What happened to batgirl's article?

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/for-paul-morphy-fans

             Thank You buddy; was it re-posted by staff??

You guys are very helpful!

I don't know. I just saw it in the general discussion thread list. 

            Einstein pointed out her last blog post after 6 yrs. She sounded like she wanted to go.

She writes articles regularly, just doesn't blog

Yeah. I'm glad she stayed.  

            I know, and the're allways dam good articles. A few days ago, she posted, "Sex & Chess". And then it came down.    Maybe we can convince chessdex that Batgirl was actually cheater 1

Say it isn't so.

What did I miss? :)

     I'm really not all thaaaat old, but I do remember that when I was in my 20s and needed information, I had to go to the library or a bookstore or write a letter (with a stamp) to someone with some authority on a subject.  When the internet first started, for years there wasn't a whole of value online compared to today or even compared to my library. I got into chess just before the birth of the world wide web and was immediately drawn to its rich history and all things surrounding it. Back then I still had to hit the library and the intra-library loan system hard to learn what I wanted to learn.  Books, each of which took an effort to obtain, were not just treats, they were feasts.  Since there was almost nothing on the internet, I learned how to write html so I could contribute by sharing my explorations on a landscape which, with just a few exceptions, was pretty much void of chess history.  As the internet exploded, books, periodicals and newspaper archives became gradually available, opening new avenues for research, but still involved a lot of time-consuming work. I maintained a chess history website (several, in fact) for a dozen years before arriving at chess.com when it first opened its doors.  By then I had been toying with the new thing called blogs and had started and stumbled in several attempts at blogging.  Since the blog format was far more limiting than that of html, I was someone dismayed.  But chess.com offered several valuable tools and an immediate audience, tilting the scales for me. 

     What boggles my mind is how little effort one must exert today to get informaion, to be able to learn things, as opposed to 20 years ago.  This isn't a bad thing by any means, but it does lessen the appreciation.  When one has to work hard for something, its value rises dramatically.  Of course, that's human nature.

     The article in question in this thread was a modification of a web page I made, probably 10 years ago, called Chess: Love, Romance and Sex.  What the page - which received very high reviews by people who followed chess sites back then - endeavored to explore was the historical evolution of roles to which men (presumanly men) relegated women in relation to chess, through art, literature, advertising and other forms of expression.  My underlying idea was that women's relationship to chess today is one more step in, and partly a result of, this evolutionary process.   This particular page was the result of over 100 hours of research and writing and the modified (and much tamer) version I posted here was another 10 hr. investment.  

     It was online a little over 2 hours and received about 20 comments both praising and complaining.  After I removed the article, IM Jeremy Silman wrote to me, "A terrible pity, because that was the best article I’ve ever seen on that subject. A true gem." 

     While it was criticized, I presume, because some people though it was too racy,  absolutely nothing in the article was salacious, lewd or indecent.   However it did cover a subject, obvious by it's title, that might be sensitive to some and the "raciest" images were one or two small paintings with Reuben-like nudes, a couple of low-res images of chess phone-cards with ladies in negligees and the famous, highly-circulated arranged photograph of Marcel Duchamp with Eve Babitz.  In contrast to a flippant (remember the lack of value and appreciation resulting from ease of obtaining information) comment here, the pictures in the article were quite carefully selected to illustrate a point, some easily found, some impossible to find elsewhere in the net.

     I took the article down for one reason only.  A member who uses chess.com in scholastic chess coaching contacted me concerned that the article might contribute to an already-existing wariness about chess.com by his school, and that argument carried enough weight to override my conviction that the article was on completely sound ground here in terms of words, concepts and choice of iages.  However, even this honorable reason doesn't prevent me from reexamining the worth of having spent many, many, many thousands of hours gratis researching and presenting various aspects of chess history and culture which can be dismissed so casually and cavalierly.

     I just stumbled upon this thread and thought I'd clarify things from my perspective in case anyone else stumples upon it too

Sounds interesting. Can you re-post it somewhere else?

I like what you do batgirl.

 ^^ +1

Your article can also go into a time capsule opening it in 100 years!

I don't know if this of much relevance, but I can attest to the hard work done by those researching new and interesting aspects of chess, be it John Donaldson or Jay Whitehead before him scrounging about in the depths of the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco, Edward Winter's indefatigable investigations/crusades, or batgirl's now rather vast canon of forgotten wonders.

Also, FWIW, I once had my own brief brush with historical chess "relevance" - at a music concert, a fairly elderly lady noticed I had with me a book on Akiba Rubinstein, and told me something shocking: she was his niece!  They actually lived together after Akiba disappeared from chess after the second world war.  I asked her various things about him, and she told me quite a bit, but like an idiot, I didn't write any of it down and in fact didn't even think to get her number or any other kind of contact information (I was a teenager and this was in the mid/early 90's).  Anyhow, if any chess historians are reading this, please accept my apologies for squandering a fantastic lead on one of the more enigmatic masters of the 20th century.

Off the subject a little; but, GargleBlaster, why are your posts in yellow?

The posts of people with titles are off-colored. They look pinkish on my computer.

Oh. Is that they say more important? Sounds like the start of a class system to me.

I've never noticed posts from titled players being in a different color.  Also, I've only been titled for the last few months, the vast majority of my time here has been as an untitled player.