And to follow up on what Harley said, and also to reply to some earlier posts from the opposing side, I wish to present an argument that is slightly different from what I have said thus far.

The main point of contention seems to be that some (gary, myself, Harley, and others) believe that a variant has to be JUSTIFIED in order to exist on a gaming site. The opposing viewpoint, presented by Walter, Satan, Pioneer54, Ellieoop, and others is that a variant need not be justified beyond the generic "I want the variant so therefore it should be so."

I feel that Gary and I have given more than enough reasons for why this particular variant just should not exist on this gaming site (or any other for that matter).

But to further illustrate the point, suppose tomorrow lots of people started requesting LOTS of pente variants, and lots of othello variants, and lots of variants for all games. Do you think Fencer would indiscriminantly add every one of them? No, he would most likely examine the merits of each one, deciding to keep only the better ones. The site cannot support a limitless number of variants, and thus only those that deserve to exist should exist. In the future, we may see lots of pente variants, and then people will have lots of options.

So, for pente or any game, the decision on whether to introduce a variant is a judgement call. SOME criteria MUST be used! If it were simply a matter of saying "well, this one was asked for so I'll do it" then every variant would be created, no matter how pointless it is, and we would be overrun with bad variants.

Here is where I am going with this--

WHY was Gary ridculed and insulted for presenting a set of criteria to be used to evaluating whether a variant should be created? I would say his list of criteria was well thought out and could be well-applied to any game, not just pente. I think we would all agree that SOME criteria needs to exist in order for a game to be created. So, before blasting his, why not actually think about it first and see if his criteria has any flaws? I did not see any. But, instead of actually examining the details of his idea, some of you just outright blasted it and dismissed it with snide questions about who made him god or some crap like that. I have two words for that: CHILDISH AND PETTY.