[Retros] Building a complete and friendly retro library

[afretro]

Dear Roberto, dear all,
The idea of a retro-wiki is highly inspiring. Indeed, we should start with something relatively simple. As to records – surely chess composition is more than “merely” art; traditions of mathematics-related records date back to many decades ago; it would be ill-advised to impose a ban on them. There is nothing wrong about people wondering e.g. what is the shortest way to mate with a bishop in a SPG. As to the word “best” – this one is quite suitable for being banned, as far as any esthetic aspect is involved, no matter how small or trivial it may be. Retroanalysis is, in a way, magic; and we won’t try to determine the best magician among us, will we?
One of the issues to be dealt with consists in differences in terminology. For example, Nikita Plaksin came up with dozens of terms back in the 1960s-1980s which are widely used in Russian and Ukrainian publications and which often do not have direct analogues in the West. I included explanations of a lot of such terms/concepts in the Dictionary of Chess Composition Terms published by Mark Basisty; unfortunately, that book remains in Russian only.
Yours,
Andrey