Similarity Report 2019

[Colin-G]

[Moderation] I have moved Ed's thread on engine similarity to the Engine Origins section.
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Where have the recent posts on this topic been moved to?
I can only find this thread
http://www.talkchess.com/forum3/viewtop ... s&start=20
The latest post in it is from Feb 2012!

[chrisw]

I treat complaints as confidential, and was not planning on changing this policy. People must not feel impaired by fear for petty harrassment in retaliation for flagging wrong-doing. By the nature of things it are the most aggressve and viscious members that violate rules, and have a tendency to bully other people.

Moderators do not 'obey' complaints any more than judges obey district attorneys in criminal court cases. It is their task to independently judge whether postings violate the charter (in which case they are censored or removed alltogether), or disruptive to ordered discussion (in which case they might be locked or moved). The complaints merely act to bring matters to our attention.

This is all fair enough, but I have a thought or two.

1. Without transparency, what is to stop a moderator from inventing an 'anonymous complaint' (or two) to further their own interest on a matter. For example, I know that you and Ed don't always see eye-to-eye and there's some bad blood. Is there a 3rd party mod who verifies that said complaints exist from real established members?

2. This brings to mind the hole in your judge analogy.

Perhaps a moderator is nothing more than a judge, but a plaintiff still has to make their case in open court, right?

If a judge and prosecution team prepared to indict a suspect for say, sexual harrassment, even in this case they'll never say "an unknown, anonymous person has made a complaint against you and we find you guilty"...this is unfair and against the spirit of legal transparency.

Instead, they'll be asked by the prosecuter: "Would you be willing to make your statement in an open court?"

The hidden nature of Engine Origins forum means that links to informative posts within it will not be available to a wider public via, say, links from the Computer Chess Wiki.

[Rebel]

I treat complaints as confidential, and was not planning on changing this policy. People must not feel impaired by fear for petty harrassment in retaliation for flagging wrong-doing. By the nature of things it are the most aggressve and viscious members that violate rules, and have a tendency to bully other people.

Moderators do not 'obey' complaints any more than judges obey district attorneys in criminal court cases. It is their task to independently judge whether postings violate the charter (in which case they are censored or removed alltogether), or disruptive to ordered discussion (in which case they might be locked or moved). The complaints merely act to bring matters to our attention.

This is all fair enough, but I have a thought or two.

1. Without transparency, what is to stop a moderator from inventing an 'anonymous complaint' (or two) to further their own interest on a matter. For example, I know that you and Ed don't always see eye-to-eye and there's some bad blood. Is there a 3rd party mod who verifies that said complaints exist from real established members?

I met HGM many times during tournaments and we are just fine then.

[hgm]

This is all fair enough, but I have a thought or two.

1. Without transparency, what is to stop a moderator from inventing an 'anonymous complaint' (or two) to further their own interest on a matter. For example, I know that you and Ed don't always see eye-to-eye and there's some bad blood. Is there a 3rd party mod who verifies that said complaints exist from real established members?

2. This brings to mind the hole in your judge analogy.

Perhaps a moderator is nothing more than a judge, but a plaintiff still has to make their case in open court, right?

If a judge and prosecution team prepared to indict a suspect for say, sexual harrassment, even in this case they'll never say "an unknown, anonymous person has made a complaint against you and we find you guilty"...this is unfair and against the spirit of legal transparency.

Instead, they'll be asked by the prosecuter: "Would you be willing to make your statement in an open court?"

As to (1), I suppose this is the reason why we have three moderators rather than one. If one moderator misbehaves by abusing his powers for personal gain, the others can overrule him.

As to (2): note I was comparing this to a criminal case rather than a civil lawsuit. The member reporting a post merely has the role of a citizen calling the police because he sees there is a crime in progress. Because of the nature of 'forum crimes' the perpetrators here are always caught 'red-handed': there never can be any doubt as to what they posted. There is never any need to call the complainer as a witness to verify what was done. In such cases there would only be an indictment by the DA, explaining the charges to a judge. That is also hardly necessary in moderation, as the charter is simple, and what part of it was violated is usually obvious. The moderator can simply consider all rules in the charter to see which one (if any) was violated, rather than having to be pointed out by an independent party which rule to focus on.

We have no formal jury here. (Just like most real courts in civilized countries, I might add.) When I am in doubt, though, it is my personal policy to start a thread where forum members can speak out their opinion, before making a final decision In the mean time I take temporary measures to make sure the delay this brings about has minimal impact.

[hgm]

Where have the recent posts on this topic been moved to?
I can only find this thread
http://www.talkchess.com/forum3/viewtop ... s&start=20
The latest post in it is from Feb 2012!

It is not a thread in the General Topics section, but a separate section. Make sure you are logged on, or you cannot see it.

I am not sure what the reason was for hiding this section from non-members. This was not my decision, and I doubt it is even in my jurisdiction. It suits my rationalization for the existence of this section, though; if it is to be used as a place where accusations can be made that might tarnish the reputation of one of our members, it seems better to start resolving such matters 'in-house', rather than immediately hanging someone out to dry with the dirty laundery for all the world to see.

[BrendanJNorman]

To Ed and Harm:

Got it.

Thanks to you both for clarifying.

[Rebel]

To Ed and Harm:

Got it.

Thanks to you both for clarifying.

When this forum was created back in 1997 there was only section, this main section. In 2000 CTF became a sub forum. As volume postings increased people got annoyed by folks posting match results and so the tournament sub forum saw the light, later the programmer sub forum.

The EO sub forum was created because of the massive volume of postings about the Rybka/Fruit controverse which started in 2008-9 and at some point more or less became the main topic.

Nowadays one or two user complaints are enough to make a moderator decide to move a thread to EO, as HGM already explained.

[BrendanJNorman]

To Ed and Harm:

Got it.

Thanks to you both for clarifying.

When this forum was created back in 1997 there was only section, this main section. In 2000 CTF became a sub forum. As volume postings increased people got annoyed by folks posting match results and so the tournament sub forum saw the light, later the programmer sub forum.

The EO sub forum was created because of the massive volume of postings about the Rybka/Fruit controverse which started in 2008-9 and at some point more or less became the main topic.

Nowadays one or two user complaints are enough to make a moderator decide to move a thread to EO, as HGM already explained.

Yep. A bit of historical background and it makes more sense...

Thanks.

[Ovyron]

But we live by outdated rules. The EO was made at a time where we couldn't discuss much at all around here because every other subject would be buried by the threads about engine origins. It became so ridiculous that I quit Talkchess at the time. The EO subforum, and moving all such threads to there made sense at the time.

We're not going to have 20 active threads on the subject nowadays, no threads are going to get buried, so it's clear EO has outlived its usefulness, and we'd be best to get rid of it and just move all its threads back to this section.

Otherwise, people that don't even know EO exists and just visit the General section are going to miss the discussions happening there, such as the Similarity Report 2019 discussions.

[Rebel]

True.