Question to Shut Ctf Down posters

[towforce]

Again, from what I've read it doesn't seem likely that any new mods will be able to clean it up. I might be wrong, but that's how it looks to me.

New moderators who are willing to clean up CTF stand ready to do so.

Give them a chance.

Like I said in my first post, I see little upside to having CTF when the same topics can be discussed elsewhere, with a bigger community of people with more expertise on the specific topics.

...and to hell with families. Why talk to them when you can find someone somewhere on the internet to talk to? If people NEED specialised help, OF COURSE they want to seek it - but most of the time, it's nice to speak with family about things. Family is the most important thing in your life.

Why even have any talkchess forums to begin with? Just talk to your (actual) family about everything... You talk to different people for different reasons.

At best the new mods succeed and there's one more decent place among many on the web to discuss non-chess things - a neutral outcome. At worst they fail and CTF continues more or less as is - a negative outcome. I prefer the guaranteed neutral of simply removing it.

Did you miss Peter Berger's experience I posted a link to in this thread earlier today?

That single anecdote is just that, a single anecdote. An online gaming community I know banned an active, but disruptive, member and moved on just fine. Neither of these accounts mean anything.

Of course. People getting banned is a part of life in forums like this. I am guessing that you're in your early twenties, and I greatly respect the intelligence and maturity you have brought to this discussion. If my guess is correct (apologies if I'm wrong), then when you kill CTF (who are all computer chess lovers, and all know people from the CCC community (I have met many of them in person)), you'll be killing off a community of friendship that has been around longer than yourself (it was RGCC before CCC).

[towforce]

This looks like a "shut up" to me. Given that CCC regulars can vote in the CTF election, CTF regulars should be allowed to speak about the election in CCC.

It is a sign you annoy them. Given that they vote, it indeed a very smart move to use your right to do that.

Some will be annoyed, some will ignore me, and some will be happy to read my views about an important issue in the forthcoming Talkchess elections - even if they don't agree with me.

[hgm]

Rest assured that more will be annoyed than happy.

[Terje]

Of course. People getting banned is a part of life in forums like this. I am guessing that you're in your early twenties, and I greatly respect the intelligence and maturity you have brought to this discussion. If my guess is correct (apologies if I'm wrong), then when you kill CTF (who are all computer chess lovers, and all know people from the CCC community (I have met many of them in person)), you'll be killing off a community of friendship that has been around longer than yourself (it was RGCC before CCC).

From what I see in there, it's hardly a community of friendship at this time, but if some of you are friends I'm sure you can figure out a way to stay in touch - a discord server is an easy solution, as a bonus you also avoid all the (I hope) unwanted extremism and can moderate it however your group sees fit

[towforce]

Rest assured that more will be annoyed than happy.

I have been a part of computer chess communities for the best part of 3 decades, and I know what we're like. At our core, we're good natured people, and even if we don't like what somebody is saying, we respect a person who stands his ground with a concise and reasonable argument.

I am ready to put my faith in what I believe about computer chess folk.

[towforce]

Of course. People getting banned is a part of life in forums like this. I am guessing that you're in your early twenties, and I greatly respect the intelligence and maturity you have brought to this discussion. If my guess is correct (apologies if I'm wrong), then when you kill CTF (who are all computer chess lovers, and all know people from the CCC community (I have met many of them in person)), you'll be killing off a community of friendship that has been around longer than yourself (it was RGCC before CCC).

From what I see in there, it's hardly a community of friendship at this time, but if some of you are friends I'm sure you can figure out a way to stay in touch - a discord server is an easy solution, as a bonus you also avoid all the (I hope) unwanted extremism and can moderate it however your group sees fit

The risk that you're running is a loss of many valuable CCC regulars, and the start of a long, irreversible decline. You never know the value of what you've got until you lose it. I fully respect the fact that you, personally, are willing to take this risk, and that I'm not going to change your mind - and I don't think any the less of you for that.

[duncan]

Well, not in my opinion. TalkChess is not a free hosting company, and offering space to anyone merely because we feel that it is their democratic right to exist is not enough. It is just what the vote expressed, and it was a minority POV. There has to be a specific reason to exist here to provide something extra.

Ctf was not formed to give other people a democratic right to exist. It was formed to solve a problem of the tendency for too many off topic comments to get into CCC .

For some reason the 37 voters are not concerned about that now. Either because Ctf was a victim of its own success,or amnesia, or they have other considerations which over ride it.

However that reason has not gone away and still provides the something extra.

[MikeB]

Well, not in my opinion. TalkChess is not a free hosting company, and offering space to anyone merely because we feel that it is their democratic right to exist is not enough. It is just what the vote expressed, and it was a minority POV. There has to be a specific reason to exist here to provide something extra.

Ctf was not formed to give other people a democratic right to exist. It was formed to solve a problem of the tendency for too many off topic comments to get into CCC .

For some reason the 37 voters are not concerned about that now. Either because Ctf was a victim of its own success,or amnesia, or they have other considerations which over ride it.

However that reason has not gone away and still provides the something extra.

Looking back at when the new BB board started, it was so much more pleasant. People were civilized, topics were interesting and the polling feature was working.

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewforum.p ... tart=14960

We have lost that.

[hgm]

Ctf was not formed to give other people a democratic right to exist. It was formed to solve a problem of the tendency for too many off topic comments to get into CCC .

For some reason the 37 voters are not concerned about that now. Either because Ctf was a victim of its own success,or amnesia, or they have other considerations which over ride it.

However that reason has not gone away and still provides the something extra.

Indeed, some of the voters were (IMO justifiably) concerned about flooding of the CCC general topic forum with off-topic (i.e. non-computer-related or ches-related stuff). But I think this problem can be managed in better ways than keeping CTF open. There obviously will have to be a tough moderator policy versus those who would simply try to continue their current CTF activities in the main forum, and versus starting off-topic threads in general.

But the occasional birthday or holiday congratulations seem OK; we had those anyway, as posting them in CTF would be pointless: virtually no CCC poster reads there.

It might be a good idea to create a "Benign Off-Topic" section, similar to the current Moderation Archive, but visible to everyone, where moderators can move civilized Off-Topic discussions on non-devisive subjects (e.g. natural disasters, scientific or technological breakthroughs) once the interest in those subsided, to effectively lock those (it would be a read-only section), and keep the CCC forums clean in the long run. It would be up to the moderators to decide whether off-topic postings in the general section will be allowed to develop in a discussion, or removed immediately. If the number of off-topic postings is too large for comfort, we could switch to a system where requests for off-topic posting must be made by PM to a moderator, who will then create the topic if the request is granted.

[Michel]

Well, not in my opinion. TalkChess is not a free hosting company, and offering space to anyone merely because we feel that it is their democratic right to exist is not enough. It is just what the vote expressed, and it was a minority POV. There has to be a specific reason to exist here to provide something extra.

Ctf was not formed to give other people a democratic right to exist. It was formed to solve a problem of the tendency for too many off topic comments to get into CCC .

For some reason the 37 voters are not concerned about that now. Either because Ctf was a victim of its own success,or amnesia, or they have other considerations which over ride it.

However that reason has not gone away and still provides the something extra.

The worry about OT posts in CCC is an artificially created issue that will not arise. The CCC moderators will simply do their job by deleting OT posts and banning repeated offenders.

Look. I like to discuss the upcoming election in the US with my friends. However I feel no desire at all to do this on a forum dedicated to computer chess.