Unfair Poll

[Peter Berger]

One solution to the perceived lack of member involvement could be the following: We flip the switch to make CTF invisible based on the current vote, but allow the vote to go on for another month, or even 6 months. Perhaps there are still a lot of long-term members who have not logged in this week. That CTF is gone should smoke all those prospective 'stay' voters out of the woods, I would think. If 100 more members do show up, and invert the result, we simply flip the switch back.

As you closed the thread ( for sensible reasons) where I suggested otherwise:

This won't work. What will happen is that what you consider to be decent people will just leave. There is little incentive for being a CTF poster, it is a very little hobby. If it becomes inconvenient, you'd rather do something else.

There are some people who'll stay to fight this out, but this is not exactly the crowd that will make most people happy.

Some people care for the CTF community, but this is very clearly a minority of people who are members of the CCC community, I think this can't be argued. Else more people would participate in dicussions there.

How many people participate in the "Tournament and Matches" room btw? Few would be my guess.

[Harvey Williamson]

I don't like the idea of it being outright invisible to non-members. I think prospective members should at least know the option exists should they decide to join. I.e. "what advantages to I get to join?" The answer is not clear if you think it only opens the door to 1-2 forums. My 2 cents. That said, given no such option I'd vote 3.

This is a good point. It could be left visible on the Talkchess homepage but you would not be able to read the contents without requesting access.

[towforce]

1. This is not a "poll", it's a survey.

2. There's only three boxes, with limited possible responses. Quite a few people have either posited a different response to the three given, and several have answered textually, rather than just a click box tick. Several have answered not-close and so on.

3. There are time honoured and established conditions for "voting" eligability on CCC/CTF, for moderation elections or whatever. Sam Hull, TCAdmin, has recently stated what these conditions are (and the reasons for them). Six months registration, a minimum of 50 posts on all boards, and recent posting activity.

4. There's little doubt, via statements all over CCC and CTF by a moderator, HGM, that this poll/survey/questionnaire/whatever is going to be taken as a 'majority' decision (or not) to close down CTF more or less immediately. There has been no "official" denial of imminent threatened closure, it's not stated when, but it's perfectly possible that when the "poll" seven days runs out, on Monday, members will wake up to a large blank page. It will be too late to complain because all complaints can just be deleted, and posters banned for being off-topic, or whatever, as has already happened in fact (Milos). In real, this poll/survey in basically a survey/vote to close or not close CTF, that's the intention and that's what it is going to get used for. Voting posters can take their pick.

Applying the above established eligability criteria, 50 posts and six months registered, to the responses so far, the situation is:

Close CTF - 30 votes
Don't close CTF - 26 votes.

As Milos has pointed out, this is NOT a democratic election for moderators, it's about a fundamental change/deletion. A mass of ethics and philosophy on democracy/majority/minority etc etc etc apply. Some already posited and discussed.

So, those are the figures. 30 to 26.

Another figure is that moderator elections get around 400-500 total votes, split three ways, eg, total voting mass is around 150 members. As opposed to 56 here. Active posters are what? 250? 500? Another figure are the numbers in the poll with accounts of a few days old only, where do they come from? The whole thing is just bizarre.

I fully agree with Chris about this: closing CTF on the basis of the "poll" (a CCC thread) would be reprehensible.

If talkchess is to be guided by posts in threads, then it should also have been guided by the posts in CTF (and there have been many) asking for Daniel and Thorsten to be appointed as moderators for that forum. IMO, they would clean up the racism that most of us want to see the back of.

[hgm]

If the chess talk on this website is not enough to keep people here, it seems to me those people have no business being here at all. CTF was intended as a place where computer-chess afficionados could discuss other problems. Not as a self-sustaining cummunity of non-chess lovers that would just enjoy free hosting.

You think that the current state of CTF is valuable enough to keep it alive, and that is of course your right. But the question is, why should it be part of website for chess, if the large majority of people that are here for chess don't see it as an inviting place to go to? Note that many of the 1 voters who post in CCC motified this by "I shun it, and what I don't see cannot hurt me, so it can stay". That can hardly be considered support for having it here, right? Motivations like "we need a sink to lure the scum away from the main forum" are also highly dubious.

It seems that there is only a very small number of members with genuine CCC interest for which CTF is a valuable addition to their posting options. Several of the 1 votes are from people that have all or >90% of their posting activity in CTF. That these want to keep it is to be expected. But again, it is hardly an argument for making it part of computer-chess website. The strong call from CTF to exclude CCC posters from voting in CTF moderator elections also points in that direction.

I would say that the case for keeping CTF part of TalkChess is very weak indeed. Perhaps as few as 6 voters truly visit both sections often, and some of those (like me) even voted 2. These seem to be very dedicated to CTF, and I have no doubt they would continue to visit both forums even when these had different URLs. Browsers have tabs, and what is the difference between clicking another tab where you have opened another URL and clicking another section in the TalkChess main index?

[hgm]

I fully agree with Chris about this: closing CTF on the basis of the "poll" (a CCC thread) would be reprehensible.

If talkchess is to be guided by posts in threads, then it should also have been guided by the posts in CTF (and there have been many) asking for Daniel and Thorsten to be appointed as moderators for that forum. IMO, they would clean up the racism that most of us want to see the back of.

This is just rewording the "CCC members must stay out of CTF affairs" POV that so clearly shows that CTF doesn't belong on TalkChess. You want to be independent, but you still want to be here? Why? It is very unusual that revolting provinces who claim their independence still expect to share in the tax revenues of the country they want to abandon.

Claim your independence? Fine! But then go all the way.

Nobody seems to want this marriage between CCC and CTF. The CTF members are just a bit schizofrenic about it.

[towforce]

...Not as a self-sustaining community of non-chess lovers that would just enjoy free hosting.

OK then, find me a single member, just one, of CTF who doesn't love chess and computer chess. Speaking for myself, I am a chess enthusiast, I visited the 1997 computer chess championship in Paris as a spectator, I took part in the 2000 computer chess championship at the Alexandra Palace in London as a participant, and I have had articles about computer chess published in Selective Search (which are now online). I also occasionally participate in CCC threads - especially those about mathematical issues relating to chess (e.g. its solubility), and I am working (slowly, admittedly) on a method of discovering underlying patterns that might enable me to discover whether, as I suspect, chess has a simpler emergent pattern behind it than most people realise.

Because I like the maths, but am not enthusiastic about writing code to generate game trees at high speed, I am about to be cleaned out.

[towforce]

Nobody seems to want this marriage between CCC and CTF. The CTF members are just a bit schizofrenic about it.

It's the same people! If it's a marriage, then it's this marriage - link. It just needs moderators to clean it up. There are moderators who are willing to clean it up ready and waiting to start work.

[hgm]

Same people? Same as what? As those you want to exclude from deciding about CTF?

Holding a poll in CTF only would effectively exclude all CCC members from voting, since the large majority of those would not even want to be found dead in CTF. We conducted a poll in the place where no TalkChess member could miss it.

Besides, the original proposal was to have a vote in CTF, but there would be other candidates as Thorsten and Daniel, including those who did not have any cleanup on their agenda, and I would be running too, for an effective CTF shutdown during my term. It was the CTF dwellers that were very loud indeed in claiming that CCC members should not be allowed to vote there.

Same people, my ...!

[Rebel]

Same people? Same as what? As those you want to exclude from deciding about CTF?

Holding a poll in CTF only would effectively exclude all CCC members from voting, since the large majority of those would not even want to be found dead in CTF. We conducted a poll in the place where no TalkChess member could miss it.

Besides, the original proposal was to have a vote in CTF, but there would be other candidates as Thorsten and Daniel, including those who did not have any cleanup on their agenda, and I would be running too, for an effective CTF shutdown during my term. It was the CTF dwellers that were very loud indeed in claiming that CCC members should not be allowed to vote there.

Same people, my ...!

You forget to mention that 1) the poll option is broken and 2) Sam no longer is willing to check the member list for fake accounts due to the increased number of members. It was never the intend to exclude CCC members. Just to find a reasonable ad hoc solution to fix the problem of 2 CTF mods that left.

[hgm]

Then I advice you to reread the sticky thread that discussed election methods ("Election preparation (important!)"), and the responses I got in the thread where I announced my candidacy as moderator for the SHID movement. Some excerpts:

Ed Schroeder (Rebel) has been so helpful as to compile a list of frequent CTF posters, see the quote below. It has been proposed that we solve the account-verification problem by only allowing frequent posters to vote. I for myself see no reason to suspect any of the login handles mentioned below to be second accounts of the same person, so these people should certainly be allowed to vote.

If there are people who were accidentally left out, or would feel their rights would be infringed if we allow no others than those on this list to vote:

Please come forward to claim your rights!

I made a list, got 35 members, mainly from members who posted last month, but I also went back to the George Floyd period which became the trigger for new moderators.

1. Terry McCracken
2. Paul Bedrey
3. Eelco de Groot
4. Chris
5. Rebel
6. hgm
7. Laskos
8. Milos
9. mhull
10. mclane
11. A Distel
12. corres
13. Sam Hull
14. smatovic
15. K I Hyams
16. Charly
17. ernest
18. Peter Berger
19. Damir
20. towforce
21. S.Taylor
22. MikeB
23. BrendanJNorman
24. duncan
25. Anton
26. Leo
27. AndrewGrant
28. shrapnel
29. Daniel Shawul
30. dj
31. Michel
32. Adam Hair
33. Henk
34. gaard
35. Martin Hudon

Due to the volume it's maybe an idea to split the work involved. In principle I see it as a moderator job but surely I am willing to participate.

If I missed a member please post.

directly followed by:

An idea how to hold the election.

The listed members are invited by PM (by hgm, me, you an me together, or someone else) to suggest max. 3 candidates. Candidates will be checked by PM (or email) if they want to run for moderator and publish their moderation policy. The listed members have a right to vote max. 3 candidates. Voting will take place by hgm, me, you and me together or someone else via PM or email.

Note that the available of a SHut It Down option kills the possibility to vet voters just by number of postings in CTF. While it is highly likely that members who virtually never post on CTF would care very much who moderates it, they might have a strong opinion, and a strong desire to express it, on whether CTF should be shut down. So we cannot deny the rights that the charter grants them.

If we want to use posting frequency as a signature for detecting fake accounts, we should also include CCC postings.

Nah - if we get this team thing going I will use everything I can to make sure that CCC guys who never cared about CTF can not vote - but this would come in later - you can't win this per default, we will fight over it, rest assured I will put up some satisfactory fight ( else you'd win this one anyway).

So - do you have a team? ( the liberal front might actually be able to create a team eventually, as strange as this may sound).

...
Members that practically never post or even read CTF, like this Röschtigraben gentleman shouldn't be allowed to vote. Period.
...

Thank you for showing everyone as you think democracy should work.

These are your own words - For such proposals to be taken seriously, at least 5 people must have expressed their support for them

Indeed. Taken seriously as a proposal worth the trouble to put up for a more general vote. You seem to misunderstand it as the requirement for the proposal to be accepted or implemented.

It is common practice that some minimum expression of support is required to qualify for voting. In a small meating this is typically one person who has to 'second' it, in national elections you have to collect some 10K signatures before your party is allowed in the elections, etc.

At least 5 ppl supports Ed's proposal, now put it to vote or shut up. And all we need is a majority of ppl that actually voted to support it.
You clearly do not have support of CTF members to be the moderator and you still keep usurping the power.

(Note: the above refers to Ed's initial proposal to allow voting only by members on a list of members with a certain minimum number of postings in CTF.)

And what is the sense to let members of CCC vote over a forum they never visit ?
Maybe because they are 2000: 10 in the majority ?

Ok. You people are interested in saving the status quo here.

The similar things that happen in any dictatorship.
It’s to risky for you to do fair elections. So you manipulate them.

The admin with no Mandat implements another admin without Mandat.
Then the admin without Mandat threatens the people who are against his wish with moderation and bans.
Next the Admin without Mandat spreads lies.
Nothing new. Sam also did this often when he was standing back to the wall.