Time to say thanks to ChessUSA for all the good years and move

[ydebilloez]

As I said earlier -

Why should we not move to https://www.forumotion.com/
The setup is a piece of cake, polls are available, youtube support, likes support.

It's free and we are no longer dependent, put Talkchess on read-only for those who still can access it. The Talkchess database is of later concern.

We should indeed get past the issue of having the forum unavailable at times for some users. This forum should be accessible for all people that are contributing to computer chess and respect the rules of the forum, regardless of their origin, location, opinions, ...
I much appreciate the forum format of phpBB. If moving to anything new, please keep the same featureset.
BTW: what are the server requirements for running this forum?

[Modern Times]

I think the forum should go its own way separate from ChessUSA, but who becomes the "owners" for want of a better word - the administrators, decision makers, owner of the domain name etc etc etc. Separate issue from moderation.

[Hobacle]

This is not what I want because TalkChess.com was the sourse of my composing and my happiness, expectation and emotion... I just want to post my compositions here till April 2022.
Hope for the best.

[mclane]

You and Harvey are elected with the responsibility to keep the forum going---

They're elected to moderate the forum, nothing more.

So who then is responsible for the sanity of the forum?

Not sure what you mean, Ed.

Are you comfortable with the fact many readers / posters are denied access to the forum?

No. That is disappointing.

Then what should be done?

Wasn't Quentin looking into it?

The Situation is over a year in that desastrous stage and we always complained over that period of that year.

When we founded the forum in 1997 we never had in mind that it is owned by a company.
The forum belongs to the members.
And not an owner decides but the members.

The forum is a democratical institution.
The members decide what to do.

How can it be that polls cannot be made, and moderator candidates are blocked ?!
This looks like a banana republic, like Belarus or Turkey or russia Where oppositionals are sent to siberia or get a tea with polonium into it.

Thats completely the opposite of the situation the founding fathers of this forum had in mind.
And the fact that all this is not happening in North Korea but in USA makes me think something is terribly wrong here.

Lets Shut it down and lets do a new beginning somewhere we dont have to wait a year to “solve a problem”.

I am fed up with all the excuses of the admins and moderators in charge.
1 year of excuses and fog and no difference.

[Ras]

Lets Shut it down and lets do a new beginning somewhere

And lose all the database or what? There are members who don't just use the forum for trashposting. It's also a valuable resource in terms of computer chess, in particular for those who actually program engines. The CPW has many links to TC that would be preserved when moving to another host and keeping the database, but not when just starting from fresh.

[mclane]

The old data should of course be preserved.
With a new beginning i mean a forum that can be accessed by all computerchess friends and not only those who luckily can access it while others cannot.

In the old days we had RGCC. Then the moderated CCC.
I am sure we can create another forum and preserve the old data.

[dkappe]

So, questions going forward:

1. Funding and management of the board.
2. What to do with the old posts/data.
3. How to make sure the new board doesn’t suffer from the same attacks/outages as the present one.

[Harvey Williamson]

3. How to make sure the new board doesn’t suffer from the same attacks/outages as the present one.

This is a real issue. If we take talkchess.com to a new host it does not stop the attacks.

[Eelco de Groot]

3. How to make sure the new board doesn’t suffer from the same attacks/outages as the present one.

This is a real issue. If we take talkchess.com to a new host it does not stop the attacks.

You always will have hackers around. Everywhere. Part of the vulnerabilty is I think this is still not the fully up to date phpBB. Part of the vulnerabilty, much more important, is that the forum is riding piggyback on ChessUSA's site. If there are more than ten people here the webhost is getting very nervous and they shut down half the userbase. Hackers rejoice, every year or whenever an election. If you close this forum for new posts but keep it up as a database only, I think the troublemakers will try something else. At least that takes care of all the spambots, Sam used to remove I think hundred's of them. they can't register anymore here. Of course in the new forum you still have that problem but tha't's life. At least they can't hurt ChessUSA's site much if there is an independant account. It will take some money to set up a new forum and we as a group might lose all the technical support if ChessUSA would not want to sponsor us anymore in a new place.

[scchess]

Why don't we do the calculations and work out how much to run the servers? And then find a new sponsor or do fundraising? We don't need ChessUSA, surely we can move the service out. Who can do the finance calculations?