Elections

[bnemias]

I read through some of the moderation philosophy posts and one point raised is spam, another was personal attacks.

I'd like to see what some of the candidates consider spam. Ie, existing posts they would have dealt with as spam without being asked by the "report post" tool.

Ditto with personal attacks.

One candidate mentioned he would not allow discussions, links, or results from the Robbo* engines. Could you provide examples of what you would have removed besides links?

Thank you.

[sockmonkey]

I read through some of the moderation philosophy posts and one point raised is spam, another was personal attacks.

I'd like to see what some of the candidates consider spam. Ie, existing posts they would have dealt with as spam without being asked by the "report post" tool.

Ditto with personal attacks.

One candidate mentioned he would not allow discussions, links, or results from the Robbo* engines. Could you provide examples of what you would have removed besides links?

Thank you.

I'll define forum spam as completely superfluous, irrelevant, generally aggressive posts, intended to hijack or otherwise disrupt a conversation in progress, with which the author(s) don't agree. By my count, there are two present members of this forum who are particularly egregious on this point: Graham Banks and Rolf.

I honestly don't know what the appropriate remedy for this situation is: as I wrote in my nomination statement, I am opposed to banning as a general remedy, and I'm uncomfortable with giving long-time members of the forum the boot. Nor do I support censorship of posts, in general. I appreciate Graham's contributions to computer chess, but don't appreciate his egotistical, repeated insistence on the rightness of his point of view, to the exclusion of all other forum members. Rolf is a different story, but also produces copious spam in an effort to shout down those with whom he disagrees. Additionally, both of these forum members are guilty of conducting personal attacks against their opponents. Sorry for the plaintext, if it offends, but I'd rather put my opinion out on the table.

In any case, I'm not oblivious to the problem, but intend to discuss it with the rest of the moderation team, should I be elected to the moderator position. Obviously, we need tools at our disposal which come short of censorship and bans to rein in the problem, where it occurs. Of course, if Graham is a co-moderator, that might be a little touchy, but, then again, if Graham is a moderator on this board, I probably won't stick around very long to see how he destroys it.

Jeremy

[bnemias]

Since response to this has been underwhelming, I decided to do some legwork on it and provide some examples. Though, it is illuminating that only one candidate bothered to reply so far.

I'd like to see what the candidates would do with the following posts. Please be aware that I'm not interested in debating the issues, but rather what actions you'd take if any. There is no right or wrong answer, it's a test of character.

Post subject: Re: ACCA stance on Ippo, Robbo and such
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 849#315849

Re: Why not let Norman return to chess community
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 033#319033
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 426#319426

Re: Bit Scan (equivalent to ASM instructions bsr and bsf)
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 816#311816
http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 816#311818

[bnemias]

I was going to wait until people respond to post my thoughts, but on reflection, I think I will post what I'm curious about before anyone actually responds.

1: (is this seen as a personal attack)
2: (does it matter if it is truth or not) [i don't even know if it is... don't care, not the point of this test]
3: (will they halt tangents that only matter to two people)
4: (does the mention of robbo in a technical thread disqualify it?)
5: (does the actual implementation change things?)

[Graham Banks]

I was going to wait until people respond to post my thoughts, but on reflection, I think I will post what I'm curious about before anyone actually responds.

1: (is this seen as a personal attack)
2: (does it matter if it is truth or not) [i don't even know if it is... don't care, not the point of this test]
3: (will they halt tangents that only matter to two people)
4: (does the mention of robbo in a technical thread disqualify it?)
5: (does the actual implementation change things?)

1.No
2.Yes - a personal attack
3.I wouldn't have allowed it to go as far as it did
4.I have said that I would allow discussion in a managed way, but no links
5.As for 4

[sockmonkey]

I was going to wait until people respond to post my thoughts, but on reflection, I think I will post what I'm curious about before anyone actually responds.

1: (is this seen as a personal attack)
2: (does it matter if it is truth or not) [i don't even know if it is... don't care, not the point of this test]
3: (will they halt tangents that only matter to two people)
4: (does the mention of robbo in a technical thread disqualify it?)
5: (does the actual implementation change things?)

1. no
2. This is clearly a personal attack, I don't care about the background, either. However, the person being referenced is no longer a member of this forum. From that perspective, it's not exactly a moderation issue, is it? The person in question is, however, a well-known member of the CC community, and it's just bad form to permit the kind of vitriol displayed here to become commonplace on talkchess.
3. I would have suggested that the discussion be taken off-forum, although I wouldn't have insisted. Members are encouraged to stop reading that which doesn't interest them.
4. no
5. no

[Peter Skinner]

Sorry Eric, I just saw this thread, so I will reply.

1. No.
2. Personal attack and would have been removed and Rolf warned.
3. That went on way to long. I would have locked the thread to halt the accusations and what not.
4. No, just mentioning Robbo in a thread doesn't disqualify it.
5. No, I see code. What is wrong with discussing changes to code? People were allowed to talk about Toga.

The legality of the Ippolit code is what concerns me. We do have a sponsor that could be held liable for discussions here, and I believe the charter gives us guidelines to prevent that from happening.

If I knew with 100% certainty that our sponsor would never be held liable for the discussions or actions by people over the usage of the Ippolit code, I couldn't really care if that was the only thing talked about here.

We have went through periods where Crafty, Shredder, Ferret, and Rybka dominated the conversation for months at a time and that was fine. Toga did the same as well, but that is seen as a "legal" clone that is abiding by the GPL license. There are differences between the two.

I know you didn't ask for the above explanation, but I decided to kick in an extra two cents worth

Peter

[swami]

I was going to wait until people respond to post my thoughts, but on reflection, I think I will post what I'm curious about before anyone actually responds.

1: (is this seen as a personal attack)
2: (does it matter if it is truth or not) [i don't even know if it is... don't care, not the point of this test]
3: (will they halt tangents that only matter to two people)
4: (does the mention of robbo in a technical thread disqualify it?)
5: (does the actual implementation change things?)

1. no
2. This is clearly a personal attack, I don't care about the background, either. However, the person being referenced is no longer a member of this forum. From that perspective, it's not exactly a moderation issue, is it? The person in question is, however, a well-known member of the CC community, and it's just bad form to permit the kind of vitriol displayed here to become commonplace on talkchess.
3. I would have suggested that the discussion be taken off-forum, although I wouldn't have insisted. Members are encouraged to stop reading that which doesn't interest them.
4. no
5. no

This was exactly my thoughts. Reasonable to me too.

[bnemias]

I know you didn't ask for the above explanation, but I decided to kick in an extra two cents worth :)

I understand the tendency. Actually I'd prefer avoiding that simply because I'm tempted to jump in and debate some of that with you. But that's not the goal of this thread, so I'll refrain.

Thanks.

[bob]

Sorry Eric, I just saw this thread, so I will reply.

1. No.
2. Personal attack and would have been removed and Rolf warned.
3. That went on way to long. I would have locked the thread to halt the accusations and what not.
4. No, just mentioning Robbo in a thread doesn't disqualify it.
5. No, I see code. What is wrong with discussing changes to code? People were allowed to talk about Toga.

The legality of the Ippolit code is what concerns me. We do have a sponsor that could be held liable for discussions here, and I believe the charter gives us guidelines to prevent that from happening.

If I knew with 100% certainty that our sponsor would never be held liable for the discussions or actions by people over the usage of the Ippolit code, I couldn't really care if that was the only thing talked about here.

We have went through periods where Crafty, Shredder, Ferret, and Rybka dominated the conversation for months at a time and that was fine. Toga did the same as well, but that is seen as a "legal" clone that is abiding by the GPL license. There are differences between the two.

I know you didn't ask for the above explanation, but I decided to kick in an extra two cents worth

Peter

Just for the record, the legal issues here are <nil>. The only person/persons that would face any sort of legal issue are the ones that actually violated a copyright or patent law. In this case a copyright law. Discussing such is not a problem. I wouldn't worry a minute about such issues. I'd worry more about trying to get to the bottom of what Robo*/Ip* actually is. The only one with any legal standing there is Vas, since he would be the only injured party, and he's the one that would have to take some sort of action. But first he would have to provide some evidence to get anything rolling, and so far, -nothing-.

Disallowing links to Robo* or whatever would be just as silly as disallowing links to Crafty, if some bozo comes around and claims it is a clone with no evidence (assuming Crafty was not open source). How long would Crafty be banned? We are at the one year mark with nothing at all to support the clone claim. Shoot, as I mentioned, we should have banned Rybka and still should, based on this kind of thinking, since Rybka 1 _clearly_ has fruit code in it. But we haven't. And probably should, based on the calls to ban Robo*. I wonder what the legal status of an illegal copy of a program that is an illegal copy of a GPL program actually is? Enough to make your head explode... It may well be legal since it forces the "middle program" to release the source since the copy is, by definition, a copy of the source?