Unfair Poll

[duncan]

Not all ethnic cleansing is bad. If two groups cannot stand each other, it is best to separate them. It is the injustice that usually accompanies it that gives it a bad name. Often it is just an euphemism for genocide, and in other cases for robbing one group of all its possessions, and turning them into homeless refugees. That is of course evil. Having to move large crowds is of course bad, but it is better than a perpetual civil war. Of course peacefully coexisting would be best for everyone. But some people are just not capable of that.

Cyprus is an interesting example. These Greeks and Turks really hate each other's guts. In the long run everyone there is perhaps better off living in their own part of the island.

If cleansing only means you have to change ISP...

Someone once won the Nobel peace prize for ethnic cleansing the warring Greeks and Turks but it is unlikely to happen today.

[corres]

...
As I have pointed out over and over, "strictly following the charter" does not let moderators proactively remove controversial material. There is no provision anywhere for removing a post because, for example, it cites scientific studies showing average IQ differences among races. But there are fair grounds for removing ANY material that generates member complaints; in particular, when multiple members find the material offensive and formally report it. It continues to amaze me that people are willing to fill threads with paragraphs of self-righteous ire about the tone of the forum, but they can't manage to click the report post button and empower moderators to remove the content they find so deplorable.

We have had more than one moderator in CTF who decided to do "proactive" moderation based on what he deemed personally offensive, and in those cases the membership rose up and demanded a special election and fired him. Any independent action by those "in power" that isn't firmly grounded in a charter clause is going to get attacked viciously by those who disagree. I speak from experience.

If you want less controversy in CTF but can't be troubled to help out by reporting offensive posts, I would suggest the solution is not new moderators, although a new method for appointing them board-wide is desperately needed. The solution is a separate posting policy statement for that forum with tighter restrictions on what may be posted, granting moderators greater official freedom of action.

-Sam-

Controversial materials are good base for dispute. But such a heterogeneous community as Talk Chess is nobody can await scientific debate. Moreover nowadays a lot of problem are political question also and even scientist are rather divided politically. In this community in all time there are people who feel himself offended and I think with voting moderators can not be able decide about which post is very offending and which is not.
In general I think the clicking is a childish peaching. Adult can be able to handle the disagreements and his emotions, even offended personal vanity too and I accept the liberal (but not libertarian!) handling of issues among member`s opinions and posting also.

And that would be fine, members maturely tolerating disagreements and controversy, not reporting offensive opinions, etc., if they didn't then feel compelled to post endless rants about how bad the forum is and how deficient the moderators are. In some ways that's just as offensive and tiresome as the other and tends to intensify the objectionable atmosphere.

-Sam-

I agree. I do not like the self-contained disputes also. It is very tiresome thing.

[Ovyron]

This has shown the failure of democracy when more than half the people voting don't realize the solution to their problem is to stop visiting CTF. They want a world where either "they visit CTF and only find people are talking about stuff they like" or "CTF is gone." When "they don't visit CTF" is a solution that doesn't even cross their minds, they shouldn't be allowed to vote.

If 60% of people support censorship, does that mind censorship is right?

[MikeB]

talkchess.com should be abandoned altogether. Those who want to stay in the Computer Chess Club could move to computerchessclub.com, and those who want to stay in the Chess Thinkers Forum could move to chessthinkersforum.com; both sites could be hosted by chessusa.com. That way the divorce is more like the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, which doesn't exist anymore, having been replaced by the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

It is difficult to see how an account that signed up only 23 DAYS ago can have sufficient time and knowledge to have formed a valid opinion.

It is one of many no doubt. Why people do that is beyond me, but it is evidence of the lunacy that is permeating here.

[Ovyron]

1. CTF should continue as it is now.

Or

4. Make it so that all the people that voted 2 on this thread can't see it anymore, as if it was closed - wouldn't that solve all problems? Or is it a case of "we can't allow something we dislike to exist even if it's enjoyed by some people"? Some people can't restrain themselves, nobody is being forced to look at CTF.

If you don't like it just don't go there, letting people hide it would serve the same purpose because for them it's as if it was closed, but for the rest of us it's not the same, just censorship led by tyranny of the majority.

It is filled with hate. Hate is a cancer and must always be cut out. Simply ignoring something that is hateful is complicit.

But the people on the poll hate CTF and that's why they want it closed

Hate goes both ways, some people just think there's some things that are fine to hate (like it's fine to hate what some people post on CTF.)

Interestingly, the biggest hate I've seen on these discussions is people hating CTF so much that they want it DELETED from the Internet. The good, and the bad, all just gone like that. It took so many hours for all the people for all these years to write everything that resides on CTF, it's very easy for some admin to purge it all with one click.

[hgm]

The 'CTF survey' poll will still run for one day, but the stream of voters seems to have subsided to a trickle, so let me already give a summary of the situation as I found it after Ovyron's vote. If I am not mistaken, this is:

Code: Select all

1) x?-xx0x0?0xxxxx-x
2) x??xxxxxxxxxx?x?xx??xx?xx?xxxxxx??x?xx
3) x00
4) x
-1) xx
-2) x0
-3) x

I used the following notation: all characters are a vote. I used ? for votes that I expect to be contested by those who don't like the result of the survey, because the voters have less than 200 postings to their name, or signed up less than a year ago. Many of these guys had more than 100 postings, btw. (But of course some will contest the validity of all 2 votes, just on the basis that they are 2 votes...)

A 0 means a vote with a negative motivation, i.e. voters that confess they feel no need to use CTF themselves, or even actively avoid that. But nevertheless vote for 1/3 on free-speech principles or because they think CTF is a good garbage dump for keeping the CCC forums clean. I used a - for voters that seem to post exclusively in CTF.

There were some 'against-the-rules' negative votes, which I summarized under -1, -2 and -3; since a negative vote would be equivalent to a positive vote for the two other options, and it seems unfair to award rule-breaking with extra voting power, it seems logically to count these as half-votes for the remaining options. This would produce 1.5 extra votes for 1 and 2, and 2 extra votes for the not very popular option 3.

[chrisw]

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.

[Guenther]

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.

Votes went down to 200 and even much less sometimes in the last decade already.
The last CTF result I found, had 61 votes (was already down to 32 once)

http://talkchess.com/forum3/search.php? ... =titleonly

[chrisw]

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.

Votes went down to 200 and even much less sometimes in the last decade already.
The last CTF result I found, had 61 votes (was already down to 32 once)

http://talkchess.com/forum3/search.php? ... =titleonly

Yes, gradual decay. I was extrapolating from the prior time I was here which was pre-Rykba thing, basically. In fact, as you point out, there was indeed an exodus, around 2012, I think. Post-Rybka.

[hgm]

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.

These are all in the summary. I translated all purely textual responses to N or not-N; only Henk's response seemed not to indicate any vote. Your '4' is also there.

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.

In my summary I even accounted for the possibility that the threshold would be 200 postings and 2 years. With your conditions most of the question marks would turn into x. IIRC only 3 would be left (one 1 vote, two 2 votes), but everyone can of course check that for himself.

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.

Well, I surely hope so, that is no secret. And apparently many with me. But, like you say, this was just a survey, to gather information on how we should best proceed.

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).

The 'whatever' is rather important here, as this also covers personal and libelous attacks versus moderators. It is a direct charter violation, and when someone persists in doing it incessantly despite warnings, yeah, then banning him is the only way to enforce the charter. Off-topic postings were only deleted from where it was first very explicitly announced that they would not be allowed, BTW, such as in the voting thread. I don't see such an announcement here... Also note that the CTF close/stay issue is not a moderation decision. So you are comparing apples and oranges. Everyone is free to give his opinions here as ever, provided they stay civilized (as the charter requires). The very title of this thread is a complaint; it is what we created it for.

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.

I think everyone did realize that from the beginning. This is why people voted (2) with so much enthusiasm.

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.

Seems to me some 'creative counting' is going on here. But by all means, give us a list of 'voters' who you think have no right to affect this decision. Note that criteria on posting count are quite arbitrary in the first place, and at best a very rough tool to establish what we really want to know: whether the person behind the account is real, and has a genuine interest for being here. I would think it really strange indeed when a known author of a Chess engine would be excluded from the vote because he posted here only 49 times.

The number of 'dubious' voters is small enough to consider each case individually, for maximum guarantee that we won't violate anybody's rights.

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.

There are indeed 2 or 3 of the latter, and whether these should be considered qualified to decide on this subject is a legitimate question. But I suppose you did already exclude those (and a lot more) when you massaged the data down to 30 closers; I counted 39.5. We won't be able to exclude them twice...

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.