To MODERATORS: Please STOP moving genuine tournaments!

[Harvey Williamson]

Pablo (Father) can post all his games in this section but the posts advertising the 3 or 4 face to face events where authors have to enter and travel and pay a lot of money to attend are not allowed. Without these authors there would be no Computer Chess community. The current moderators have got this totally wrong. But you will always find full reports in the main section of the Hiarcs forum

[IWB]

Pablo (Father) can post all his games in this section but the posts advertising the 3 or 4 face to face events where authors have to enter and travel and pay a lot of money to attend are not allowed. Without these authors there would be no Computer Chess community. The current moderators have got this totally wrong. But you will always find full reports in the main section of the Hiarcs forum

I think that is a possible solution to the problem.

Face to face tournaments with authors of engines should remain here as the whole fora wouldn't exist without authors!
Everything played online or on private computers, therefore without the authors, goes to the other section.

Sounds very reasonable to me
Ingo

[mjlef]

Please continue the good work.

There is a group for tournaments.
That should be enough.

Sooner!

Might I suggest we just do a poll on this issue? Let the users decide.

I think there is a strong case to be made that announcements of upcoming major events belongs in the General Topics section, since it is of interest to many forum users. Postings about tournament results should go in the Tournament and Matches section. I think the reason for adding the Tournament section was to keep the General Topics section from being swamped with results. But a World Championship or announcement of a new event deserves a wider audience. But lets just take a poll and do what the majority of regular users of the site want.

Mark

[Graham Banks]

Perhaps a solution is as follows.

Firstly a post for programmer-only tournaments should be made in the Programmers' subforum.

A few days before the event is due to start, a post could be made in the general subforum so that others who are interested are made aware.

Then once the tournament has started, results could be posted in the tournament subforum.

[hgm]

But lets just take a poll and do what the majority of regular users of the site want.

I think this is a bad idea. We should do what is right, and not what a majority mob wants. Democracy only works when restricted by laws or constitutions. Decisions that infringe on other people's rights are not acceptable, even if a majority is in favor of them. Otherwise, when you are in a lifeboat and food is running out, voting for the proposal "who is in favor of eating Billy" woud become morally acceptable.

This forum was created for meeting certain basic communication needs of the computer-chess community, and any member of that community should have the right to use it for satisfying his needs in this respect in the optimal way. If a majority of people want to infringe those rights, even only of a small minority or a single individual, they do not belong here, and should start their own forum where the majority mob can rule. We should not allow such people to hijack TalkChess.

[hgm]

Perhaps a solution is as follows.

Firstly a post for programmer-only tournaments should be made in the Programmers' subforum.

Well, this is what I do for the monthly on-line blitz. Although it is not strictly programmers-only (e.g. Ray is usually a very welcome participant, and has used a variety of engines), it is primarily intended for authors. So although anyone is welcome, I recruit in the Programming section, because that is where the people most likely to participate read. I don't care too much about attracting non-playing spectators.

A few days before the event is due to start, a post could be made in the general subforum so that others who are interested are made aware.

This is probably how I would do it too, if I wanted to attract spectators. But from the POV of the General Topics session it isn't much different; in the end a thread will appear in it for the event.

Then once the tournament has started, results could be posted in the tournament subforum.

This would make sense if a lot of discussion on the games is expected, or when there is round-by-round reporting of, say, WCCC. For the blitz I usually just copy the final 'cross table' as the ICS prints it in the same thread as the announcement in the programmers forum. It seems silly to start a new thread for just making a single posting, if an old thread on the same subject already exists in another forum section. Sometimes a discussion on games of the tournament results afterwards. But as this then usually is posted by the author of the engine playing it, often with a detailed explanation of what program flaw caused a certain bad move, this does not seem too much out of place in the programers section.


It is interesting to note that the number of posts we now have on this subject in the General Topics session is already an order of magitude larger than all annnouncements of participation events for the entire year would have been...

[BBauer]

It is interesting to note that the number of posts we now have on this subject in the General Topics session is already an order of magitude larger than all annnouncements of participation events for the entire year would have been...

I counted 10 posts from HGM.
Isn't this an order of magnitude?

We should do what HGM says and not what the majority mob wants - or what?

A possible solution could be: simply ignore Forum Indices.

Kind regards
Bernhard

[hgm]

We should do what HGM says and not what the majority mob wants - or what?

This is of course always a good idea.

If only because what I say is much better motivated.

So far I have not seen a single motivation of why it would be better to violate the forum rules by burying announcements of participation events so they will not be able to attract participants. Lots of people seem to want it, but no one seems to explain why it would be better...

[Robert Pope]

It is interesting to note that the number of posts we now have on this subject in the General Topics session is already an order of magitude larger than all annnouncements of participation events for the entire year would have been...

I counted 10 posts from HGM.
Isn't this an order of magnitude?

We should do what HGM says and not what the majority mob wants - or what?


Kind regards
Bernhard

Some of us aren't chiming in because: 1) we aren't the owner of the tournament that is getting its announcement repeatedly moved, and 2) hgm has already raised the same points we would, so we aren't posting content-less "me too" posts. Maybe we should.

A possible solution could be: simply ignore Forum Indices.

Or, update the names to reflect their de facto use, or a sticky outlining their intended use.

Like it or not, the "Tournaments and Matches" section is almost exclusively used for posting the results of end-user tournaments - game scores and cross tables. So if that isn't my interest, I'm not going to be going in there on a regular basis, just to look for the off chance somebody announces a tournament that I might want my engine to join.

Post should go in sub-fora that will reach their intended users - that's the whole point of having them! And if other authors are anything like me, they spend 80% of their time here in General or Programming, so that's where these sorts of announcements should logically go. And of the two, I would argue that a tournament announcement fits better in General than Programming/Technical, but I would be open to either.

[bob]

Please continue the good work.

There is a group for tournaments.
That should be enough.

Sooner!

Might I suggest we just do a poll on this issue? Let the users decide.

I think there is a strong case to be made that announcements of upcoming major events belongs in the General Topics section, since it is of interest to many forum users. Postings about tournament results should go in the Tournament and Matches section. I think the reason for adding the Tournament section was to keep the General Topics section from being swamped with results. But a World Championship or announcement of a new event deserves a wider audience. But lets just take a poll and do what the majority of regular users of the site want.

Mark

here is the key point. _I_ made the suggestion that we create the tournament and programmer's fora, for a specific reason. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a place where all the "mini-tournaments" and such can report their results. And a number of people are interested in those. I rarely even look at the ones Graham runs where Crafty is included.

The original CCC had one board where everything was posted, and with a high volume it became difficult to follow discussions, particularly technical ones where there might be a post every other day or so as people experiment with something new and interesting. And that gets lost in all the individual matches and tournament results that are posted daily.

My suggestion at the time was to create three separate fora, one for programmers, one for all the tournaments and matches, and one for what is left. Someone else wanted a fourth where non-chess topics could be discussed and the "chess thinker's forum" was born.

The WCCC, ACCA, CCT and such major events belong in the general forum. They are definitely of interest to programmers, but they are also of interest to general computer chess enthusiasts. That makes the natural place the general forum, NOT the tournament forum. Finding a one-post announcement in the tournament forum will be work, because within 24 hours it will be buried below all the recent tournament/CCRL/etc updates that are posted almost hourly.

This is not complicated, it is not controversial, it is simply good common sense. This was the original intent. The membership voted to adopt this policy. We did. We don't need additional polls, we just need common sense and doing what was intended. ALL things tournament do not necessarily belong in the tournament forum.