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

[Ras]

I suggest that all moderator candidates add a statement on their policy how they intend to deal with the IP blocking issue.

THis is literally the only thing that interests me about these elections.

That's bad because moderators have no say about that. That's a complete misunderstanding of what a moderator position even means.

[mclane]

Be known to the fact that some moderator candidates (e.g. chris whittington) are blocked until today and cannot post here.
Thats an undemocratical situation.
When people who run for moderation are blocked cannot access and post here, its not a democratical election.
Its a banana republic election kind of north korea or belarus, russia, china or syria, turkey or whatever dictatorship regime.

[mclane]

I suggest that all moderator candidates add a statement on their policy how they intend to deal with the IP blocking issue.

THis is literally the only thing that interests me about these elections.

That's bad because moderators have no say about that. That's a complete misunderstanding of what a moderator position even means.

Indeed. An admin job. Has nothing to do with moderation.
Its been a very wrong situation that sam hull or HGM were admin, moderators and posters in ONE person.

An admin is a person with no mandate just doing what the moderators tell him.
He has no mandat.
The moderators have the mandat because they were elected in a democratical election.
But the last years this was mixed here to the negative of the participants.
Sam hull was admin, moderator and even participant of discussions.
Same with HGM. Admin, moderator and participant.

As a german who once had a kaiser and later a Fuehrer i have to make clear that these jobs have to be separated.
A moderator cannot be admin and participant in 1 person.
Otherwise he is kaiser or fuehrer,

Absolut power corrupts absolutely.

[Ras]

Be known to the fact that some moderator candidates (e.g. chris whittington) are blocked until today and cannot post here.

Which is why it's on hold for now.

Its been a very wrong situation that sam hull or HGM were admin, moderators and posters in ONE person.

Nonsense. The admin activities have nothing to do with the moderator activities, so that's easy to split up even for one person.

An admin is a person with no mandate just doing what the moderators tell him.

Also wrong.

The one discussion that would touch the admin post, namely a possible TC migration, would be discussed in an entirely separate way. At the very least so that people without server-admin skills won't retract their moderator candidation - see D. Kappe's retraction that was IMO based on the same misunderstanding of the moderator role.

The problem is that the intricacies of such a migration today are exactly the same as they were a year ago, which is why nothing has changed:
- In whose name exactly would the domain be registered?
- Who exactly would have a hosting contract?
- Where exactly would we host?
- How to deal with the legal requirements, in particular in case of EU based hosting?
- How to do the database migration, given that even just a forum update was already so difficult that we had to make a donation round to contract an expert?

None of these questions are in the scope of moderator activities, which is why lumping that up with the election is nonsense. It's also not anything that the board administration can or should decide by themselves, which is why they havn't done that.

What came up so far? Uhm, well, let's just ditch the current forum and move to some ad-ridden "free" cr*p where we will have even less support than now because we don't pay. Database migration? Uhm, yeah, will be easy. Hopefully. Somehow. Dunno.

As a german who once had a kaiser and later a Fuehrer i have to make clear that these jobs have to be separated.

As a TC member, what you should have to do is talking less delusional b*llsh*t.

[Graham Banks]

I suggest that all moderator candidates add a statement on their policy how they intend to deal with the IP blocking issue.

This is literally the only thing that interests me about these elections. And any member of the the current team gets no vote for not reacting to this problem strongly enough.

I don't think that the moderators are able to do anything other than make Quentin aware of it, and asking for a solution.

The job of the moderators is essentially to make sure that inappropriate posts or persistently miscreant posters are dealt with.

[mclane]

As a TC member, what you should have to do …

The moderators are elected people and have a mandate.
An admin should not be one of the moderators because that would focus too much power on 1 person at all.
Because an admin has technical possibilities in using the board, he could e.g. block people or not allowing others to subscribe.
And since he has no mandate that would be a step too far.

Forces should be separated and not mixed or melted with each other. Otherwise its not a democratical process.

[hgm]

To reduce confusion about who does what:

There are registered members, who can post, and read some of the non-public forum sections.
There are moderators, who can edit, move or delete other member's postings in the forum sections they moderate.
There are board admins, who can configure the forum (add or remove sections, enable and disable some functionalty), and manage the member list (activate new registrations, ban members or delete their accounts), grant moderator rights to members.
There is a webmaster, who has ftp and ssh access to the server, can install software there (such as phpBB upgrades).
There is a provider, who has physical access to the server, and can pull the plug.

[Rebel]

To reduce confusion about who does what:

There are registered members, who can post, and read some of the non-public forum sections.
There are moderators, who can edit, move or delete other member's postings in the forum sections they moderate.
There are board admins, who can configure the forum (add or remove sections, enable and disable some functionalty), and manage the member list (activate new registrations, ban members or delete their accounts), grant moderator rights to members.
There is a webmaster, who has ftp and ssh access to the server, can install software there (such as phpBB upgrades).
There is a provider, who has physical access to the server, and can pull the plug.

And there is a hacker on a mission to destroy this forum. And so far he is winning. Any news from Quentin?

Besides of that, Thorsten is right, at creation time of the forum with chessusa (Steven Schwartz at the time) as host it was agreed that the forum belongs to its members. And that members elect their own 3 leaders two times a year. The admin at the time (Tim M. of chessusa) under the lead of the moderators cooperated to keep the forum going. I would like to see that basic democratic fundament intact. The first 3 moderators in 1997 were: Bob Hyatt, Enrique Irazoqui and Dirk Frickensmidt. Thorsten was one of the founders, he knows, Chris W. is a founder (he wrote the charter, unchanged till today), Bob was a founder, you can ask him as well.

Of course chessusa can pull the plug, they pay the bill.

[hgm]

ChessUSA is not the provider; they just rent the server in some data center. Quentin Turner of ChessUSA is the webmaster, though.

The technical reality is that there is a hierarchy of power, where every level is at the mercy of higher levels, which roughly goes from physical access -> root access -> webmaster access -> board admin -> moderators -> members -> guests. This is contrary to what is needed for enforcing a democratic system; the latter depends on those in power to be trustworthy, and voluntarily restrain himself for staying within their mandate. It is therefore important that the mandate is clearly specified. Unfortunately the charter says nothing about this. This seems a serious omission. We should extend the charter with a description on the methof of governance, and the tasks and limitations of every role in this. So that people to fulfil those roles can be 'sworn in' to abide to those rules. And be removed from power by someone higher in the technical hierarchy when they abuse these powers.

The following system seems workable:
* A team of 3 moderators will be appointed by the members through elections organized by the board admin.
* In case of disagreement, the moderators decide by majority vote.
* The moderators decide on organization of the forum (which sections exist) in the program they anounce before the elections, so that any changes in forum structure will also be under democratic control.
* The moderator team decides on sanctioning of members, such as banning or revoking membership, which on their request has to be performed by the admin.
* Moderators are appointed until the next moderator election, which can be requested by the memberships no sooner than 6 months after a previous election, or when one or more moderators offer their resignation.
* A 'rogue moderator' can get his moderator status revoked by the admin on request of the remaining two moderators; such impeachment counts as a resignation of the team.
* When the admin considers the behavior of the moderator team in violation of the charter, or the election program the moderators have been running with, he can start a referendum calling for impeachment of the moderation team, in which all members can vote.

[jhellis3]

I don't really like posting about these types of matters, but.... JFC.

1) IP blocking is not a viable or reasonable solution to *any* attack by anyone who knows what they are doing.

2) Any host for which dos or ddos is an issue is not it. Reliable hosts have good CDNs and see that garbage every single day.

3) There is no excuse of not being on latest forum code and whining about "hacks" or attacks. None.


Difficulty level:
Was admin for decades old game server subject to relentless attacks. Game server still persists thanks to user donations.

TLDR: Ask for donations 5/10 $/year. Use that money to get a host worth a damn. GG.