Time to immigrate to another forum?

[noobpwnftw]

I can tell you my thought process. Back then when I was first getting involved in computer chess, under one of my threads right here, I was told that it is rare if I'm getting mostly positive comments, and I didn't quite get it as that was when I barely knew anybody. More I read I realized that this is entirely a place of clowns instead of any meaningful discussion. I enjoyed my time doing my fair share of that so much that I'm willing to pay bloody bucks to have the forum staying forever for I don't have to troll in other places where people do talk serious stuff. I also have a strong desire to watch public executions of people who disagree with me, so there is that.

[chrisw]

As I understand it, Ed proposed the crowd-funded idea to Quentin some time ago but has not received the courtesy of any reply.

Ed also looked up ownership of the shop company and reports that it is owned by somebody (unnamed) located in SW USA. The shop is in NE USA.

If users want to back a transfer of the forum into community control then it doesn't look like there's going to be any goodwill from the shop or its owners.

Discuss ....

[towforce]

As I understand it, Ed proposed the crowd-funded idea to Quentin some time ago but has not received the courtesy of any reply.

Ed also looked up ownership of the shop company and reports that it is owned by somebody (unnamed) located in SW USA. The shop is in NE USA.

If users want to back a transfer of the forum into community control then it doesn't look like there's going to be any goodwill from the shop or its owners.

Discuss ....

First question: has anyone posted the contract between the founding fathers and ChessUSA online where we can look at it?

ChessUSA was founded by Steven Schwartz, who is now retired. He may still be the owner. When I was a moderator, he periodically used to email me.

When Ed researched the ownership, did he do a whois lookup? The owner of ChessUSA's website is GoDaddy, who are based in Arizona - but their business is websites - not chess: https://who.is/whois/chessusa.com

The current CEO is Carlos Aristy according to Zoom Info: https://www.zoominfo.com/c/your-move-ch ... /347978778 . Confusingly, though, his LinkedIn page shows him as CEO of Long Island Chess: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-aristy-1763151b/ . The ChessUSA shop is on Long Island, but Long Island Chess is a chess club (being CEO of a chess club isn't usually a full time paid job?).

Anyway - we can all agree to move to a new forum: for me the issue is the database, which contains historic posts from the top people in computer chess over a long period of time.

[Rebel]

As I understand it, Ed proposed the crowd-funded idea to Quentin some time ago but has not received the courtesy of any reply.

Ed also looked up ownership of the shop company and reports that it is owned by somebody (unnamed) located in SW USA. The shop is in NE USA.

If users want to back a transfer of the forum into community control then it doesn't look like there's going to be any goodwill from the shop or its owners.

Discuss ....

https://www.zoominfo.com/c/your-move-ch ... /347978778

Thanks for the link, apparently the shop is sold, I could be wrong, but following - https://www.zoominfo.com/p/Carlos-Aristy/8666230998

Who are Carlos Aristy’s peers at other companies?
Carlos Aristy’s peers at other companies are Lewis Goldstein, Todd Wichmann, Gregory Kirber, Todd Kline, Maruchi Azorin.

Perhaps it explains the silence of Quentin.

[Eelco de Groot]

Hi everyone, just a comment on your posts and Graham's link;

It says there that Carlos Aristy has been working at Your Move Chess & Games as CEO for eight years. So that is not a recent development. It also says, on the same page, that Quentin Turner is President of the company. I don't know much about it but is that not usually higher than the CEO when it comes to more strategic decisions. It varies greatly I suppose but at the face of it, I would say the decision (to sell a domain) would be more for the President. Both titles do not say who actually is the owner I would say, but not my field. Also, Whois apparently does not give you the holder name anymore -for privacy reasons maybe?-.
I get my knowledge solely from reading a similar discussion a while ago where they thought AliBaba was the owner of Rab https://hiking-site.nl/prikbord/index.p ... ost-174843

Quentin Turner is also on LinkedIn, I'm not, sorry guys, I can not read it.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/quentin-turner-23399570

Basically I thought this discussion was moved elsewhere for being so silent... But we are also waiting for a reply from HGM who was supposed to answer first to an e-mail from Quentin where he had expressed wishes to sell the domain.

[Modern Times]

Anyway - we can all agree to move to a new forum: for me the issue is the database, which contains historic posts from the top people in computer chess over a long period of time.

Can we ? Look at the poll results, there is no majority for that action. The "Yes" and "No" vote counts are the same, and "Yes" is only 43%.

[smatovic]

Hmmm, maybe it is really time to move on, even if we can not get TC domain+DB.

Quentin shows lil interest in this forum (maintenance and communication), what
also might be a reason why it lasted so long...nevertheless, I would like to
take action to prevent TC from the slow and steady death of tech degeneration.

I offered the founders to do the tech, there is already a newTC dummy forum
with phpBB running, I now registered also the domain "computerchess.club"

Feel free to take a look and tinker:

https://computerchess.club
user: guest
pw: guest1234

If there is some kind of registered society upcoming I will transfer the domain
to the board.

This runs on my private webspace, robots excluded, will not activate any
registrations for now.

Chris has Admin and Mod access, so he can tinker with the backend.

We have a new domain, we have a phpBB forum running, still need a registered
society to own and run that place, a more performant virtual server, then
people are free to move on, or alike. The tech is not the issue.

We can govern ourselves only if the community has control over the domain+DB
and the underlying server, otherwise we can not fix, mod or archive our stuff.

--
Srdja

[towforce]

Feel free to take a look and tinker:

https://computerchess.club
user: guest
pw: guest1234

Good work - that looks really nice - like suddenly moving forward 10 years into the future!

I can actually see the FEN board - something I haven't been able to do here for a long time.

In the PGN, the analysis board is missing (an important feature for a weak player like myself to quickly understand why "the obvious move" doesn't work), but I'm sure that can be fixed.

[towforce]

Anyway - we can all agree to move to a new forum: for me the issue is the database, which contains historic posts from the top people in computer chess over a long period of time.

Can we ? Look at the poll results, there is no majority for that action. The "Yes" and "No" vote counts are the same, and "Yes" is only 43%.

Good point. I know of at least two of us who voted "no" who might be changing our minds, though (myself and Srdja).

[Rebel]

Hi everyone, just a comment on your posts and Graham's link;

It says there that Carlos Aristy has been working at Your Move Chess & Games as CEO for eight years. So that is not a recent development.

Where did you get this information from?

https://www.zoominfo.com/p/Carlos-Aristy/8666230998

For what it is worth, this page is updated in February 2023.