Moderator Elections

[smatovic]

Mods have no problem moving my troll posts. They should have no problem moving the garbage shit-posting of others?

Seems my posting was too long, so I'll reduce the point to just three words: "within the charter."

Well then they aught to stop moving my posts to random forums just because they don't like it. Since its not "within the charter."

From the charter:

You are further agreeing to abide by the decision of the moderators should a post of yours be deleted or moved.

Obey!

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Srdja

[AndrewGrant]

Mods have no problem moving my troll posts. They should have no problem moving the garbage shit-posting of others?

Seems my posting was too long, so I'll reduce the point to just three words: "within the charter."

Well then they aught to stop moving my posts to random forums just because they don't like it. Since its not "within the charter."

From the charter:

You are further agreeing to abide by the decision of the moderators should a post of yours be deleted or moved.

Obey!

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Srdja

Excellent, well then the moderators should start deleting all the troll posts, even though they don't "violate the charter", and then if anyone complains, its fine, because "You are further agreeing to abide by the decision of the moderators should a post of yours be deleted or moved"

Congrats to the mods for giving themself total power in the charter lol.

[smatovic]

Where does an personal attack start, where does the trolly critique end? Subjective perceptions, up to the elected moderators to make the decision.

From the charta:

It was felt that a group where a full range of computer chess ideas could be discussed, and, if necessary attacked, without also making personal attacks on the deliverer of the ideas, would be productive, and might well encourage various well-known figures who were no longer posting in rec.games.chess.computer to return to the arena of discussion without fear of insult or abuse.

Once a member gains access to the message board, he may read all messages and post new or response messages with the proviso that these new or response messages:

1. Are, within reason, on the topic of computer chess
2. Are not abusive in nature
3. Do not contain personal and/or libelous attacks on others
4. Are not flagrant commercial exhortations
5. Are not of questionable legal status.

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Srdja

[AndrewGrant]

Where does an personal attack start, where does the trolly critique end? Subjective perceptions, up to the elected moderators to make the decision.

From the charta:

It was felt that a group where a full range of computer chess ideas could be discussed, and, if necessary attacked, without also making personal attacks on the deliverer of the ideas, would be productive, and might well encourage various well-known figures who were no longer posting in rec.games.chess.computer to return to the arena of discussion without fear of insult or abuse.

Once a member gains access to the message board, he may read all messages and post new or response messages with the proviso that these new or response messages:

1. Are, within reason, on the topic of computer chess
2. Are not abusive in nature
3. Do not contain personal and/or libelous attacks on others
4. Are not flagrant commercial exhortations
5. Are not of questionable legal status.

--
Srdja

I view a large number of posts from the Moderators here as being abusive in nature.

[smatovic]

Hmm, new forum is technically looking good from my side, I still monitor the load caused by bad scrapers and good crawlers until 2024-05-01, then we are green to hold moderator elections from my side, dunno how this will happen in detail, up to the founders to set up a procedure.

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Srdja

[chrisw]

Where does an personal attack start, where does the trolly critique end? Subjective perceptions, up to the elected moderators to make the decision.

From the charta:

It was felt that a group where a full range of computer chess ideas could be discussed, and, if necessary attacked, without also making personal attacks on the deliverer of the ideas, would be productive, and might well encourage various well-known figures who were no longer posting in rec.games.chess.computer to return to the arena of discussion without fear of insult or abuse.

Once a member gains access to the message board, he may read all messages and post new or response messages with the proviso that these new or response messages:

1. Are, within reason, on the topic of computer chess
2. Are not abusive in nature
3. Do not contain personal and/or libelous attacks on others
4. Are not flagrant commercial exhortations
5. Are not of questionable legal status.

--
Srdja

This is the original charter as written by me.

Authoritarian additions, such as moderators decision final, etc were added by decree of the shop owner after he managed to gain de facto control of what was supposed to be a democratic space.

Btw, as the only comp chess programmer who vocally opposed the shop control, I got banned, permanently (also never happened to anyone else, they always get back in after new mod term) for several years, until the shop ownership changed.
The way they enforced this was to trap any sign ups with my name or anything similar in it and then imposed the “real name” policy, a Kafkaesque move designed entirely with me in mind. Moderators and members were not informed of the name trap.
Welcome to how fascism works.

[Ras]

Well then they aught to stop moving my posts to random forums just because they don't like it.

Maybe you should re-read the charter. The issue with the "quack" posts is that they are on the topic of chess and computer chess. They are also annoying because they are uninteresting, but updating the charter to only allow "interesting" postings would be such a loose and subjective guideline that this would open another can of worms, i.e. moderation going wild. That cure would be worse than the disease.

So far, nobody has come up with a proposal that would address both issues.

[Pali]

Well then they aught to stop moving my posts to random forums just because they don't like it.

Maybe you should re-read the charter. The issue with the "quack" posts is that they are on the topic of chess and computer chess. They are also annoying because they are uninteresting, but updating the charter to only allow "interesting" postings would be such a loose and subjective guideline that this would open another can of worms, i.e. moderation going wild. That cure would be worse than the disease.

So far, nobody has come up with a proposal that would address both issues.

Perhaps not relevant to this specific subject but I suggested this on my chat with Rebel/Ed Schroder on discord:

- Having a pinned post on testing methodologies used by modern engines. This could link to OpenBench github, FishTest github, JW's SPRT github, Neural Network Trainers etc.
- Explicitly inform users that SF clones (and clones in general) are very likely to be either worse or neutral. It's really easy to contact SF maintainers, information on which SF clones serve a purpose (e.g. I see Huntsman being brought up for mate finding) and which clones do not. Keep in mind that SF is GPLv3, if a clone contributed Elo, the changes would be ported to SF as they have full legal rights to do it.
- Flag SSS testing? Perhaps this outside the scope of talkchess moderation but it's also supposed to be informing to the average reader. I saw someone post 14 wins, 11 losses, 47 draws as evidence that a version is better the other day. Someone who's not experienced could easily fall for this kind of statistic.

Keep in mind, I do not know the limitations of what can and can't be done on talkchess and as such my phrasing may be off or I may be suggesting something that may not be possible.

[smatovic]

[...]

[...]

I don't know how to address this either, in the past there were periodic moderator elections, mods in teams of three, so if community was unhappy with the mod policy, they will vote another team next time, but, this cycle went off from 2020-2024 ?, time to reboot.

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Srdja

[smatovic]

[...]

+1

Maybe an locked sticky post on top with some basic infos in concord with SF devs and founders and TC charta, to satisfy all parties.

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Srdja