2024 Moderation Election ***Update***

[hgm]

Anyway, it's a term for usage by unelected monarchs, you're not one of those are you?!

Fortunately not. Contrary to popular believe I am just a modest guy.

[Peter Berger]

To adress one part of the problem with a fresh suggestion:

Why the need to update profiles with real names at all? If you go through the list of all people who are listed as insufficiently named and anon, you'll notice that most of them are well-known for our resident long-time members - or, to put it in a slightly different way, just as well-known as the people who gave their real name in the first place.

I can see that there could be a potential problem for future elections if you give up on the demand for real names completely ( like some people trying to register additional accounts), but I fail to see any problem for the current one.

People didn't know about a timeline demanded for being active, so you just caught the ones who were active anyway - on a little board for people with a special interest.

If I were you, I'd just go with the accounts found to be eligible for voting - why should real names added to profiles make any difference to people's behaviour? Just trust your electorate.

Peter

[Ras]

Not sure I understand what your gripe is.

How you framed what I said was really bad. It should have earned you a moderation warning. Let's see what comes out of that.

On the topic, the choice you gave to have it either your way or no way is a false dilemma. You are the one limiting that to these two choices. That's also why I suggested that the Founder Group discuss that. You manage the hosting, that's correct - but that doesn't mean that you are the only one who decides how voting should be done. If you think so, then you don't have a Founder Group anymore. Then you just took over alone. That would be another topic for discussion in the Founder Group, and it seems that Chris isn't too happy about that prospect.

So, to re-iterate. It is legally forbidden to collect any personal data unless you have an excempting reason to do so, as detailed in GDPR Art 6. When collecting personal data, you must also state which of the reasons is your justification. So far, that's nothing outrageous, that's just GDPR basics. In previous posts, I've detailed that only two of the reasons need to be considered: voluntary user consent and legitimate controller (TC) interest.

Well, voluntary user consent is out of question. From Talkchess Registration:

**You must supply your real first and last name** or your registration will NOT BE APPROVED.

That is not voluntary consent because that would require the possibility to accept or decline at free will.
The second reason against the same possible cause is Art 7.4; if you bundle parts of the service, such as voting, with giving the consent for unnecessary personal data, then the consent isn't free anymore. Unnecessary for fulfilling the contract/service, that is.
But that really just means that you have not one, but two factors ruling out "consent" as justification.

That leaves the other reason, legitimate interest of the controller. For normal forum operation, there is none. It doesn't matter whether you think it would prevent people from derailing, which it doesn't btw; the measurement is whether and how you use such data. A typical example of legitimate interest is logging the IP addresses of the visitors. The legitimate interest here is for technical troubleshooting, detecting attacks and so on.

Now, preventing voting fraud could be an argument because a real identity is required to prevent people from rigging the votes with several accounts. You can well have that different for users with and without real names because the bundling aspect only concerns the "consent" justification, but doesn't touch the other reasons. You can even argue that preventing people from re-registering after getting banned is legitimate interest. So that's not an obstacle at this point.

The problem is that you don't verify in any way, so the whole plot doesn't work. Now, if that doesn't matter to you, it means that you don't really have any interest in that, and therefore not a legitimate one, either. You can't both care and not care.

Now, it's not like opening a TC account would have to be like opening a bank account (showing up in person with ID card), that would also be against legitimate interest because then nobody would register at all. But not doing anything is also self-defeating.

Oh, and doesn't just concern the voting. It already concerns the registration process itself, even if you decide to never have votes.

[chrisw]

To adress one part of the problem with a fresh suggestion:

Why the need to update profiles with real names at all? If you go through the list of all people who are listed as insufficiently named and anon, you'll notice that most of them are well-known for our resident long-time members - or, to put it in a slightly different way, just as well-known as the people who gave their real name in the first place.

I can see that there could be a potential problem for future elections if you give up on the demand for real names completely ( like some people trying to register additional accounts), but I fail to see any problem for the current one.

People didn't know about a timeline demanded for being active, so you just caught the ones who were active anyway - on a little board for people with a special interest.

If I were you, I'd just go with the accounts found to be eligible for voting - why should real names added to profiles make any difference to people's behaviour? Just trust your electorate.

Peter

Well, very few are well known to me, and I'm the lone processor. It's also extremely subjective; so I prefer to make codeable rules and that more or less eliminates my own bias, deciding to pass some and not others for example.

If people are serious about voting, they'll make sure they're on the voting list. So far there have been direct contacts and I've only part checked at this stage but some accounts have added a name. There is also, for example, no reason why reluctant names don't update their profile for the date window given, then downdate it after. Not recommending of course.

I'ld wait and see the numbers.

[chrisw]

Not sure I understand what your gripe is.

How you framed what I said was really bad. It should have earned you a moderation warning. Let's see what comes out of that.

On the topic, the choice you gave to have it either your way or no way is a false dilemma. You are the one limiting that to these two choices. That's also why I suggested that the Founder Group discuss that. You manage the hosting, that's correct - but that doesn't mean that you are the only one who decides how voting should be done. If you think so, then you don't have a Founder Group anymore. Then you just took over alone. That would be another topic for discussion in the Founder Group, and it seems that Chris isn't too happy about that prospect.

So, to re-iterate. It is legally forbidden to collect any personal data unless you have an excempting reason to do so, as detailed in GDPR Art 6. When collecting personal data, you must also state which of the reasons is your justification. So far, that's nothing outrageous, that's just GDPR basics. In previous posts, I've detailed that only two of the reasons need to be considered: voluntary user consent and legitimate controller (TC) interest.

Well, voluntary user consent is out of question. From Talkchess Registration:

**You must supply your real first and last name** or your registration will NOT BE APPROVED.

That is not voluntary consent because that would require the possibility to accept or decline at free will.
The second reason against the same possible cause is Art 7.4; if you bundle parts of the service, such as voting, with giving the consent for unnecessary personal data, then the consent isn't free anymore. Unnecessary for fulfilling the contract/service, that is.
But that really just means that you have not one, but two factors ruling out "consent" as justification.

That leaves the other reason, legitimate interest of the controller. For normal forum operation, there is none. It doesn't matter whether you think it would prevent people from derailing, which it doesn't btw; the measurement is whether and how you use such data. A typical example of legitimate interest is logging the IP addresses of the visitors. The legitimate interest here is for technical troubleshooting, detecting attacks and so on.

Now, preventing voting fraud could be an argument because a real identity is required to prevent people from rigging the votes with several accounts. You can well have that different for users with and without real names because the bundling aspect only concerns the "consent" justification, but doesn't touch the other reasons. You can even argue that preventing people from re-registering after getting banned is legitimate interest. So that's not an obstacle at this point.

The problem is that you don't verify in any way, so the whole plot doesn't work. Now, if that doesn't matter to you, it means that you don't really have any interest in that, and therefore not a legitimate one, either. You can't both care and not care.

Now, it's not like opening a TC account would have to be like opening a bank account (showing up in person with ID card), that would also be against legitimate interest because then nobody would register at all. But not doing anything is also self-defeating.

Oh, and doesn't just concern the voting. It already concerns the registration process itself, even if you decide to never have votes.

If bad things get said on the forum such that it gets to law, the forum management are going to have a problem, surely, if they made no attempt at knowing who the badsayer was, no? So, Mr Founder Group, you just let anybody turn up and say whatever they like and your moderation is incompetent at trapping said bad things? Have a writ. In absence of the bad sayer identity; we'll go after you instead (as well as).

[Ras]

If bad things get said on the forum such that it gets to law, the forum management are going to have a problem, surely, if they made no attempt at knowing who the badsayer was, no?

That's not related to GDPR ofc, but criminal law and depends on the country. But in general, platforms are not responsible for what their users are doing. Otherwise, no platform such as Youtube could even exist because they'd be taken down for copyright infringement alone within 24h. There is only a duty that platforms must remove illegal content once they have gained knowledge of it.

In the EU, we have the new Digital Services Act, and while I havn't looked at it much, it would seem to me that Talkchess already complied with that, by and large. That is, with the charter forbidding illegal content, reporting mechanism, moderation with transparent guidelines (the charter), potential bans for repeated offences. Since Talkchess isn't a very large platform such as Facebook, the heavier requirements don't even apply anyway.

In any case, what would you even want to give to police? A "real name" that doesn't mean anything because it has not been verified in any way? That's not a lead.

[hgm]

I am not convinced that providing a real name is not a legitimate controller interest here. I would make the case that it is required for credibility of the content. TalkChess is not just a place where anonymous users could exchange chitchat; the sole purpose of its existence is for experts on computer chess to disseminate their knowledge.

There must be precedents for this in scientific publication. There are plenty of websites were you can view scientific papers (for payment), and these all have authors. Providing your name when submitting a paper is not voluntary; without a name the paper would simply be rejected for publication.

[chrisw]

If bad things get said on the forum such that it gets to law, the forum management are going to have a problem, surely, if they made no attempt at knowing who the badsayer was, no?

That's not related to GDPR ofc, but criminal law and depends on the country. But in general, platforms are not responsible for what their users are doing. Otherwise, no platform such as Youtube could even exist because they'd be taken down for copyright infringement alone within 24h. There is only a duty that platforms must remove illegal content once they have gained knowledge of it.

On Talkchess, the charter requires that postings "5. Are not of questionable legal status." There is a reporting mechanism so that unlawful posts can be reported, the moderation will certainly take action. Even repeated offences will be dealt with because such a poster will be banned permanently, which is a method to prevent future illegal actions from that same account.

In any case, what would you even want to give to police? A "real name" that doesn't mean anything because it has not been verified in any way? That's not a lead.

Amusingly enough you appear to be arguing for real names here ....

https://www.talkchess.com/forum3/viewto ... =2&t=67411

[Ras]

I would make the case that it is required for credibility of the content.

That goes also out of the window because you are perfectly fine with any random character sequence that looks like a real name, and you don't think that this hampers credibility.

There must be precedents for this in scientific publication.

Not comparable because in "publish or perish" academics, it is of vital interests for the authors to get their name on as many papers as possible. You also can't just put in any fake real name because you will be enrolled in some academic program where you had to show your ID card at some point.

[Graham Banks]

Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.