Questions for the FG about the organization of the election

[AndrewGrant]

Well, if illegal cloners are not an issue, how about legal near-cloners, authors of buggy and weak engines, testers that report matches of 10 games... Do you think the forum would be somehow 'cured' if these were all banned, or their postings would be systematically deleted, or they would bee declared fair target for lynching mobs to drive them away?

I think if a poster is posting samples of 10 games, then they can expect (respectful) criticism in the responses. Such people should not be banned, nor should regular posters be punished for ensuring that all such posts have a top response indicating the statistical issues. Now suppose I am one of these 10-game posters... its bordering on harassment in some sense for every single time I make a post, for a couple people to instantly respond that the posting is not meaningful and lacks statistical merit. That is tricky. But I don't think it is harassment. People are allowed to have bad ideas. But you are not expected to spread your bad ideas all over without push back. I think we can all agree on that much, I imagine.

One of the problem with the near-cloners, the people who literally clone Stockfish and just put their name into the UCI output, is that their threads swamp out everything else. I'm not sure I could even write out the full list of Stockfish clones that are no more than a setting change. So there almost needs to be a Stockfish cloners section, to avoid other, more (objectively) interesting posts to exist. But that is more an annoyance to me than a position of great importance. I simply block users that create these threads via the forum and/or ublock, and so I don't have to see the noise.

It is a shame that the Foe feature on this forum does not do a sufficient job to block posts -- it still shows those where the Foe is the original poster, as far as I remember.

[hgm]

I never acted against the pointing out of flaws in presented claims, no matter how often this is needed. So it doesn't seem we have any differences there.

As to the near-cloners; there might be a lot of those, but I never noticed them swamping the forum. But it could be that this is because I never read theTournament section. It seems that there were just one or two such members that received an enormous amount of hostility, and they were not creating very many threads. If this would really be a problem, then yes, a separate section for Stockfish derivatives would be a good solution.

[cpeters]

Hello!

Occasional/senile/older hobbyist here: Kritik und Selbstkritik/критика и самокритика mofos!
Rehashing and moaning about some twothousendyearold 'problems'. The Youth..incursions..rediculous!

Merry fucking christmas!

P.S.

We're one big happy (fufu) family!!!

[Rebel]

@Andy, ever since the restart of Talkchess I only saw an endless stream of negativity from your end, what happened?!

I want the old Andy back, a valuable member, the one who posted quality stuff.

I found a nice website which I posted in the sticky Computer Chess Programming from the Ground up thread from programmer Marcel Vanthoor and his Rustic chess engine. IMO a good starting point for writing a chess program from scratch.

I remember you once contributed a quality post about SPSA testing, however I can't find it any longer, do you still have it?

What happened? I can give an honest answer, without any intention on being mean, but it has us running in circles. I'll try again in good faith, since you were kind to me in the above post.

Talkchess used to be the center of things. I have read just about everything that Mark Lefler has ever posted on here or on CCC. As time went on, Discords took over as the main place for sharing of engine commentary. Not because of any sort of problem with talkchess per se, but just as a natural continuation. Stockfish developers migrated from fishcooking forums to discord. chess.grantnet.us was the first big OpenBench instance, and so that saw the creation of the OpenBench discord, which had a lot of dev talk at the time. The Leela community is very much the generation of people who were already using Discord.

So you have this partial exodus of chess engine developers from talkchess. What does that leave on talkchess? You have the rating list guys, the hobbyists who are mostly just engine users who find great interest, you have the people who are not so active in development anymore but still stick around because it is what they love, and then you also have the trolls.

Due to the volume of people that left, the proportion of posts coming from trolls grew. Perhaps the # of trolls grew or shrunk, who is to say. So the forums now have less signal than before, and also seemingly more noise. Not good. So people like myself, like many others (they can attach their names if they like), start calling for moderation. Well at the time, the forum is in chaos, I don't know the specifics, but for a while no one has the reigns and it takes a long time before power gets handed back.

Then what happens (This is my opinion, and of course as such is not entirely accurate, and is skewed to make my claims look better) is the moderation returns, but instead starts moderating those who were calling for moderation against the trolls. Some of it is fair, some is not. People got pretty heated through the months of total non-moderation (not anyone's fault) shit posting. Skip ahead a bit, and it seems (again, my opinion, and not the point of this post) that the moderators exist to punish otherwise law abiding citizens, and to grant free reign to the trolls. Anarcho-tyranny.

Then the final sort of catalyst for a lot of people was the Simex post, which falsely claimed that Viri and Stormphrax shared neural networks, with some irony thrown in for CSTal and Rebel being largely the same entity. Not to rehash this -- but regardless of correct vs incorrect vs intent vs non-intended. This got a TON of people, who already had talkchess accounts but just lurked, to start showing up in droves with pitchforks. When you combine all of this, you have the appearance of a moderator group that 1) thinks their engines to be of greater quality than the new kids; 2) Is doing very little to stop the rampant trolling on the forums; 3) Is punishing the victims. Again, all of that opinion.

So what is the remedy? Probably not what is happening right now, where the most vocal opposition has been banned from these elections. And also probably not what I am doing, where I am just complaining about it endlessly. Should probably be some apologizing from both sides. A statement from the moderators highlighting they see the problems and want to fix them. Statements from us non-moderators who are so vocal, acknowledging that we have over stepped in our quest to fix the problem, and that we need to pull back.

Wipe the slate clean as of {{Insert day}}. Moderators will remove obvious troll posts, and issue increasing timeouts to users. Moderators will also be removing posts from those attacking the trolls, and issuing similar timeouts. Moderation requests should be through reports, and moderators should either step into the thread to note their actions, or reply the the report with some clarity. We all agree to move forward with our lives -- not rehash this thread, no rehash the simex thread, not rehash he said X and got banned but when she said X she did not, etc etc. Those of us who have been around for many years will stop assuming the newcomers don't know anything -- the newcomers will stop assuming the oldies are too out of touch to know anything.

Now does this bring talkchess back to life? Probably not. But it at least gets us somewhere stable. We've gone from stable, to a troll-apocalypse, to now an all out war. Stable would be good, and is a necessary precondition for revitalization.

A couple of days ago on the discord, you called the FG members "fucking retards". Which is the real Andrew Grant or is it Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?

"Fucking retards" is a beyond the pale comment, so far as I'm concerned. It says so much about a person that he can refer to other humans as "fucking retards". Don't you think?

Two-faced Andy.

[AndrewGrant]

@Andy, ever since the restart of Talkchess I only saw an endless stream of negativity from your end, what happened?!

I want the old Andy back, a valuable member, the one who posted quality stuff.

I found a nice website which I posted in the sticky Computer Chess Programming from the Ground up thread from programmer Marcel Vanthoor and his Rustic chess engine. IMO a good starting point for writing a chess program from scratch.

I remember you once contributed a quality post about SPSA testing, however I can't find it any longer, do you still have it?

What happened? I can give an honest answer, without any intention on being mean, but it has us running in circles. I'll try again in good faith, since you were kind to me in the above post.

Talkchess used to be the center of things. I have read just about everything that Mark Lefler has ever posted on here or on CCC. As time went on, Discords took over as the main place for sharing of engine commentary. Not because of any sort of problem with talkchess per se, but just as a natural continuation. Stockfish developers migrated from fishcooking forums to discord. chess.grantnet.us was the first big OpenBench instance, and so that saw the creation of the OpenBench discord, which had a lot of dev talk at the time. The Leela community is very much the generation of people who were already using Discord.

So you have this partial exodus of chess engine developers from talkchess. What does that leave on talkchess? You have the rating list guys, the hobbyists who are mostly just engine users who find great interest, you have the people who are not so active in development anymore but still stick around because it is what they love, and then you also have the trolls.

Due to the volume of people that left, the proportion of posts coming from trolls grew. Perhaps the # of trolls grew or shrunk, who is to say. So the forums now have less signal than before, and also seemingly more noise. Not good. So people like myself, like many others (they can attach their names if they like), start calling for moderation. Well at the time, the forum is in chaos, I don't know the specifics, but for a while no one has the reigns and it takes a long time before power gets handed back.

Then what happens (This is my opinion, and of course as such is not entirely accurate, and is skewed to make my claims look better) is the moderation returns, but instead starts moderating those who were calling for moderation against the trolls. Some of it is fair, some is not. People got pretty heated through the months of total non-moderation (not anyone's fault) shit posting. Skip ahead a bit, and it seems (again, my opinion, and not the point of this post) that the moderators exist to punish otherwise law abiding citizens, and to grant free reign to the trolls. Anarcho-tyranny.

Then the final sort of catalyst for a lot of people was the Simex post, which falsely claimed that Viri and Stormphrax shared neural networks, with some irony thrown in for CSTal and Rebel being largely the same entity. Not to rehash this -- but regardless of correct vs incorrect vs intent vs non-intended. This got a TON of people, who already had talkchess accounts but just lurked, to start showing up in droves with pitchforks. When you combine all of this, you have the appearance of a moderator group that 1) thinks their engines to be of greater quality than the new kids; 2) Is doing very little to stop the rampant trolling on the forums; 3) Is punishing the victims. Again, all of that opinion.

So what is the remedy? Probably not what is happening right now, where the most vocal opposition has been banned from these elections. And also probably not what I am doing, where I am just complaining about it endlessly. Should probably be some apologizing from both sides. A statement from the moderators highlighting they see the problems and want to fix them. Statements from us non-moderators who are so vocal, acknowledging that we have over stepped in our quest to fix the problem, and that we need to pull back.

Wipe the slate clean as of {{Insert day}}. Moderators will remove obvious troll posts, and issue increasing timeouts to users. Moderators will also be removing posts from those attacking the trolls, and issuing similar timeouts. Moderation requests should be through reports, and moderators should either step into the thread to note their actions, or reply the the report with some clarity. We all agree to move forward with our lives -- not rehash this thread, no rehash the simex thread, not rehash he said X and got banned but when she said X she did not, etc etc. Those of us who have been around for many years will stop assuming the newcomers don't know anything -- the newcomers will stop assuming the oldies are too out of touch to know anything.

Now does this bring talkchess back to life? Probably not. But it at least gets us somewhere stable. We've gone from stable, to a troll-apocalypse, to now an all out war. Stable would be good, and is a necessary precondition for revitalization.

A couple of days ago on the discord, you called the FG members "fucking retards". Which is the real Andrew Grant or is it Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?

"Fucking retards" is a beyond the pale comment, so far as I'm concerned. It says so much about a person that he can refer to other humans as "fucking retards". Don't you think?

Two-faced Andy.

Well we were able to have about 10 messages exchanged before Chris, and now you, have made things personal again. It was a good run.

[Rebel]

Sleep well Andy.

[AndrewGrant]

Sleep well Andy.

Thanks, Ed. Same time tomorrow.

[hgm]

Still seems to me that "victims of rampant trolling" is a ridiculous description for a bunch of people that decided to enter a forum section that was not intendent for them in the first place, and then find that some 10% of the discussions is of zero value to them...

I would also like to see a somewhat more precise description of your concept of an "obvious troll post". How does a posting like "I have published a new engine X on GitHub, does anyone want to test it?" qualify as obvious trolling? Or "Engine X beat Y in a match I conducted"? Because it are typically those postings that attract the mob of 'victims' with cavemen manners.

[chrisw]

Still seems to me that "victims of rampant trolling" is a ridiculous description for a bunch of people that decided to enter a forum section that was not intendent for them in the first place, and then find that some 10% of the discussions is of zero value to them...

I would also like to see a somewhat more precise description of your concept of an "obvious troll post". How does a posting like "I have published a new engine X on GitHub, does anyone want to test it?" qualify as obvious trolling? Or "Engine X beat Y in a match I conducted"? Because it are typically those postings that attract the mob of 'victims' with cavemen manners.

His signature has declared war again. Also answers the Jekyll-Hyde question. What a baby.

[AndrewGrant]

Still seems to me that "victims of rampant trolling" is a ridiculous description for a bunch of people that decided to enter a forum section that was not intendent for them in the first place, and then find that some 10% of the discussions is of zero value to them...

I would also like to see a somewhat more precise description of your concept of an "obvious troll post". How does a posting like "I have published a new engine X on GitHub, does anyone want to test it?" qualify as obvious trolling? Or "Engine X beat Y in a match I conducted"? Because it are typically those postings that attract the mob of 'victims' with cavemen manners.

In the case you are talking about, the user is a "well known troll". As in, has spent multiple years creating and recreating new accounts on Github, in order to spam threads / discussions / issues on Github, argue and attack developers for changes they don't like, and just generally waste the time of others. Okay, so do you kick the guy because of his activity on Github, even if he might not yet be trolling on talkchess? In general that is a bad idea. But perhaps such a case is extreme and is warranted. I would say moderators exist in part to deal with such things.

In general your apprehension is right. In this specific case, I believe it to be wrong. Although to be reductive, in this case the user was openly lying about their name on the forum, which itself should have been enough. I mean, we've stripped people of their rights for having funny last names, so you would expect openly fake names to be looked into.