Questions for the FG about the organization of the election

[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.

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

Please feel free to join the productive conversation that HGM and I are having, whenever is best for you.

[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.

Please feel free to join the productive conversation that HGM and I are having, whenever is best for you.

Thanks, I generally agree with HGM. As for you, useful discussions would be oxymoronic. There is no discussion possible about morals nor ethics with someone who casts others into sub-human categories.

[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.

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

Please feel free to join the productive conversation that HGM and I are having, whenever is best for you.

Thanks, I generally agree with HGM. As for you, useful discussions would be oxymoronic. There is no discussion possible about morals nor ethics with someone who casts others into sub-human categories.

I've tried my best here, but I think its time I have to add you to my block list, Chris.
Its too hard to have a good dialog with you coming in and saying these things in the middle of a good discussion.

My appreciation for HGM, who despite sharing great differences, is having a real conversation. One where we've established some common ground that I can be happy about. Hell, I might have voted for an HGM moderation if the commentary about bans for blatant illegal clones was at the top of his platform.

[LazySMP]

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 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.

It is really unfortunate. Trying to discredit new members and make them look like trolls, why really? I remember that for a short time, the ShashChess Engine was the most powerful chess engine in the world ranking. But Stockfish members started to disrespect and insult Andrea Manzo because they didn't like another engine being more powerful than theirs.

BTW, I thank the CCRL members for trusting and testing my engine, and I am really happy that the SF members' attempt to destroy my engine was unsuccessful.

[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.

Please feel free to join the productive conversation that HGM and I are having, whenever is best for you.

Thanks, I generally agree with HGM. As for you, useful discussions would be oxymoronic. There is no discussion possible about morals nor ethics with someone who casts others into sub-human categories.

I've tried my best here, but I think its time I have to add you to my block list, Chris.
Its too hard to have a good dialog with you coming in and saying these things in the middle of a good discussion.

My appreciation for HGM, who despite sharing great differences, is having a real conversation. One where we've established some common ground that I can be happy about. Hell, I might have voted for an HGM moderation if the commentary about bans for blatant illegal clones was at the top of his platform.

You don't get it, do you? Casting other human beings (here or elsewhere) as "trolls" or "fucking retards" is casting them as sub-human, then to justify whatever you want against them (usually bullying by others and exclusion). Apart from engine programmer, this is what you do, this is Andrew Grant, youth version. This is what you learnt so far in computer chess social media. Why I recommended to you some time ago to leave, reflect on yourself (you're smart enough, I would guess) and start again somewhere new. Thank me in ten years.

[hgm]

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.

Moderating one forum is already more than enough work. If a moderator would also have to monitor animosity in other places, and make judgements about those to determine against who they should take action here, it becomes pretty much undoable. So I judge people by how they behave here, and do not allow them to settle any scores for disputes elsewhere. We are not here as an agency to do other people's hatchet jobs.

The amount of hostility that goes around amazes me. That people get so upset because one person opens a single thread and sticks to posting there, which would be easy to ignore even if the forum did not have a real ignore function, makes it hard to believe the presence of uninteresting or dumb posting can be the real reason. It just seems a dominance game: some people feel themselves as masters of the internet, and get outraged that their orders are not promptly executed by TalkChess moderation.

The name issue would just be a pretext, since there are many others that have no or fake real name. And I never saw any prove of this 'openly lying'. How can you know what anyone's real name is? And note that the other cases you mention are not in relation to barring access to the forum.

[towforce]

Two-faced Andy.

Assuming he's been rude about the FG on another social media (which, based on this thread, is probably true), it's not surprising that you feel an urge to be rude back.

I'd like to clarify which tense "two-faced Andy" (TF) is in though. There are 3 possibilities:

1. The simple present tense ("Andy is TF right now")

2. Andy is TF right now and always has been

3. Andy is TF right now, always has been, and always will be

If it's (3), then it's not immediately obvious where the positive path forward is. If it's not (3), then how much time must elapse before you'll be happy to re-evaluate his consistency?

[Rebel]

Two-faced Andy.

Assuming he's been rude about the FG on another social media (which, based on this thread, is probably true), it's not surprising that you feel an urge to be rude back.

I'd like to clarify which tense "two-faced Andy" (TF) is in though. There are 3 possibilities:

1. The simple present tense ("Andy is TF right now")

2. Andy is TF right now and always has been

3. Andy is TF right now, always has been, and always will be

If it's (3), then it's not immediately obvious where the positive path forward is. If it's not (3), then how much time must elapse before you'll be happy to re-evaluate his consistency?

“Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.”
― Dr. Phil

[AndrewGrant]

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.

Moderating one forum is already more than enough work. If a moderator would also have to monitor animosity in other places, and make judgements about those to determine against who they should take action here, it becomes pretty much undoable. So I judge people by how they behave here, and do not allow them to settle any scores for disputes elsewhere. We are not here as an agency to do other people's hatchet jobs.

The amount of hostility that goes around amazes me. That people get so upset because one person opens a single thread and sticks to posting there, which would be easy to ignore even if the forum did not have a real ignore function, makes it hard to believe the presence of uninteresting or dumb posting can be the real reason. It just seems a dominance game: some people feel themselves as masters of the internet, and get outraged that their orders are not promptly executed by TalkChess moderation.

The name issue would just be a pretext, since there are many others that have no or fake real name. And I never saw any prove of this 'openly lying'. How can you know what anyone's real name is? And note that the other cases you mention are not in relation to barring access to the forum.

Ah, well I don't care to rehash this since you've read it all before I am sure, and were not compelled by it... But the name for the user we are talking about is fake. You can tell it is fake, because the image of the profile matches the name, and is a fictional character from a television show.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1714204/

[Viren]

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 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.

It is really unfortunate. Trying to discredit new members and make them look like trolls, why really? I remember that for a short time, the ShashChess Engine was the most powerful chess engine in the world ranking. But Stockfish members started to disrespect and insult Andrea Manzo because they didn't like another engine being more powerful than theirs.

BTW, I thank the CCRL members for trusting and testing my engine, and I am really happy that the SF members' attempt to destroy my engine was unsuccessful.

Why are you responding in this way to a post which did not mention you?