Questions for the FG about the organization of the election

[AndrewGrant]

Is there any explanation why these people on discord are that kind of destructive??
It all reminds me on the massive amount of trolls Talkchess has survived in all those years of existence.
The idea was always to protect our beloved computerchess forum against trolls who tried to destroy discussions with off topic or personal insults or chaos.

No, not really. The FG is ageist and views the young guys as a threat. That is why you see the heavy handed moderation over trivial remarks from Andreas, where as other users can call Andreas a Nazi and get off scot-free.

[jefk]

AG
you're repeating your unsound nitpicking arguments suggesting the current moderation
team is biased and apparently implying you could do it better (and i had explained already
previously why the nitpicking was wrong); no comments about your 'ageists' statement;
except that it's simply immature and ridiculous; and off topic again. As someone who
was talking about 'hobbyists' maybe you should first graduate, work for a while in a
job, etc. instead of thinking you're king of the computer chess world (as for the
idea of becoming candidate moderator here, well even if you would not have banned,
you imo would need at least ten more years of experience, in life work etc (not
an insult, but more or less confirming what CW's opinion of your capabilities
seems to be). If i were moderator, i would have banned you the moment you put
your insinuating signature back again (a few days ago). Although they seem to be
playing good cop/bad cop sometimes, the current moderators imo are actually
quite (too) tolerant, democratic, having dealt already with a lot of bs in this thread
(I wouldn't recommend Ras to do that, replace Hgm, keep Ed and Chris in for a
while for a transition period, and delete this whole thread); alternatively we could
do an anonymous polling/vote for Ras, Ed and Chris, and keep top the two of
them; endorsing Ras who seems to be a stable person, i'll expect him to get in;
just an idea/my 2 cnts.

[Ciekce]

Because somebody said NO to them. For what happens then, read up on narcissistic rage.

this is extremely ironic considering the behaviour of certain FG members during the SIMEX saga

One can’t suppose that Covid lockdowns, reductions in socialisation and education didn’t also have its effect on the generation concerned.

me when the generalisation

I suggest rereading AGE's post laying out the actual situation when he and hgm almost managed an actual discussion, but this time without being blinded with rage at what he said on a different platform

[AndrewGrant]

... If i were moderator, i would have banned you the moment you had put your insinuating signature back again (a few days ago)...

Yes, and I would have temporarily banned you for suggesting one of our long time members was a Nazi.
Post here: viewtopic.php?p=973416#p973416

But what we would or would not do is not very material here.
Glass houses, friend.

[Ras]

As someone who was talking about 'hobbyists' maybe you should first graduate, work for a while in a job, etc.

Andrew has graduated in CS and even math, according to the CPW. His engine Ethereal is top notch, not to mention OpenBench, and he is the lead for Torch at chess.com, which sounds very much like a job to me. Wherever the issues come from, it's not lack of credentials.

[jefk]

you're getting annoying Andrew, i never called someone a nazi, i only asked him .
This is for the third time; can't you read. Nb and this was only after other grave insults from
others, after which this mr Andreas joined the party (of piranhas) and
made another idiotic insinuating insult (regarding my age). Not 'glass houses' and
you're still continuing with your signature, i observe.

Also, a day later i sent a PM to a moderator (Rebel) that i was offering to retract
the message (preferably if Andreas would apologize) in other words, requesting to
delete the message. didn't happen. Anyway like i said, you are nitpicking, pulling words
out of their context, and now engaging in some defamation and slander regarding
me as a person; thus reporting your idiotic post to a moderator; and warning
you anyway, continue like this and you'll get banned,
for sure.

[jefk]

Ras wrote

Andrew has graduated in CS and even math

to my knowledge indicating someone is a 'major' (on CPW(*) is being a post
bachelors student, yet to acquire a Msc degree; so i think it's only a bachelors
degree, or i may not be up to date. Anyway his remark about 'hobbyists' imo
were not indicative of a pleasant personality nor respectful to many persons
here on this forum, like eg. yourself...

lead for Torch at chess.com, which sounds very much like a job to me

there's not much bucks in chess, and i don't think such an activity,
even if he got some compensation, counts for a job (it also won't give
the social experience which a young person could get if he/she would
work in a company, with colleagues, management, etc); for the rest
it's irrelevant whether the bloke is a Bill Gates type or not (probably not(**), i
simply react to the behavior (and wordings and content ) here, in this forum.

PS whether Torch is a strong engine, is irrelevant regarding
this topic (moderation issues, and abilities to perform as such).

(*) thereby i have some questions regarding this CPW, in particular who is
maintaining the content, if i read eg. through the (probably self written)
description of the SF (russian) bloke mr 'Viz' i observe a grandiose lithany
of capabilities and achievements, most likely all highly exaggerated; as
a sideline, i had been on the (previous) chess programming wiki btw,
but disappeard (content wasn't transferred) with the new version (no big
deal, there's still some info on the webarchive, but it's not up to date)

(**) BG came from Harvard, and even then he was a rare species, for sure,
who would not make logical/reasoning mistakes and inconsistencies as i have
often observed here in this thread in several of mr (A)G's postings.

[hgm]

you're getting annoying Andrew, i never called someone a nazi, i only asked him .
This is for the third time; can't you read. Nb and this was only after other grave insults from
others, after which this mr Andreas joined the party (of piranhas) and
made another idiotic insinuating insult (regarding my age).

Nevertheless, it would have been worth deleting, together with the original age-related insult. But in order to intervene things should first be brought to my attention. Such mutual mud-slinging is of no interest to anyone, and as we see here it will come back time after time.

[AndrewGrant]

As someone who was talking about 'hobbyists' maybe you should first graduate, work for a while in a job, etc.

Andrew has graduated in CS and even math, according to the CPW. His engine Ethereal is top notch, not to mention OpenBench, and he is the lead for Torch at chess.com, which sounds very much like a job to me. Wherever the issues come from, it's not lack of credentials.

I reject credentialism, and arguments from authority. But for those who like them:

I abandoned university after my third year, never finishing. I immediately left to work for a defense contractor writing VHDL for a brief stint. Then COVID happened, and I found myself at chesscom since 2020, and full time starting in 2023 working on Torch as a team member, which then become a de facto project lead for it, and now many many other things in the engine space. I have no intentions on returning to university, as I see no purpose, at least in the field of Computer Science. Were this ever to become an issue, I would either return and finish a computer science degree in a single year, or if I really wanted, finish both the computer science + maths degrees in ~2.

Ethereal was, at a time, the #3 engine in the world, masked by Fire and Houdini using Stockfish. Ethereal continues to be one of the most widely referenced engines by engine authors. It might quality as the "Fruit of its time". Of course Stockfish is king, but people like the simple nature of Ethereal to learn.

OpenBench is, (unfortunately?) my greatest success. It is being used by the vast majority of active engines. The notable exceptions at this point are: Stockfish and Komodo ( although both run on OpenBench, and Komodo work was done on OpenBench for chesscom ), the private engines ( they could be using it; but I would not know ), Rebel/CSTal, and I think Uralochka. That gets about everyone in the top-30.

I administrate the Computer Chess Championship for Chesscom. Through doing that, I advocate heavily for my fellow engine developers. I have created a number of tools on chesscom's time, for this work on CCC, which I have shared with the community. I have regularly given testing access to strong engines to try out things like NUMA awareness on multi-socket boxes owned by chesscom, as well as general high SMP scaling testing. I have even published small portions of code from Torch, of things that I think are beneficial to all, but of no proprietary importance to chesscom. This includes a stripped down threadpool implementation ( based on Cfish, then based on Berserk, then based on Jay's impl. in Torch ), as well as code demonstrating how one can trivially build there engine for NUMA handling with weights + affinity binding.

Torch I guess is the most public success. It was, in my opinion, a clear #2 some time ago, beating Leela heavily in Bullet and Blitz, losing in Rapid, and actually winning the first 100-game h2h in classical. Although a more pessimistic view would be to call it the #2.5 engine, as Lc0 and Torch seem to have carved out clear #2/#3 paradigms depending on the time control. Torch is used for an absurd number of things at chesscom, and some of my work which is very theoretical alpha-beta in order to provide better analysis to humans, is soon to come.

I do all things engine related for chesscom, constantly consulting with disparate teams of people, who are looking to harness the existing tools inside of engines to power their products, as well as to theory-craft and execute novel additions to Torch that are outside the "elo grind" space on chess engines, but instead are on the user/usability side of things.

I am credited directly or indirectly in a significant number of engines, including Stockfish, Komodo, and even (somewhat jokingly), Lc0. I have dedicated the last ten years of my life to computer chess, riding great highs in 2017/2018 with the release of OpenBench and Ethereal's first-of-its-kind (?) HCE tuner. As well as great lows when my health was so poor that I was unable to leave my home, or stay awake for more than a few hours at a time.

[jefk]

it would have been worth deleting, together with the original age-related insult

well i had pm'd Ed at the time, who -being busy or not- probably didn't think it was
worthwile to discuss with another moderator. And indeed, i had *not* reported the two
earlier insults as i'm not a coward or snitch straightaway 'reporting' every remark or criticism
'higherup' so instead i decided to shoot back, out of self defense (and a warning); simple
as that (you may also observe i'm not also reacting to AG in a straight manner, rather
than going to report every annoying remark he makes, although the threefolded
repetition (of an incorrect statement, in red) now imo crossed a line.

Anyway it's now months ago, and there were other issues (and insults then),
so i would have expected this stuff to be irrelevant. which is another reason
why i regard the three fold repetition by AG and digging up old dirt
as nitpicking (and annoying); like written earlier, in a futile attempt to
suggest bias and prejudice from the current moderating team (and
suggesting he could do it better ?). Again, illogical nonsense.