I count 3...what's wrong?

[ChickenLogic]

Before people start speculating about me I'll state my reasons:

1) This forum is pretty messy even though it isn't a live chat. People go off topic really quickly (like in Andrew's post we're now discussing if MIT or GPL should be used instead of discussing why people seem to be incapable of at least respecting the rights granted by the GPL)

2) People post so called "tests" without even thinking about meeting minimum requirements such as stating the used hardware, time control and opening book. There are even people supporting the idea that 10 games at 10 minutes are worth more than the 60k 1 minute games played for Stockfish regression tests. This is ridiculous but instead of helping people to understand why they're wrong we wave our white flags and let people propagate this nonsense. One would think that a forum has a standardized form for how test reports should be structured. Both the Stockfish discord and the Leela discord do this and it makes it very easy to compare tests. People tell me that discord is "too casual" compared to talkchess. In reality it is the other way around.

3) This forum is gatekeeping. It is totally unacceptable that certain regions are forced to use TOR or a VPN service. This is a bit like "ethical software" (i.e. this software is totally free except if you're *insert political/racist reason*)

4) There are several 'oldtimers' that are stuck in the nineties that propagate stuff like "Stockfish switching to NNUE is resignation to Leela". I get it. It's hard to let go of old beliefs that may have been true at some point in time. But a lot of ideas that get posted here are simply outdated. I'm more interested in spending my time in a discord full of developers that know what they're doing than I'm interested in talking to people stuck in the "good old days".

6) People, that openly violate licenses of open source programs (or even encourage doing so), used to get banned. (Norman from Fire comes to mind. Nowadays DKappe and others). Now they're accepted into a community that is only alive because of open source engines and yet we accept people that try to destroy "our legacy".

7) Moderators get NOMINATED and ELECTED? Like WTF seriously? There is a good reason mods get recruited and not elected in basically any good forum. Every forum has a duty to keep it running and clean. Recruiting of mods is one of the things you have to go through. Letting people nominate their friends and potentially even rig who gets to be a mod is not only insane but also incredibly lazy.
For example, the SF discord never lets people vote who should be mod. It was always recruiting people that are more than capable of doing their job. It runs remarkably well and the progress of SF from pre nnue to now shows this clearly. It grows steadily while this forum seems to shrink down to the people that were always here.

TL;DR is that I'm simply fed up with this outdated forum and how it is managed.

[dkappe]

6) People, that openly violate licenses of open source programs (or even encourage doing so), used to get banned. (Norman from Fire comes to mind. Nowadays DKappe and others). Now they're accepted into a community that is only alive because of open source engines and yet we accept people that try to destroy "our legacy".

Where have I violated the license of an open source program or encouraged others to do so? Pointing out that someone misunderstands the GPL doesn’t count as encouraging someone to violate it. Quite the contrary.

[Graham Banks]

Dann:

...
I resign as moderator from this forum.
It's time for me to take a break.
Maybe some photography.

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... ak#p894100

In the case of Dann, there's also the issue that, by his own admission, his computer chess hobby was a bit out of control: his house was full of high-powered graphics cards generating enough heat to warm the whole building, and all generating chess moves. He used to openly say it was a "disease", and he would receive letters from his electric company about his power consumption. Under these circumstances, I would support a break wholeheartedly.

I don't buy it, I remember the last time he took a break from this community, it was the Rybka vs. ICGA issue.

--
Srdja

Nope, it was the shredding of Albert Silver that made him decide to leave.

I can confirm that.

[smatovic]

I count this as Fat ... collateral

Graham Banks

I'm withdrawing from being a moderator candidate.

https://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic. ... 28#p903328

I myself see little sense in posting on TC anymore, and I am not interested in discussing Fat ..., you can find progress (slow) of my Zeta and Eta projects on my blogs if you are interested:

https://zeta-chess.app26.de/

https://eta-chess.app26.de/

--
Srdja