Questions regarding the Election and Nomination Process

[Tony Thomas]

I will nominate:

Kaustubh
Frohlick
Swaminathan

Guenther

And i will nominate you.

Me too, I nominated Swaminathan, now will you quit already?

[Terry McCracken]

I will nominate:

Kaustubh
Frohlick
Swaminathan

Guenther

And i will nominate you.

I'll nominate myself!

Upon reflection, (took about a millisecond), I retract my nomination.

Terry

[dj]

Urgh.

If you feel as strongly as appears to be the case (judging by your language)

Man....

[deleted by moderation]
Stan

[deleted by moderation]

You have given us your shrill dislike of elections. However, no fewer than 17 people have already been nominated and 5 have accepted. It seems that more people welcome elections than you suppose. You appear to be in a minority of one.
Btw in the Anglo-Saxon world there are elections for all sorts of things - governments, local authorities, chess clubs, golf club committees, women's guilds, literary societies and even...chess forums!

[Daniel Mehrmann]

Hello all !

I must decline my CCC moderator nomination with the following reasons:

1.) I'm happy and pretty busy with the german CSS forum moderator job already. ( http://www.computerschach.de/forum )

2.) A member shouldn't be moderator of two or more big forums (to much power in one hand, also with different teams).

3.) My english skill level is to low to do this job.

But thanks anyway

Good luck to all other candidates.

Best,
Daniel

[bob]

IF we are both elected i think there will be several things that will have to change
Steve

I'm sure that the voters would love to know what you mean with this statement Steve.

Also the votes in the forthcoming election could well tell you a different story. Perhaps the great majority of members are happy with the way things are.

Besides, a moderation team discusses their policies and modus operandi after the election to decide how things are going to be.
It is not up to one mod to dictate to the others how things are going to happen.

Regards, Graham.

yes of course the team must decide together
and if you and i are elected on the same team i think the members will wonder how we can get along together for the good of the board and i think to do that we are going to have to agree to do things as a team a bit differently then they are done now
thats what i meant by a change

i am surprised Graham you thought i meant i would dictate terms

you are going to have to be more trusting then that if we are both elected

i will be making my moderation policy quite clear in my statement in Turners thread

you could be right that many would be happy with seeing the same moderator for what would be 3 terms if you are reelected and what would amount to more then 4 years of moderation from the same person

its a pity that the Founding fathers of the CCC did not foresee this would happen or they would have imposed term limits on mods i think

personally i think its good for the board to have new mods certainly after close to 3 years with the same mod and the possibility of another 2 more years

Hyatt and Skinner and myself on the ballot certainly does not look like a very strong vote of confidence for you and Swami

and i can assure you....i certainly did not nominate myself and i doubt either Hyatt or Skinner would either.. like it appears you and Swami did

Steve

Someone sent me an email suggesting that I at least respond here, so I will.

(1) I really don't care whether you (SteveB) become a moderator or not. So far as I know, you would probably be a good one. I don't follow your CC posts, and I doubt if you follow my programming-related posts. So what?

(2) I do have a big problem with CCC as it exists, and it is my intention to simply go elsewhere unless at least two things change significantly...

(a) This crap of moderators _editing_ posts is going to stop for my posts, because there are not going to be any more posts from me to edit. It is a lousy policy. It is a stupid policy. It is an insane policy. Delete a post? yes. Change it? Not on my watch. Not now, not ever. And while my absence here won't mean a thing, I can guarantee you I will be absent until this practice is completely stopped, and made impossible for future moderators to do.

(b) The silly business of locking threads on a whim, or temporarily moving threads on a whim, is not going to fly. I _was_ one of the founding fathers of CCC. And we _never_ intended nor even discussed such things happening. The thread that was the final straw for me was the Hiarcs operator fiasco in the last CCT event. That idea is so very basic to all computer chess events, that saying "Oh, he didn't know, or didn't mean to hurt anything" just simply does not cut it. If a guy lives by himself deep in the jungle somewhere, and then makes his way to civilization at age 30 and immediately kills someone to take their food, does he get a "free ride" because he didn't know any better, or is he going to jail? In this case, the 30 years with no human contact didn't happen. Rules for the CCT/ICGA tournaments have been published over and over for years. They have been discussed over and over for years. We had a year-long thread about the DB match and how these rules were applied even there.

And then the moderators have to step in and quash the discussion for a period of time while they "clean up the thread".

I'm simply done with that nonsense. If everyone else is happy with it, so be it. But I'm not, and I'm not going to be involved if that is going to be the way things are done.

Hope that makes my position clear. I don't have a problem with you, and suspect you might be an excellent moderator. Thorsten and I have locked horns many times in the past, yet I feel the same way about him. But the way things are going at present, is not for me. And I'm old enough and experienced enough to have the right to make whatever decisions I choose to make about where I post and where I don't...I'm not willing to just tolerate a place, either I enjoy it or I move on...

[Christopher Conkie]

Hello all !

I must decline my CCC moderator nomination with the following reasons:

1.) I'm happy and pretty busy with the german CSS forum moderator job already. ( http://www.computerschach.de/forum )

2.) A member shouldn't be moderator of two or more big forums (to much power in one hand, also with different teams).

3.) My english skill level is to low to do this job.

But thanks anyway

Good luck to all other candidates.

Best,
Daniel

Let me do it for you daniel......

I'd kill em all........



Christopher

[dj]

Dr Hyatt,

I do not feel competent to comment on all the points you raise in your post. However, I do think it is very sad that someone of your eminence in the field of computer chess should feel as you so obviously do. To lose you from this forum would be a considerable blow. Your words should at least make us all look very carefully at what is going on here.

Derek Jones

[Christopher Conkie]

I do not disagree with anything you have said.

It's a no brainer to me. Either we protect our hobby or we don't.

Protection means cutting off problems at source. It is easy enough to do provided there is the power to do so for whoever moderates.

Real people have sway over non entities.

This should be a place of progress and help not polls about crap and one liner quips that have no real lasting meaning.

You should not go. That is a cop out and you are better than that but I do empathise with you. We have (if you remember) discussed it anyway elsewhere.

A club should encompass new people as well as old but everyone should not forget the purpose of the club.

Anywhere where we are mods we have no problems.

We just get rid of trash and leave the real people to get on with it. That has been the secret of our success and so it should be here.

Regards

Christopher

[gerold]

I do not disagree with anything you have said.

It's a no brainer to me. Either we protect our hobby or we don't.

Protection means cutting off problems at source. It is easy enough to do provided there is the power to do so for whoever moderates.

Real people have sway over non entities.

This should be a place of progress and help not polls about crap and one liner quips that have no real lasting meaning.

You should not go. That is a cop out and you are better than that but I do empathise with you. We have (if you remember) discussed it anyway elsewhere.

A club should encompass new people as well as old but everyone should not forget the purpose of the club.

Anywhere where we are mods we have no problems.

We just get rid of trash and leave the real people to get on with it. That has been the secret of our success and so it should be here.

Regards

Christopher

Christopher,

Thanks for your post . Well put. I hope what ever the out come of
the election Dr. Hyatt will continue to post here.

Best to you,

Gerold.

[bob]

I do not disagree with anything you have said.

It's a no brainer to me. Either we protect our hobby or we don't.

Protection means cutting off problems at source. It is easy enough to do provided there is the power to do so for whoever moderates.

Real people have sway over non entities.

This should be a place of progress and help not polls about crap and one liner quips that have no real lasting meaning.

You should not go. That is a cop out and you are better than that but I do empathise with you. We have (if you remember) discussed it anyway elsewhere.

A club should encompass new people as well as old but everyone should not forget the purpose of the club.

Anywhere where we are mods we have no problems.

We just get rid of trash and leave the real people to get on with it. That has been the secret of our success and so it should be here.

Regards

Christopher

My main two problems are...

(1) I do not believe _anyone_ has the right to edit someone else's post, above and beyond (perhaps) adding a comment or explanation at the bottom, and clearly indicated as being added. But deleting a line here, a word there, etc, is simply not acceptable. If the post needs to be edited, the original poster should do the editing. Else it should be deleted. I've been here since we started CCC, and have probably been a moderator more than any other person here. And I/We have _NEVER_ edited someone's post, in any form or fashion. I raised this when it first came up a year or two ago, I voiced my displeasure with the concept, but apparently it still continues. I won't deal with that, whether it is my words, or someone elses. I subscribe to the famous quote "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it..." Editing someone's post puts words into their mouths that they did not say. Not acceptable.

(2) locking threads, whether temporary or not, is just stupid. I can't count the number of times we have seen the arcane "I locked this thread, it was getting too long..." It makes conversations disjointed and hard to follow, particularly if someone comes in after the lock and picks up at the start of the new thread without having the context of the old one.

In short, there's simply too much mucking around that goes on. I've deleted lots of SPAM posts here in the past. I've deleted a very few member posts and then always with a personal email to them explaining what was unacceptable and why. Again, I disagree with that philosophy. Abusive stuff can/should be removed, whether it originates with me or someone else. But no editing. No capricious decisions about when a thread has reached the end of its usefulness. When that happens, the thread dies out. It doesn't require any euthanasia.

Somehow, things have gone awry, to the point I don't consider it acceptable. The only thing I can control is myself. And I believe I've earned the right to pick and choose what I do, since I am fast approaching 60 years old.

I probably could have been a perpetual moderator here, I've been nominated almost every time, but I have for the past few years taken the approach of serving once and sitting out once before coming back, as I think everyone should have the opportunity to try it on for size. The best moderators we have had were nearly invisible. Not so the past year or so, they have become quite obstructionist at times. This was originally "by the programmers, for the programmers" but it's drifted. Non-programmers are welcome for the most part of course, and I've found it easy to skip the stuff I don't want to read. But I find it objectionable when threads are abruptly moved or locked, "just because". I have plenty to do without having to waste mental energy dealing with that...