2024 Moderation Election ***Update***

[mclane]

This looks like a kindergarten here.
This forum is about computerchess. And in the many years of its existence it was capable to deal with computerchess topics.
If people want to destroy the topics or the forum, moderators have the power to act and save the forum against trolls and off topic stuff or personal attacks.

Computerchess has so many playgrounds and topics and subtopics. We should concentrate on the nice things and filter the negative things out.

[cpeters]

One thing I'd certainly be wanting to do is to disable the accounts of clearly fictitious members, as they have not joined the forum in accordance with the stated rules.

Well, how would be able to detect for certain the fictivity of a member? Follow your intuition/hunch? Demand a civil address/phone number and call? Nonsense. Never understood the urge for cleansing. Fantasies.

Greetings

[Graham Banks]

One thing I'd certainly be wanting to do is to disable the accounts of clearly fictitious members, as they have not joined the forum in accordance with the stated rules.

Well, how would be able to detect for certain the fictivity of a member? Follow your intuition/hunch? Demand a civil address/phone number and call? Nonsense. Never understood the urge for cleansing. Fantasies.

Greetings

Many are known or long term, so okay in most cases.

Those who are unknown or new would need to abide by the forum sign-up rules.

[LazySMP]

One thing I'd certainly be wanting to do is to disable the accounts of clearly fictitious members, as they have not joined the forum in accordance with the stated rules.

I hope that the current moderators will remain and not change.

Often, not always of course, there are more creative methods of dealing with, for example, avatar copying. The OP just neutered the “offenders” by changing his avatar at what appears to be zero cost to the OP. I call that a clever solution. OP 1 Offenders 0.

http://talkchess.com/viewtopic.php?t=84343

http://talkchess.com/viewtopic.php?t=84367

http://talkchess.com/viewtopic.php?t=84382

It is quite clear that a part of the offenders are members of the Stockfish community, so it is not difficult to detect them.

[chrisw]

One thing I'd certainly be wanting to do is to disable the accounts of clearly fictitious members, as they have not joined the forum in accordance with the stated rules.

Well, how would be able to detect for certain the fictivity of a member? Follow your intuition/hunch? Demand a civil address/phone number and call? Nonsense. Never understood the urge for cleansing. Fantasies.

Greetings

Many are known or long term, so okay in most cases.

Those who are unknown or new would need to abide by the forum sign-up rules.

New registration is done at Admin level, not moderation level. The hierarchy system, which I believe you strongly supported when we tried to make the Admin subordinate to the moderators, has been set up that way since almost twenty years ago and is firmly coded into the board software. Your proposal is self-contradictory and currently without validity.
As an aside, obviously the then shop wanted as few bars as possible placed on their bread and butter signing up.

[Graham Banks]

One thing I'd certainly be wanting to do is to disable the accounts of clearly fictitious members, as they have not joined the forum in accordance with the stated rules.

Well, how would be able to detect for certain the fictivity of a member? Follow your intuition/hunch? Demand a civil address/phone number and call? Nonsense. Never understood the urge for cleansing. Fantasies.

Greetings

Many are known or long term, so okay in most cases.

Those who are unknown or new would need to abide by the forum sign-up rules.

New registration is done at Admin level, not moderation level. The hierarchy system, which I believe you strongly supported when we tried to make the Admin subordinate to the moderators, has been set up that way since almost twenty years ago and is firmly coded into the board software. Your proposal is self-contradictory and currently without validity.
As an aside, obviously the then shop wanted as few bars as possible placed on their bread and butter signing up.

Thanks, Chris.

Who is the Admin now?

[Eelco de Groot]

I just hope that the forum does not have to go looking for both moderators and sponsors and a new administration at the same time. I am just happy that we have all that and that they want to do it. If the present triumvirate does not think the forum is ready for moderator elections by all means don't do it then. We have only been here since March this year in the new setup But it was at least part of the plan of the Founders Group in the new setup, to have elections for moderators, with the exception perhaps of Harm Geert (and voiced doubts that we should do it at all by some including myself). I think HGM is still the admin after he took over from Sam Hull who has been TCAdmin for a very long time and who also organized the whole election process, collecting votes, organizing the nominations for moderators, excluding bots and no longer actives from the process and doing all the signups to the forum. So that was a lot of work. And also a bit of a thankless job with no respite after six months.

[chrisw]

One thing I'd certainly be wanting to do is to disable the accounts of clearly fictitious members, as they have not joined the forum in accordance with the stated rules.

Well, how would be able to detect for certain the fictivity of a member? Follow your intuition/hunch? Demand a civil address/phone number and call? Nonsense. Never understood the urge for cleansing. Fantasies.

Greetings

Many are known or long term, so okay in most cases.

Those who are unknown or new would need to abide by the forum sign-up rules.

New registration is done at Admin level, not moderation level. The hierarchy system, which I believe you strongly supported when we tried to make the Admin subordinate to the moderators, has been set up that way since almost twenty years ago and is firmly coded into the board software. Your proposal is self-contradictory and currently without validity.
As an aside, obviously the then shop wanted as few bars as possible placed on their bread and butter signing up.

Thanks, Chris.

Who is the Admin now?

There are three. The three FG members are the three equal Admins, the idea is that each one of us has the ability to reconstitute the forum (safety measure against any one Admin going rogue and hijacking or destroying the forum). Moderator(s) also have (lesser because lower in hierarchy) forum destruction capability, so we are also safeguards against that too.

On real names, once a user is through the registration stage (admin level), I guess we have in the case of an apparent subsequent realname fail, a grey scale between

1. known user with another name and doing personal attacks etc, to

10. unknown user using possibly false unknown name but not doing anything against the charter.

At one end of scale we'll go thermonuclear probably, and the other end we'll probably wonder if we're not creating unnecessary strife ourselves if we let it bother us too much. Talkchess is not a prison, we (mods) are not police/guards/bureaucrat box tickers, we're here rather to try and keep the place friendly and useful for users.

People do sign up without the real name field and I believe that often gets passed (not likely if username is Mickey Mouse derivative) on the basis that some potential readers/users might want to try things out first or really don't like their real name on the internet, and we'ld decrease the size of the forum by about a third or more. In which case (no real name) they don't get a vote and we'll probably be tougher on them if there are charter breaches.

[chesskobra]

I will be in that category. I do not plan to publish my real name, and don't care about having voting rights. I don't have high stakes here, so eventually if the real name policy is imposed rigidly, I will leave. Or if I give a fake name, how will anybody know? As someone asked above, are the mods going to ask for identity proof?

[Graham Banks]

I will be in that category. I do not plan to publish my real name, and don't care about having voting rights. I don't have high stakes here, so eventually if the real name policy is imposed rigidly, I will leave. Or if I give a fake name, how will anybody know? As someone asked above, are the mods going to ask for identity proof?

As Chris said, it is the admins who accept new registrations, not the moderators.

Anyway, you've been here for a couple of years and if you haven't caused any trouble I don't see an issue.