Time to immigrate to another forum?

Discussion of anything and everything relating to chess playing software and machines.

Moderators: hgm, chrisw, Rebel

With all the current troubles through the years isn't it wise to move to another forum?

Yes.
51
45%
No.
44
39%
Undecided.
18
16%
 
Total votes: 113

Modern Times
Posts: 3603
Joined: Thu Jun 07, 2012 11:02 pm

Re: Time to immigrate to another forum?

Post by Modern Times »

mclane wrote: Mon May 22, 2023 10:04 pm The major idea was that this forum UNITES us and increases the amount of members.
Supports our hobby and increases our friendship.
Yet it hasn't. In recent years it has become more a battlefield with the "clone wars" and the like. Far more division and animosity these days than friendship and unity, at least it seems that way a lot of the time. Not just this forum of course. However that is freedom of speech.
Werewolf
Posts: 1899
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Re: Time to immigrate to another forum?

Post by Werewolf »

My view: this site has gone downhill for two related reasons:

1) it lacks contributions from programmer-level people who were prolific. Bob was a good example of someone who contributed a lot of content. The endless engine origin issues were unfortunate but he would take time to answer questions. Other programmers likewise.

2) the Admin aren’t harsh enough. A lot of posts here are spam by attention seekers who know nothing, yet compulsively post stupid crap. An example of this is Chessqueen. These posts should be instantly deleted and the Forum would be improved.
There was a similar person on the Rybka forum, which I was a moderator of, and I deleted hundreds of his posts. Without doubt it made it a better place until the engine origin thing was too much.
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Graham Banks
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Re: Time to immigrate to another forum?

Post by Graham Banks »

Werewolf wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 4:30 am My view: this site has gone downhill for two related reasons:

1) it lacks contributions from programmer-level people who were prolific. Bob was a good example of someone who contributed a lot of content. The endless engine origin issues were unfortunate but he would take time to answer questions. Other programmers likewise.

2) the Admin aren’t harsh enough. A lot of posts here are spam by attention seekers who know nothing, yet compulsively post stupid crap. An example of this is Chessqueen. These posts should be instantly deleted and the Forum would be improved.
There was a similar person on the Rybka forum, which I was a moderator of, and I deleted hundreds of his posts. Without doubt it made it a better place until the engine origin thing was too much.
The advent of Discord channels has had a huge impact, as programmers can discuss ideas there in real time.
gbanksnz at gmail.com
Modern Times
Posts: 3603
Joined: Thu Jun 07, 2012 11:02 pm

Re: Time to immigrate to another forum?

Post by Modern Times »

Discord is both a good and bad - good for chats in real time but there are no threads, so post days apart on the same topic aren't joined up. Useless for that.
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Rebel
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Re: Time to immigrate to another forum?

Post by Rebel »

Modern fora have chat channels, mine has.

Integrated chatbox
Enjoy real-time chat thanks to the chatbox. Integrated by default on all Forumotion forums, you can display it everywhere on your forum. Full personalization of the chatbox is possible by modifying templates.In addition, Forumotion includes some essential tools like ban option, logout of members, sending of absence messages, or deletion of in "progress messages".
90% of coding is debugging, the other 10% is writing bugs.
smatovic
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Full name: Srdja Matovic

Re: Time to immigrate to another forum?

Post by smatovic »

Werewolf wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 4:30 am [...]
Would like to add:

3) The science is done, the commerce is done. No money, no papers.

Pro AI/NN computer scientists have currently for sure other topics than computer chess engine programming on their list.

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Srdja
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towforce
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Re: Time to immigrate to another forum?

Post by towforce »

smatovic wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:16 amPro AI/NN computer scientists have currently for sure other topics than computer chess engine programming on their list.

This is absolutely true. In the early days, chess was seen as a good way to study AI, because it was something that AI could actually do - even if not to GM level. Many strong chess players didn't like the way the programs played, but grudgingly came to accept that there's more than one way to play chess.

Today, a computer scientist would be idiotic to choose computer chess. If they came up with a breakthrough, by the time they fully developed it, there would be a serious risk that top rival programs would be almost unbeatable anyway. Even if they did make the breakthrough, there would be almost zero commercial opportunities to exploit (maybe there's an opportunity to improve computer-based chess training that human chess players would be willing to pay for?).

I use an "arithmetic test" for AI (this is entirely my own analogy - don't bother searching for it!): once, being able to do arithmetic quickly and accurately was seen as a kind of intelligent behaviour (maybe up to the early 1960s?). Now, some computers can do 10^18 arithmetic operations per second, and even the cheapest computers (SOCs costing less than $0.50 when bought in the thousands) can do many orders of magnitude more arithmetic than any human, and nobody regards arithmetic as intelligent behaviour any longer. Like arithmetic, each "intelligent" behaviour is impressive when a computer first does it, but then gradually stops being regarded as intelligent behaviour over time. It's only a matter of time until chess starts to fail my arithmetic test.

I also have a "cool kids" analogy: when a new activity starts or a new club opens, the cool kids go first. As the uncool kids start to join in, the cool kids move on, and the club/activity becomes uncool.


The science is done, the commerce is done. No money, no papers.

Sorry - have to disagree.

* There's certainly a lot to learn from computer chess, but not much of it is "science" IMO

* I remember reading decades ago (probably in the early 1990s) that chess is not a good model for AI, because brute force works too well for the game (in this respect, Go is a better model: the higher branching factor prevents brute force from being effective). What was true then is still true today.

Having said all that, it is true that the rate at which "big breakthroughs" are happening is, over the entirety of the history of computer chess, undeniably slowing down, and will continue to do so: in terms of playing strength, the only target left to hit is "practically unbeatable" - and when that target is hit, it's likely to happen quietly - without victory parades or other fanfare.
The simple reveals itself after the complex has been exhausted.
smatovic
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Re: Time to immigrate to another forum?

Post by smatovic »

towforce wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 11:04 am [...]
I myself am not done with chess yet, as we wrote in another thread, there is still something to figure, with science and engineering, but we reached IMO currently a plateau in this regard, and there are more interesting and rewarding topics out there.

My prof said in 2008 to me in "chess is dead", I get it, 2006 - Deep Fritz 10 vs. Kramnik, the topic of game tree search was done, the topic of expert knowledge was done, then followed the question how to use a GPU for chess and how to use NNs for chess, solved - A0/Lc0, Giraffe/SF NNUE, recently DAG+Attention, the last two seem already to be optimizations of existing techniques...

nevertheless I think that programming a computer to play chess will stay as an topic of interest for many people to come, as an hobby, a side project, a mental exercise and challenge....the match Deep Fritz 10 vs. Kramnik was rewarded with $500K, those times are gone:

https://www.chessprogramming.org/Kramni ... Fritz_2006

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Srdja
smatovic
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Full name: Srdja Matovic

Re: Time to immigrate to another forum?

Post by smatovic »

Modern Times wrote: Wed May 24, 2023 3:27 pm
mclane wrote: Mon May 22, 2023 10:04 pm The major idea was that this forum UNITES us and increases the amount of members.
Supports our hobby and increases our friendship.
Yet it hasn't. In recent years it has become more a battlefield with the "clone wars" and the like. Far more division and animosity these days than friendship and unity, at least it seems that way a lot of the time. Not just this forum of course. However that is freedom of speech.
Yes, a battlefield, sometimes I have the impresion that the different pro dev groups met here just to rant against each other, then everybody was p****d and moved on...yet, TC programmers section is quite easy these days, or alike.

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Srdja
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towforce
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Re: Time to immigrate to another forum?

Post by towforce »

Werewolf wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 4:30 amA lot of posts here are spam by attention seekers who know nothing, yet compulsively post stupid crap.

Add such members to your ignore list: I think it will improve your experience of the board.
The simple reveals itself after the complex has been exhausted.