Author: Peter Davison
Date: 10:22:19 10/06/00
Go up one level in this thread
On October 06, 2000 at 12:19:24, Bruce Moreland wrote: >On October 06, 2000 at 11:29:46, Ed Schröder wrote: > >>On October 06, 2000 at 10:47:36, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >>>On October 06, 2000 at 00:12:07, Bruce Moreland wrote: >>> >>>>On October 05, 2000 at 22:36:38, Daniel Chancey wrote: >>>> >>>>>Castle2000 >>>> >>>>OK, this is getting crazy. We have people running world cups and we have >>>>grandmasters playing games, only it's all taking place between two computers in >>>>someone's basement. >>>> >>>>It is like watching the news and the lead-off headline is about a gigantic naval >>>>battle, and you find out after sitting through three commercials (internet lag >>>>to load the page) that the naval battle took place in some kid's bath tub. >>>> >>>>I don't know what should be done about this, but this is annoying and I hope >>>>that something can be worked out. >>>> >>>>Perhaps these kind of posts can be prefaced with "CM:" or something, so those >>>>who couldn't care less could skip them. >>>> >>>>bruce >>> >>> >>>I agree. The subject has to be better defined. >> >>>Please stop with the current approach. >> >>Is this a moderator issue? As much as I dislike the CM personalities >>issues (there is hardly any interest for me), isn't this forum for >>everybody? >> >>Ed It is very hard to know who or what it is for. Different people have different ideas. > >Imagine that he makes a CM personality called Rebel, and another CM personality >called Genius, and he starts reporting a lot of Rebel vs Genius results. >Wouldn't you think that was misleading and distracting? > >I think the forum is for everyone, but it's distracting to see one world >championship per week. I don't want to read those threads, but I want to read >world championship threads. If they are Chessmaster basement tournaments, at >least he could preface the titles with "CM:" > >And really, these threads are starting to get very esoteric. Not only are we >seeing results of these tournaments, we are seeing procedural posts, reported in >such a way that you'd assume that people should take note of this stuff. But >how small is the minority of people here who care if someone's basement >tournament has been delayed for a week? > >bruce This board tries to define itself in three ways. First it calls itself by a name that suggests what is and what isn't appropriate. Then it has an elected group of moderators who are supposed to maintain some kind of on-topic control function. Thirdly groups of posters develop their own ideas of what is and what isn't, and will 'propagandise' as to what goes and what doesn't. You also have a time element involved. The Internet has grown fast, computer chess groups have changed from being full of enthusiasts, commercials and so on, to attracting younger, less 'specialist' people. The density of people you might argue are slightly nuts has increased. The density of people who want to publish Fritz or Chessmaster internal toin-cossing tounaments has increased. Effectively, you've moved from 'specialist fanatics' to 'specialist fanatics plus Joe Public'. This results (please refrain from the snobbery flames) in a dumbing-down, a general intellectual downgrading. And, I think, it is this general downgrading, which you sensibly refrain from explicitly stating, which concerns you. Let's call it the pesky end-users and kids syndrome. Now, if I'm right about the view, and I'm sure you'll be disagreeing by now, this viewpoint will probably not be in favour of groups here who *want* pesky end-users and kids. End-users provide a marketplace, as do kids, a little. Retailers, publishers, commercial programmers, crafty programmers all want this group. Well, they want to use this group. Programmers like you, who don't depend on sales or uploads, want, I suspect, in the final resort, to talk high level with other experts. You're happy to do some teaching function to serious beginners, but you get irritated by what you perceive of as nonsense, like the CM tournaments. I think your irritation is reasonable and genuine. If the forum was taken completely, as it has been at times, by nonsense posts, then the smart ones will quit (as many have already done). Nonsense then begets more nonsense. So, given the various differing requirements of the various differing interest groups here, what do you propose? Leave it as it is, but keep whingeing about the pesky ones? Make a select exclusive group of experts? Break up into specific interest groups? Make an expert write, end-user read only forum? Pack up and go home? Make more rules, make them explicit and enforce them? Anything else?
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