Author: Steven Schwartz
Date: 10:36:48 05/18/98
I have collected the posted wisdom of 7 of the 9 nominees for the three open positions of moderator of CCC. They may be found below and they are in no particular order. I am still awaiting an autobiographical post by Karsten Bauermeister (where has he been?) and a final say from Fernando Villegas. With everyone's permission, we will push the voting back so that it begins on Friday at noon (New York time) to give Karsten and Fernando an opportunity to respond. Since we have four days until election, perhaps some of the members would like to pose questions to the nominees so that we can better understand their philosophies of moderation. I have a question: What are your feelings as they pertain to newbies posting questions and responses in CCC? - Steve P.S. Gentlemen, if you are going to answer my question, please to not copy the remainer of this post. We can save some space that way. KEITH IAN PRICE My name is Keith Price. I am 46 years old, and work as a Field Engineer for a company that makes machines to build circuit boards for the electronics industry. I live in Portland, Oregon, am married, but with no kids. I have been interested in Computer chess since 1976, when I first read about it, but I have no program. I have done programming and am the software specialist for my company's Field Engineering department. At first I was surprised that Detlef nominated me, since I am not a "name" in the Computer chess field. I was going to decline for the same reasons, when I decided that it might not be a bad thing to have a "no-name" amongst the moderators, so as to voice the opinion of the rest of us, if needed. My moderation style would be similar to the others, and as far as I can see, the CCC is pretty well self-moderated, so the only real role I can see is if there is a discussion limiting the scope of the posts. Steve can easily remove any offensive posts, such as the only one that has occurred so far. Thank you for your consideration. THORSTEN CZUB My name is Thorsten Czub, I am 31. Computerchess is my hobby. I am doing computerchess for a while. Therefore the possibilities of sharing and enjoying it with friends are numerous. This place is ONE example how to share "chess-shit" (as Bob's wife said) with other people. I don't like to censor or shout at people. After all the "experience" I had with NO moderation in rgcc, i have found out that sometimes one would have to delete posts with insulting stuff into it. I would have deleted some of my posts too. Since some of them were heated and offending. Normally i should (after a night sleep or even earlier) apologize when I have done something wrong. E.g. I thought (I was mistaken) Djorde Vidanovic is RT. This was a mistake. I was so involved in finding out which emails or posts are faked that i thought: this one could be a faked one too. An apology does not excuse anything. But it helps mainly myself to sleep better the next nights. I would like to see the people here in CCC discuss and talk without attacking each other for days or weeks. Sometimes I fail to do this myself, since some topics are very important to me (ideals, ethics, fair-competition, new ideas in computerchess, No-monopolism). I think nothing (especially no IDEA) is so important that it should be more valueable than human-beeings, friends and human-rights. Also no rule or no law should be that GENERAL that it will be misused against people. Rules are FOR people and not against them. A principle shall not be more important than wishes of other people. Normally i differenciate between peoples actions, and people themselves. I could HATE somebodies IDEAS or OUTPUT about a topic, but I would go eat with him, or drink a beer. Or be together with him in a community. I would not call him my friend, but I would let him live his own life. On the other hand I would not invite him at my home or lend him the key of my car. Or allow him to use my PC. Nobody should ever be thrown-out or censored. Anybody needs a second chance or more chances. But when somebody fails all chances, the group has to react and the moderator has to do something. Since we are talking about computerchess and not about IMPORTANT stuff, it should then be allowed to send this guy a yellow-card. And if he does not behave any better = on-topic and not insulting, he should get a red card. It is difficult for me to stay on topic since i do mainly think with the right-brain-part. And this halve is associative and connects all kind of "same-levelled topics together". It works different than the left brain-halve. But who knows what is better. Hip or squared, left or right-brain-halve, chess has the same rules. And Internet is the right way and the right place to communicate. Never ever was this possible, that the people joining one hobby could meet each other without paying too much, on a common place, and chat. We should not let this destroy by people who have all kind of personal problems or want to be "famous" by attacking other people. The best "moderators" are friends anyway ! And the best experience is when "enemies" become friends after a heavy discussion and the reevaluation of your own point of views. Thanks. AMIR BAN 41, married + 2, Ramat-Hasharon Israel Author of Junior M.Sc. Computer Science, co-founder and employee of M-Systems, currently as Chief Technology Officer. Anyone who considers voting for me should take into account my views. If you disagree with this, please don't vote for me: The role of the moderator is to ensure that discussion can take place on this newsgroup, and to prevent a situation where people feel they have to go elsewhere to have it. To enable this to happen, it may be necessary to shield this newsgroup from insults of a certain kind, and from what can be described as pure noise. That discussion on computer chess should have this kind of moderation is a strange but proven fact. I will not automatically shield anyone who thinks he has been insulted, even painfully, but I will vote without hesitation to do that if I think that the insult is of the sort that no one would even care to defend against. For example, I don't see any connection between any computer chess issue and nazism or fascism. On the other hand, an accusation, even a serious and insulting one, is allowed so long as I can see a connection to the issue discussed and think that it makes sense to argue with it, even if I don't agree with it (an example is Ossie Weiner's letter posted here). If someone on this newsgroup feels wronged or insulted by this kind of attack, I will ask him to argue the case on its own merits by posting an argument or a simple denial. I don't see this kind of moderation as limiting free speech, or, god forbid, censorship. I note that the freest people are the elected members of democratic parliaments, who often have special privileges and protection that ordinary citizens don't have (such as, in my country, immunity against court action), to enable them to speak their mind freely. Yet every parliament has procedures, etiquette committees, and sanctions for those who don't follow the rules on proper discussion. Those rules, rather than limiting free speech, ensure it against those that would shout it down or intimidate it. BRUCE MORELAND 34 Babysitter Ferret USA I think that Steven Schwartz and Tim Mirabile should be allowed personal discretion regarding deletion of obvious trolls such as the recent post that contained "Fuck You" as the title and "No really, fuck you" as the content. Anything else should be worked out by the three moderators cooperatively. I can imagine some constructive threads here about what should be deleted, and what should be discouraged. I have been watching this place for a long time, and I have often wondered what would be the best thing to do about some particular sour post. I expect that post deletion should be extremely rare. Probably more common are "calm down and knock it off" emails. Hopefully people would get the message after one of these. The current crop of moderators handles things behind the scenes, so it is hard to know that something is being done, and it is hard to get a clue about what they're sending "knock it off" mail for and what they're letting slide. I would like to suggest that future moderators be more public about what they do, so people can get some idea about what the rules are. There is the danger that this will give people who want to cause destruction an idea of how far we can go, but I think the benefits of allowing the rest of us to know where the boundaries are, so we can stay well away from them, outweighs this. Sometimes we will have heated discussions that the moderators should stay away from. But I am very much interested that this place not turn into a forum for continued expression of grudges and pursuit of personal vendettas. The idea is that someone should be able to write posts that explore this field without having to worry that someone will accuse them of being a pedophile. DAVE GOMBOC I am a professional software developer, living in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I'm 23 years old, and a lifetime member of the Chess Federation of Canada. I am on the board of directors for the Alberta Chess Association, I am a co-editor of the ACA's newsletter, and will begin hosting the ACA web site shortly. I have a B.Sc. in Computer Science (convocation is this June, actually). I have been working for eight months on the automated generation of opening repertoires for chess programs, something that will eventually find its way to publication (when I finish :). I will be continuing my studies in AI at the graduate level, probably in January. Moderation style: First I would like to say that in the vast majority of instances, no moderation is required! Moderators should only intrude when there is a need, and that seldom happens (on CCC, at least 8^). Should there be a need, e.g. some comment is especially offensive, I would replace it with "[A moderator has removed a section of the post at this point.]" and let the rest of the article be displayed. Anyone who can post civilly and constructively is welcome to post, anyone who cannot will still be able to post. Someone in the latter group might find the comment in square brackets above appear more in their messages than in those of others, that's about all. DON DAILEY Age: 42 Occupation: Sys Admin, MIT's Lab for computer science. Chess program: Rexchess, Socrates, Kasparov's Gambit, Cilkchess. Country: USA Family: No wife or kids (yet) Interests: AI, linux, algorithms, chess, tennis, biking. Personal thoughts on moderating: Do it as a last resort. Let the group run itself. If serious trouble breaks out (stuff that hurts someone) send private non-threatening email. Take care to consider the whole groups feelings over you own. CHRISTOPHE THERON I'm born in 1965 (age 33) in France. And I'm french. I live in Guadeloupe in the caribbean. I'm a professional programmer (currently working on a cardio training fitness system). No children (as far as I know) :) But time will come, and I already know someone who is volunteering to help me in this task. Or is it the opposite? :) Interest in life: I want to live in a cool place, avoid stress, improve Chess Tiger, write music, and try to understand the world. I would be glad to never have to delete a post. But I would certainly do it if somebody tries hard to make people hate each other. Or if someone obviously tries to generate a lot of negative feelings (this would be the case of a post loaded with insults). In such a case, I would like the offending sender to be given the opportunity to correct the message. So I would advice the moderating comitte to: 1) delete the message. 2) inform the sender by email (in the softest way you can imagine) so he has a chance to calm down and post again later. But I suppose this is the way moderators have done it in the past. I would advice to give anybody several chances to become a fair member. As you understand, I would like to moderate in a very soft way. My motivation is that I would like to see CCC keep on in the very same spirit. Heated discussions and out of topic paragraphs are not really a problem. Maybe it is even the heart of CCC: people speaking about a very tough and technical subject, but sometimes (often) showing some human feelings too. A good mixture, as far as nobody gets hurt.
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