Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 09:42:08 04/05/04
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On April 04, 2004 at 21:20:16, J. Kazinski wrote: >Yesterday I posted an article about how to spot cheaters in online chess. While >this article was commented as an interesting and informative suddenly it has >been deleted. Although the referenced article is intrinsically interesting, I wonder whether or not it is appropriate to this forum. This forum, CCC, was set up, presumably, to make a home for people interested in creating and testing chess software. One could reasonably argue that discussion of chess servers IS appropriate since chess programs being produced by members of CCC are tested on chess servers. Indeed, opening repertoires are developed for chess-playing programs by letting them play games, with "opening learning" enabled, to optimize the opening repertoires for the specific programs. Indeed, there are even computer chess tournaments being conducted on chess servers as this is being written! So, discussion of chess servers is appropriate at CCC. People who create chess-playing programs should be interested in how their products are being used. If a programmer does not wish his program to be used in a certain way or for a certain purpose, then the programmer may be able to modify his/her program to preclude the undesired uses. This may or may not be possible or practical, but deserves consideration. People who write chess programs, such as Blitzin, have not yet discussed their programs here at CCC insofar as I recall. Nevertheless, chess programs for use on chess servers such as Blitzin should, it seems to me, be a valid topic of discussion here at CCC if a programmer of such a program chose to post bulletins about it here. Technical discussions of the technical interractions between user chess software and chess server chess software should be allowed here at CCC IMHO. The behaviors labeled "computer cheating" do fit into the general topic of the above paragraph. If discussed in a rational responsible manner, there should be no problem with such discussions assuming that they were aimed at identifying and solving problems of interest to chess computer programmers "of the CCC kind." There is a real problem with discussion of "cheating" at CCC. The term "cheating" is a "hot button" word [like "Damn!"] which illicits irrational emotional responses from otherwise sensible responsible individuals. I suspect that most members of CCC would much prefer to keep emotional, moralistic, political, religious, and otherwise objectionable topics out of CCC and relegate them to CTF. [Almost anything goes at CTF.] So far as I can tell, the "computer cheating" thread has contained exactly ZERO technical content and serves no useful purpose here at CCC. My advice to those contributing such articles is "Shape up or ship out!" We do not need rabble rousers here at CCC. IMHO. Bob D.
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