Author: Dan Kiski
Date: 21:12:36 12/23/98
Go up one level in this thread
On December 23, 1998 at 21:25:08, Dave Gomboc wrote: >On December 23, 1998 at 19:13:05, Fernando Villegas wrote: > >>Hi: >>No, I am not saying we must replace the purpose of this place by another one; I >>just say we must tolerate without so much discussion and without an special >>tolerant and gracious attitude of the moderator in carge that day the off topic >>post when it appears. Your post about my post and this one about your answer to >>mine is an example as how you can communicate a lot more even for the very first >>day here. No, no danger of killing the goal of this place anyway. Off post are >>no more than a fraction, but when some days they are more than that, there are >>good reasons to that thing to happens anyqway. >>Merry chritsmas and welcome >>fernando > >It's true that some off-topic threads are more tolerable than others. We have >many posts about computer chess. Occasionally something will head off into a >purely chess topic, and it's generally all right, most computer chess lovers are >chess players, so this works out not too badly. The thread usually dies in a >few days. > >The same happens with computers. Perhaps someone is attempting to optimize the >performance of their software, and someone throws in a comment about >overclocking the CPU in the computer. :-) This spawns a little thread of its >own, and that also usually dies after a bit. > >And, because it's the holiday season, a few people usually say "Merry >Christmas", "Happy New Year", or whatever. I mean, what are you going to do, >sue them? :-) > >But then there's these other kinds of threads, threads of the type which I >haven't seen too much of on the CCC, and hope that it stays that way. If you've >been involved in the online computer chess community for a few years, you'll no >doubt remember a few things that happened in rec.games.chess.computer over the >years. > >One example is that the decision to hold a WMCCC in Jakarta, Indonesia spawned a >vitriolic debate, if I may use the word "debate" loosely. I think it's fair >game to criticize the decision, to state why you think it's wrong, to back up >your opinion (e.g. no university in Indonesia should not have been chosen, >because of the country's terrible human rights record) by giving an example or >two (e.g. Amnesty International reports that there have been xxx human rights >abuses this year alone.) But you know, it didn't stop there. There was a >person posting historical AP press releases several times a week about the >mistreatment of the East Timorese, over a period of months. The "discussion" >failed to stay constructive, it was just a call for the heads of whoever had >made such a horrible decision. Others started with the head-hunting, they >didn't even bother justifying the why. But my point is, there were a huge >number of messages being posted that amounted to someone grandstanding their >political views. It ceased to have much to do with the WMCCC at all. And I >think it's wrong to deluge a computer chess group with this sort of thing: if we >wanted to read it for months on end, we'd be reading the appropriate political >newsgroup. > >Another large brouhaha occured as a result of the unfortunately-aborted World >Man-Machine Checkers Championship between Chinook and Dr. Marion Tinsley. Sure, >it was checkers, but for the purposes of developing an algorithmic (computer) >player, checkers is similar to chess in many respects. Indeed, the main author >of Chinook once tied for first place in a WCCC with his chess software (I think >this was 1983, with Bob et al.'s Cray Blitz winning the tournament on tiebreak). > There was some bigtime personal attacking going on then, mainly done by a few >people who didn't really know what took place at the Chinook-Tinsley match, but >refused to believe those that were actually on-site, preferring their own >invented, hatchet job version of events. This thread couldn't have gotten out >of hand on the CCC today like it did then: it would have been blown away by a >moderator, and the appropriate people chastised or booted. That's a plus for >the CCC. > >Some people fail to appreciate how destructive their behavior can be. Others >appreciate it perfectly fine, and choose to be destuctive anyway. Just a few >days ago, we heard Don Dailey say that "we lost good members because of [Sean >Evans]!". Yep. And the computer chess community has been losing good members >for a long time now. For every person who is willing to wade through the crap, >there is another who packs it in and says "enough is enough, I'm not going to >bother with this shit anymore". We lose casual chess players with an interest >in computer chess. We lose computer chess afficianados. We lose computer chess >software developers. There was a time when you would see a post from, say, >Jonathan Schaeffer, or Hans Berliner, more than once in a blue moon. >Feng-Hsuing Hsu was never a frequent poster, but it was really interesting to >read his posts about the Nolot positions. The best we do today is to hear about >a "source" from Bob, which may or may not be him for some particular >information. And for every champion-class computer chess software developer, >how many hundreds of other, normal people have decided that they too have >something better to do than to wade through hundreds of posts of animosity? >Will we ever get these people back? Maybe. Probably not. > >Some people feel that a moderator should have a light hand, or that it's a good >idea to give people third and fourth chances. IMO, this is baloney. We have >the CCC for a reason, it's because r.g.c.c. doesn't work. If people prefer >r.g.c.c. to CCC, fine, but the last time I read r.g.c.c. it was a cesspool, and still is!! >I doubt it's changed much. CCC exists because people want an alternative, so I >hope that when you're voting, you're not voting for someone who's going to take >that alternative away. > >Dave Gomboc
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