<Then you also create a magnet for the kinds of people who *like* deleting other users' posts (or at least those of some other users)>

I have been inside enough moderator groups to know first-hand that this is indeed very often the case with the kind of personalities who are attracted to these jobs (only, they tend to see it as a status/position).

Of that I have no doubt. The admins are not ingenues.

Example: I would have removed all posts from the Judit Kiss page. As an isolated case they are not so bad, but when we get more and more (thousands of) player pages like this, fewer will take this site seriously. And I can see that some already don't. I'm sure CG could find grown-up crap-deleters that would not make you panic. If they so wanted.

The objection is not to that; it's to the idea of drafting volunteers from <the membership> - because these people are just too personally involved. And it's not that "this would never work", either... but every single recruitment is a huge gamble the admins would be taking with the social health of the site. The danger that the cure might turn out to be worse than the disease is just too high.

The idea of separating on-topic and off-topic into two different "threads" is not bad, although the gray areas would be many and often difficult calls. And even with this solution, I definitely do *not* agree with deleting the off-topic branch on any regular basis - just to keeping it separately.

I'm in fact more worried about pages like the Judit Kiss page type than say Stumpers. For the latter, I think a side-chat page (without deletion then, sic) could be a good idea. For the former, the posts are already 5+ years old and I think there socializing there is now over.

Certainly, and they are very appreciated! :)

But as for the <socializing there is now over> - socializing doesn't work that way. For instance, any given exchange of jokes may not look significant to an outside observer, but this observer has no call to decide that the participants may have no say in the matter; he has no way of knowing, the exchange may be very meaningful to them. Suppose they became best friends starting with that insignificant-looking chat? Or suppose they became best friends several years later, and one day realized that they actually had this much earlier exchange? Those posts would be quite special to them, and it's not hard to see that they would be hurt and outraged if somebody suddenly just deleted them as "not worth preserving".

So, moving the conversation to an "off-topic" thread - maybe. Deleting it, still no. :)

Note - if the "joking" goes so far as to be seriously offensive to the person who is the subject of the page, that *is* a somewhat different matter.

And, um totally off topic, Kiss is pronounced with a long 'sh' sound, not with a long 's' sound as it would be in English, and it means 'Small'. The opposite Hungarian name is 'Nagy', meaning Big. ;s

<<these people are just too personally involved> Nah, not all? I can think of several candidates, among those who don't make a post every day.>

The people who are willing to accept a serious daily chore at a site are usually not ones who don't care much about it. :)

Here we have only to take note of who "volunteered" immediately when the "crap deletion squad" idea was put forth.

With some volunteers, it would be only a matter of time before they told the admins that, to do a really thorough job, they needed access to the site's source code: "Just *trust* me; by the time I return the results of my work, the site will be so improved you won't recognize it!"

P.S.: Interesting etymological note on the name Kiss. Once, long ago when I was a security guard, I had a co-worker named Lisa Nagy; and on weekends I attended Naval Reserve drills with a Tom Nagy.

I wonder, though: Does Kiss sometimes appear as Kish? The CEO of my web hosting site is named Bill Kish (although I have no idea if he's Hungarian or not).

One might even say, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Here is some analysis of the game, comparing the game with 2...b5 against 2...b6:

https://zanchess.wordpress.com/2015...

It was a good excuse to get my 100th post in the blog, so I thank you for that.

I would like anybody interested to compare the score graph of evaluation vs move number between the two versions.

Yes, but not from among the kibitzers. <Annie> is right, giving regular posters the keys to tools like that would be way too risky. None of us are perfect judges of character, and the damage even one rogue (or simply incompetent) crap-deleter could do is too high compared to what we'd gain if the admins somehow managed to select only users who were perfect in every way.

And as <Abdel Irada> noted, it pays to keep site history intact and accurate. Even now, with no non-admin crap-deleters, too many fights and flame wars on this site have involved deleted posts and people spreading lies and half-truths about their contents with impunity.

Yes, they <could> find one decent crap-deleter. Give him a couple months, and we have the same amount of crap that we started with, users blaming the admins for deleting posts that were actually nuked by the crap-deleter, one tired and disillusioned crap-deleter and a user base that never even noticed the experiment.

We've never resorted to such detailed histograms to modify a game score (especially so early in the game!), although the idea of adding histograms (or at least being able to request them on demand) has occurred to us.

'Power corrupts' is a simplistic cliche.

Power *changes*; sometimes for the better, and sometimes, in several possible ways, of which "corruption" is only one, for the worse. The cost of even one unpredictable change for the worse might be too high to the 'community' feeling at a site.

<Tabanus> I am sorry, but the idea that nobody would mind deleting their old posts shows extremely poor psychological understanding.

Think of it in these terms: how many of us moved out of the family home because our parents kept throwing away our beloved old things? ;s

No adult can feel at home in a place that treats them like children with limited ownership of what they think of as their stuff; in a virtual home, this "stuff" is our old posts. Touch them at the peril of having us move out, because we don't feel safe putting our stuff here anymore.

That's why I didn't say it. :-)

The quote from Acton actually runs as I presented it: "Power *tends* to corrupt..." and I believe that is true.

I have not said that nobody would mind it. Some would probably mind, but that's Ok IMO as long as they didn't start new off-topic postings about it. I thought it could be worth a try at least - to challenge the comfort of the few for the improvement of the site.

<Deleting things because they are offensive: yes.> I can agree to that. Only that "offensive" is harder to define than "off-topic".

If it's not possible to remove posts, then I have another suggestion: remove birth date, country and first name from the player, or all players for that matter, go back to "J. Kiss" and "L. Stumpers". Or just "Kiss" and "Stumpers".

<CG> I hope it's not corrupted power that made you change site, venue and round number for two games in Rio de Janeiro Interzonal (1979). The games are Timman vs Velimirovic, 1979 and Sax vs Ivkov, 1979. Will the same eventually happen in all the matches and tournaments we have strived to get voted in?

And thanks for including Portisch vs Savon, 1972 again into Hoogovens (1972), but event should be "Hoogovens" (as with the rest of the games (hopefully)), site should be Wijk aan Zee NED, date should be 1972.01.07, and round number should be 7. Possibly I forgot to fill in those fields when resubmitting the game, in which case I apologize.

I see what happened. In both cases there was a duplicate game that Sargon must have fixed up, witnessed here:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/dupe...
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/dupe...

It must have been decided that the moves of the duplicate were actually correct, meaning the ones with the nice headers are now buried underneath.

I'm going to show this to User: Sargon and point out his mistake. In special circumstances like this it's necessary to do some header-copying. (Furthermore, the correction slips themselves might be viewed with some skepticism, because of the old rule of thumb that if the headers to a game are wrong, you might not want to trust the moves either.)