Next time you are uptown replacing the ivory filaments in the server, turn it off and then on again.

When it restarts, press the F8 key repeatedly.

At the MS-DOS prompt type, format c: /s

The computer will ask you "Are you sure you want to erase everything at chessgames.com".

Press "Y" (for yes) and press Enter.

OK, that explains why my harmless and funny posts are gone...

<1) Almost every significant trove of off-topic posts could be gainfully transferred to a special-purpose page, such as <Politics>, <Logic Puzzles>, <Sports>, etc., freeing the player pages for their intended purpose.>

Yes, this is a hot topic right now, ever since I brought it up a potential solution. I'd love to extend the discussion of this topic that I began. I somewhat took offense at you accusing me of ignoring this solution in spite of "others" bringing it up, but we'll continue.

<2) Prompt and respectful attention to Whistles would have resolved many problems that instead were allowed to escalate.

3) Transparency and impartiality in handling confrontations between members, when and as they arise, would avoid the sense (on the part of quite a few members) that favoritism is at work.

4) It is necessary to enforce rules as written and promulgated, or members will lose respect for them.>

All 3 of those could be condensed into simply this:

2) Moderate better!

<Is there anything controversial about any of this?>

Not particularly, but people think that the "Moderate better!" imperative is something is really very easy. People think, "If I were in charge of things, that's the first thing I would fix, and it would be easy." The problem, in their eyes, is that we (specifically me, Daniel Freeman) simply doesn't care about the problem, but since that scoundrel is at the helm we can expect nothing but favoritism, inconsistency, and laziness.

I invite you to look at it from a different perspective. Suppose that my skills are too valuable to waste on topics like whether or not a comment on some page is off topic or not, and all of these tasks are delegated to a a couple of close-to-minimum-wage workers who's job it is to read whistles and take action on them.

Do you suppose that these two workers, likely just kids working part time, will show some great discretion and wisdom? Would they have deleted all of the Piscopo jokes triggering a landslide of complaints? Would they have failed to delete all of the G Key jokes triggering at least one person to go storming off the site in a huff? Would they waste endless hours deleting tolengoy only to see him reappear in 20 other accounts? Would they perform actions interpreted as favoritism or inconsistency? I would argue that they would do all of these things and worse.

While we're exploring this thought experiment, suppose we really did have those kids who can perform menial data-entry tasks. Do you really think that's the best investment of their time? We could use them to upload games or fix errors, but instead the #1 crying demand is to placate somebody's one millionth accusation of stalking, or to mollify somebody offended that a joke was cracked on the page of Dang Tat Thang? I would argue that even if we had these resources (spoiler alert: we don't) that it STILL would be madness to go down that road.

This is why I keep going to back to technological solutions. If the software could be programmed so that problems are self regulated by the community, avoiding the ridiculous cost of extra employees, then we might have a solution worth discussing. Perhaps a complaint whistle by a post could be clicked and the post itself would be hidden once a threshold is exceeded, without the need for any CG staff to review the situation. There are 100 other technological solutions, each either their own problems and ways that they can be abused, but more importantly they are fiscally possible.

Therefore, it's not unreasonable to say, that any solution to forum moderation should not require the moderators to actually be able to read the post in question. These minimum-wage employees hypothesized earlier: Perhaps they should read the complaint itself, but to actually read the post? Not in the general case.

< Copy comment to user's dossier >

There maybe some people who think like that but I can honestly tell you that not everybody does. I would like to see how others would feel and react if they were in the position of administrator and subject to some of the criticism I've seen here.

<Suppose that my skills are too valuable to waste...> <...I never signed up for the job of forum moderator.>

It's a pity that some people seem to overlook this.

<I think it's worth adding, a large number of posts to the forum are not in English. In fact it's often in a language that resists attempts at computer-aided translation.>

<Yes, this is a hot topic right now, <<<ever since I brought it up>>> a potential solution. I'd love to extend the discussion of this topic that I began. I somewhat took offense at you accusing me of ignoring this solution in spite of "others" bringing it up, but we'll continue.>

Sorry Daniel that's more than a little disingenuous, at least the way you've written it. You've been hemming and hawing on that idea for years without actually ever trying it out.

What you've written gives me no confidence that you're ever going to try it out.

Remember <crawfb5's> recent post in here about how he never wanted to hear you "talk about" the <sandbox> ever again? I believe the gist there was either pull the trigger or shut up about it.

I would say exactly the same to you on this topic.

<Daniel> please stop "bringing up this idea." Either do it or stop talking about it, because I'm sick of hearing about it.

Procrastinating is one thing- we all do it. I'm just tired of reading about you procrastinating on this particular issue, especially in the wake of yet another cg.com meltdown- caused rather directly by your failure to give this policy a try.

<Daniel> Actually on re-reading the way you've written your post about trying out the <dedicated topic forum> idea, I'd say it's is really, really disingenuous.

You are making it sound as if this is your original idea, and you just came up with it, as a response to what <tabanus> did earlier this month?

That's what the syntax of your thread rather directly suggests, and as you should well know that's in fact blatantly untrue.

It has been members in the Bistro and here who have brought that idea up, periodically, for years. "Save the Rogoff page with a Politics forum" and so on, and on and on and on.

You and I have discussed that idea in private correspondence, years ago.

At any rate, I don't care whose idea it originally is, or who has "copyright" on it.

Will you or will you not give it a try?

I have not heard any proposed solutions that are in accord with this fact.>

2) Moderate better! >

I'd say instead:

2) Moderate more consistently.

There are pages and pages of insulting comments about player names, that have whistle after whistle blown, nothing done. There is one page of an unknown player named Piscopo, one person, non-premium, complains, and it's wiped. That you chose to spend your time on that and not the insulting comments is what drives people(or at least me) batty.

As for what you spend your time on, yes, and that hits home as I spend all day trying to placate people who don't understand why I don't care about their situation as much as they do, and don't grasp when you have 30,000 customers you don't have 15 minutes to deal with each one of them. There have been numerous statements of sympathy in that regard on this very page, often couched in terms of herding cats. What doesn't connect with me is that you have spent how much time in the past month with the <Tabanus> issues and in the past year with <UNF> issues.

What does that mean, and how long has it been around?>

First, to some extent, the solution I have in mind I credit as "my own" because of some specific technical twists I have put on it (but perhaps did not explain.) Specifically the notion of creating twin-discussion forums side by side on certain pages; I'm not sure if any user expressed the idea in exactly such terms.

But don't think I am trying to take credit for the general idea. Not at all. It's not that original of a notion that anybody can lay claim to it.

I'm just saying that when Tabanus brought it up a year or so ago, that was my immediate response (I can go find the old discussion if you like) — and again, when it was brought up, that was my knee-jerk reaction.

<At any rate, I don't care whose idea it originally is> Nor do I.

Please however do not compare this to the Sandbox. The Sandbox is a real project which aims to revolutionize the way online chess databases work. It is a real solution to a real problem. I am prioritizing the completion of the Sandbox. Yes, I've been promising it for years, but with every sincere intention.

I haven't been promising the specialized discussion-forums for years — I've been talking about it, and mostly trying to dodge it for years!

The way I see it, there is no rush to hurry into what could be a bad idea.

The people pushing that button will range from crazies to web-bots to our competitors intentionally wasting out time. It's a button that hemorrhages money and you don't have to pay a dime for the privilege of pushing it 100 times a day.

I can't help but to say that regardless of what you think should be done regarding moderation, if anything, the cold reality is that you'll be getting less of it.

THAT wouldn't really work. Some people post large sections from say old German chess magazines.>

Thanks for being much, much more specific <Daniel>.

You should have given that answer to <Abdel> in the first place. To fail to do so was disingenuous- it means you were trying to fob him off without actually admitting what you were actually going to "do"- which is allow more talk about it, with the actual intention of doing nothing about it:

<I haven't been promising the specialized discussion-forums for years — <<<I've been talking about it, and mostly trying to dodge it for years!>>>

The way I see it, there is no rush to hurry into what could be a bad idea.

If you are accusing me of being all-talk/no-action when it comes to making special twin-discussion forums for certain pages, I plead guilty. I am not prioritizing it as a major problem right now.>

Still missing is your explanation of *why* you think it's a bad idea.

This reminds me of the time you encouraged a lengthy debate in the cg.com forum about "what to do about the AJ problem," and when it became apparent that every single participant suggested that kicking AJ off the site was not only the best solution, but the only solution- you abruptly ended the discussion by accusing all of participating in a <witch hunt>.

This prompted the mild mannered <benzol>, one of your most staunch supporters, to complain publicly of being labeled a "witch hunter." He was obviously very stung by your careless actions in this sorry episode.

Now if <benzol> was stung, what do you think the less mild-mannered participants felt?

I think it's precisely this mode of communication with your membership that causes long term resentments, and distrust of what you have to say about anything to do with "site improvements."