Gert Jan Timmerman>

I just wanted to offer one suggestion. I think it's a good idea that would help our team: a standard forum system might be a better 'general discussion' location than the game's kibtzing page, which is just very inefficient. There are a few questions we need to answer to to decide if this is a good idea:

<1.)> Does such a system benefit the team's organization?

<2.)> Is it practical to convince enough users to switch?

<3.)> Do the benefits of a new kibitzing area outweigh the cost of encouraging users to switch?

If our answers are 'yes', 'yes', and 'yes', then switching to a forum system is ideal. But <the real question we need to consider is 3.)>, I think. So, costs? I think the main cost of changing forums is temporarily or permanently splitting some of the general discussion between the kibitzing page and said forum. This could be a legitimate problem. Or perhaps the idea would never soar.

But if we accomplished this, the <benefits> would be huge.You can create actual moderation staff and moderate threads, preventing the flamewars, centralize the various analysis forums in a way that makes it easier for users to access the information, sticky and edit highly relevant information that we currently have to repeatedly post (such as the information in your profile), create user-run subforums with custom moderation, and the list just goes on.

I am going to give you my thoughts, but I will also post a message on the forums of a few others and invite them to join the discussion.

I agree completely when you said <We have so many good minds and powerful computers at our disposal that if we simply harness those gifts correctly, we can win (or at least draw). I think the real trick to winning these games is achieving this higher level of organization and cooperation.>

I don't remember you being part of the team during the last game, so let me first say that things will get better. Organization will never be perfect, but once we get to move 10 or so and all the forums are in place, you will see a big improvement. Of course, your efforts in providing summaries will be an important piece of the puzzle, also.

I don't think I have a full appreciation of what you are talking about when you advocate a <standard forum system>. I participate occasionally on a few other forums on the internet where they have message numbering and you can follow threads. I assume this is what you are talking about. Would such a system be an improvement? Probably. Must we have such a system? I'm not so sure.

One issue, as you point out, is whether we can "train" everyone to use the system. There is one other aspect to this, though. While I am a paying customer (premium member) I am nevertheless very grateful to chessgames.com for having this series of games that I can take part in. It is great fun and I'm sure my chess is improving, also. I just feel a sense of loyalty to this site and I feel like we ought to use the tools they give us instead of venturing elsewhere. They have made improvements that help us (such as the sticky). If there are specific shortcomings that they can address, then we should ask them to do so.

1) no
2) no
3) no

The main problem with the forum system is people don't use them. They post speculative analysis on the main page where it rapidly gets buried. An alert forum host will copy relevant posts to his forum. But the problem still is to attract enough players to the forum to create a healthy dialog.

<Tabanus> and <Zanshin>, I hope it's understood that I don't think the present state of our organization is disfunctional or that the system is bad. Rather, I watched the GMYS game's kibitzing and had the sense that, while we're doing very well, there is room for improvement. I think the kibitzing 'one big thread' setup just isn't an ideal default location for the team's meetings. I think it works because we're smart people and we work together, but I don't think it's ideal. I don't think it's broken; it works because we work hard.

That said, I understand the concerns about practicality, common support and loyalty to CG.com. If it's just not practical to sway enough people, then it's just not practical. I can understand that. And, the "if it's not broke" concerns are very reasonable. It would be tragic for such an idea to backfire.

<Arkanin: We have so many good minds and powerful computers at our disposal that if we simply harness those gifts correctly, we can win (or at least draw). I think the real trick to winning these games is achieving this higher level of organization and cooperation.>

<Kutztown: While I am a paying customer (premium member) I am nevertheless very grateful to chessgames.com for having this series of games that I can take part in. It is great fun and I'm sure my chess is improving, also. I just feel a sense of loyalty to this site and I feel like we ought to use the tools they give us instead of venturing elsewhere.>

<Zanshin: As I said earlier, I think it will be a hard sell to convince others to switch to a new system after the success we've had with the old one.>

<Randomvisitor: Also, I would suggest that you include cg.com in any discussion on this subject, since they are the organizers of this game, obviously paid Timmerman a fee of some kind, and would perhaps like to be in the control seat as far as any changes made to what so far has worked well. Just my 2 cents.>

<Tabanus: RV's off-topic forum idea is good in theory, but hardly in practice. People will probably post off-topic posts in the "game ralated" forum anyway, and we should not be *too* serious or uniform either. Just my one cent!>