Polish users cut off from TalkChess

[yorkman]

Still not fixed it seems. It sounds like talkchess is prejudice against Poland and other countries that can't access this site. There is no excuse for this not to be fixed for this long. Well, I say the hell with talkchess. There are other chess sites that don't have problems like this.

[mclane]

It’s horrible. It has to do with the company that hosts the talkchess forum. They block whole countries.
We don’t really know how many computerchess enthusiasts are blocked by these actions.

All complains did not work.

IMO the idea of an international (!!) computerchess forum is now ad absurdum by these circumstances.
We founded this forum in 1997 to allow ALL computerchess enthusiasts to read write into the community.

I still don’t understand why participants accept this kind of handling.


In Covid 19 times computerchess in internet should be OPEN to all friends and enthusiasts.

It’s a pity that people are blocked.
Not all people register that they have to use a VPN .

[Madeleine Birchfield]

Still not fixed it seems. It sounds like talkchess is prejudice against Poland and other countries that can't access this site. There is no excuse for this not to be fixed for this long. Well, I say the hell with talkchess. There are other chess sites that don't have problems like this.

Ed Schroeder has created a new forum at prodeo.actieforum.com that you could visit.

[peter]

Still not fixed it seems. It sounds like talkchess is prejudice against Poland and other countries that can't access this site. There is no excuse for this not to be fixed for this long. Well, I say the hell with talkchess. There are other chess sites that don't have problems like this.

Ed Schroeder has created a new forum at prodeo.actieforum.com that you could visit.

A fine forum for sure, but what does it have to do with this one here?
A problem that's regarded too seldomly in this thread, as far as I read it anyhow, is this one:
If members from here simply join another one forum to meet there instead of here, all the threads, postings, data would get lost, if CCC is just closed.

Think e.g. only about the much information that can be found here by forum- search.
Does really anybody want to give that up?

And what for?
A new one forum started from scratch?
Nothing against Ed and his new forum, but can it really replace this one here without migrating the data from here too?
Can any other new or old one forum?

Just my two cents regards

[PK]

If members from here simply join another one forum to meet there instead of here, all the threads, postings, data would get lost

This content is already lost for the people that are blocked.

My statement on Rodent page: http://www.pkoziol.cal24.pl/rodent/rodent.htm

[peter]

If members from here simply join another one forum to meet there instead of here, all the threads, postings, data would get lost

This content is already lost for the people that are blocked.

My statement on Rodent page: http://www.pkoziol.cal24.pl/rodent/rodent.htm

I understand your and other's bitterness about that, Pawel, and one reaction to that of course might be to me too, to move somewhere else.
But even less I would simply let the data stored here go without even trying to save them in one way or the other. At this or another one server.
With some kind of security protocol fitting today's standards.

[PK]

But even less I would simply let the data stored here go without even trying to save them in one way or the other.

I agree. But Talkchess is no longer a place where you can reliably store and retrieve information.

[mclane]

If members from here simply join another one forum to meet there instead of here, all the threads, postings, data would get lost

This content is already lost for the people that are blocked.

My statement on Rodent page: http://www.pkoziol.cal24.pl/rodent/rodent.htm

That’s exactly my point pawel.
An international computerchess forum with blocking whole countries is a Paradoxon and IMO a disaster.
IMO there has to be a solution,
Since the problem has to do with the commercial host using the same server, it is IMO necessary to move the forum to a place it is again an international forum.
It’s not only people from Poland, other countries have or had similar problems.
Our founding idea is treated with the feet.
The situation is absurd.
We don’t even know how big the damage is because not everybody is capable to speak out here and complain.



Thanks for your clear statement on your website.

[mclane]

But even less I would simply let the data stored here go without even trying to save them in one way or the other.

I agree. But Talkchess is no longer a place where you can reliably store and retrieve information.

Sad but true,

Our idea to have a big community and to collect anybody and any idea Here has been changed into a farce of it.

[Guenther]

This content is already lost for the people that are blocked.

My statement on Rodent page: http://www.pkoziol.cal24.pl/rodent/rodent.htm

What can you do?

- Please consider writing to the admins of the discriminatory site of Talkchess about the issue. Please ask them politely when and how they are going to fix this issue. Or please do away with the politeness and remind them that they participate in something utterly immoral. The choice is yours. Please do that often.
- Please consider not posting there, because your content will be inaccessible in some parts of the world.
- If you care for spreading information about computer chess, please look for other venue. Talkchess no longer guarantees that.
- For Your own good, please backup any stuff you posted there, because you can lose access to it on a whim.
- If you happen to posses technical ability, resources and spare time, please consider backing up technical information from Talkchess. Replacing links at Chessprogramming Wiki with actual quotes might be a good way to start. Reposting it somewhere else will work too.
- All of the above is especially important if Your work is in any way connected with open source. The discriminatory site of Talkchess goes totally against that spirit.

I am currently in the process of saving the most important parts of the forum by an old tool, which still seems to work like a charm.
(I don't want to put too much stress on the host server so I limited the bandwidth for downloading)

This will take a while and I have to check first, if the saved archives work at all later.
If all works out as desired, I will report back in a few days.
I don't think I will save everything and will filter manually 'not so useful' content, at least from the General forum.



I have no clue how big it will be and hopefully it won't crash my computer over night ;-)
Oh, I forgot to say I started of course with the Programmers forum :)
After this I will try the General forum. The others are not that important.

Edit:
A first check is very promising - everything is working as expected in the saved archives structure!

BTW ofc I also tried wayback on this and in fact talkchess was saved hundredths of times in the past, BUT the saved archives
never go deeper than the thread/post titles, which means those are useless.

First guess for the programmers part ~5GB (total links will still increase further)
This will make the General part something like 20-50GB