Unfair Poll

[Rebel]

I am asking permission to discuss the CTF survey poll here in CCC.

[hgm]

Well, if Harvey doesn't have any objection either, it seems reasonable to me that you get it. The poll itself is here as well, after all, and discussion in there is not allowed.

If it degenerates into a mud fight, like all threads in CTF always degenrate, I will move it to CTF, though. So perhaps you should encourage your fellow CTF posters who are never able to write two sentences without at least one of them being a charter-violating viscious personal attack to stay out of here, and leave the the arguing to you.

I hope that you will not be arguing that people mostly posting in CCC have no right to decide whether they want to rid themselves of CTF, and that the only democratic way to decide matters on this board is grant voting rights only to frequent CTF posters, like Thorsten tried to argue. That did not seem to go down very well...

[Rebel]

Thank you HGM.

The thing with this poll is (which actually will function as a Referendum) that people before the Referendum should be well informed about the subject before they vote. I believe this hasn't been the case and I want to explain why things has become so bad overthere (I don't deny that), and fix that with a new strong mod team.

I want to give more details, want to propose makesense solutions, but (arrived here) I am not sure if you want me to allow to share those.

[Rebel]

Alright, I see the thread is still here and so I take the liberty to write something that hopefully makes (some) sense.

The CTF forum was founded a couple of months before the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and because of that immediately was flooded after the terrorists flew two planes in the twin towers, emotions ran high. It's said that politics can ruin life time friendships. CTF (contrary to CCC) often is about sensitive issues, politics and religion always were the 2 top sensitive issues and quite recently immigrants and notable also racism (!) made its ugly entry. I thought that in our modern 21th century way of thinking there is no place for racism any longer but after the tragic death of George Floyd I learned otherwise and for quite some time CTF became an unbearable place. There were rightful voices who loudly were complaining against this filth, even wanted to become moderator and clean the place.

In the past I ran for CTF moderator 2 or 3 times, last time 12 years ago, or so. What I learned, you can not wait till people start to press the complaint button, that's maybe works for CCC, in CTF moderators need to actively monitor the forum on a daily base and act, put the fire out before it becomes unmanageable. The 3 mods can decide to divide the days they are active if there is a need for it. This did not happen during the last CTF period, moderators expected that people are responsible themselves and hit the complaint button, it did not work.

Several people offered their help to clean the place, there is a will among the members to improve. I want to make the following suggestion, give the CTF members a short time to sort out their problems, come up with a trio that is united, actively monitors the forum on a daily base and is not afraid to act, strictly following the charter.

Thanks for your attention.

[hgm]

That all sounds very nice and noble, but is also seems idealistic, and mostly wishful thinking. There is no guarantee whatsoever that there will be any change under a new moderator team. In fact one of the moderator teams that intends to run in the upcoming elections proposes to continuate exactly the same "liberal front" policy of the previous team, where basically "anything short of calling for genocide" would be considered acceptable. Perhaps they would be a bit more vigilant and pro-active w.r.t. charter-violating personal attacks. But I don't think that these are the gravest concern of the shut-down voters here.

In my judgement this liberal team would enjoy the broadest support of the teams that want CTF to continue; the other candidates are from the extreme left and right wing of the political spectrum, mainly interested in censoring each other away. Which would solve only half the problem.

What Ed failed to tell here is that he is at the heart of a movement that advocates excluding CCC members from voting in the moderator election, and limit that to a small 'in-crown' of frequent CTF posters. That is, exactly the people who are responsible for the current mess in the first place, and now want to shift the blame for that on the moderators for not oppressing them more. So it is not only that he tries to appease us with vague (and IMO unrealistic) promises that things might get better; he also wants to make sure we will have no influence on whether this will be the case. It is like letting a murderer walk free under the assumption that he might regret what he did, and might not do it again, so that it would be unfair to subject him to parole board supervision.

[Rebel]

I leave your points unaddressed avoiding a (large) discussion, what I want to ask if the community is allowed to speak out about my proposal to give the CTF folks a short time to come up with a decent united trio, actively monitoring CTF on a daily base, not afraid to keep the charter people signed up for. If the CTF members fail to form such a trio then BOOM, no problem. But unlike you I have a different opinion when it comes down chosing moderators, last time they appointed Sam, Dan H. and Fernando, looks like a sane choice, don't you think?

Over to you.

[smatovic]

Hmm, I tried some month ago to discuss in CTF what the limits of CTF shall be, and I had the pretty clear impression that people are strong free speech advocates in there, the "liberal front", I get this point, CTF would make no sense if a left-wing or right-wing takes over, the world in general is polarized, and so is CTF. Nevertheless has CTF a negative touch on CCC as a whole. Computer Chess and Computer Chess Programming should be inclusive, not exclusive, if CCC members feel dissed/blamed/hatred for their ancestry/color/gender/religion via CTF I would like to see it rather shut down than CCC members not feeling at home in CCC and free to express their enthusiasm with others, or alike.

--
Srdja

[hgm]

But unlike you I have a different opinion when it comes down chosing moderators, last time they appointed Sam, Dan H. and Fernando, looks like a sane choice, don't you think?

It looked like a very sane choice. But look how it turned out in practice!

I don't understand you, it seems you argue against yourself. First you say "the current situation is so bad, only because the moderators sucked; the members are not to blame". And now you say "look how good a choice we made for moderators last time, no reason we would do worse now"?!?

So what is it? If the sane and responsible choice last time resulted in a moderator team that sucked, why would a sane and responsible choice this time have any different effect? Especially if the proposed policy is practically the same?

I don't understand why it is such a big deal if the genuine users of this site (i.e. the computer-chess afficionados) don't want to be associated with CTF. Just go somewhere else. Renting a web space is dirt cheap nowadays. Just get your own domain name (I pay 7.31 euros a year for one), and move there.

Why is it so all-important for the CTF dwellers to force their presence on a chess community that clearly has no interest in them? If I am not welcome in a place where I have no business to conduct, I just leave.

[Rebel]

Sorry, not interested in discussion here, we already fight our battles at the dark side

I am only interested in member opinions about my proposal to give CTF a second chance, Srdja did and you expressed yourself loudy, that makes two.

It's about willingness.

[Ras]

Sorry, not interested in discussion here

From your start posting in this very thread:

I am asking permission to discuss the CTF survey poll here in CCC

You asked for permission to discuss, only to reveal that you are not interested in discussion. What's next - promoting democracy by stripping most voters of their voting rights? Oh, that's already done, nevermind.