Allow Political Content on Daily Puzzle Comments Under Certain Circumstances

I posted the following comment to the first page of today's Daily Puzzle:

Today I posted two other chess puzzles and a political advertisement for peace, here, in this second comment spot on the Chess.com Daily Puzzle. The portion of my comment advocating peace was deleted by a moderator. I then deleted my full comment and put this one in its place.

Following are some of the comments I received about the chess puzzle I posted on the first page of the Daily Puzzle yesterday.

"Hi. nice puzzle Edward Lasker (?) vs. George Alan Thomas (?) you posted on 9/14/2013. I am sure I can see a mate in three(3) solution and cannot for the life of me see why it doesn’t hold up. I would appreciate if you would let me know where I am going wrong. 11.Nxf6+ if black played anything other that 11….Rxf6 it would be 12.Qxh7# if black does play 11….Rxf6 it would be 12.Qxh7+ Kf8. 13.Qh8#." --SteveB0412

"Hi!

In your puzzle the last move i made a a rook and the king togeather, you know like deffense, is alternativly good move, to mate. but it said it was wron... how ever its not.
King moves up to mate the king is also good idea. but to rook the king you know. its good too. 
:)
it hink.
bye" --Istvan89

"It´s a great puzzle, but I like better 18. 0-0-0#" --johnniechivas

"[*Quotes the puzzles PeaceRequiresAnarchy posted*] i like it!" --hassan17

"That was very well thought out.  Loved the anticipated King move for the win." --Deanograyjag (PeaceRequiresAnarchy Note: Haha, this person, referring to the puzzle I posted, apparently didn't even realize that it wasn't the Chess.com Daily Puzzle, as this was his full comment!)

"In response to the edward lasker vs george alan thomas puzzle, would white plays Be4 be an automatic checkmate. The way the puzzle plays it, it takes like 3 extra moves." --jonnybomb

"castle queen side mate works too." --quadriple

"Hi. @PeaceRequiresAnarchy, I think your puzzle is a mate in 3, or I make some mistake?  1. Nxf6 Rxf6, 2. Qh7+ Kf8, 3. Qh8#. ??" --newmega

"@PeaceRequiresAnarchy puzzle. Oh... right! I just noticed my mistake. Taking the knight with the pawn, queen's way is set free... " --newmega

"Without 18. 0-0-0# that was just gibberish!" --RetiFan

"There is actually a mate in 7 with 16. Kf1! In the case of Qxf6 White has Be2# anyways on move 17 in this line.  This is mate in 1 faster than the solution!" --jonnyjack

"peacerequiresanarchy: 0-0-0#!" --Firestopr

"great, PeaceRequiresAnarchy" --patrickpeng168

I also received a few comments asking not to post political content on the Daily Puzzle and a few comments thanking me for posting political content on the daily puzzle, either because the commenter found it interesting or because the commenter thought discussion of the issues I posted was important.

While I understand the reasons why people don't want me to post political content, my thought process is that my comments with political comment should be allowed given:

(1) the low value of most of the other comments that appear on the first page of the Daily Puzzle ("first!", "nice", "easy", etc) and

(2) the fact that I supplement my peace advertisements with alternative chess puzzles that many users are happy to see.

In other words, it's true that the fact that a comment contains non-chess-related political content is a sufficient reason to have a presumption against allowing the comment on the Daily Puzzle, however the inclusion of other chess puzzles in the comment overrides this presumption since the comment is now much more valuable as a whole to most chess visitors to the Daily Puzzle comment section than the vast majority of other comments that people post on the first page of the Daily Puzzle.

Some people have asked, well why not just encourage people to post only the valuable alternative chess puzzles without posting the peace advertisements?

The answer, as I explained to one person, is that that's unrealistic since you'd be asking people to do things which are not in their interest:

"Thanks for your daily puzzles!" --7thSense

"You're welcome, although I don't consider it worth the effort to wait around until the first second that the Daily Puzzle is up to make the first page of comments to post the puzzles unless I am also allowed to post a comment advertising peace. But, peace is politics, which isn't allowed in the Daily Puzzle comments, so unfortunately I won't be posting any more puzzles for your enjoyment. Hopefully Chess.com posts good puzzles that you find enjoyable and challenging enough." --My reply

In summary, I think allowing comments with alternative chess puzzles and political content would increase the utility of the Daily Puzzle comment section. While a few people strongly dislike seeing the political content, most people find that it is easy to ignore it if they are not interested, and a lot of people appreciate the alternative chess puzzles, especially when the Chess.com Daily Puzzle is too easy for their skill level, or just because they would like to do another puzzle, etc.

Lastly, I predict that Chess.com will not follow my advice to allow comments containing political content that are overall much more valuable than the vast majority of other comments appearing on the first page of the Daily Puzzle to users interested only in chess.

The reason for this is because comments of the kind I have been talking about (containing chess and political content) posted on the first page of the Daily Puzzle are less likely to cause new people to become paying members of Chess.com than they are to cause people who are already paying members who strongly dislike seeing political content from dropping their paid membership.

Chess.com is no place for political advertisments at all. Find somehwere else to advertise.

While Peace is a fairly non-offensive political message, what's to stop people from posting more controversial political messages if they follow your lead and include chess puzzles as well.

E.g.  "Create a Kurdish country from northern Iraq and Turkey, and solve this mate in 3"  or "Stop English Imperialism in Rhodesia....and help the White King escape in 4 moves" etc.

There is a place for political discussion, and the Chess Puzzle page is not one of them. 

By the same token, most of those "First!" and "Easy" comments, should likewise be deleted  :-P

I can only imagine strife and anger and lots of hurt feelings coming from this.

If you allow one type of political comment, you open up the gates to all types of political comment. Think of the most ignorant & hateful gibberish that can hide under the cover of politics and that will be floating around irritating people who came here to play chess.

I saw ur comment on the daily puzzle the other day, so as soon as I saw the title of this thread I knew that u were the OP. I'm an anarchist myself (though judging from your full username I know that I belong to a totally different subdivision of anarchists), but I think that what you're proposing isn't really a good idea. It's gonna start all sorts of arguments, and before you know it, the Daily Puzzle will be locked (I'm pretty sure that's never happened). It's the same logic behind why my comments get deleted when I swear in them - both political comments and wearing really get people's attention, and make people start arguing about trivial stuff.

Proselytizing for any belief will achieve little besides the resentment of the people you are trying to convert.

I come here to play chess. I go elsewhere for my politics, you should as well.

Yea, let's keep politics of any kind off the site.

No politics.

Politics are poison.

Chess only.

Mao's nemesis, Wu(f).

No harm in advertising something like peace, it's not like you're hating on a person or something.

=1

There are many, very good reasons to keep politics away from here (and of course discussions about "peace" quickly go into politics). Considering the general purpose of this site, I think mods are being very kind to you for not deleting your account. You should be thankful for that and not demand more. And mixing chess puzzles with your political message does not make your posts less political. This is nothing personal against you but you are demanding changes that will affect all users. And as one of the users I'm saying my opinion on why this change should not take place.

This site needs a political forum. My local windsurfing site has a great political forum with argument all day every day.

Surely the intelligentsia what plays chess can do just as well

http://www.chess.com/groups/view/open-discussion

Think about how you might feel if out to dinner one night for a special evening with your partner and someone in the restaurant decides to sit down at your table and preach peace at you. I don't think you would be very receptive regardless of weather or not you agreed with what they had said. You are more focussed on the fact that someone is attempting to hijack your evening with their own views. People's feelings are similar here, if they have chosen to do a daily puzzle, then chances are the only discussion they want is about the puzzle iteself (except for those bizarre first comments and hello to "...." comments, but that's another story again!). I don't think its limited to politiacl discussion, but personally I thought this to be a bit more obvious than some other topics.

So why should you have to join a group?

Just another layer of bureaucracy

is to keep the forum clean.