Notes for Club Members

I've deleted the bulk of this quote only for the sake of brevity.

Again, I don't see a problem with anything that's written in these suggested notes because they will be seen only by the admins of the respective clubs. What is the difference between discussing a member's possible cheating in HQ, where the record could be permanent, and recording it direct on the member's record? 

An admin writes, "His mother wears army boots". So what?

My mind is not closed to the possibility of abuse of such a system but I've not yet seen one. @JustADude80 is concerned about kids leaving notes. Again, so what?

"Again, I don't see a problem with anything that's written in these suggested notes because they will be seen only by the admins of the respective clubs."

Admins come and go. Not everyone promoted to admin of a group can be trusted to keep information confidential, particularly after they've left. Some groups have dozens of admins. One group of which I have been a member had a policy of making every single member an admin.

"What is the difference between discussing a member's possible cheating in HQ, where the record could be permanent, and recording it direct on the member's record?"

One difference is that in HQ the information is all in one place and therefore easier to delete when that is deemed appropriate, whereas information in individual members' admin-profiles would not be so readily findable when it becomes out-dated. Aside from that particular difference, I agree with you that it is a similar situation. I am not generally in favour of writing possibly sensitive information about club members in an HQ area either and prefer to exchange PMs about it with the club's SA. And a system which is put in place specially for exchanging such personal information with other admins, i.e. a members-notes facility as suggested in this thread, would encourage what I consider bad practice.

"An admin writes, "His mother wears army boots". So what?"

That's trivialising the issue. The problem arises when an admin writes something like "She told me that she timed out in all her games because she was under extreme pressure because her ex was stalking her plus one of her teenage children had been in trouble with the police over possession of drugs...."

My using a deliberate trivial annotation should not be taken as trivialising the issue. AsI said, I'm very open to the possibility of this being abused.

Chess.Com's Code of Conduct disapproves of on-forwarding pms.

Please remember that everyone and perhaps even Eric, are totally anonymous. I have met two in real life and a few other users in real life but I didn't ask their user-names. If I was in the headlines of the local paper for some misdoing, they would be free, "To pass on", this information to everyone on my friends list. Again, so what? They're just a pile of pixels on my screen. If this was Facebook, I readily agree that it would be an issue.

What am I missing? Please be aware that I'm open, well, I believe that I am. to issues.

That's interesting. You say that if this was Facebook then it would be an issue. What's the difference? Scale/size? This site may be a lot smaller than Facebook, but it's still pretty huge, isn't it?

No, mate. I mustn't have made it clear though I tried. Facebook identifies real people. We know that people on their keyboards or devices are real but we have no idea as to to reality of their presence on here. Yes - that's my pic on the left, isn't it? Isn't it?

I preserve my anonymity here to an extent too, but my real name is on my profile for those who look for it because I want to keep open the possibility of renewed contact with chess friends from my past. It is indeed a good thing about this site that anonymity is possible, and different members will use that anonymity to different extents.

Some members are completely open about their identity here. They have a lot to lose if confidentiality is compromised.

Even for those people whose real life identity is completely hidden, privacy is still important. We spend a lot of time here and we build up a network of friends and clubs just like we do in general life. We still have our reputations on this site to consider, our online personae which we have built over years here.

I concur that a club-admin private note is no better or worse than a post in a club HQ group.

Brian, as ever, I respect your sincerity but cannot follow your logic.

Among my far-too-detailed postings above I indicated that I don't like either private notes about members or posting about them in HQ. And introducing the former, as suggested in this thread, would encourage the bad practice. I think personal information should never be aired outside PMs.

I'm now pondering the possibility of anything on here spilling into real life.

@Karnakatz: It can. There was a reasonable amount of noise when a young GM "outed" himself as a cheat. That was after his ability to log in was disabled and he contacted chess.com support, etc etc. I forget his name and won't look it up. Best he admits his error and grows up; second best he skips the admission bit and grows up.

@Brian-E: OK, now I understand your point of view, and as won't surprise you, I don't agree at all. Which won't bother you in the slightest, I both hope and expect!