Clubs, their admins and leagues on Chess.com: Open letter to Magnus Carlsen

Look, it's nice you're so attracted to your boyfriend there, but I really couldn't care less.

Like I said, in the past I've heard SAs of big group say chess.com's rules are overly restrictive, so sure, maybe there's a legitimate gripe there. And like I said, "good luck."

Writing a letter to Carlsen though... get over yourself.

Someone downvoted me about the rating thing... sigh.

A rating of 2364 is good enough for #50 on the whole site.

https://www.chess.com/leaderboard/daily

And if daily is, across the board, 500 points higher than blitz, that means there are 10s of thousands of people who are good enough to be top 50 in daily...

... but that's not the case. It's not a 500 point gap across the board because the skill-to-point slope is not constant, it decreases then asymptotes. In a sense, ratings become compressed.

When you're living in the area where the slope is healthy, let's say "1" is ideal, then sure, daily games can be a lot of fun, and there's meaningful competitions between clubs... I don't get to play games like that. Too bad for me, but it's not an option.

In the reality of Group Admins being muted for private group activity and administration, I proposed a change of muting policy relating to Group Admins messaging to their group members. This is directly related to the request in the message to Chess.com's ambassador in the OP.

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/chess-com-mute-policy-for-private-group-admins

The basis of this is that group admins would always be excluded from recieving spamming sanctions for direct messages to their own group members. This will assist private group admins in administering and moderating private groups as required by Chess.com's policy for private groups. (Chess.com publically state they do not get involved in the mangement of closed groups.) If admins would like to support this requested policy change, please comment in the forum.

It would be advantageous to recieve some feedback from Chess.com senior management if this policy change is to be considered and what time scale can be expected for any potential revisions. This would also give some indication that the above message, from many group admins (who are also members), is being considered and debated amonst the Chess.com policy makers.

Like to add an example trying to show the level of annoyance: Last time I've got muted this was not for "club spamming", it was for "vulgarity". I've had written something like this, "... admins, who are managing ..." – in fact I've had grammatically incorrectly replaced " a" with "'" – and got immediately muted, because Chess.com's super clever filter trapped me trying to cache a vulgar English word (which I've newly learned only afterwards and this way ..., as I was never motivated to complete my vulgar vocabulary in foreign languages 😉) by adding unnecessary symbols.

I was asking myself for long time, why so many European and Asian club admins get muted and only very few English and American ones. Looks, that we've not only a problem with messages to club members, every kind of "letter salad" in each single other language can trigger mutings. As more messages you're sending (specially in any other language than English), as more likely you'll get muted.

I am sorry, but I cannot fail to intervene. A "comparison" is based on values of civilization, such as respect, education and more. I am not a moralist, indeed .... but reading what you write I find it very offensive, and even worse-"JUDGMENTAL" - which in psychology, has its own clear meaning. If I knew how rewarding it is, playing together with other "friends acquaintances".

Unfortunately, I think you do not know, otherwise you would not do ... It is a popular saying: "the 1st woman". We understood that you are a champion to play chess, but in my personal opinion, not very humble, and polite!!!!

I share the concerns of the letter. I support the message, but I would have addressed it to someone else.
As for clubs, there are many amateurish ones that seem to be run by kids. There are also many serious, useful ones that take part in highly competitive leagues - be they daily chess matches, vote chess, or shorter time controls. They just aren't the ones you notice, since they don't spam invites or post "join my club" messages in the forums.
The good clubs add a lot to this site; indeed, they're the main reason I'm on chesscom. Unfortunately, the best league is shutting down after its current competitions wind down, because of reliability & moderation issues with chesscom. That's a significant and deeply unfortunate loss to our community.
The chesscom bosses need to realize what they're losing. I'd much sooner lose Titled Tuesdays than One World League, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels that way.

Although at the moment I am not doing administrative work (owner Team Odessa and ex-admin Team Ukraine, co-organized relatively small interclub tournaments - Ukrainian Cities Championship (UCC; with @karina55), International Cities Challenge Cup (ICCC; with @Ramin_Chess)) - I would like to support this appeal. Why not do it? The site is indeed becoming less and less comfortable place for various competitions.

I have never been muted from the site for sending messages to other members, but the poor performance of the site was one of the reasons why I decided to suspend my activity. What upset me the most was the anti-cheating policy, which is deaf to the arguments of the players. Players have absolutely no rights on the site - if they are blocked, they will not be able to prove anything to anyone. I know this from the experience of many of my teammates, in the honesty of the vast majority of which I have no reason not to trust. It seems that the site in relation to the blocked ones works according to a single, mutually exclusive principle: «We are 100% sure that you violated the rules of Fair Play, but you can appeal». Of course, such an approach cannot cause a positive reaction, and most importantly, it makes you wonder whether it is worth helping the site with personal participation. We are not talking about the public disclosure of algorithms for detecting cheaters (I understand perfectly well that this is impossible and unacceptable), but about the open dialogue with the banned players.

Also, current problems that complicate administrative activities include (but I'm sure they are temporary as they are not unresolvable):
— malfunctioning club search page (for example, in the list of Ukrainian teams, sorted by the number of players, there is no many of teams that are listed as Ukrainian (but country is set in club settings): can't find Team Lviv, Team Odessa, Team Dnipro and many other clubs. Despite the fact that earlier there were no such problems with the search for clubs!);
— lack of tools for a comfortable search for players through «/members/» tabs (used to be comfortable!). It is still convenient to search for players of a particular country by rating in descending order for each type of game only from the club pages «Player Leaderboard» (you can change the team to the desired country in the search, as well as select the desired type of game);
— numerous problems with "Messages", in particular, a bug with autoloading of all previous messages of correspondence with the selected players, which makes it impossible to immediately start writing and sending messages. Also, which is sometimes important for team admins - sending messages to «/messages/compose/» has been degraded (earlier messages, sending from this form, could be formatted in the same way as it is available on the forum, but now this opportunity for some reason has become inaccessible).

Thank you for attention! Hope that all the errors - both large-scale and minor - will be corrected and the site will become better. I sincerely believe in this and wish you all good luck.

Bernd, special thanks to you for your efforts! I have always been amazed by your tireless energy and, I confess, to some extent you were an example for me, when I was active. But, unfortunately, I am very far from you I really hope that your initiative will be heard.

ROFL !

With the Way the Chess.coms Rules are right now, an Admin is taking a chance with each message they send to join a match, after exhausting the News, Anouncements, and Forums...I even get members messaging me, telling me not to be messaging them, even though its an alert for a note or an announcement or new forum, So that means there are irate members messaging staff already, so if your sending them a private message, depending on the staff member, you may be taking a 15 day mute hit for the team...

I'm afraid, @bulletheadbilly could be right and we're only at the beginning of a process, which will end in a situation with as less automated notifications as any possible.

For those, who are (!) newly arriving this will not be a big problem. For older clubs with a routine based on these notifications, this would create an important problem (we have already seen this during the two months without notifications for matches with rating limits).

Danny Rensch answers to questions about difficulties for clubs and their admins (app. 3:44:00). ...

There are some people who work, every day, to make better chess.com.Me, Bernd and others, we work to be able to do competitions, etc ... A great added value for the site, which boasts of the numerous subscribers and profits. But to my request for at least a free subscription((,because,gives you the opportunity to access "tools?",I think it is not correct,better to "changes")) that ;who manages,leagues of clubs,knows that it is important,to make the grids, or not having to redo the links and changes to the texts. Hours of work and tress less. Response from chess.com ??? They tipped me... 10 days of diamond subscription, while I in return I gave him 2.5 (two and a half years) years, every day at least 8 hours (minimum).of professional commitment, and most importantly my time ...Then also, money, in subscriptions, and brought many players to come to stay and interact with others, for public relations,... help in learning, at least the basics and something more, on this site, because many leave for reasons such as being Threatened, insulted and defamed, at most silence, and depends on who it is. Some 3 days other months and months, and here comes back what Bernd wrote, the silencing of administrators for messages invitations, that are part of the job and can be silenced even for 6 months, without even answering e-mails, I write it because it really happened to my colleague and friend @racine6 , when you sent invitations for the WL, and the EL. People who make initiatives, which bring, interest to the site, while penalizing, seriously the adm. in question. Before he silenced only a few and not famous, and now that touches everyone, even those who seemed "untouchable",...He came forward, to stop this serious problem of the site and those who "program" it ... Gaps in notifications. The death of leagues and clubs makes chess.com, in my personal opinion, uninteresting. Everyone knows how stimulating teamwork is, and it also brings in new members.The function of the alloy. For this reason, I would have asked for at least a fee, symbolic, for the commitment and time given. Bernd is the one who did most of all, and also gave the basis to form other leagues, new, but only thanks to his meticulous work, even if sometimes he was a little irritating, in a good way without offense.So before offending or criticizing imagine the site without anything just with games and that's it. I would not stay here anymore, I would go to look for a chess site, with similar characteristics, but also better, and maybe there is one, but I do not remember the name, and I think that even there you can do as here, the administration of clubs, but I am not absolutely sure. OK I think I wrote, what I believe "is" (the status of things), and also right. Kind regards Alex

Who is Danny Rensch? Member supporter of chess.com?

@CenturioneRomanoXXX:

Daniel Rensch: Chief Chess Officer, Chess.com

Wikipedia: "Rensch is the "public face" of Chess.com as a spokesperson for the company. Notably, he has created video tutorials for using the site's features^[17] and hosts the quarterly "State of Chess.com" show, presenting the company's activities over its previous three months and its plans for the future.^[18]"

Great idea. I will take your advice, and implement it even if there is already one of Andrew Smith's chess.com staff in the league! If I were you I would do it Bernd!!

That shows today's situation: https://www.chess.com/blog/Tournamentix/state-of-chess-com-sixty-seconds-with-danny-rensch

After writing to Danny last Friday nothing has happened until now. Not sure, if we will ever get answer. In the meantime club redesign has been prematurely released to Beta.

Forgive my ignorance. What do you mean by "club redesign.....?". Do you mean the league one world leagues?. And what changes?. I follow you, because, even for me it is important, for the league that other 5 good administrators, send forward. I am the owner only because it is written, but I wanted to give others the opportunity to develop and manage it, in total autonomy, but following, however, guidelines, by me.

@CenturioneRomanoXXX: For five months now Chess.com has been working on a club redesign (a new outfit for all clubs on Chess.com). Last Friday they've released it to their "Chess.com Beta" club. Forums in this club are public: You can follow the biggest forum here: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/club-redesign-five-questions-to-jdcannon

I've also made a blog post with some first impressions ... and a summary.

no advertising of clubs please

Dave the mod

No advertising of the Beta club?