erik, we are frustrated

Yes I also feel that the system needs to be improved. For example it might be possible to put some sort of a time limit on the power of the auto-bots. That is to say if something comes to the attention of an auto-bot regarding a member who has been here more than say 2 years ( or 3 years ? ) then instead of muting the said member perhaps the auto-bot could forward the problem to a human-mod ? The mod could then carefully review things and decide if muting really needs to happen. Just a thought.

as soon as i edit to write i am against blocking, i am tested...

I understand the comment now. This is a hard issue. It's challenging enough already to deal with the amount of spam, abuse, cheating, and poor behavior from how many members we have, but to then go in and mark their comments as keep, remove, keep, remove, keep, etc - we just can't do all of that. If someone creates a great blog post or forum, but then goes on to verbally abuse 10 of their opponents - we just can't handle the nuance of deciding that some of their content should stay. In an ideal world with unlimited resources, sure, I think that makes sense. But it's just an impossibility at this point. 

My suggestion is: if someone is closed, and you think their content deserves to remain active on the site, please reach out to our support team to let us know and we can evaluate. I'm sorry that we don't have an easier solution for this at this time. 

We do something like this. 

Also take in the fact that if a member is doing repeat reports on one particular account, that should be a warning flag. One report should be sufficient, not several to take advantage of the bots.

hi

You could incorporate that into an upvote system (potentially). If people like the post, more upvotes means less chance of a blog or thread getting deleted.

That was pretty much my suggestion.  Self-closing after a mute creates a situation where that former-member's content  is hidden.  Generally a member whose content is worthwhile is also savvy enough to know this will happen if he closes their account rather than just leave without closing the account.  Additionally, members who get muted and close their accounts, but while here provided such quality content or even comments witty or helpful enough that their content should be preserved are so few and far between that a simple request to unmute their account seems a reasonable solution to a very minor and rare issue. 

i think that it has to do with it being cool.

The concept of being valuable to the community is itself absurd. Ghost_of_pushwood's posts should be preserved? Why? The days of witty comments being appreciated by adult members is long gone.

How old are are the people here? 6, 7, 8?

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/how-old-are-yall?

As old as 9?

It's literally a daycare. Low effort posts dominate.

How can you tell? Just search for low effort posts via this handy link:

https://www.chess.com/forum/hot-topics

Where you quickly find that the majority of chess.com's forum posts are 5 words or less i.e.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/king-of-the-ladder?page=6373#last_comment

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So I have to disagree with @erik.

This is not a "challenging" topic. The forums are for children... and not just children, but young children. The idea of preserving clever posts, particularly posts that are deemed clever by an old man such as @alczervik is laughable. There is no community here, not for anyone whose age happens to be as high as double digits.

Recently this kid @terminatorc800 bragged to me in PMs that he is not a kid... because he's as old as 16 or 17.

In other words the state of these forums, of this community, is understood. 16 is old. Certainly not an age to be looked down on.

Well, I'm among the minority then, but I find wit funny. There's plenty of members who are at least double digits who can apppericate an intellectual joke, a good roast by old @Itude, and plenty other examples. Encourage maturity and prize it, and that will help some of the issues (certinally not all).

Look. You were spreading a rumor that I was a kid. I shut that down, and that was all.

You're a teenager. You're a kid to me. I know you think 16 is very old, but that's not how I see it.

Age is relative. 16 is old for this site, and even though I'm not that old, age doesn't really matter. A 50-year-old can act like a kid, an 11-year-old, vice versa. It's maturity that matters (besides abiding by the ToS of being at least 13).

And of course the only numbers Erik cares about are bank account balances. He doesn't care if you're 16. So don't worry about it.

As much as that old copy-pasta from Erik says the members are diverse (which they may be) the community (as in forum community) is not. It is made up of young children and retirees. Very little in between.

I've found a lot of chess players to be middle-aged men. Probably not as much, but they are there. I think the oldest I've seen is Denver.

There are some even older here...