Locking long-standing threads

When you have a group of semi-autonomous moderators and little staff oversight, it is possible for a single moderator to unilaterally decide to, say, to lock all the longest threads with thousands of pages combined without any real scrutiny.

This can come from a desire to exert control, warranted or unwarranted...but without directly actioning individual accounts and having to deal with the confrontation and appeals involved.  The problem is, the larger the thread and participation, the more posters are affected by the lock.  

The forums are already a shallow wading pool of social media kiddie stuff as it is.  This just makes it worse. 

Certainly, adults can, and do, increasingly flee the main forums for clubs...but is that actually what Chess.com actually wants to achieve?  I would say that is a decision for somebody other than a lone volunteer mod.

In the recent lockings three large threads have been locked in a week or two.  One was arguably the 3rd instance of a trolling thread, and shorter lived but large, two were longer running threads that have been around a long time (4-8 years) without any real hint of being shut down.

As a participant in all of them (what can I say, there's a dearth of adult content here), I saw lots of poster's posts get edited.  Mine among them.  Never once have I received a PM/DM, a warning, or a muting, nor any specific action of any kind.

While I applaud a general crackdown in moderation for the forums (it is very much needed), this isn't it.  This is passive and arbitrary, with no central messaging about standards, whether they are changing, and if there's any direction.  If mods have a problem with specific posters showing up in a long-standing thread and causing trouble, it is incumbent on them to do their job rather than just taking the easy way out without having to confront anyone.

This type of moderation actually empowers trolls with the knowledge that they can get any thread closed down if they want to, without suffering repercussions.

Maybe the mods/staff can talk about this and come up with (and impart for a change?) some consistent messaging here.  Meanwhile, I think the last lock (Elroch's global warming thread) should be reviewed, unilaterally or otherwise .

Arbitrary is the key word here. When childish threads are produced by the hundreds and this particular mod joins in with them, then we know something about that mod.

Honestly, I think that stuff like this:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/yet-another-mod-amaa?page=1#comment-107022913

...should be looked at separately, and having mods joke about threads they have locked, telling people that they have a conceal and carry permit for guns, etc. are out of bounds and that's a whole 'nother issue, but this community thread should probably be focused on the locking issue.

this reminds me of my "for staff" topics. i applaud the effort, but you're basically pi$$ing into the wind here, tickler.

staff does not care.

the mods come and go. mistakes are never acknowledged and i can't remember a single topic being unlocked due to any "review".

it's why the adults either go to clubs or leave the site entirely.

wahhhhh !!....quit wasting ur time writing a book on it

...lol !!

I don't think the owners/managers of the site really care. They cater to toddlers and have put people who don't know/care about anything in charge of monitoring these forums. Expect no progress or support.

When ruling is made by the judges instead of being made by the law, it's then no (longer) a "state of rights".

Chess.com is openly a tyrany that forbids what it wants, under a set of rules that is vague enough so they can chose to enforce or not to enforce at will anything, and the moderators, serving as judges, received, of course, zero judiciary or legal or anything such, training from Chess.com.

At the end of the day, Chess.com is like a dictatorship and a micro state alltogether, and their ultimate argument is that no one forces you to use their website.

This ignoring the simple fact, that where one spends a part of their life, is supposed to be part of a nation or an other, with proper laws and judges.

And this also ignoring the fact, that when one wants to play chess online, for any reason including no other option for it, the number of places for it is limited, not to mention the places with enough various players to make it what we need.

And once the word "need" has been thrown on the table, it does question the claims we'd be all here by "free choice".

Ideally, a boycott would be a solution. In reality, it's (almost?) impossible to organize.

National authorities should step in and moderate the absurd thirst of power of them online businessmenn but they don't care. (or else)

Welcome to the 21th century and its "democracies" plagued with online dictatorships (among many other problems).

A brilliant perspective on a complex problem.

I'm sure chess.com staff cares about their own site and chess.com mods have some protocol in place; no one (staff or mods) can just "unilaterally decide to, say, to lock all the longest threads with thousands of pages combined without any real scrutiny."

Staff and mods just enforce chess.com's tos. It really is that simple.

no. staff cares about money. mods are unpaid.

what you write is plain wrong. the tos are vague, on purpose, and the enforcement is arbitrary. any staff or mod can lock any topic and there are no repurcussions. the protocol you mention is left to a capricious rendering of the indisdinct "rules".

i had a topic about site issues that was locked. this was after erik-owner of this site-had written there were good ideas posted.

messages to mods, staff, and, yes, even erik, either result in no response or bs. erik's response to me was that he can't manage the entire site as a ceo. to me, this is a cop-out similar to the execs of enron and many other companies that say they didn't know about fails because they delegate.

in other words, cc is making money. the mods are unpaid, and obviously not mature enough to understand discretion. they also have bots and use filters to determine which of these posts are viable. when fails are pointed out, as in this topic, we receive either no response or lame responses.

or nothing. the facebook model. deal with it or leave.

consider that we receive the dreaded red banner if we write the word "id!ot". this fail has been going on for years. never any explanation for an attempt to fix an obvious flaw with the bots.

if you do things on the cheap, you get what you pay for.

yet, you were compelled to post.

this is the type of 'member' cc loves.

you must read very short books.

was that too many words for you?

you offer no relevant response to why topics are locked.

your profile shows you have been here for one month. maybe you are another eight year old. you have on your profile that "you are the danger".

that is the wording of fools that this site loves. good for you, being dangerous.

I am not happy with the lack of involvement by staff, but I want this to be productive, if possible. I also had a thread and a list of stuff on Community Defenders that Erik said he wanted to dig into, but nothing much ever came of it.

I expect him to delegate, but I would also expect him to check in and see how that delegation is going. When he hired the community manager position I had some hopes, but after saying hello once on the forums she disappeared entirely from them, apparently opting for live chat, Discord, etc.

Community manager, Tyrm, Shaun, have been AWOL all along. Richard seems like a good guy, but he doesn't seem involved anymore, either.

The worst sin was cleaning house, and for some inexplicable reason forcing Batgirl out, then leaving a gaping void which makes no sense...if you intend to just ignore the forums anyway, then you might as well keep your most active and professional mods. I do pity Martin and JustBeFair.

They have more or less indicated that the forums are not really the focus nor of any import.

In fact now it just performs the drunk babysitter function with kids running wild and advising each other how to fool their parents into getting more screen time. Who needs TikTok?

The real Diogenes would not have had such high hopes, the bunny thinks ...

Sorry but your wahhhhhs are no longer in demand. The bunny's boohoo has taken over.

Also his time, his choice.

well if either a u two cant win em ? ...then join em. its not our problem u two elmers (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) are being controlled by a site that u could NEVER start to save ur own cold-water flat lol !

Another Gen Z/Alpha with a horribly low attention span.

...and proud. howd u like ta be a doofus boomer ?...uknow old & in the way ?

The bunny's boohoo has taken over.

then take me. any way u want...