What to expect from Chess.com forums??

Your Dark Knight analogies are awesome!  I love the subtle changes you made in the dialog to fit the situation.  I told you we need your brain!

Hehehe. So sorry guys... I'm off work in 5 minutes. I did have a few brainstorms about a "spending" points system that ramped up with each month the account is active, progressively offering more leniancy which might be a system that works. The other thing, as opposed to more categories, would be more "thread" control... we have "track this forum topics", howabout "hide this thread"? ie. it never displays again when you're looking through the topics or even on your recent posts list once you've ticked the box off?

/now that's more like it Mr. Wayne

Rael wrote:

we have "track this forum topics", howabout "hide this thread"? ie. it never displays again when you're looking through the topics or even on your recent posts list once you've ticked the box off?

/now that's more like it Mr. Wayne

 I would LOVE to see that feature!!!

On the topic of points... you can spend them now?  I didn't think they were good for anything other than looking at.

Rael wrote:

Ooh ooh last one I promise 'cause I'm leaving work right away.

 Wanna see a magic trick? Watch me make this post dissappear.

 Oh no, we can't spend them now, it'd be something different. Like, on Fark.com they have it so that any newly created account can't post for 24 hours for one thing, which prevents some types of spam (for instance, you want to know about this great deal I have on NOKIA phones?).

It would be a gradually ramping number for daily posts allotted... and it would be judicious insofar as honestly, you could post well thought out threads, make excellent game comments, way more than enough while at the same time immediately stifling point-spamming.

Oh and the more I think about it the more I like the "hide this thread" ability. It only hides it from your view, and anyone who wants to enjoy it otherwise can.

I enjoy it when people put effort into their work - jokes too. I dunno, just ideas.

/Now let's not *blow* things out of proportion here... you know what? Here's my card.

Dr_Doc_MD wrote:

There should also be a special forum for making fun of Erik! ;D

LOL

I'll admit that "LOL" gets overdone but if we frowned on it too much clever comments like Dr_Doc's would be in danger of going unrewarded.

I don't spend a lot of time in the forums so I can't really comment here. I tend read more of the blogs and, of course, that allows me to choose the bloggers whose content I am most likely to enjoy.

For me the forums have been most useful when I need to ask a question. There's always somebody out there who is willing to help, and I really appreciate that.

Erik wrote:  "Grotesque spelling"

Amen, Erik!  I admire those people who come from a non-English-speaking background and are able to communicate with us in our own language, and certainly don't expect their spelling to be perfect.  Nor do I expect perfect spelling from native English-speakers. But if somebody hasn't made any attempt at all to communicate their ideas with reasonable spelling I don't waste time reading their posts.  It's unlikely they'll have anything worthwhile to say.

The problem is were do you draw the line with forum moderation.

The obvious ones, spam, sex, politics and religion are no gos.  After that how do you keep it so that the majority of people are happy? Not everyone will always be happy and so on.

Common sense would have to be applied in huge doses in the case of moderation and of course, that won't always happen, so then people will be upset that their posts have been removed hence another bunch of unhappy people.

To rework an old saying, you can keep all of the people happy some of the time and some of the people happy all of the time, but you can't keep all of the people happy all of the time.

when are you going to release this thread to the public?

Here's one Rael,

You've changed things.  There's no going back now.  What this site needs is a better class of poster...  It's all part of the plan.

I've spent some time on forums and it does not bother me that most are just jibber jabber. I know that if I want something good to read, to go to an articles, or have a one to one conversation with someone. I'm not really that sure how important the quality of main forum posts are. It's like a big enterance hall with loads of folk, so it will be hard to have a certain quality of conversation. If fact most the stuff I type in main forums is normally just daft, but when I talk one to one with someone, I have a proper conversation.

BUSTED!!!!

Hypocrasy WILL be pointed out. It WILL be made public.

 I lost track of the number of times that the VERY people in THIS VERY TOPIC have called for MY DELETION.

I dont swear. I don't flood the board with posts. I don't cheat on this site. I'm on this site for 15 minutes a day 3 times a week. I don't break any rules other than being a vociferous, opinionated, PULL NO PUNCHES type of guy.

I've lost track of the number of times that "otherwise nice people" have spouted off at me like a drunken sailor. I've WATCHED as EVERY SINGLE ADMIN on this site has sent me "watch your step" emails or locked a forum topic of mine as they preach about being more tolerant.

What I find FASCINATING is people who want to be MY BEST FRIEND, send my quite nice emails, wanting to know about me personally as well as telling me about themselves, then when I fail to give them what they want, I watch as they FLOOD my emails with HATE. I watch as they rip me to shreds in the forums. I watch as they turn 180 degrees. That is why  (this may hurt a bit) I dislike EVERYONE on this site. No offense. I don't discriminate..I just don't want to be anyone's friend. Everyone has a motive. Honestly, who would want to get to know a jerk like me?

However, I HAVE noticed a growth overall in this site. I have seen a marginal increase in the tolerance of the perpetually negative types. I was walking on eggshells in the beginning, but now feel a bit more open to say what I feel.

It is impossible to please everyone, but there needs to be a balance. Try to sanitize all the "bad" things and you'd see this site dry up and blow away. I guarantee it. Try to make this a kid friendly site and you'd be moderating topics all day long like "witch peece is you favorite?" I'm not saying turn it into a rated X site, but let it evolve into whatever the site wants to evolve into.

This may hurt a bit ERIK, but chess.com is BIGGER than you are. It's not some 8 year old child that needs her hand held, it's in its second year (in web life thats a middle aged person). Step back. Stop playing daddy (I sense you have a bit as of late). Guide it, delete the very offense garbage, let the PEOPLE dictate the content.

What I have added to this site is my real life personality amplified a few times. You may hate what I post, hate my infamous persona, etc. But some of the most "popular" people in life are the people that you love to hate.

I have tipped my hand numerous times to numerous people IN PUBLIC on this site as to I'm just a pot stirrer who loves to tick people off just for the sake of ticking them off. It doesn't matter. My "Chess is NOT a sport!!!" post got over 34,000 views. But what makes my posts "popular" is that I Honestly believe what I write. People can sense that. I'm not playing Devil's advocate. I'm writing from the heart. I'm not trolling for abuse.

I could blab on forever. It's up to the admin. In short, keep the balance.

to much spam i expect there to be a lot less

Boys will be boys,up she flew and the cock nailed her!

erik wrote:

rael, i never even look in the Off Topic section, so i probably miss a lot of it.

if there are point-pumping offenders, just report them and we'll deal with it.

Why would someone pump points? and if they did does it really hurt anything?

wjones4 wrote:

erik wrote:

rael, i never even look in the Off Topic section, so i probably miss a lot of it.

if there are point-pumping offenders, just report them and we'll deal with it.

Why would someone pump points? and if they did does it really hurt anything?

 Well said,my friend,for expriming oneself in a matter of joy or boredom should not be punished.Who will be the one to trow the first stone!

wjones4 wrote:

erik wrote:

rael, i never even look in the Off Topic section, so i probably miss a lot of it.

if there are point-pumping offenders, just report them and we'll deal with it.

Why would someone pump points? and if they did does it really hurt anything?

 It does, it makes in incredibly hard to find active topics with interesting discussions in it, that "Recent Posts" is populated by posts that adds nothing to anything.

I did not join Chess.com for the forums, but for the games. However occasionally I would see interesting subjects that peaked my curiosity and I would read them and in some cases add my 2 cents. Needless spam, makes it harder to hook the "occassional poster".

@thegab03

I think the point is that the forums have become a place used by some to have a nice little chit chat and as such threads get bogged down and it becomes impossible to find the relevant posts.

The site has both PM and Notes that can just as easily be used to chit chat, as well as setting up threads within Groups for that prupose.

As has been pointed out already, school holidays are over soon, so perhaps that will be the end of it.

What to expect from the forums? Nothing. Why would anyone ever expect to receive anything of any value whatsoever from any public forum? I certainly don't know. What to expect from TV, or the movies, or any other media? NOTHING! What is worthy of your time and attention? Who knows? But I'm assuming that public forums are the last place one should expect to find anything which justifies their expenditure of time, energy, or money. I expect from Chess.com the ability to play online chess. Period.

I don't know why every website has a forum, and every forum has regular contributors. I guess I'm missing the point. I do sometimes find reading forum comments amusing; and depending on the site, reading them may actually help to broaden my understanding of a topic if additional relevant information is provided by the posters (as opposed to statements of agreement/disagreement, inane jokes, or other inane chatter). Ah, but you can't trust anything you read anyway... Sometimes I even feel compelled to express my own opinion, as with this post. But who cares about my opinion? I'm sure nobody will be glad that they've read my post, as it's neither amusing nor educational. Sorry about that! When in Rome...

Why do people visit Chess.com, I feel, is a better question than what should people expect from its forums. There are a few billion ways to amuse ourselves, or to educate ourselves, to otherwise engage our minds, or just to kill time. I personally believe that Chess.com would be a great site even if there were no forums at all. Online chess = cool enough. Additional content (puzzles, learning tools, articles, tourneys, live chess, etc, etc) = amazing. Public forums? Community? Whatever! Sorry Rael, the community seems to be a result of Chess.com's existence. "If you build it, they will come." I'd say that the game of chess itself and people's desire to engage in it comprise the soul of Chess.com (along with the vision and effort of its creator(s) and staff). All of the resulting community interaction stuff seems to be a superficial aspect of the site, and of the internet in general.

Finally, a couple of practical suggestions: (a) Eliminate 'member points'. They do not indicate anything other than that the member is a prolific poster, which is a meaningless statistic. The value of a member's contributions, as well as the member's credibility, should not be inferred from their abundance of contributions. (b) People posting in the forums should exercise discretion, as is to be expected in any public place. And as already mentioned, readers should exercise tolerance since, this is a public place.

Loomis' thumbs-up/thumbs-down suggestion ( http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/before-you-leave-the-site ) has much to commend it. In particular, as a form of distributed-regulation, it should not add to Erik's operational effort in the way that a centrally-operated moderation/censorship scheme would.

How about that topic called Help Set a New Chess.com Record? Even in an Off Topic forum, a thread should be about something — your pet frog, Brittany's hoohah, World of Warcraft, whatever. The word association threads are fine. But a thread that aims at getting the highest post count, without any content? A waste of bandwidth that clogs up the Hot Topics list.

artfizz wrote: Loomis' thumbs-up/thumbs-down suggestion ...

 Another way of differentiating substantial topics from tumbleweed would be to indicate, for each topic, the number of people who had explicitly tracked it. (This would generally tend to exclude topics such as Help Set a New Chess.com Record - which is tracked by many people only because they have posted in it.)