https://www.chess.com/member/myratingis1523

I am filing a lawsuit against chess.com and request them to be transparent about this and explain us what rules our honorable player broke. Thanks in advance.

MyRatingis1523 

If you read what he wrote in the forums and saw his huge sandbag with his blitz rating (lost 1000 points in about two days) I'm surprised he wasn't banned sooner.  Chess.com doesn't need people like him.

The site rarely ever will explain why an account was closed, beyond the information provided on the profile. The only one they will talk with about it, is the account owner.

I haven't followed his posts, but sandbagging like he did in blitz is not a good idea, and that alone can lead to a ban.

For all you know, he might actually be several dozen of them.

This is a better place with out him.

Well, he is a troll. Other than that I think he did not break TOS. No cheat, no abusive language , other than noisy repetative posts (such as stop hanging pieces, overrated rating etc). I did not see sandbagging was a break in TOS. I think he dropped his blitz rating to 1000 to troll people. His nick saying myratingis1523 is a troll. His rating must be somewhere between "1800-2100".

I thought sandbagging would give you the cheater badge instead of the abuse badge. Can we file a transparency lawsuit or something?

@bronsteinpawn

I don't see you on the forums for months, then this guy is banned and you appear to ask questions?

Hmmm....

When someone makes an account, they agree to the terms and conditions laid out here: https://www.chess.com/legal

Where it states:

You agree that Chess.com may, with or without cause, and without prior notice, immediately terminate your Chess.com account, any associated email address, and access to the Service. Chess.com may terminate with or without cause at any time and effective immediately, at Chess.com’s sole discretion, including but not limited to Member's failure to conform with these terms and conditions of the Agreement. 

So, while it may be frustrating to have the account closed, the site is well within its rights to take such action and is not required to be transparent about it. End of story.

From a purely legal point of view, if you were to try to sue in a common law jurisdiction under administrative law principles, you would have to establish that membership in this organization is the type of right which entitles you to fair procedures governing your potential dismissal.   Under contract law, it seems that given chess.com's statement in your contract that it can dismiss you without cause, you would not have a case.  The governing jurisdiction might be common law, assuming chess.com is incorporated in a common law jurisdiction, or civil law, if you are in Eastern Europe, so this would be a topic of preliminary dispute.  Generally, I would anticipate that you would not have much success with the case.

There are regularly protests when someone is banned, but usually there's more going on than the rest of you know about.  For example, there have been incidents where several accounts banned, but they were actually all sockpuppets of the same person.   To those who are not moderators, it may look like a bunch of people got banned for nothing more than some light trolling, but there was really more than that going on.

In other cases, people have been banned for being seriously abusive towards other members after multiple warnings.  Their comments in the forums may not have risen to the level of what they said in private, so those who are not staff may not know about it.

Other times, they may have posted something highly inappropriate in the public forums, but it was found quickly, so many people never saw it.

All that to say, there's a lot of information that simply is not public, so there is no possible way anyone who is not staff can be certain that a ban was unjustified.  If you are in contact with them on another site, they may have given you their story about why they were banned, but I've seen many people blatantly lie about their bans, so there's no way you can be sure their story is true.

Chess.com does not ban people for fun.  More members means more money, either from premium membership fees or from advertising.  So chess.com's incentive is to find a way to keep people on the site; that only changes if someone is causing trouble.  If someone is banned, you can be sure there's a reason.

Additionally, if you are banned and you think it's unfair (or if you want to apologise and ask for a second chance), you are permitted to appeal by contacting support.  Here's the link: https://support.chess.com/customer/portal/emails/new.  Or email support@chess.com.  Please do not appeal on someone else's behalf; they will normally only discuss the specifics of a ban with the person who was banned.

 And you would think the OP--Bronstein would know this. The original Bronstein was here long before Oct 2016

(sorry, can't seem to edit today)                                                                                                                                        

Well, glancing at his Blitz history should tell you all you need to know.

He got stomped by Logozar 14 games in a row. Then he went on a self-destructive bender, resigning all his points away to CompEasy in frustration.

 transparency?......independent appeal?.....arbitration?.......   This is not a court of law, and MGleason is not "any other user".

   I don't bother Staff for what they already know. The bug has been on & off for over a week.

 I suspect they needed to work on the servers and they choose the Easter holiday weekend due to the lighter than normal volume of traffic online.

Transparency?  Chess.com is transparent with people who are banned about why they were banned.  They do not normally violate the privacy of the person who was banned by broadcasting their misdeeds to the world; that way, if someone apologises and comes back and follows the rules, they do not need to have their old misbehaviour be public knowledge.  Additionally, if someone else was violating the rules and got banned for it, it's really none of your business.

Independent appeal?  Arbitration?  Is there any other online forum that allows an external organisation to review and override its bans?  If so, I've never heard of it.

Rules are unjust?  Which of these rules do you not like?  https://www.chess.com/legal 

Arbitrary enforcement?  Again, without inside information, how can you be sure of that?  Sometimes the person you think is just a mild troll is using another account to spam porn in the forums, or is cheating at another account, or is using five different accounts to tag-team troll and stir up controversy (all of these have happened more than once).  You, as an ordinary member, could not possibly know about this, and therefore cannot possibly know whether the enforcement was arbitrary.

That said, every case requires a judgement call.  When dealing with someone who's being abusive, for example, we have to determine whether to issue a warning or go straight to a mute or ban - or even if it's mild enough to just let it slide.  Since it's not possible to write a 5,000-page book detailing what should happen in every possible situation, the moderator or staff member involved has to use their judgement of what's best in the situation.  Sometimes we get it wrong.  That's one reason why people are allowed to contact support and appeal, presenting their side of the story.

Additionally, if you believe a moderator has abused their position, @jdcannon is the staff member in charge of moderators, so complaints about a moderator should be directed to him.  If an account was closed, however, it's almost certainly staff rather than a moderator, as moderators rarely close accounts (most accounts we close are spammers who circumvented the spam filter or brand-new accounts with inappropriate names).