Banned Members

@CRYYSIS called @RareSapphireKnight dumb rather than calling her opinion dumb - that's what makes it a personal attack (not that calling her opinion dumb is particularly helpful either).

Similarly, I warned @Damonevic-Smithlov about his "misleading and inaccurate opinions" re: Black Lives Matter and did not call him a liar: the problem was that he was minimising the importance and significance of the issue by making claims about the history of a radical group that was not relevant to the conversation.

And the problem with "treating everyone equal" and #AllLivesMatter is that's fine when everyone is in fact being treated equally, but when a group of people has historically and - more importantly, is still presently being treated horribly unequally, it's actually undermining any action aimed at reducing that inequality. It's actually the same sort of thinking that attacks women's titles and prizemoney in chess as discriminatory against men, instead of recognising it as an attempt to improve women's participation in a game that they have been historically discouraged from playing.

If people have any concerns about a specific instance of moderation or with a particular moderator, the correct course of action is to raise it with Chess.com - contact Support via https://support.chess.com/article/346-contact-us or even the staff members leading the moderation team, @jdcannon or @shaun. It is not to complain about it repeatedly in the forums, and attaching additional insults like "whining snowflake" is not acceptable either. Any further instances will be deleted and stronger sanctions may be applied.

Thanks,

David, moderator

Who do you think you are, insulting a staff member who has been here for 13 YEARS? 

You are practically BEGGING to be muted or even BANNED!!

The account was created 13 years ago, but I only took it over 5 years ago when I became a moderator: I've actually only been on the site for 10 years.

And while I've got Staff permissions on this account, I'm really just a moderator with some extra powers to help out the wider team of moderators when needed - we're not paid for it, although we do get free premium membership.

David,

Let me first say that i pretty much agree with your post.  What I do not agree with is the bending over backwards for the black cause.  Besides overreacting to what is going on now.  When as the last time chess.com interviewed black chess players, and their experiences with racism? 

Suddenly businesses think they need to flood sites with black movies, black comedies, black history, black documentaries.  You know how much this addresses racism?  It doesn't.  Its pandering, plain and simple.  If you weren't worried about interviewing black chess players before about racism, then why do it now?  All this fosters is reverse racism.  Now we have to play the black national anthem at sporting events?  Now kneeling is acceptable?  And their is talk of a black bill of rights???
So why dont we play an Asian national anthem? After all we worked the Chinese to death building our railroads.   Why not the Mexican national anthem?   American Indian national anthem?  We killed an awful lot of them taking their land. 

Again...all this over reacting is reverse racism.  If you didn't care enough before, then you dont care now.  Its a bunch of hypocrisy. 

Just because people didn't care enough before isn't a reason to not care now: people's opinions can be challenged and they can be changed. And while there can be overreactions such as the rioting and looting (which some could argue is not an overreaction to the issue but opportunism by those who don't really care about the issue at all), by "reverse racism" you are implying that opportunities are being taken away from other people, which is not necessarily required to give coloured people more opportunities. It's not necessarily an either/or dichotomy, and not an excuse to not do anything to address the issues. And recognition of all those other instances of colonial exploitation and a discussion about how that's affected and perhaps continues to affect those communities would also be a great thing: Crazy Rich Asians was a nice film, but some of its cachet was because it was the first major Hollywood film to feature an all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club more than 20 years ago. My own country is still not really dealing with its history and relationship with its indigenous peoples that the British dispossessed under the fiction that they weren't civilised so they didn't count ("terra nullius").

Chess.com wants to promote chess to all people - it's good for the game and good for them, it's why they supported this whole Twitch POG Champs thing. I don't know how they go about supporting greater participation by black people specifically, but dismissing it all as "hypocrisy" beforehand isn't really helping.

And FWIW, I think kneeling for the anthem before an NFL game should never have been an issue: it's not unpatriotic to point out the flaws in a country you love, and Kaepernick's concern about police brutality against black people is obviously and tragically accurate. He was initially sitting to protest and took on board the advice of a combat veteran that kneeling would be more respectful, so that's what he did: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-knee/u-s-army-veteran-stunned-by-negative-reaction-to-kaepernick-kneeling-idUSKBN23G2E2 I will also say that I don't think Kaepernick's release from the 49ers was about this issue but about how he did (or rather, didn't) fit into Kyle Shanahan's offensive scheme, and that his subsequent unemployment is probably not the result of an explicit blackballing, but teams just unwilling to take a chance on an unorthodox quarterback who would probably invite controversy, especially since a lot of people seem to feel optimistic about the young QBs currently in the league.

No green this time? 

Because that's pretty much entirely my own opinion as a person and not as a moderator or representative of Chess.com.

    Kind of like Tom Cruise......blue is glue,...RED is DEAD.                                                                     

Makes sense. But why can we use the green, even though we are technically not allowed to use it because the mods do? Always wondered.

Because removing a specific colour from the palette for everyone except the mods is a much trickier programming task, especially when the editor is likely a third party widget that they've paid for. It's a lot easier to just tell people that and enforce it with warnings and mutes than to change the software.

Thanks, I never knew that!

Also I would like to personally apologize to you for my post about "another website". Still don't know what I was even thinking, honestly. Probably nothing at all. I made a mistake and learned from it.

BTW my previous name was @checkmateohwait, didn't want any bad connotations so I changed it. 

Lc0_1, who do u think u r? 

This is who I know I am: I think everyone should have a voice & be treated equal. Just because the latest virtue signaling mob of witch hunters r clamoring for targets to lynch or burn at the stake doesn't mean anyones opinions should be disregarded simply because they r a free thinker. I escaped y'alls thought plantation long ago.

David, I'm impressed u remembered specifically what I was referring too, not easy given all the threads. I must've stood out. But there's a very important point I failed to express.

I'll point this out because nobody else will. Most in the world r getting their ideas & information from tv. I actually live in these areas & personally know the people involved. Have for many years. News companies HAVE to sensationalize & create stories just to compete, it's a brutal competition for viewers. They have to do that to survive. Imagine me telling u what it's like in ur house or neighborhood just because I heard a rumor or from somebody that just wanted to get some gossip started. That's what is happening. Y'all have a right to ur beliefs, there's no problem with that. But please don't think censoring some but not others is just because u watched tv & it's shaped & guided ur opinion. That has never been a good idea. History has very bad examples of how that can turn out.

I'm not hating anyone with a differing opinion but please treat everyone equal when it comes freedom of expression also. 

Edit: And if I seemed insulting or hurt anyones feelings that wasn't my main objective. I'm sorry if I did but I do stand by what I've said.

While that's certainly the approach adopted by particular media outlets, others still value their journalistic integrity and understand the importance of accurate, factual and well researched reporting. It's important to understand the biases and leanings of those media organisations and the slant it can give to things, but by ignoring them altogether, you're left with just what you can directly see and comprehend - which is a really small sample size and not necessarily reflective of what's happening elsewhere (not to mention the things that even in your own situation you're not aware of or the accuracy of any conclusions you may draw from it).

There's a really interesting play about the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? cheating scandal in the UK, where the audience was presented by the prosecution's evidence and asked to vote on the accused's innocence or guilt at half time, and then presented with the defence's evidence and asked to vote again at the end of the play, and almost always people overwhelmingly voted "guilty" at the interval but changed their vote to "innocent" at the end.

In the same vein, I think it's useful to read the same story from multiple outlets, that way you see the small bits that each leave out.

In the past Fox News was something of an anathema for me, but reading their version along with, pretty much anything else, gave me, if nothing else, more information.

The current ethos, at least in the US, is rather lamentable. People care much more about what is believed instead of why that thing is believed, which IMO is going about it backwards... and yes this leads news organizations to dumb down news considerably.

Anyway, as David touched on briefly, dismissing news completely is not only lazy, but a rather pathetic attempt to close your mind to new ideas. There are people like this who I like to mock by saying "Of all the knowledge that exists in the world, I already have all of it that's worth knowing" or "Anyone who knows less than me is an idiot, and anyone who knows more than me is crazy."

It's a great American tradition to peacefully protest. Can you explain to me why kneeling is bad?

I see your point about interviewing black chess players, but can you explain to me how interviewing black chess players is reverse racism? (It's not a zero sum game. You can interview both white and black players.)

I think a lot of companies, particularly in silicon valley, are pressured by some far left insanity. However I don't think black lives matter fits into that category. In fact I heard one guy saying if you go to their website you'll find they promote Marxist ideology. So I went there looking for it, because I don't want to say I support BLM if there is some crazy stuff associated with it, but I couldn't find anything like that. So for that too, if you can point that out to me I'd appreciate it (not being sarcastic).

   After 20 yrs at FOX, I noticed recently that Shepard Smith is going to CNBC. lol....does that mean the actual news is going to change? 

What happened to that club is bad!!! It needs to be saved

Notice that I created this forum more than a year ago. Much  before Club audits existed.