Reporting extremely inappropriate chat when there are no mods online

Kupov: You don't have kids.

I suppose you're right, if children under fourteen or so are going to read the comments they should be removed/prevented.

Your kind of logic would have workplaces full of sexist, hateful, and racist comments, because people "just shouldn't take it seriously".

That's not how things work, dude.

The comments would not really be sexist, hateful or racist because they would be jokes.

Racist and sexist jokes, yes, but still...jokes.

Again, that's not how the real world works. The harassment laws are pretty clear on that. Read up.

Kupov, I don't think recourse means what you think it means, or we are using different definitions.

I meant it in the sense of "Somewhere to turn to for assistance"

I think you're right, I was using it to mean "a counter action" etc.

Which is wrong.

A lot of offensive stuff can be dressed up in humour. To me it doesn't make it OK if you say something offensive and then add "only joking". So even if people are being sarcastic it is inappropriate to make deliberately provocative and hurtful comments in a chat window.

The above comment does need to be balanced against how ridiculously PC our world is becoming. It is always good to make fun of political correctness itself, but never good to cause people deliberate hurt, even in jest.

Agree wholeheartedly with CRShelton and Ozzie_c_cobblepot.

Well said.

The monitoring/filtering/sanctioning software should consider the universe of "bad" words, and shouldn't put absolutely everything that someone might find offensive in there. But the stuff in this thread should somehow make in in there (along with even more benign stuff, too...) I mean it's not even close, or shouldn't be.

For what it's worth, a couple of months ago I noticed similar stuff in the chatroom.  At first I thought it would just go away, especially if people would just ignore it.  But it was not ignored and it didn't go away.  I did two things.  First, I made sure not to engage the idiots and second, I copied it into a Report Abuse post to chess.com. 

The result was nothing immediate of course.  When I signed off, the idiots were still going strong.  But the next day I received a personal email from somebody at chess.com thanking me and telling me those guys were gone. 

It's easy to imagine the offenders you're talking about now are the same guys who were banned a couple of months ago, having rejoined under different names.  (Why they would go to such trouble I don't know.  But I don't know why anybody comes to a chess site to try to spread racism in the first place.  It seems a little out of the way, if you know what I mean.) 

I'm not trying to tell you how you should deal with this in your life, but ignoring them at the moment (as Kupov perhaps is suggesting) and reporting them so they're banned (as Kupov perhaps would NOT suggest) seems to work for me. 

I would certainly not suggest reporting for non serious conduct in any form.

That is good advice, chopbox.  I didn't use the Report Abuse link, because I had a misunderstanding of how it worked.  I see now, that is probably the answer to the question in my original post:  How to contact the staff and mods when they are not active in live chess.

I think the main disagreement between us is that I consider the things I heard today to be serious, and you do not.  I was there and have a more contextual perspective than you do, but I guess it is just a matter of personal feelings. 

That is why the site administrators decided to set the boundaries in official TOS.

 I think your best point was directed at the site's money making function.  As you wrote, you use chess.com at work (I would propably fire you but since you have admitted to being a teacher (public educator, no doubt) the prospect of firing is alien to you) and you would be unwilling to subscribe if the profanity continued.  As to whether or not the "comments" were serious is really a matter of taste.  The bottom line is this site is a capitalist venture and the owners can deal with racism how ever they want.  One thing I can say for sure is that if I have to read one more post about racism on this site I will stop paying for my subscription.

It's all a matter of context. Someone could be taking on a voice or opinion far away from their own, just to demonstrate (humorously or otherwise) how ridiculous it is. That practise should never be discouraged, and is partly why statutes such as the right to free speech exist. Dialogue, in its multivocal forms, is essential to a healthy society.

On the other hand, if sentiments are crass, have no insight and are just provocative for the sake of being abrasive or to wind people up, then they should best be ignored, discouraged, and (at the discretion of the site owners) removed. This is the difference between having a dinner party at which one of the guests is being wittily satirical, and another stupidly abusive - who would you want to remove? Most people can recognise an idiot when they see one.

That said, since we're logical chess players, we should be able to divorce ourselves from the obvious illogic of such-and-such stupid statement, and view whoever produced it as having made a mistake. If they do so consistently, then view them as an idiot.

Some people are offended by censorship too.

Hatred is offensive irrespective of the context -- here you are a guest.  If I invite you into my house I expect you to respect my desire to keep that kind of thing out of my home.  If you don't care for my wishes, don't be surprised if I ask you to leave.  This site is no different -- there is no fundamental right ot free speech here, this is someone's private property.  Taking offense to the right of the owners of this site to manage the content as they see fit is completely misguided.

Hatred is offensive to everyone irrespective of the context?

No it's not.

...People really get that much bothered by words though? LOL