I wholeheartedly agree, there are far too many completely new accounts who immediately start posting in the forums, seem to have intricate knowledge of most member's posting histories and the social circles they frequent, while also attaching themselves to various causes, the majority of which being malicious in nature.
There need to be more stringent rules that restrict the posting of such new accounts, for example a waiting period that is imposed upon creation. Many other forums have been successfully practicing this for years, so I hope that CC will follow their example.
CHESS.COM SHOULD IMPLEMENT A PROBATIONARY MONTH FOR NEW ACCOUNTS TO DECREASE SUSPICIOUS ACCOUNT ACTIVITY
Hello Everyone:
As you may all know, there are suspicious accounts being created and used at times. While it is difficult to determine exactly what the motivation for such accounts is, the fact is probably that such accounts are bots & program assisted players.
I have found that most of the suspicious accounts that violate the Chess.com rules of Fair Play are recently opened accounts. Many within the same day/week/ or even month. Once it is reported and determined that such accounts are violating the Rules, Chess.com does a decent job of policing the situation and I have noticed that those accounts are closed. However, I doubt that every suspicious account is caught & there may be those who use their "cheating ways" occasionally & exist perpetually until they come across the wrong opponent who flags the activity & raises the attention of a moderator.
I was thinking that Chess.com could clean up a lot of the suspicious accounts simply by implementing a Probationary Month to all newly created accounts. During that time, players with 1-month or less log-time on Chess.com would be able to play only other players who have less than a month of log-time or Computer Programs. I believe that this will truly make our Chess.com community a much better playing environment for all rated players.
In the alternative, I suggest that Chess.com should add a new filter to Rated Matches to enable players to filter out opponents with Less Than a Month of Log Time or at least a 100 games. This will ultimately prove frustrating for the users & creators of suspicious accounts as it will take them longer to perpetrate their suspicious activity and it will discourage such actions.
I could not understand why anyone would want to create a suspicious account in the first place to watch a bot or computer program play the games against their opponents. However, it has been brought to my attention that such suspicious account creators are looking to artificially raise their ratings so that they can compete against the higher rated players on Chess.com. Usually, once they rise to around the 2100 to 2200 level, they get reported because they accumulate a winning streak of 20 Consecutive Wins with losses only by forfeit or 1-10 move time-outs.
If Chess.com community members wanted to play against Computer Programs or Bots, then we would simply play against such Programs... There are strong programs out there, but it's the Human v.s. Human challenge that we are seeking online through this medium.
Did anyone else have similar experiences or suggestions?