The Site's Comment Filter

Because I'm tired of the disingenuousness of some, and the sincere lack of understanding on the part of others, I might not be able to comment any more in this thread, if my point is seriously misunderstood or continuously belittled. I have enough experience with this site and its users to not expect too much profitable from this discussion, so if you feel like drawing me into an argument, don't bother.

Yeah those topics should be locked. It's politics without saying it is.

Thank you, and the site knows it but protects those users.

Furthermore, I and other users have reported harassment there, but the site didn't respond.

For whatever reason, the site doesn't have a report option for posts that violate the site's policy on politics and religion, otherwise those topics probably would have been reported hundreds of times by now. Incidentally, this inoffensive topic was locked in a matter of minutes, for being indecently guileless I suppose. https://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/god-loves-everybody

Wow. Terrible double standard. Thanks for showing me how bad it is. Why ban a posititive forum like that but not ban a controversial topic like climate change and evolution?

I think it's like the frog in the pot of heating water. The two political threads have been around for a long time. There's a juridical principle that long-standing injustices have to be maintained, because changing them would undermine the whole system. No one complains about it, because they are intimidated.

What I'm confused about is that the site filter doesn't allow "censored" names but it does let, and I quote, "I'ma shoot this place up, bouta be a dead chat". That message was spammed in my club previously.

Some people would kill to have that much activity in their club, and here you are getting it in spades. Some chats have all the luck...

It was my friend who posted it as well...

I'm not sure if that eases or exacerbates the pain

Neither do I.

The distress is all yours. Just don't be distressed by other people talking about science. Go about your business. It's that simple. Instead, you are so upset that you keep constantly trying to undermine the mods and staff and post topics you know will be closed down. If I were a mod you'd be banned for intentionally wasting the mod's time by now, but they are more lenient than I am.

Note that if people like you just stopped trying to equate religion and science, there would be nobody to take a ribbing on the science threads and those threads would return to their naturally quiet states. If you go through the thousands of pages, you will see this cycle over and over again. Some new poster wades in thinking they are the first person to ever argue about the fossil record, they get shown the error of their ways, politely (if they are polite) or snarkily (if they are snarky). But then they do not stop, they keep hammering away with an argument they cannot factually support, and eventually, as in all walks of life, this leads to frustration and ridicule.

Imagine a kid on the schoolyard saying "the sky is green" over and over. How long does it take before the entire class is not having it? Your last sentence is key. Nobody restricts what you can say. You can even mention religion or politics as a reason for something, and nobody will say boo, as long as you don't start soapboxing directly about it. Some threads do not allow you to keep saying the same arguments over and over if you cannot post support for it. That is their decision.

You can start a competing thread if you don't like it, and *if* your competing thread can manage to stay within the TOS and forum guidelines, it too can survive to reach 50,000 posts. That can be a tall order, because people that are not, shall we say, amenable to peaceful conversations will always show up for an anti-science or anti-government party, and then you will be hard pressed to not break the guidelines. Or, you can go to one of the many freeware messageboard sites and start a community and make up your own rules. What you can't do is petulantly complain repeatedly in a fashion that causes the mods or staff more work. Eventually, they'll have had enough of it.

As for the 2 specific threads in question, they invariably return to a quiet state with occasional discussion of new articles etc. as soon as the anti-establishment crusader types move on.

The answer is that it's disingenuous. Climate change and evolution are not "controversial" for the majority of the planet's population. Conversely, the thread you listed as "positive" was posted purely to get shut down so the OP could complain about it, and for no other reason.

It's not the filtering of the word I have an issue with, it's the automated warning / banning system. It's automated due to laziness / lack of investment on part of the site, but what it means is you can say an authors name and find yourself banned for a week, it's quite dumb. On the other hand, if I have to forgo saying an authors name to see the cesspool of the internet be cleaned up I actually don't mind that.

The system of warnings is also not designed well (like most of this forum) - like if you're a user who spends significant time posting on this site you're going to accumulate warnings over time and eventually be banned just by accidentally saying words. I think I've been banned twice due to accidentally saying words I didn't consider taboo. And the message is like... "you were warned buddy" - yeah like 3 months ago I was warned about a different random word.

If you're going to automate a dirty word system like that then just automate the removal of the post, what you lazy / incompetents have done is automated injustices against your paying customers.

If your aim is to explain the origin of life (what the person you're responding to was actually talking about) you need to talk chemical evolution, not biological evolution (i.e. the fossil record) - and that actually does become a very speculative conversation. What you're essentially arguing is that the universe itself is designed in such a way that life emerges from non-living matter... and you better be careful or your argument starts to closely resemble a design argument.

Though honestly, to even talk chemical evolution you first need to explain the existence of matter, and the universe itself, i.e. the very occurrence of the big bang or whatever other cosmic event you think was at the origin.

Like so many pseudo-skeptics you seem to overestimate how strongly the science actually makes the case for naive materialism.

Btw - are we talking religion right now? Because this conversation is about science, but it sure seems to be hinting at a difference in religious worldview... are you arguing in favor of atheism or agnosticism - do we consider that a form of religious belief that's also subject to censorship then...? But again, every topic can be related to religion or politics in some way, it's a ridiculous rule, no one knows how to interpret it - obviously thought up by dimwits (is that a censored word? let's see).

Seriously though guys - there's two things you can do to get around this fecal matter: 
a) use odd insults like duncery, buffoonery, wooden-headed, dimwit, etc. 
b) just out science the supposed "scientists" you run into - it's actually very easy to do. Because pseudo-skeptics don't actually understand science, for them science is more of a form of dogma, and it's easy to penetrate that.

Thanks to both of you for the excellent examples...this is why we can't have nice things.

Speaking to Shadowtanuki...this is how it goes. I oppose your viewpoint in a pointed fashion based on your prior posts and expressed motivations, and two strident posters show up, one to personally attack me from the get-go, hypocritically since he's accusing me of it, and the other to make a bunch of arguments about evolution in opposition to my apparent beliefs...when I didn't actually say a word about evolution beyond a casual reference identifying the most generalized complaint naysayers have about it, and even then only to make a point unrelated to the science of evolution. In both cases, the sting of past engagements connects me to them in their minds.

You are doing the same thing by going on about free speech to the mods. In all three cases, it stems from a sense of entitlement to post anything you want, coupled with a feeling that you are smarter than the average bear and people *need* to hear your opinions to better themselves or something. This leads to grudges, which leads to more conflict. There's maybe a dozen or two of these type of posters at any given time on the forums. They are largely interchangeable. In a mass, they are like gnats flying around a picnic table.

You're pretty smart. Smarter than Optimissed. I can't speak about ibrust, we haven't had enough interaction. You also have an ethical code and some integrity to stand behind it. You could be a force for "good" on the forums. It seems like that is what you think you are trying to do here, but it's been contorted into something else.

Apparently believing you have some right to speak in what closely resembles public is a form of "entitlement" in this persons mind. Free speech - an idea set in motion by bad parenting!

It was interesting hearing from that poster earlier who actually grew up in Bulgaria during communism, and had to cut his hair 1 inch short / trim his nails to the base or get caned in school. He seemed to have a very different perspective on this matter than you.

Oh no... the conversation is naturally moving into politics... someone CALL THE MODS!!!!!

The number one thing power mongering sadists will say to you is to not question authority. You're bad. Don't do that, bad person. Morality = conforming with the will of those in charge - of this forum, and elsewhere. Why? Don't ask that question... Because they're in charge, and you aren't. That's why.

Reason...? Authority is not beholden to reason. This is not your house, kid... quite a sense of entitlement you have there... foolish kid, authority has no reason to reason... are you gonna make them? Go ahead and try kid.

I do think people need to hear my opinion though, because not everyone understands science. Too many people are, unfortunately, easily confused by dogmatic posturing which misrepresents topics such as evolution... in reality, when you take a careful look, there's not alot of meat to these dogmas. Not much meat on the bone at all.

There's nothing public about chess.com. The easy-access facade of the internet has confused you, perhaps.

As for some posters' neverending misunderstandnings of the 1st amendment...xkcd said it best.

You heard it here, folks - there is nothing that even resembles public in a space that over 140 million users across 241 countries can come to, and converse with one another, at any time. This is a private place, folks. Infact... feel free to post all your girlfriends nudes here (but don't violate the forum rules).

Of course if the issue were so simple and clearcut we wouldn't have had a recent string of supreme court cases / government officials arguing that major social media sites are defacto public forums. But these are minor details.