And thanks to all the staff for your hard work throughout the site! Some of you may work in the shadows, but it is always appreciated.
Rule Changes, My View
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While your account was closed, other members may still wish for an answer so I might as well. ^^'
A veteran is someone who has been with the site longer, and has a significant number of contributive posts. With all other things being equal, I recommend that these members do not get invulnerability by any means, rather, that they get the benefit of the doubt. This also generally includes known masters. Carlsen should get a bit more leeway than someone that just registered.
This means that a user with lots of contributive posts, articles, messages, etc. like Mr.Pandolfini should be allowed to break some minor rules a couple more times than say a user that just registered last week without getting much more than a warning.
As for my other thought:
trolls are generally just trying to steer a thread off course or make another party angry over something that the troll does not care about. As a result, I generally recommend less time to be spent on interacting with someone you identify as a troll than with a user that is actually attempting to improve Chess.com.
Some of these trolls are really just users that came in with the idea of doing some damage to prove the point that something needs to be changed to fix the capability of that damage being done at a greater level. If these same people offer suggestions to fix this, it may or may not be worth the time to look over their suggestions and consider them. Obviously, this depends on whether they are genuinelly trying to help fix a problem. I do not encourage this behavior, since if you know it is possible why not just tell support?
In addition, I would like to suggest a few things.
First of all, it may be nice to have someone(s?) officially hired to respond to posts like my own and this one. This allows us to know that our posts were not only read by staff, but were noticed and considered. In fact, people hired to do this could also be given the important job of identifying which posts are great ideas that will be passed on to the other staff members and which should be ignored or expanded upon.
Also, please don't be afraid of banning some users. I have been notified of some previously banned users coming back just to continue trolling. Maybe you should hire a few experienced programmers to come up with a way of identifying and tracking previously banned users. For example, tracking by ip is a very effective means. All of this helps improve the level of moderation shown to the community as well as improve the community as a whole.
Dear Moderators and Admins,
First of all I would like to say hi! thank you for the recent changes to the moderation and rules here at Chess.com. You have addressed some of the issues that I brought up in my posts here.
I have read your announcement post and I tend to have the same long writing and philosophical tendency(this is your warning!!!). As for your feeling of being unable to easily juggle the decisions that effect all the members and can easily cause a group of them to disagree with you, I have more ideas that may help, if you are kind enough to read all I have to say.
To begin, I want you to consider a few things. While Chess.com may be a site to host a large community to play games of Chess, it also has parts of it to train this community. In addition, it assists members in learning from their blunders through analyzation. This is done through online forums that make up a seperate part of the site. One can also share their experiences with others in multiple ways, yet another part of the site. And then their's "MORE"!!! Wow, so many pieces to the puzzle that is Chess.com!
You agree with me so far, I assume. Almost to the important part! Each of these, PLAY, LEARN, SHARE, FORUMS, and MORE make up seperate sections of the site. And yet one makes them all come together and really mean something. This is none other than the FORUMS!
Now, forums have their good and evil, their okay and just wanna have fun, their "PRETTY BUTTONS!! YAY CLICKETY CLACK!!!" and "Uhh.. wat if i try breakin rulez? lulz i probly wont evn get warn'd". Without any moderators and adminastrators overseeing their behaviors they turn the technologically advanced FORUMS into a cave not even fit for an animal. Stinking of spam, a new species of trolls, and far, far worse, this is the extreme of terrible. Many a site's forums has been plagued by the curse of spamming terror trolls(stt's).
What comes next? Well, the honorable courageous minority tend to band together and gather what tools they can find to fight off the masses, all while calling themselves "moderators" or "adminastrators" or sometimes even "hackers". The rest tend to either be assimilated by the stt's or run away in terror. This war can be over quick or long, depending on the capabilities and determination of the moderators. No matter what, this war only ends when the stt's win. This occurs when the moderators start slacking more and more and more... until there is only a couple active mods left. What happens next depends on their ability(or lack there of) to revive the site with intelligent posters.
Now, I am not saying that Chess.com is going anywhere near this journey, far from it in fact. I only mention this so that you understand the possibily outcomes of making the wrong decisions.
Back to the Future!
The other possibility is that you meet the perfect balance that keeps the entire community happy. You rarely, if ever, need to change moderation and general poster guidelines. This is what every community should strive for, Chess.com included. Now, I understand that you still believe in having a section that is unmoderated. Some sites have this, some don't. It is all up to the moderators and admins on whether they believe this is a nice idea.
Wait a minute... all up to.. moderators and admins? Oh my! That's you guys!!!
That's right! You guys have power. With power comes the honorable duty to King Erik. I mean.. to keeping Chess.com actively filled with intelligent contributions to the community, from the community! How do you do this? By outlining five guidelines for what to prevent:
What exactly do these points mean?
To summarize, I have outlined some ways in the "here" link above for how to improve the site further as you strive towards these goals.
While I've written on and on about this, I still have one regret. I have yet to share my opinion that listening to trolls for advice is just a bad idea in general. Granted, some trolls do it purely to reveal vulnerabilities in an act to improve the site. Due to this, I recommend reading these suggestions as well(if you guys have time). Meanwhile, consider the goals I've listed and look at the two side-by-side. If the suggestions don't seem to contriute anything noteworthy to Chess.com's progression towards the goals I've listed then generally I wouldn't consider them to be good for the forums as a whole.
In addition, you may consider redoing this page:
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/chesscom-posting-rules
Either editing the first post every time you make a change with a seperate topic of [OUTDATED] posting-rules to log the changes with the top of that second topic displaying [OUTDATED] ,just like that. Or by maintaining the first post as the newest change and the posts below it as the outdated versions(harder to maintain imho).
I wish the best to this community. May tactics and strategy be with you always!
It looks like it's too late to heed that warning and turn back now! Oh well!