Moderation Rules and Decisions

[Kevin Bonham]

Really sick of antichrist not getting the message about not posting stupid and often inappropriate off-topic political, historical, religious or whatever material in chess threads completely without any provocation.

antichrist is excluded from the overseas tournament section for a year or until I remember to lift the exclusion, whichever is longer.

This may at my discretion be lifted early if and only if I have not deleted any of his posts anywhere for being off-topic for at least three months.

antichrist also now excluded from Upcoming and Current Tournaments for a month for the same offence.

[Kevin Bonham]

Reminding posters of the shoutbox guidelines here:
http://www.chesschat.org/showthread....l=1#post260973

in particular re "* strident soapboxing about political or religious non-chess issues. Take it to a thread."

[Kevin Bonham]

Deleted an exchange of shouts in which one member who is apparently on rather stroppy terms with another member accused the other member (without naming them) of computer-cheating in a long-ago correspondence game here, claiming that all their moves were first or second choice computer moves.

While this might (though I doubt it) have been the case with some program available at the time (nobody raised it back then), it is certainly not the case with programs available now (several moves are only 4th or 5th choice by some margin and one is a blunder) and in any case the shoutbox is certainly not an appropriate place to make such accusations.

Please note that in future any member who makes claims of computer-cheating against another member in the shoutbox, whether the other member is named or not, risks a very long shoutbox ban. This also applies to any other form of potentially defamatory claim.

[Kevin Bonham]

A certain type of post recently seen on this forum may be known as an "antichrist gallop", named after the so-called "Gish gallop" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop). Whereas the Gish gallop aims to overwhelm the respondent with more nonsense than they can possibly refute in time, an antichrist gallop aims to overwhelm the moderator with such a bizarre collection of tangents, analogies and apparently off-topic material that it becomes impossible to tell at what point the post has slipped off topic and whether the post was meant to be as irrelevant as it looks or not. The sense is that the poster is using distractions flying in all directions to get from a point that is tokenly on-topic to a point that is completely not.

I have allowed many of these posts but as a general rule any "antichrist gallop" post that is made in the non-chess section and mentions any controversial chess personality will be deleted.

[Kevin Bonham]

I want some posters to make more effort to save the moderators work by putting posts in the right thread, so where non-chess posts are primarily just sharing of news or social media items posted to political threads and it is not immediately apparent that they are on topic, I am just going to delete them and any replies without warning or logging for a while.

[Kevin Bonham]

Reminding posters of the shoutbox guidelines here:
http://www.chesschat.org/showthread....l=1#post260973

in particular re "* strident soapboxing about political or religious non-chess issues. Take it to a thread."

To make it simple since the slightest mention seems to spiral into the usual stuff, US politics including any mention of Trump whether positive, negative or flippant is banned from the shoutbox for the rest of 2020.

[Kevin Bonham]

User olantirn <gildyshows@gmail.com> is permanently banned from Chesschat for threatening the site with legal action without contacting the moderators first and for personally threatening the site staff of Chesschat in an unspecified and open-ended manner. A threat emailed to me was as follows:

"U BETTER TAKE [abuse removed] KOHSER'S THREAD OR YOU WILL NOT HAVE HAPPY LIFE..."

There have since been further more serious - if comically ungrammatical - threats. I do not normally post the email addresses of users but in the case of threateners I will. Especially homophobic threateners.

A hydra account of the same person "Fred Johnson" <fredcoldstone@gmail.com> has also been banned. The following are other email addresses that this person has used to abuse and threaten CC staff and spam Australian chess authorities (list will be updated as required and when I can be bothered):

"F.C.Classics" <generalf55@gmail.com>, "John Lary - OTR Shows" <gildyshows@gmail.com>, "John Lary" <John Lary <janlarysrockystatue@gmail.com>, "Michael Harris" <mikeharriswdca@gmail.com>, "Jan Lubek" <janlubekhere@gmail.com>, "Vesna (Vanessa) I" <macamalena2@gmail.com>, "lupco4ride44" <lupco4ride44@gmail.com>, "Marko I" <dairymarko@gmail.com>, "Sara Reinholtz" <sarareinholtz@gmail.com>, "Gogi George Reeves" <gogigeorgereeves@gmail.com>, "CBM IBM" <cbmibm@gmail.com>

This is clearly one person posting under multiple names (although he claims Lubek and Steriev are different people), and may be a result of a multiple personality disorder. Whether this person really has any of these names is unknown to us.

The initial threat arose from a response olantirn posted to some comments posted by thekohser about internet pest behaviour by this person. olantirn's response defamed a person who was not a party to his dispute with thekohser by implying they had behaved improperly in a correspondence tournament. No evidence was provided for this accusation and another moderator responded by removing olantirn's reply and locking the thread. olantirn then tried to take the matter up on a completely irrelevant thread, and when the off-topic posts there were deleted, responded by threatening the site and us personally.

As a result of this not only is olantirn permanently banned, but any new poster who attempts to discuss the Lubek/Steriev matter or who is suspected of being olantirn will also be immediately permanently banned.

ACF officials are getting high volumes of deranged ranting and threats from this person. This person appears not to be aware that Chesschat is independent of the ACF, and hence he is wasting his time.

[Kevin Bonham]

antichrist banned for one day and excluded from the Religion and Science section for a month or until I remember to let him back into it for twice four times posting comments referring to moderation outside the Help and Feedback section.

[Kevin Bonham]

* Links to material that falls outside the site rules must be clearly labelled "not work safe" and must contain additional warnings if the material linked to is unusually gross, potentially disturbing etc. In extreme cases links may be deleted even if a disclaimer is provided. Some links may be better posted in the Coffee Lounge rather than the main board.

Further to this, do not link approvingly to Nazi, neo-Nazi or overtly white supremacist websites as they will almost always contain material that is illegal somewhere in Australia, even if there is nothing illegal on the direct page linked to. If it is really necessary to link to such a website, eg for the purposes of commentary on something said by another poster, then contact a moderator first for permission.

[Kevin Bonham]

Several posts from an obituary thread have been moved offline on the grounds that they were one or more of:

* not appropriate for an obituary thread
* comments about moderation
* by antichrist and of unclear proprietry

Prior to this action undertaken just now the thread had not been moderated.

[Kevin Bonham]

As noted on the coronavirus thread, the posting of silly conspiracy theories or fake news relating to the virus will not be tolerated until such time as the virus ceases to be a public health emergency.

(see clarification re accidental escape claims)

[Kevin Bonham]

The following actions have been taken as concerns the Pell thread:

1. Ten posts from last April moved offline - these started with a post that could easily be read as asserting that a person who had been cleared on appeal of a conviction was still guilty, although the intent appears to have been to comment on whether the accusation was newsworthy rather than whether it was true. Also some of the language used was not appropriate for the main board.

2. One post by antichrist moved offline, another edited and quotes of both edited - repeating hearsay accusations he had previously been directed not to repeat.

3. antichrist banned for a week and excluded from the Religion and Science section for six months (or until I remember to let him back in, whichever is longer) for disobeying a moderation directive to cease repeating hearsay accusations. Ban would have been longer had I noticed he was breaching a previous directive at the time.

4. Six posts from today moved offline because they included comments about moderation that were posted on the thread in question and not in the Help and Feedback section.

A reminder that we do not always read all posts closely with our moderation hats on in the absence of any complaint. So the fact that a post that no moderation complaint has been made about is up does not necessarily mean that it has been reviewed for moderation or even necessarily seen by moderators.

A further reminder that all comments about the moderation of a thread are to be made in the Help and Feedback section and not on the thread itself.

[Kevin Bonham]

I have modified some Gnostic Bishop thread titles for the following reasons:

1. Some of the titles are too long and stop in mid-word.
2. Some of the titles make claims of fact that are either very disputable or clearly false.

Recent GB thread titles with either of these issues have been placed in quotes, and in the case of the first issue, truncated with [..].

The same treatment may also be applied to older GB thread titles where applicable on request, provided the request is made in the Help and Feedback section or via PM and not on the thread itself.

[Kevin Bonham]

Reading antichrist's posts this morning I found at least four had been one or more of the following:

* off topic
* mentioning issues in areas of the forum where he has been told repeatedly not to mention them
* clearly silly

To save myself the bother of wading through any more I decided to bulk-delete every post antichrist has made so far today. I think there were nine in total.

[Kevin Bonham]

antichrist banned from the shoutbox for a day and shouts deleted for trolling a user who he has a long history of trolling.