Why I left

[Theoryhack]

Hi all.

I was "theoryhack" on chess.net for a number of years - played about 10,000 games here. Used to really love the place. When compulsory gold membership came in a lot of the stronger players left but that didnt really bother me. I became a gold member for a year, and a bit later had another month as a gift from "North". thanks again!

However, sadly, the thing which singles this site out now is the level of abuse. Every second or third game someone sends tells saying "f.u." or worse. I'm please to see the new guidlines for chat violation, does it apply to private tells too? If so, here's one for the admins


chumpchess tells you: drink sour urine from a rusy cut


Another "trick" bad losers use is a bug which should have been fixed lonnng ago: If you play a single move and your opponent plays a reply then you dont lose on time when your flag runs out as you have played less than 2 moves and you cant abort because you have played too many. This means that, after you have wasted enough time to work out what the guy was doing, you have to resign if you want to play again. One can ask the admins to nuke the guy or at least end the game, but in practice they cant seem to be bothered. Likewise, when I used to bother reporting abusive tells, nothing was ever done. usually, whilst vaguely sympathetic they just advise me to use censor or set tellscreen 1. On the occasions I visit as a guest i ususally do that now. Shame, I once made some good friends here.

I know a number of strong players who tell me they left for this reason. I coach chess in some local schools and used to recommend the site to my pupils but dont any more.

Oddly enough, sometimes you can actually end up engaging abusers in conversation. They sometimes turn out to be quite good blokes, or suffering personal issues, once you get to know them. Often they say that they used to get annoyed by abusive messages themselves, and eventually decided that if you cant beat em, join em. However, quite frankly, I cant be bothered to wade through the nonsense.

The solution is simple - apply the new guidelines ruthelessly. ban people from the site altogether if they swear at people. If a guest is abusive, its easy to find the ISP and block it. People who were this rude in a real chess club would very quicly be told to leave - especially if it is ostensibly used by children. There will always be a few idiots, but its sad to see that this has become the norm.

[dragonkiller]

Hi!

I only want to talk about this little bug you talked about(both are doing one move and then you cant flag him)... there was allways the option to push the abort button when the time of your opp ran out...

regards dk

[ZeroFK]

Currently tells are not covered by the chat etiquette rules, if a user bothers you, you can censor him/her. However this policy might change in the near future.

When you receive an abusive tell, you can still contact an admin, and a note will be made. Under the current policy you will be advised to censor, but again, this may change.

When you get stuck in a game with less than 5 half moves played, you can send in an assist and an admin will quickly abort the game. It is really no bother for an admin, and they will do it. However sometimes they don't see the assist, so if you've been waiting a while you can try sending a tell to an online admin (pick one that isn't idle). If you are logged on as guest there's no need to wait for an admin, just resign - don't give the other person the satisfaction of making you wait.

[chawley]

"However, sadly, the thing which singles this site out now is the level of abuse. Every second or third game someone sends tells saying "f.u." or worse."

You can block tells from all users except people on your friends list
this is the surest way of not reciving any nasty tells.



"If a guest is abusive, its easy to find the ISP and block it."

But should all guests suffer on the abusive guest IP Block who want
to play on Chess.Net? that's what Fics did they started blocking guest
access entirely for months I don't think that's fair.

[Theoryhack]

Hi everyone, thanks for reading and the replies.

Does seem like a good idea to regulate tells - even more so than GC. If people want to insult eachother thats fine - as long as both sides are happy to play the game. Not so good if one side objects. At least in GC, everyone can see an idiot for what he is.

Yes, one can set tellscreen 1 and only receive messages from people on their notify list. That way only your friends can talk to you. Trouble is how do you make the friends in the first place? There's general chat, but its a shame to have to block out all your opponents just because you havent got to know them yet simply because they MAY be abusive.


I was on as a guest again last night. Set tellscreen 1 each time, so didnt have any trouble. Glanced at GC from time to time, there were a pair of 1200s playing eachother. One of them was laying into the other - "You're so stupid, another win for me", or, when his opponent stalemated him in an otherwise totally crusing postion "has ha, you couldnt even win that one" etc. His opponent took things silently and nobody else objected.

Felt like challenging him myself and duffing him up a few times but really couldnt be bothered. Just for the record, we are all useless at chess, and anyone who thinks differently should go toe to toe with Jodie or Aida for a few games. And we've all got to start somewhere. Being 1200 doesnt mean you are dumb - I know a consultant suregon with that rating and someone with 2 Phds who took 3 years to make 1400. OTOH, it certainly doesn't qualify anyone to critiise OTHER people's play - 1200 is very far from chess truth.

-----

Regarding blocking ISPs - if blocking one guy blocks a load of innocents, thats a big shame. But wouldnt it be possilbe to find his individual IP address and just block that terminal?

[chawley]

"but its a shame to have to block out all your opponents just because you havent got to know them yet simply because they MAY be abusive."

I have a 8 year old son who plays chess online so I block all tells and I supervise you just never know when a player or a guest will have a bad case of roadrage or use extremely offensive language it can happen for any reason if your opponent blunders and makes a bad move he'll want to take it back and claim mouse slip you say no? watch out he'll throw a fit or you refuse a draw then that will set them off they say things like FU
you'll wait 35 minutes for the win enjoy the wait or some other nonsense.

[Box Brother]

Not here to judge if the sanction was right. But you in fact made a wrong move by posting tells in GC. Also you failed to move in a sportmanship behaviour.

Btw, ever heard of censor to block out tells ?

[Theoryhack]

If people send an abusive tell and you were able to complain about it and get them warned and muzzled, there would be no need to post tells.

Yes, one can block them with censor, or set tellscreen 1. But this compromises you, not them. Why should you be unable to hear everything someone says, just because they have been abusive.

There are meant to be rules about abusing people, but they are not enforced.

If people post tells, it lets everybody else know about abuse and abusers. It's almost a public service, but it would be unnecessary if abusers were caught and punnished.

At the moment, we have a ludicrous situation where insulting people is tolerated, complaing privately is pointless and publicly complaining about it is punished.

The rule about not posting tells is a bad one. It should be quite the reverse. There should be a way of posting tells in a public record, so everybody can see.

Please dont get me wrong. I like the admins here. I think they do a fine job, un(der)paid, and one can sense Fire1's restraint in the above conversation, as well as the growing frustration on both sides. But one can also see Rosicrucain's point - he got himself abused, nuked and then muzzled for what exactly? Beating Hairplug, getting abused, having his complaints ignored and not following "procedure" in order to protect himself.

Things rapidly became a confrontation between Fire1 and Rosicrucian, rather than Fire1 and Hairplug as it should have been.

If the complaints procedure was effective - ie if complaing to an admin actually got something done about the offender rather than just a sympathetic note and an invitaion to use Noplay and Muzzle - then Rosicrucian would have been way out of line. But its absolutely inapropriate for a police force to be taking action against vigilantes if they dont take action against the actual criminals.