English Chess Forum

Do you know a chess player who should be a member here?

If so give them some hassle please.

No prize gimmicks or people encouraged not to post as per the other place just enhanced debate.

Thanks

Hi Carl

Great forum. Have you thought of extending the forum with standard social share options under each post - like tweet etc - even chessbase articles have these now.

This article shows how :

http://itech.ckumar.in/2011/12/how-to-a ... aring.html

Cheers
Tryfon

Carl Hibbard wrote:No prize gimmicks or people encouraged not to post as per the other place just enhanced debate.

Carl, could I ask you to cool things, please?

I understand you feeling bitter about the turn of events and I don't think I'm the only ECF Officer who feels that you deserve better.

However, I was very pleased to see that this very evening Richard Haddrell has sought opinions about an important grading issue in a thread on this Forum.

The lower the temperature, the more likely it is that such things will continue to be possible.

Irish Chess Cogitations has followed Chess Scotland in mostly closing its forum to the outside world.
http://www.irishchesscogitations.com/blog/

Whilst it means that they can have flame wars in peace without disturbing potential sponsors, it destroys any credibility of openness.

There's half a case for the ECF to have a forum or discussion group exclusively for Council members and closed to non-members of Council. There is also the long standing tradition, that unless sworn to secrecy, that all debates and votes at ECF Council meetings are public domain with several long standing reporters to ensure this.

David Sedgwick wrote:

Carl Hibbard wrote:No prize gimmicks or people encouraged not to post as per the other place just enhanced debate.

Carl, could I ask you to cool things, please?

I understand you feeling bitter about the turn of events and I don't think I'm the only ECF Officer who feels that you deserve better.

However, I was very pleased to see that this very evening Richard Haddrell has sought opinions about an important grading issue in a thread on this Forum.

The lower the temperature, the more likely it is that such things will continue to be possible.

Fair enough I will do so.

"...per the other place..."

What other place?

Geoff Chandler wrote:"...per the other place..."

What other place?

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/Forum/

"The other place" is an expression used by members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords to refer to the House that they not currently speaking in.

Roger, I can post on the Chess Scotland forum even though I'm not a Chess Scotland member. Or have I missed your point?

John Upham wrote:

Geoff Chandler wrote:"...per the other place..."

What other place?

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/Forum/

"The other place" is an expression used by members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords to refer to the House that they not currently speaking in.

True I have heard some Members erroneously refer to the "other place", but the correct terminology is "another place" or the "other house". "Over there" on the other hand refers to unidentified opposition football fans as in "It's all gone quiet over there! Yes, it's all gone quiet over there! It's all gone quiet, All gone quiet, All gone quiet over there!" It has nothing at all to do with American tourists.

Mike Truran wrote:Roger, I can post on the Chess Scotland forum even though I'm not a Chess Scotland member. Or have I missed your point?

I think you must have registered at some time in the past. If you just pass through, it looks as if there's next to nothing there. I wouldn't be bothered about posting rights, but they no longer allow casual visitors to even see what they are arguing about. Similarly with the newish Irish forum.

My registration date is shown as August 2013 on the Chess Scotland forum, although I recall joining a lot earlier than that. So maybe a re-registration following some problem or another?

Anyway ......

Mike Truran wrote: So maybe a re-registration following some problem or another?

It used to be possible to read their forum without registering. I think they put up the shutters around a year ago. In fairness, there was some heavyweight fighting going on, but I would have thought some less controversial threads could have been released. Marketing of the Commonwealth Championships being an example.

If they have done that, I agree with you that it's a retrograde step. Flame wars still break out there from time to time, but from what I can see nothing serious enough to frighten the horses (or indeed potential sponsors, even if they: (a) exist; (b) can be bothered to have some junior tick in their PR departments trawl through obscure forums for offensive/inflammatory material).

The justification for the new ECF forum seems to me to be entirely specious. If you want a forum accessible only by ECF members, then surely it behoves the great and the good of the ECF to make a few postings that are of some interest to ECF members. To be fair, any postings at all from the ECF hierarchy would be welcome, as opposed to the complete blackout that seems to have descended.

Mike Truran wrote: ... surely it behoves the great and the good of the ECF to make a few postings that are of some interest to ECF members. To be fair, any postings at all from the ECF hierarchy would be welcome, as opposed to the complete blackout that seems to have descended.

I agree. If you do something like this then at least somebody (director or officer) should respond within in a day. I think the problem is that the board has a procedure for deciding who should reply and what the answer is (and if it is contentious the internal discussion can go on and on). It would be better if an off the cuff (I think the answer is ...) reply were given (it could always be corrected later).

I may have been particularly lucky in that my posts on the ECF forum gained responses from two officers: Phil Ehr (CEO) and Alex Holowczak (Director of Home Chess).

Here (on the EC forum) I have had responses from Lawrence Cooper (Director of Junior Chess and Education).

I would suggest that it greatly depends on the language and the manner that the question is posed as to whether it gets a response.

When posting a question it might pay to keep in mind how you might have answered the question had you been the recipient.