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Whiter than White

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 6:43 pm
by Carl Hibbard
Should the new forum be held to a higher standard or do we think mud slinging (even from moderators...) their should be allowed in the rather open way it is here?

Should moderators have a reasonable technical expertise?

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 7:07 pm
by Christopher Kreuzer
Something over there triggered this? I've not even been over there yet... I see that there is a new subforum here titled 'English Chess Federation Forum'. If some of the more acrimonious ECF disputes can be debated freely(?) over there and the calmer (non-ECF) stuff talked about here, that might be good. Probably hoping for too much. One question I did have was what does happen to such forums when they cease. The archiving question. I'm asking because I've seen various websites and forums come and go over the years, and some I'd hate to see vanish into the ether (like the old ECF website did).

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 7:19 pm
by Carl Hibbard
Christopher Kreuzer wrote:Something over there triggered this?
Perhaps it is worth a gander but to be honest I am unsure if I should even 'ask' or just shut the hell up :oops:

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 8:05 pm
by Bill Porter
Christopher Kreuzer wrote:Something over there triggered this? I've not even been over there yet... I see that there is a new subforum here titled 'English Chess Federation Forum'. If some of the more acrimonious ECF disputes can be debated freely(?) over there and the calmer (non-ECF) stuff talked about here, that might be good. Probably hoping for too much. One question I did have was what does happen to such forums when they cease. The archiving question. I'm asking because I've seen various websites and forums come and go over the years, and some I'd hate to see vanish into the ether (like the old ECF website did).
All legitimate robots are prohibited from viewing the site, so the 'English Chess Federation Forum' and all its posts can at any time be completely obliterated with no archive.

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 8:12 pm
by Roger de Coverly
Christopher Kreuzer wrote: I'm asking because I've seen various websites and forums come and go over the years, and some I'd hate to see vanish into the ether (like the old ECF website did).
You can always try www.waybackmachine.org which has at least a monthly archive of many sites, this one included.

It helps to know vaguely when a debate took place. You can certainly get the old BCF and ECF sites on there. That's useful when someone denies that something happened or that a letter of protest was written, etc.

I'm wondering what the moderation policy will be at the new site if there's a contested election or several, particularly if a candidate is standing on a platform that "The ECF/the current director are doing it all wrong".

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 8:14 pm
by Michael Farthing
Oh dear Carl! Look what you've done! Excited curiosity and now attempts to access the ECF forum give

RESOURCE LIMIT EXCEEDED

Must be pretty small!

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 8:22 pm
by Roger de Coverly
Michael Farthing wrote:Oh dear Carl! Look what you've done! Excited curiosity and now attempts to access the ECF forum give
RESOURCE LIMIT EXCEEDED
It seems to also be a problem with the more general www.englishchess.org.uk of which the new forum is a sub-folder. There were only 8 users counted in the forum.

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 8:24 pm
by Carl Hibbard
A status monitoring page for us is always available here:

http://stats.pingdom.com/4s40d6s8xndm/355392

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 8:32 pm
by Bill Porter
Roger de Coverly wrote:
Christopher Kreuzer wrote: I'm asking because I've seen various websites and forums come and go over the years, and some I'd hate to see vanish into the ether (like the old ECF website did).
You can always try http://www.waybackmachine.org which has at least a monthly archive of many sites, this one included.

It helps to know vaguely when a debate took place. You can certainly get the old BCF and ECF sites on there. That's useful when someone denies that something happened or that a letter of protest was written, etc.

I'm wondering what the moderation policy will be at the new site if there's a contested election or several, particularly if a candidate is standing on a platform that "The ECF/the current director are doing it all wrong".
The waybackmachine is not excluded by the ECFF's robots.txt file; it seems a less public method is being used to prevent archiving.

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 9:11 pm
by Roger de Coverly
Bill Porter wrote: The waybackmachine is not excluded by the ECFF's robots.txt file; it seems a less public method is being used to prevent archiving.
I've just tried it. You can view the Index page, but not the forum entries. That contrasts with ecforum where with luck on the exact dates of archiving, you can still see deleted posts (and posters).

If you want to emulate what someone from outside would find on a search for English chess, you get distorted results from Google if you use that computer to regularly search for chess related material.

I've tried www.duckduckgo.com searching for "English chess". This put the ECF top, followed by articles about the English Opening with ecforum nowhere to be seen.

Searching for "English chess forum" produces the ecforum index page as top, with chess.com next and the ECF's link to ecforum third. Fourth is a link to an ecforum discussion about March 2014 FIDE ratings, presumably as a content sample. Fifth is a link to www.englishforums.com which appears to be a discussion about the English Language and how chess terminology might be expressed.

Many other long established chess forums are also found, with the ECF main site quite some way down.

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 10:03 pm
by PeterTurland
Gawd this is complicated, how do we open up negotiations?

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 6:13 pm
by Jonathan Bryant
Carl Hibbard wrote:Should the new forum be held to a higher standard ....

The new forum should be held to the standard that it sets itself. Which is a higher - or at least different - standard to here.



Is there really a need for distinct sub-fourm for the ECF Forum, btw?

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 10:43 am
by Michael Farthing
Jonathan Bryant wrote: Is there really a need for distinct sub-fourm for the ECF Forum, btw?
OTOH With one more post after this one it will have had more posts than any sub-forum on the ECF site!

[But in truth, I agree with Jonathan]

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 10:46 am
by Carl Hibbard
Michael Farthing wrote:
Jonathan Bryant wrote: Is there really a need for distinct sub-fourm for the ECF Forum, btw?
OTOH With one more post after this one it will have had more posts than any sub-forum on the ECF site!

[But in truth, I agree with Jonathan]
So do I, but in truth it's for an SEO experiment that I am running and I will remove the section at some point in the future.

Re: Whiter than White

Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 11:14 am
by Paolo Casaschi
Carl Hibbard wrote:
Michael Farthing wrote:
Jonathan Bryant wrote: Is there really a need for distinct sub-fourm for the ECF Forum, btw?
OTOH With one more post after this one it will have had more posts than any sub-forum on the ECF site!

[But in truth, I agree with Jonathan]
So do I, but in truth it's for an SEO experiment that I am running and I will remove the section at some point in the future.
Are you trying to get the "ECF Forum" section here to rank higher in Google than the ECF Forum itself?