arthur94

[drahacikfm]

arthur94's comments are really getting out of hand.  He calls problems horrible and stupid over and over again.  When he gives a reason, his analysis is always wrong.  And his comments are getting rather ugly.

All of his comments should be purged from the site.  None of them are useful, and it might give the impression to newbies that the problems here are all bad.  Which is not at all the case.  His ability to add new comments should be taken away.

[milly]

What the strange thing is about Arthur's comments - trademark "impulsive beginner" - is that the level of his reflections does not at all meet the high ratings of Arthur, especially at Blitz.
I wonder how one can become so strong in chess with such an attitude. Maybe he is playing some kind of game with us 

[argentum]

maybe he is just young, arthur94,  born 1994? 

netiquette is something that usually slightly older people might begin to understand but not even all of them do understand. i don't think he will get the idea so quickly if he hasn't got your clue by this far. he might be reasonably good tactically but lacks the patience to understand more difficult quiet positions and lacks the patience to control self when commenting. he doesn't see the bigger picture what his comments are generating for the site, this is not irc channel where comments are quickly forgotten and buried to the bit heaven.

how about just disabling his commentary for now. 

[richard]

I've been sorely tempted to purge his comments and disable his commenting posting abilities, however I'm a bit concerned about the slippery censorship slope here.  Arthur clearly believes what he's typing, on rare occasions it is even accurate. Muzzling him just because he is often wrong seems a bit harsh.  However having said that I've given him free access to the "Show PGN" feature in the hope he'll make use of that before posting comments.  It seems that sometimes he does, although he complains about situations where he is marked wrong for missing a rook take where he played a pawn winning tactic, I guess these situations are debatable. His main problem seems to be a simple case of over-confidence, he should probably learn to be a little less trusting of his own analysis.  I think I've detected a slight improvement in the quality of his comments, but maybe that is just wishful thinking.  I'll still consider taking more direct action, but for now I have my fingers crossed that I will not have to cross the censorship line and his comments will either improve or he'll get bored with the site and move on.

Regards,
Richard.

[revenant]

A prudent course of action.  I haven't noticed the user in question responding to our responses to his comments on problems, nor have I seen him direct negative remarks against a particular person either in comments or here in the Forum (how about you drahacik?).  This would seem to rule out a troll or flamewar artiste, leaving several possible explanations we might want to consider for odd behavior by someone we can't see.  He or she may be 1) young & immature, 2) always distracted/in a hurry for some reason (sneaking in playtime at the office?), 3) a nonnative English speaker, 4) learning-disabled (I know at least one such person who just happens to be better at chess than I'll ever be), 5) some combination of the above, 6) the ghost of a dead chess champion, 7) your future self time-traveling to play a joke on you, ... uh ... have I missed any?  :-)

[drahacikfm]

I think I've detected a slight improvement in the quality of his comments, but maybe that is just wishful thinking.  I'll still consider taking more direct action, but for now I have my fingers crossed that I will not have to cross the censorship line and his comments will either improve or he'll get bored with the site and move on.

Richard, here's one of his recent comments:

Why. Not. 2...Qd5. You. Have. Got. To.
Be. Kidding. Me.

Yet another horrible problem by you
guys. I am meeting more and more of them
and they are very dissapointing. This is
one of my last problems on this website.
I am simply going to go to
chess.emrald.net

If that's an improvement I must have missed some of his past comments

I can't see how comments like this can possibly help the site when read by newbies who don't know that 95% of arthur94's comments are wrong.  Seems you've been waiting for his comments to improve for a couple months now.  Anyway, it's up to Richard and I'll drop the subject.  If he doesn't think the comments harm his site, ok.

Maybe we can have a personal censor feature so we don't see comments from people we choose to censor?  This is a feature on all chess servers such as ICC, FICS, etc.  For me personally, I find the comments very irritating, and I would like to not see them if at all possible.

By the way, 2...Qd5 is a bad move.   As expected.

[revenant]

Hmm, actually drahacik, I'm sort of with you on this.  I agree that it's a serious issue as I too find this user's comments alternately irritating and bewildering and it doesn't bode well for the future of CT if more such people are going to come in and clog up matters worse and worse.  Something needs to be done and it was good that you pointed it out.  I was wondering, though, if a bit of "lateral thinking" might help, i.e. go around the problem rather than through it.  Rather than implement a "censor" feature (whether at our individual discretion or by morphing the site administrator into a sort of site moderator), are there ways for the UI to make the instances of unwanted comments less distracting?

One aspect of all this is that problem comments are bunched up in the left margin.  Without very much horizontal "real estate", they wind up extending down into quite a bit of vertical real estate that makes them hard to peruse and hard to mentally relate to things happening on the board image, especially when there's one of those spontaneous textual ping-pong matches with "but white can do this", "no, black has ...f5", etc.  If comments were simply placed below the board with, say, the same amount of line length as in these Forum posts, we might find it easier to gloss over the snippets from users we don't find especially helpful.  Not a perfect solution, but part of the way.  Your thoughts?

Btw I recognize that some might wish to censor my own comments, which are directed at those players who really want to get into the nitty-gritty and therefore become often quite lengthy and convoluted as a result.  ;-)

[richard]

Drahacik: I do agree that his comments are potentially damaging the site, which is why I try to respond to respond to as many of them as I can , and I also appreciate the time you've spent refuting many of his comments. Maybe I'm being overly cautious but I don't want to start giving the impression that only the "right" kind of comments are allowed. There are still problems in the set that deserve negative feedback (obviously not as many as arthur94 thinks), and I wouldn't want users to feel they may be next against the "bad commentors" wall...  Then again if he's annoying everyone as much as he's annoying you then perhaps it would be best if his commenting ability was removed. 

I'm surprised you didn't find improvement in that last comment...going to CTS could be the best result :-)  I'd also enjoy reading his comments there when he starts finding rook wins rejected due to missing queen takes (which their generator seems to allow).

Richard.

[drahacikfm]

Yes, that would be the best comment he's ever written if he follows through with it   So far it's more than 24 hours since he's done a problem, so keep your fingers crossed.

If he does come back, maybe you can send him an email pointing out that not only is his analysis usually wrong, but he irritates people and potentially damages your site.  He should read all the responses to his comments and the forum posts.  I bet he has no idea they exist.  Some of my replies to his comments have been harsh, just trying to provoke a response to see if he even reads replies.  So far no response.

[richard]

I've seen him reply to a couple of comments, at least one of mine and I think he replied to your "refuted by a 9 year old" comment :-)  He just seems very selective on what he chooses to respond to , so I think he has probably read many of the replies. Given that, I wouldn't completely rule out that he may read the forum as well.  If he comes back I'll send him a warning email about his constantly incorrect analysis and indicate I'll remove his commenting ability if they continue, citing general user dissatisfaction and annoyance (he didn't respond to my last email on this matter which I sent nearly a month ago).

Richard.

[texian]

i haven't run across any of arthur94's comments yet, but have seen several suggesting alternate approaches .. to date, they have all been refuted .. every time i find something "obviously" wrong i have turned to Fritz and the solution rather than me has been validated

i've commented on a couple where even after Fritz verification i still don't get it, but those just continue to add to the challenge .. i'll use them as a measure of better understanding, if and when i look at them again and find i understand them

i've worked and commented on many more problems at CTS than here .. at first, i was disappointed with the nature of these problems .. now, i am enjoying them even more than CTS problems .. i also think the CT problems are more beneficial for me right now especially since i've slowed myself down to really study every problem .. i am taking an absurd amount of time thinking or just taking a break before responding .. but taking that approach seems to  really be helping

anyway, two thumbs up from this newbie with an amazed appreciation of how you have created the problem set

[andreacoda]

anyway, two thumbs up from this newbie with an amazed appreciation of how you have created the problem set

Let me just add no value, but completely second your comment! With so many people being more and more used to getting everything for granted, I think it is good to "give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar" (as we say in Italy)  Let's give recognition when recognition is due!

Cheers,

Andrea