Single Comment

This is the second time when the essential issue about whether the opinion of a chess variant inventor or some anonymous entity posting here is more important. Personally, I have very little respect for the kind of people who post anonymously or pseudo-anonymously on internet discussion forums, complaining about things.

While I agree that Mats Winter was a little rude in his 'shup up' comment, I also feel that the comment was warranted. Someone came here and anonymously posted that all of Mats' variants deserve only one page. Mats was legitimately hurt. We know nothing about the anonymous person who said this comment; when people are allowed to post anonymously negative, hurtful things, people who are offering legitimate things, such as Mats, are put off and may end up leaving the site.

Anonymous trolls are very dangerous to internet discussion forums. They can very well chase off anyone who isn't a troll, destroying the forum. I saw trolls destroy Usenet, I saw trolls destroy Slashdot, I've seen them seriously damage Wikipedia, and I'm seeing them destroy Digg. I'm worried that they may start coming here and destroy the quality of this web site.

I think the policy of approving anonymous posts is an excellent one; I think it is what has saved chessvariants.org so far.

Again, this is a forum for Chess Variant inventors, not for anonymous trolls to flame Chess Variant inventors. I hope it stays that way.

- Sam