Locking long-standing threads

When you have a group of semi-autonomous moderators and little staff oversight, it is possible for a single moderator to unilaterally decide to, say, to lock all the longest threads with thousands of pages combined without any real scrutiny.

This can come from a desire to exert control, warranted or unwarranted...but without directly actioning individual accounts and having to deal with the confrontation and appeals involved.  The problem is, the larger the thread and participation, the more posters are affected by the lock.  

The forums are already a shallow wading pool of social media kiddie stuff as it is.  This just makes it worse. 

Certainly, adults can, and do, increasingly flee the main forums for clubs...but is that actually what Chess.com actually wants to achieve?  I would say that is a decision for somebody other than a lone volunteer mod.

In the recent lockings three large threads have been locked in a week or two.  One was arguably the 3rd instance of a trolling thread, and shorter lived but large, two were longer running threads that have been around a long time (4-8 years) without any real hint of being shut down.

As a participant in all of them (what can I say, there's a dearth of adult content here), I saw lots of poster's posts get edited.  Mine among them.  Never once have I received a PM/DM, a warning, or a muting, nor any specific action of any kind.

While I applaud a general crackdown in moderation for the forums (it is very much needed), this isn't it.  This is passive and arbitrary, with no central messaging about standards, whether they are changing, and if there's any direction.  If mods have a problem with specific posters showing up in a long-standing thread and causing trouble, it is incumbent on them to do their job rather than just taking the easy way out without having to confront anyone.

This type of moderation actually empowers trolls with the knowledge that they can get any thread closed down if they want to, without suffering repercussions.

Maybe the mods/staff can talk about this and come up with (and impart for a change?) some consistent messaging here.  Meanwhile, I think the last lock (Elroch's global warming thread) should be reviewed, unilaterally or otherwise .

Arbitrary is the key word here. When childish threads are produced by the hundreds and this particular mod joins in with them, then we know something about that mod.

Honestly, I think that stuff like this:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/yet-another-mod-amaa?page=1#comment-107022913

...should be looked at separately, and having mods joke about threads they have locked, telling people that they have a conceal and carry permit for guns, etc. are out of bounds and that's a whole 'nother issue, but this community thread should probably be focused on the locking issue.

this reminds me of my "for staff" topics. i applaud the effort, but you're basically pi$$ing into the wind here, tickler.

staff does not care.

the mods come and go. mistakes are never acknowledged and i can't remember a single topic being unlocked due to any "review".

it's why the adults either go to clubs or leave the site entirely.

wahhhhh !!....quit wasting ur time writing a book on it

...lol !!

I don't think the owners/managers of the site really care. They cater to toddlers and have put people who don't know/care about anything in charge of monitoring these forums. Expect no progress or support.

When ruling is made by the judges instead of being made by the law, it's then no (longer) a "state of rights".

Chess.com is openly a tyrany that forbids what it wants, under a set of rules that is vague enough so they can chose to enforce or not to enforce at will anything, and the moderators, serving as judges, received, of course, zero judiciary or legal or anything such, training from Chess.com.

At the end of the day, Chess.com is like a dictatorship and a micro state alltogether, and their ultimate argument is that no one forces you to use their website.

This ignoring the simple fact, that where one spends a part of their life, is supposed to be part of a nation or an other, with proper laws and judges.

And this also ignoring the fact, that when one wants to play chess online, for any reason including no other option for it, the number of places for it is limited, not to mention the places with enough various players to make it what we need.

And once the word "need" has been thrown on the table, it does question the claims we'd be all here by "free choice".

Ideally, a boycott would be a solution. In reality, it's (almost?) impossible to organize.

National authorities should step in and moderate the absurd thirst of power of them online businessmenn but they don't care. (or else)

Welcome to the 21th century and its "democracies" plagued with online dictatorships (among many other problems).