Mike, I don’t think you should have closed the thread where tanstaafl and Winchester were last discussing the rule of writing down the move before making it.
It was pertinent to tournament direction.
I was just about to reply with my own thoughts on the subject.
Please reopen that thread.
Feel free to start a new thread, but any time people start bickering about who said what and quoting each other repeatedly a thread has probably outlived its usefulness.
I have to admit that I’m somewhat confused on this issue. I don’t see any consistency lately in which threads are locked and/or deleted.
I’m sure I’ve seen threads much worse than the 15A thread without them ever being locked. I almost wonder if Mike isn’t frustrated at so many “political” threads that SHOULD have been locked or deleted, but nobody wants to stifle discussion in the middle of the elections.
I thought I was making legitimate points (I’m less convinced Terry Winchester was, but that’s the nature of “discussion” isn’t it? 
) and I don’t think I had taken the “quoting” too far. In fact I used 3 short quotes in the entire thread – I don’t think that was excessive. I don’t think I was “trading quotes”.
I DID make my latest post in that thread a nearly 2 AM, so I probably should have waited until today. I might have done a better job of describing my point of view without antagonizing Terry (and apparently nolan).
You didn’t antagonize me, tanstaafl. 
Mike, I thought the use of quotes were okay. They help to get the points across.
Terry W
Evansville, IN
Quotes are fine, in moderation. Most of the time all someone needs to do is scroll back a bit to see the post being responded to, but sometimes a quote helps establish context better.
Posts that quote the ENTIRE MESSAGE waste everyone’s time, and quotes that cite a history of who said what are at best boring. (Some of the inhabitants of rec.games.chess.politics post that way all the time, then wonder why nobody takes them seriously.)
If you want to play that game with someone, do it by email so the rest of the readers here don’t have to follow along.
One of my favorite quotes on this is usually attributed to Sir Winston Churchill:
This should be a place for intelligent and informative discussion in which our collective knowledge is advanced, not for never-ending and never-changing restatements of position.
I will close threads when I think they are no longer advancing. (I’d delete some of them entirely but I have been told not to.)
But if you think you can do better, write bhall@uschess.org and tell him why you should be a forum moderator.
well shucks, in the future I’ll just begin by sending you a copy of my posts for your determination of the intellingence therein BEFORE I post here.
I darn sure wouldn’t want to upset Sir Winston!
Terry Winchester
Evansville, Indiana
Well, shucks yourself, Terry. If you want the job of moderator, you can have it. Then I can join the horde complaining about the lousy job the moderator does.
I call 'em as I see 'em, and some days I might not make the same decision or post the same frustrated reply.
Mike, I have never spoken ill of you to anyone, and I’ve never entertained the notion that you should be replaced. Hell, I just started posting again after a while away.
Terry I hope you do take him up on his offer to give up moderation. I’m sorry but regarding Nolan it is my honest to God, hand on the bible oath sworn statement, that i believe Mike nolan, to be the most biased unfair and pigheaded moderator, on any chess forum on the net. Half the time he starts responding in a thread, and when he personally doesn’t like it or feels he is losing an arguement just deletes it to defacto win.
RagingHell, I don’t want to jump into other peoples’ pxxxing contest, but since I have found myself the target of pigheaded flame comments on other blogs on occasion, I feel the need to express solidarity with Mike Nolan here.
The hostility and hyperbole in your characterization of Mr. Nolan only makes you look like a fool.
Mike certainly has faults, but he is nothing like what you say. FAR from it. The Internet’s a big place, and saying anyone is “the most (fill in any desirable or undesirable characteristic of your choice)” ANYTHING on the 'Net, is a very grandiose claim indeed.
In fact, Mike might even be in the top half of all blog moderators. If that sounds like damning with faint praise, consider: placing anyone who works for USCF in the top half of anything, is saying a lot.
I’ve found Mike to be the most helpful, knowlegable person that posts on the forums.
I think Mike should quit being moderator. There’s lots of other work that he could be doing for the USCF and it’s obvious that his time is wasted babysitting a bunch of whining jerks that don’t know any better (RagingHell).
Well tanstaafl. I will only reply to you once, since it is unclear how well you can read. “Whining” as you put it is a complaint. I made no complaint I made a statement, and an admonishment for someone to take up a publicly made offer. I then through my constitutionally given right stated why I believe Mike Nolan is wholly inadequate for the job, and is a dismal failure. As far as what I know, I doubt that there is any positive measure that you can equal me.
You are pointless so I will digress as you mean nothing to me tanstaafl.
If you respond further here is my response to whatever you have to say. “Tanstaafl, I said you mean nothing to me”.
So Mr. Winchester I hope again that you take Mike Nolan up on his offer. I do not know fully what your qaulifications, are, but i’m sure than anyone short of Hitler could do a better job than Mike “the president said do a backlfip- well alrighty, me and mine support the president of the younited states” Nolan.
Thumbs up to Mike Nolan. Remember, you can’t please all the people all the time. The recent posts here seem to bear that out.
Tim
RagingHell,
I didn’t realize the constitution protected your right to post garbage on a privately run internet forum. The founding fathers must have forgotten that one. 
And yes, calling the moderator (on a forum that you are PRIVALEGED to post on – not entitled by some imaginary constitutional right) pigheaded and biased is whining.
If you aren’t called an SOB at least once every few days, you probably aren’t doing the job of moderator properly.
For the record, the only time I delete posts is when they do not conform to the guidelines as I interpret them. In the last few months the only posts I have deleted are some duplicated posts, a few dealing with issues that had nothing to do with chess or the USCF, and some posts (such as a solicitation of funds from an individual) that were obviously not proper or were about temporary issues that had been corrected, like a problem with the CCA website.
There have been quite a few I would like to have deleted, though.
I don’t think I’ve ever deleted any of RagingHell’s posts. (Another moderator deleted some threads while I was on vacation, it’s possible he had posted in those threads.)
Forum advisement: Tanstaafl can not read, and he missed his short bus this morning.
“Tanstaafl, I said you mean nothing to me”.
Then quit posting to me. 
Mike,
I guess you have to be fairly thick-skinned to moderate THIS forum. I’m all in favor of freedom of speech, but after a point I start to wonder if the average intelligence of the forum readers wouldn’t be raised if certain other posters would just go away. (And then I wonder how many think the same about me ).
Guess I’ll go get on the short bus – you know, the one that’ll take me to those remedial American History classes. I just don’t understand why I never learned that there’s a constitutional guarantee of freedom to post on the USCF’s forums. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of bandwidth…
I’m ok with mike nolan. I wouldn’t want to moderate this stuff.
Mike Nolan for Moderator of the year!
Paid for by the committee to kiss up to mike nolan 2006.
Thank you for your support
I’ve been involved in running online forums of one kind or another since about 1991, and have been called about every insulting name possible, several of them unprintable, more than a few of them anatomically impossible (and many of them ungrammatical.)
I’ve even been personally threatened a couple of times, and threatened with legal action at least twice.
However, an acquaintance of mine has me beat on hostile reactions. He was one of the original antivirus researchers and as far as I know is the only one to ever receive a bomb in the mail.
I certainly would like to weigh in FOR Mike Nolan!!!
While I started this thread disagreeing with him locking another, I certainly think he is an excellent moderator of this forum.
I can understand his locking the other thread and his reasons for doing so. I would like to get back to the real reason for my starting this thread and that is a discussion of the rule change and all.
By the way, who is this RagingHell dude?!?