"Ian Burton" wrote in message
...

"Michael Steen" wrote in message
...
Thanks to all in this newsgroup for providing me a couple of months of
diversion. I recently came back to organized chess after several years
away, and I'd hoped that this group would be discussing personalities,
strategies, tactics, the history of the game, etc. You know, the kind of
thing that keeps us interested over the long haul when studying endgames
gets pretty dry.
Instead I found that the level of personal attack had escalated
dramatically since I was last here, and, unfortunately, way too much of
the space was taken up by a few semi-sociopaths who apparently spend
about 10 hours a day at their computers, spewing out the same venomous
postings over and over and over by hitting copy and paste. When you
people find time to actually play chess or work at jobs is beyond me.
Anyway, I'm leaving to go back to ICC, ChessCafe, and other sites where
people who like chess actually write about it and discuss it.
I leave the rest of you to stew in your own juice. Enjoy.

Bravo, Michael! This group has little to do with chess these days. I,
too, bemoan that fact.

Bemoan or beware? Ian - come on - let's take it back. Random noise sometimes
needs confronting directly [since it distorts] - but most efficacious is to
just write on chess topics, and let this be the measure of things.

Others can offer opinion from their own state from another perspective than
chess - but really lack some compass, some central orinentation to how we
together should discuss chess - and shall we not example it ourselves?

If we fall from this goal, its okay! but not to try is to moan like they do,
non stop - and not just in this ng, in every ng on newsnet this can be
witnessed.

When is receive 1. e4 it is so hard to not play 1. ... c5 because... laugh
and lets us all talk together as human beings who are not 'tolerant' of each
other [how patronising!] but as respectful of whatever we know in relation
to others.

This is how it used to be here sometimes, and was all that was necessary to
keep on compass.

Sometimes someone would say something absolutely marvelous!

Phil Innes

Ian Burton
(Please reply to the Newsgroup)