Is Sam Sloan a real person?

Someone mentioned in a post the other day that there are impostors.

What is all this with Susan Polgar from "Sam Sloan"? I'm interested
in chess news but not beefs between two people.

Why isn't she playing in the Women's Championship?

As someone else said, the signal to noise ratio is very low here.

I am thinking of upgrading my Free Agent newsreader to be able to
ignore "his" posts being downloaded.

Does anyone know of a free newsreader that will ignore posts by name
or subject?

Thank you.

On Jun 25, 1:30 pm, Fred wrote:
Is Sam Sloan a real person?

Someone mentioned in a post the other day that there are impostors.

What is all this with Susan Polgar from "Sam Sloan"? I'm interested
in chess news but not beefs between two people.

Why isn't she playing in the Women's Championship?

As someone else said, the signal to noise ratio is very low here.

I am thinking of upgrading my Free Agent newsreader to be able to
ignore "his" posts being downloaded.

Does anyone know of a free newsreader that will ignore posts by name
or subject?

Thank you.

Sam Sloan is a real person. He's made a lot of enemies (for obvious
reasons), so there's also an impersonator who posts to these
newsgroups occasionally pretending to be him. Apparently, Sloan's not
the only one that needs to get a life.

If you're looking for a more serious place to talk and avoid the
political BS, head to http://www.chessforums.org/ instead of Usenet.
Usenet really does seem to be dying out in general, in favor of
private forums. That one seems to be the best chess forum around,
despite being only a few months old. It's small for now, but it's
growing rapidly.

--Richard

Susan Polgar has her own blog
http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/

* Richard wrote:
private forums. That one seems to be the best chess forum around,
despite being only a few months old. It's small for now, but it's
growing rapidly.

The fact that it's small and new is probably the only reason why it's
devoid of all this ****e. The bigger it grows the higher the signal to
noise ratio will be. That's why Usenet is "dying out". It's not dying
out but just imitating real life by engulfing more than it's fare share
of whackos.

Fred wrote:
Does anyone know of a free newsreader that will ignore posts by name
or subject?

I think Thunderbird will but I'm not sure. You could also investigate
the combination of Emacs (or XEmacs) and GNUs but you might find that
hard work (again, I've not used it; it has a bit of a reputation for
being very powerful but not overly user-friendly).

Personally, I use trn on a Linux system; if I were starting again
today, I'd probably use Emacs and GNUs.


Dave.



--
David Richerby Portable Nuclear Toy (TM): it's like
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ a fun child's toy that's made of atoms
but you can take it anywhere!

On Jun 25, 1:30 pm, Fred wrote:

Is Sam Sloan a real person?


Yes. In fact, he defeated Bill Brock (another "real" person)
head-to-head, in person, in a grudge (chess) match. A few
posters here have described in horrid detail how he looks,
sounds, and even smells -- and it doesn't get any more real
than that!


Someone mentioned in a post the other day that there are impostors.


Any impostor can be readily identified by simply asking
them to name the second-cousin, once removed, of
Thomas Jefferson's third cousin, Sallie Mae Smith. If
they respond with anything less than a full recounting of
the whole story of the slave children of TJ, you have just
identified a cheap impostor.


What is all this with Susan Polgar from "Sam Sloan"? I'm interested
in chess news but not beefs between two people.


What about a grudge match between these two?


Why isn't she playing in the Women's Championship?


Idunno. Maybe the competition is getting tougher
these days. In particular, the Chinese are beginning
to get into the fracas. Maybe she's tired of this sort
of competition. I think she should issue a challenge
to GM Fischer, offering him Knight odds.


As someone else said, the signal to noise ratio is very low here.


Funny thing is, if you try switching to one of the
other chess newsgroups here, you will find a very
high percentage of this "noise" is crossposted
everywhere. Many foreign readers can't stand all
the USCF-related sniping.


I am thinking of upgrading my Free Agent newsreader to be able to
ignore "his" posts being downloaded.


In addition to filters, the author is noted at the top of
each post. In other words, you don't have to read them
all. My suggestion to all the people who complain about
the signal to noise ratio is to stop your whining and do
something to improve it. Like say, starting a thread in
which you personally deliver all signal and no noise, to
set an example and "raise the bar". In a sense, these
many complaints about the noise are themselves nothing
more than noise, at least to those who come here to
read about *chess*. Me, I come to read about the slave
children, genetics, and really, just about anything. ;D

-- help bot

On Jun 26, 7:11 am, Tom Sawyer wrote:
* Richard wrote:
private forums. That one seems to be the best chess forum around,
despite being only a few months old. It's small for now, but it's
growing rapidly.

The fact that it's small and new is probably the only reason why it's
devoid of all this ****e. The bigger it grows the higher the signal to
noise ratio will be. That's why Usenet is "dying out". It's not dying
out but just imitating real life by engulfing more than it's fare share
of whackos.

The difference on private forums is that there are moderators who can
prevent the spam invasion. After the discussions here, there was a
short discussion on chessforum.org about whether or not to allow
political posts. The owner said he'd consider adding a politics
subforum when and if there's interest from members. So at least it'll
be easy to avoid the garbage by simply sticking to the other
subforums, as opposed to the rgc.* groups, where the political BS is
crossposted to all of them.

As I said, Chess Forums is small and new for now, but it's growing
rapidly and heading in the right direction. I highly recommend
everyone go check it out.

--Richard

On Jun 26, 4:37 pm, Richard wrote:
On Jun 26, 7:11 am, Tom Sawyer wrote:

* Richard wrote:
private forums. That one seems to be the best chess forum around,
despite being only a few months old. It's small for now, but it's
growing rapidly.

The fact that it's small and new is probably the only reason why it's
devoid of all this ****e. The bigger it grows the higher the signal to
noise ratio will be. That's why Usenet is "dying out". It's not dying
out but just imitating real life by engulfing more than it's fare share
of whackos.

The difference on private forums is that there are moderators who can
prevent the spam invasion. After the discussions here, there was a
short discussion on chessforum.org about whether or not to allow
political posts. The owner said he'd consider adding a politics
subforum when and if there's interest from members. So at least it'll
be easy to avoid the garbage by simply sticking to the other
subforums, as opposed to the rgc.* groups, where the political BS is
crossposted to all of them.

As I said, Chess Forums is small and new for now, but it's growing
rapidly and heading in the right direction. I highly recommend
everyone go check it out.

--Richard

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your comments regarding www.ChessForums.org, I think the
major difference between Chess Forums and a number of other chess
sites is thats its essentially owned by one person, and run by the
community. I'm not a large chess store looking to sell the latest sets
or clocks, or even a large chess organization looking to promote its
products or services in the chess world. I'm Greg, a 22 year old,
amateur chess player in the UK. I have a strong belief in giving the
members of the site what it is they want, as ultimately without them
the site wouldn't exist.

You're right the forums are relatively new, I started it in February,
but when you consider I started with no links to the online Chess
community, and no experience of running a forum before I think the
site is doing really well. I set out to offer a free, modern chess
forum site, modern in its software (latest vBulletin) modern in its
design and modern in its approach.

Anyway I'll stop giving my Chess Forums speech now! and leave you guys
to make up your own mind, I hope you can spare a few minutes to check
the site out, and I will hopefully get to chat to you guys on the
forums soon.

Thanks for your time,
Greg
www.ChessForums.org

help bot wrote:

On Jun 25, 1:30 pm, Fred wrote:

Is Sam Sloan a real person?

Yes. In fact, he defeated Bill Brock (another "real" person)
head-to-head, in person, in a grudge (chess) match. A few
posters here have described in horrid detail how he looks,
sounds, and even smells -- and it doesn't get any more real
than that!

Someone mentioned in a post the other day that there are impostors.

Any impostor can be readily identified by simply asking

Good, good stuff. Finally 'cornbot' is learning how to spell _impostor_
correct. Well done cornmouth. And while Phil Innes is busily fornicating
with your 'things' you might be looking to your corn-stik arse.

* Fred wrote:
Is Sam Sloan a real person?

Someone mentioned in a post the other day that there are impostors.

What is all this with Susan Polgar from "Sam Sloan"? I'm interested
in chess news but not beefs between two people.

Why isn't she playing in the Women's Championship?

As someone else said, the signal to noise ratio is very low here.

I am thinking of upgrading my Free Agent newsreader to be able to
ignore "his" posts being downloaded.

Does anyone know of a free newsreader that will ignore posts by name
or subject?

Free Agent doesn't but full-featured Agent does (and is a good program).

Or failing that Thunderbird can kill-file by name or subject.