🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Mar 6, 2012 03:56 PM UTC:
Charles Gilman wrote:
Even before post-your-own pages, the editors were all too busy with day jobs to be able to read through and make scholarly recommendations. Not once did I get an e-mail vback saying 'We canot possibly post this as it has no merit'.
Before David implemented post-your-own-pages, he had made Charles an editor of this site, and I objected to this in no uncertain terms, because I considered Charles unqualified to be an editor here. And I stand by that. Charles writes and writes and writes, but he doesn't playtest, and he doesn't carefully select what material he releases. I don't have the time to keep up with everything he writes, and I just ignore most of it. I expect the other editors don't keep up with what he writes either. Although the editors did not have the time to keep up with Charles' output, David wanted to continue to allow him to post his games and piece articles here. As a compromise, he created the post-your-own-pages system. The idea is that games posted by this method have not been reviewed by the editors in any depth and do not bear any official seal of approval. It is essentially a vanity press. The one merit of this is that it allows his games to get some scrutiny. My concern remains that allowing his pages here drags down the quality and reputation of this site. I think more could be done to distinguish these user-generated pages from the rest of the site. My suggestions toward this are to 1) reword the text appearing in the footer of user-generated pages and move it the header. Say something like 'This user-generated page has been posted through the Chess Variant Pages vanity press. It has not received serious scrutiny from the editors, and it has not been officially approved by anyone associated with this site.' 2) Exclude user-generated pages from searches unless someone specifically checks a box to include them in the search. 3) Create an automated peer review system that updates a game's reputation when people play it and report on it. This would have to be different than the ratings system currently in place. The one currently in place doesn't work well and should be eliminated.
Charles Gilman wrote:
Before David implemented post-your-own-pages, he had made Charles an editor of this site, and I objected to this in no uncertain terms, because I considered Charles unqualified to be an editor here. And I stand by that. Charles writes and writes and writes, but he doesn't playtest, and he doesn't carefully select what material he releases. I don't have the time to keep up with everything he writes, and I just ignore most of it. I expect the other editors don't keep up with what he writes either. Although the editors did not have the time to keep up with Charles' output, David wanted to continue to allow him to post his games and piece articles here. As a compromise, he created the post-your-own-pages system. The idea is that games posted by this method have not been reviewed by the editors in any depth and do not bear any official seal of approval. It is essentially a vanity press. The one merit of this is that it allows his games to get some scrutiny. My concern remains that allowing his pages here drags down the quality and reputation of this site. I think more could be done to distinguish these user-generated pages from the rest of the site. My suggestions toward this are to 1) reword the text appearing in the footer of user-generated pages and move it the header. Say something like 'This user-generated page has been posted through the Chess Variant Pages vanity press. It has not received serious scrutiny from the editors, and it has not been officially approved by anyone associated with this site.' 2) Exclude user-generated pages from searches unless someone specifically checks a box to include them in the search. 3) Create an automated peer review system that updates a game's reputation when people play it and report on it. This would have to be different than the ratings system currently in place. The one currently in place doesn't work well and should be eliminated.