Friday, December 04, 2015

Opportunity not

Last word, unless it isn't, on that Stephen Moss article. Two points.

1. In the piece, writing of the English Chess Forum, Moss writes:
A brief examination of a discussion titled "The arbiter nexus" on the English Chess Forum provides a flavour of these decades-long battles; some of these men – and they are all men...
Moss quotes, or interviews, the following:

Nigel Davies
Danny Gormally
Nigel Short
Phil Ehr
Steve Giddins
Dominic Lawson
John Saunders

a. What do they all have in common?
b. This being so, why point the finger at the forum especially?

2. The piece is very critical of this "nexus", the people who voted to remove Phil Ehr and ECF officialdom generally. They're variously described as,
clueless...small-minded...bloody stupid...grossly immature, petty, pusillanimous.
However, at no point are their reasons for acting given, nor are any of the people criticised quoted in response, even though we know that other people were interviewed as well as those quoted.

The Guardian's Editorial Code includes the following clause.
Is there any reason why, on this occasion, there was no "obligation to allow the subject the opportunity to respond"?

Previously:
[Grossly immature]
[The decline of the "The Decline of English Chess" article]
[Magic words]
[Myopia]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some people appear to be of the mind that unless the forum contains posts which are well researched, contain no factual errors, and agree in advance with their own point of view, then it should be derided. Of course, that's not the idea of a forum. An internet forum presents the opportunity for everyone of a like interest to get together to discuss something, no matter how stupid their individual ideas might be. There is no compulsion to read everything that everyone writes there, the degree of engagement you make is entirely up to you. It is not a particularly hard concept to understand, and one can only assume that those who berate it are arrogant fuckwits of the type that believe that the world should be an Enid Blyton novel for children.

Regarding the Gaurdian's article, it is unquestionably suffering from some degree of slant. I imagine it is possible to use their own forums to debate the piece.

-the blueweasel

Anonymous said...

There's quite a bit of comment at
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/20/grandmaster-crash-how-english-chess-pawned-its-future#comments
Some well known names from the past added their thoughts.

RdC