How Many Voices?

Hello Cherubs,

Back in the late 1990s there was only one place on the net where Australian chess enthusiasts could give voice to their concerns and raise questions. It was the official bulletin board run by Paul Bruekhousen for the ACF.

It was a rough part of town where the likes of Bill Gletsos, Kevin Bonham and myself would do battle. Filled mostly with flame wars and such nonsense, the board was still able to air and debate burning questions in Australian Chess. At the time it was the rating system and the existence of god. Some things never change.

The ACF was spooked by claims that it was liable for libel on the board and dutifully, gave the well run and established monopoly speakers corner of Australian chess to a privateer who ran Chess Chat ( http://www.chesschat.org/ ). At that point the formal legal responsibility for online discourse fell to the privateer. Oddly, that was an expensive exercise - approaching $1000 a year - for the privateer and for no commercial benefit. Speculations still abound as to who may be actually bankrolling the site. In any case, the ACF controls the Chess Chat board through the vigilance* of Bill Gletsos and Kevin Bonham - both big noise executives in the ACF.

Debate was often and is still stifled at Chess Chat. It is little wonder then, that other avenues for voices of decent began to appear on the net:
With me as midwife, Uber Chess Jehad was born and died of self inflicted wounds. Later, Australian Chess Club Forum ( http://p067.ezboard.com/baustralianchessclub ) was also born, but has been a runt - albeit a particularly hardy one with a style contrasting strongly with the toxic Chess Chat.

The blogsphere also has had one pod caster which has faded and several blogs. The standout daily must read blogs are The Closet Grandmaster ( http://closetgrandmaster.blogspot.com/ ) and Chessexpress ( http://chessexpress.blogspot.com/ ). Two other bogs are The Chessnut and now, as in right now, is this here blog what you is reading.

Finally, yet another bulletin board is about to appear. Form the efforts of a Queenslander, within 48 hours, the as yet nameless board will arc up and be a third rival to the behemoth Chess Chat. Check back here regularly to find whereabouts of the new board as soon as it appears.

WARNING: If you have a Chess Chat account, you are not permitted by Chess Chat to post there, any text posted elsewhere by some individuals. You will be abused and banned. That is the nature of Chess Chat.

*A first misspelling of “vigilance” was picked up by my spell check as probably “virulence.”