CCO finds the forums listed below extremely anti-free-speech and we condemn their practice of exercising blatant censorships of all kinds. We did not list those forums that openly claim they are anti-free-speech though, as at least they are honest about what they are.

http://www.ficsforum.net/

This is the most censorship-loving place that we have ever seen, yet they claim they are pro-free-speech. They tend to censor even the gentlest forms of unpopular speech - the main moderator has even threatened to sue the forum users for not using the forum properly, and that is not his only lawsuit threat against readers of an online forum - see http://s6.invisionfree.com/Free_FICS_Forum/index.php?showtopic=82. They have a subforum called "Free for Flames and Rages", where they say they would allow nearly everything, but it's only empty words - they censor discussions there too. One of the most blatant censorships there is censoring the URLs to competing forums and organizations they don't like. In March 2004, they have censored nearly all discussions on the forum, labeling them "trolls" and claiming they are turning away "serious posters". Immediately after that, they closed the forum for unregistered users, and enforced strict criteria of eligibility for one to become a member. Everyone can still read posts, but you have to be a member in order to post there and the procedure for becoming a member is so complicated and slow that you have better chances running for the White House. The so called "serious posters" applauded such decisions by the administration, but none of them has posted anything on the forum since - speaks volumes about how much they have been turned away by "trolls". The moderators even said they would rather have an unused forum than allow users to speak freely. So that is what they have now - they have around 3 members there, 1 of them being active, sometimes posting silly things to himself. Occasionally, a user speaking some weird, unheard of, language shows up there making a bunch of posts in that language, and even though nobody seems to care, he doesn't seem willing to shut up. The moderators have made a mockery of that place, and what is most interesting is that they seem proud of it.

http://s6.invisionfree.com/ALT_FICS_Message_Boa/ - The ALT FICS Message Board

We have no words for this place. It was founded in view that ficsforum.net was not imposing enough censorship, and that there should be a more anti-free-speech board. After ficsforum.net introduced the new more censorship-loving policy, the ALT FICS moderators claimed they were satisfied with it and called their users to use ficsforum.net instead. They say that is why no one posts on the ALT FICS now, but rest assured that no one ever posted there, except for a few censorship lovers thrilling in ecstasy for a few days for having found the oasis of censorship. We promised we would not include here those forums that openly claim they are anti-free-speech, but we felt we would make an exception there - this place is so screwed up that we just couldn't resist mentioning it.

http://talkchess.com/

This place is actually comprised of two subforums: The Computer Chess Club (CCC) and The Chess Thinkers Forum (CTF). Both components have in past censored slightly unpopular speech or ideas, especially with regard to world politics, and applied double standards. For example, the CTF moderators don't allow members whom they don't like to criticize others, deeming such posts "trolls", yet they allowed another more popular member to post a criminal libel against one of the talkchess.com founders, who has previously been conveniently banned from the forum (the fact that one of the founders is banned from the forum speaks volumes about how "excellent" that place is). The CCC moderators, on the other hand, didn't allow discussions about ethics of computer cheating in chess, deeming them "off topic" for computer chess, and banned the pertinent users. They even required users to use words in accordance with moderators' own definitions, rather than the dictionary ones - see http://s6.invisionfree.com/Free_FICS_Forum/index.php?showtopic=88 . Chris Whittington, one of the CCC founders said "I wrote the charter for the CCC forum, and if I had realised how bad it could get, I'ld have written in numerous checks and balances to deal with rogue moderators and group bullying. Even so the tendency to little Hitlerism is so strong here for some reason that I doubt anything much could ever have been done." CCC and CTF tend to resemble a democracy by allowing their users to elect the moderators for a 6 month term, however they seem to have forgotten that one of the essential values in democracy is Freedom of Speech. talkchess.com appears to have recently changed slightly towards a pro-free-speech forum though, and CCO welcomes this change, however this change is not enough and we expect and encourage more change in that direction in the future.

If you know of an online forum, message board or other sort of discussion group, preferably chess-related, that you think should be on one of our lists, please write us and provide your justification and evidence for your claims, and we may examine the pertinent forum closely for possible addition to our lists.

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