Chess Carnival Fallout

Loomis wrote in comments to Sunday's post:

I like the carnival because it helps connect the chess blog community. However,
I think the format should encourage interaction. A lot of times people don't
check the comments of their old blog posts, so a link to an old post doesn't
lend itself to interaction between reader and author.

To which I have a modest proposal:

1) As for interaction between readers and authors, set up an automatic e-mail every time someone comments to a post on your blog. Blogger has that feature. I think that this is pretty common in other blog engines now, too.

2) To the more general phrase: "connect the chess blog community" (hold onto your seatbelt!) I suggest we use the USCF Forums. Now I know that they have a lousy rep but since the election they have been trying to clean them up. Only a few malcontents cause most of the trouble now and we know who they are.

Another problem is the lack of common-sense that the moderators have had in the past. It wasn't so long ago that posts on chess were pulled "because they didn't concern USCF business". They had trouble connecting in their minds the USCF mission to promote chess and allowing the website to promote chess. (Yes, I was the primary instigator/agitator on that battle.) However, now I think that this is a battle that has largly been won. In fact, the moderator that is most active now, Mr. Vaughn (Tanstaafl) has said that he considered discussion on the Chess Blog Carnival to be okay on the site. Kudos, Tan!

Most importantly of all, the larger chess community (at least in the USA) needs to fundamentally change the attitude towards the USCF. It is not THEIR USCF; it is OUR USCF. We do not have to shell out bucks and spend a lot of time developing a new forum for us to use. We already have one. It is bought and paid for by our membership dollars. All we have to do is use it.

As for the bloggers outside of the USA, I note that the USCF is affiliated with FIDE. With the new site renovation coming any day now, we could all use a public section in the Forum. Someday, the Executive Board may want to set up a seperate forum just for the internet bloggers but for now, I suggest we just use the CLUBS FORUM. And if some of the posts are in French, Russian, Chinese, or any other language, then so be it! Gens Una Sumas!

We ought not to go through any process or anything. We should just start using it. Just to get things started, I'm going to post this in a new thread on the forum. Check out this link for Chess Club Organization:
http://www.uschess.org/forums