Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Please, add interactive board for Gala chess. There is not :(

It appears Gala Chess has too much location dependence of the piece moves to be handled by the current standard version of the Interactive Diagram. (The moves cannot be expressed in Betza notation.) It woud require a specially written move generator to handle that variant. And I have neither the time nor the inclination to program that. I could probably create some 20 Interactive Diagrams for more normal chess variants in the time required to do it, and Gala Chess doesn't seem more important to me than any of those.

Excuse me. I'm having a problem. A variant I named but submitted no information for is claiming that the game name is submitted. This means that since I've changed my mind I cannot find how to retract and delete the submission. It doesn't stand to reason that I can't delete it because it is unnecessarily saying that the name is someone else's submission. I expected that my data was just stored in my browser so that I could just erase the form. In my mind, if I haven't published something then I haven't submitted it. The server disagrees. Is there a way to remove the game name from submission? I discovered this when I made a new account because I lost my password and user I.D. The point is that I want to submit That game name under the new account and delete this account. Any help would be appreciated.

What's the name of the game?

I the Lord know that Fergus Duniho is preparing himself to steal variants from people. And he doesn't know that if he had not done this that Chris Urquhart would have given this variant for free to the public. If he hadn't done this, Chris Urquhart would have done wonderful things for the public. All he wanted was to sign to an anonymous account so that he couldn't receive credit. Now Fergus Duniho will realize that I the Lord am watching him.

Not everything that goes wrong is a conspiracy against you. If you want technical support with the problem you described earlier, answer the question I asked you in my previous comment.

A variant I named but submitted no information for is claiming that the game name is submitted.

When you named the game, you submitted its name.

It doesn't stand to reason that I can't delete it because it is unnecessarily saying that the name is someone else's submission.

When I tried to create a page for a game called Eternal Chess, I got this message:

Error: You may not edit Eternal Chess, because this is a preexisting submission that you are not the author of.

Is that the message you got?

Using a different account, I created a page for a different game, and when I went back to create the same page again, I did not get this message. Instead, I got a form for filling out information about the game. However, there was no button here for deleting the page.

I then selected the "Your Unpublished Submissions" menu item in the menu with my name, and I got a page with the link to the game.

This brought me to the page, which lacked any description of the game, because I hadn't added any. On this page was a link to Delete this submission. Also, the Edit menu had a menu item called Delete submission. These each link to the same script with the same value for itemid in the query string. Following the menu item, it gave me this information:

## Delete Submission
There was no member submission to delete.

IsDeleted :: 1 ::: 0

UPDATE `Item` SET `IsDeleted` = :isdeleted WHERE `ItemID` = :keyvalue
Array
(
    [:isdeleted] => 1
    [:keyvalue] => MSbugglechess
)
The item MSbugglechess has now been marked as deleted.

Although it had been marked as deleted, the entry in the Item table had not been deleted.

When I tried to recreate the page again, it recognized that it was still in the database and gave me the form for editing it again.

When I followed the "Your Unpublished Submissions" menu item, I did not see the game listed this time.

Using my main account, I tried to create a game under the name I had used, and it would not let me, giving me the same error message I had reported earlier.

There are a few ways to fix the problem:

1. Delete the Item entry instead of marking it as deleted.

2. Conditionally delete the Item entry, perhaps if the author deletes it, or there are no comments.

3. Allow ItemIDs that are marked as deleted to be reused by new authors.

I will allow people to weigh in on this before I change the code to do one of these.

I imagine that the database and scripts using a deleted flag--rather than actually deleting the information--was a purposeful decision. I think it's a reasonably good idea to keep data around in case an author (or someone posting as the author, not that I expect us to be a large target for hackers) mistakenly or brashly deletes or vandalizes their pages. We've in the past varied on how serious we are about our rights to maintain content posted here. That probably needs agreement first.

I don't think it entirely too onerous to require asking an editor to purge the last remnants of a page, but I think we don't surface clearly enough what "delete" means here (mostly fine, except for confusion in cases like these).

I don't think GDPR applies except to the connection between author and content. But also I am not a lawyer.

I imagine that the database and scripts using a deleted flag--rather than actually deleting the information--was a purposeful decision. I think it's a reasonably good idea to keep data around in case an author (or someone posting as the author, not that I expect us to be a large target for hackers) mistakenly or brashly deletes or vandalizes their pages.

David may have had something else in mind, as he added this feature before I programmed the 404 page, but I think the main use for marking a page as deleted is so that the 404 page can inform someone who goes to a deleted page that it used to exist. This makes sense for published pages, particularly those that have been around for a while. For unpublished pages, it seems like it would be fine to just completely delete the Item row.

Also, I'll note that David added this feature back when all pages were .html pages, and one field of the Item table was for the URL. So, keeping the row in the database would tell us that we once had a page at a certain location, and it would not deter anyone from putting a new page there. The issue now is that keeping this row for a deleted member-submitted page can prevent other members from creating a new page with the same name, ID and address.

I don't think it entirely too onerous to require asking an editor to purge the last remnants of a page

But if it is appropriate for an editor to delete an Item row, it could also be appropriate for a script to do it automatically under the right conditions.

I don't think GDPR applies except to the connection between author and content. But also I am not a lawyer.

I wasn't even thinking of this as a legal issue.

@Fergus: I would like to verify a new email address. A message appears that a link has been sent to my new email address, which I should click on. I can repeat this as often as I want, an email does not arrive.
What can happen, what do I have to do?

Our server email is not working, and I don't know how to fix it. If you want your email verified, send us or me an email from the email address associated with your account, asking for it to be marked as verified.

Hello! Cannot log in to my account - the site shows no warnings, just keeps showing the login in the menu.

(If this message appears, apparently the login works through the message form)

I believe that's the current behavior for an incorrect password, but could be any other error in logging in...the actual login page doesn't seem to produce a useful message either. @Fergus?

I have removed Zied Haddad and Ola Sasserson as editors, because neither has signed in since 2021, and neither was ever active very much as an editor. Although Greg Strong has been inactive for several months, he is still listed, as he has previously been active as an editor, and he has been inactive for less time.

I have made these changes to the Contributors page, which is linked to from this page but has not itself been indexed.

1. The SQL query is now sorted in the order of LastName, FirstName, PersonID.
2. Each option is written in the form of "LastName, FirstName – PersonID" to align with the sorting order.
3. The registered users list now includes all registered users, not just the ones who are not contributors.
4. I added a new list for unregistered contributors.
5. I moved up the registered and unregistered contributors lists to come right after the complete contributors list.