FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy

[hyatt]

From this I infer that the breaching of the Panel privacy requirements was thus OK'd by Rajlich (cf. March 2015 publication on Rybka forum). ... [The purloining of said Panel discussions, and particularly subsequent "blackmail" attempts by Schröder therein, was a subject in Yokohama, and generally it seems that this type of behaviour is bound to ensure that the "Panel" is not going to be used in subsequent cases, at least not in the same form].

Secondly you have no idea at all as to the source of the panel discussion leak. ... Accusations against Ed merely show your bias.

Yet, Mark Watkins states firmly it was Ed ...

Your reading comprehension underwhelms me. I never accused (nor "stated firmly") Mr. Schröder of being the "source" of the Mar 2015 Rybka forum panel discussion leak (done by Trotsky/Whittington). I merely stated that Schröder had "blackmailed" various persons back in 2012/3 regarding this, and that the topic was brought up in Yokohama, particularly as to how this might affect the Panel in working with LOOP.

BTW, now that you spoken out, I have removed the text you took offense.

I don't see why you did After all, it was part of your email (as Rajlich's representative) to Levy, and thus part of the procedural history. A better option would have been to put a sidenote/footnote somewhere on the page saying "MarkW disputes the veracity of this account"...

If ICGA wish to negotiate with Vas Rajlich they should approach his negotiators, myself and Ed.

I don't think the ICGA has any reason to accept Schröder and Whittington as representatives of Rajlich. If you want to drum up the "court" analogy again, leaking private documents (a la Trotsky/Whittington) would likely lead to disbarment, though admittedly the activities of Schröder [purloining these and then haranguing others about them] might only be seen as "contempt". Given these prior actions (among others), it seems perfectly reasonable to me that the ICGA would not accept either to act as Rajlich's representative.

Did you [Harvey] (or Bob or Lefler) consulted David to allow Chris (a critic) in or not?

Yes, they did. If you recall the history, ChrisW contacted me regarding his temporary ban from the Panel, and I was then involved in some circular emails with the above four. In particular, Levy was consulted by the Secretariat regarding the application of ChrisW, particularly the subsequent difficulties therein.

And you guys were deaf for Watkins plea to investigate R3 first

This is not my recollection. My opinion was that the ICGA should "move forward" (end the Panel Investigation) regarding the 2006-7 entries, and then if Rajlich had not sufficiently addressed the situation by (say) the next WCCC, then actions regarding later entries should be contemplated. I don't think I was ever eager to have the Panel "investigate R3" (even if I had already done lots of work vis-a-vis the R3/IPPOLIT), one reason being that it was not freely available to all Panel members.

Good. I'll take that as your acceptance of the obvious. The data was sent anonymously. There are about 50 panel members. The only valid deduction is that there's a 2% chance that Ed was the anonymous sender. Any increase on that 2% has to be down to personal bias.

Nevertheless, the terms: purloining, haranguing and blackmail, do indicate some form of biased thinking about Ed
Ed Schroeder has a reputation for being calm, cautious and conciliatory, it takes quite a lot to get him angry. I for one do not accept your characterisations, and, anyway, this is about an unjust verdict against an innocent programmer as more and more readers agree. Decoys and diversions into character assessments of those arguing are probably just chaos-makers and the process would be quicker and less unpleasant if we ALL refrained. At least here, on the one forum with a reputation for the possibility of reasoned and constructive argument between those of different views.

There were NOT "about 50 panel members". There were maybe 15 that participated, a total of 34 were approved.

For blackmail, do you know what it means? It would seem not.

[syzygy]

My best recollection is that what I said is "LOOP is essentially a bitboard rewrite of Fruit, with a few minor changes."

I might point out that Amir Ban interrupted me on this, and he and SMK had an extended side discussion about whether (or to what extent) doing a bitboard rewrite of Fruit would be "legal", both from the "Nintendo" (copyright) standpoint and also concerning ICGA's Rule #2 on originality.

Did they come to a conclusion on those two points?

[BB+]

So in a group mail I asked (each of) the Panel members if they had an objection to document their input for reasons of transparency and being accountable for their reasoning that led to their vote. And I got mixed reactions. Some had no problem among them Ken. Some needed to think it over. Some were flat-out against it.

The Panel deliberations were private (just as the FIDE EC deliberations were private). You can argue whether the Panel should have been private, and indeed with LOOP there was some discussion of that, but the decision in March 2011 was for privacy. It would be little more than pedantry to explain why such discussions are sometimes/often preferred to be private, the only thing that matters is that in this case they were. And so, my opinion regarding this request of Mr. Schröder (as a purportedly neutral truthseeker concerned with "transparency and being accountable") was the same as Don Dailey's: given that we agreed in the first place for this to be private, there was really no choice but to say NO, and that Mr. Schröder's action was little less than blackmail (fairly certain this was Don's term, Peter Skinner was also quite vocal on the matter). If anyone wanted to explain their reasoning, they could do so themselves, on one Internet forum or another. Mr. Schröder continued to harangue the Panel members, essentially saying that he would let their refusal (obviously a sign of some deep dark secret) be known far-and-wide if they failed to cave into his request. Some people understand "privacy", others understand it only when it suits their purposes...

Incidentally, the totality of Ken's Panel comments was to answer "yes" to both poll questions. The cynic would say that he knew the ICGA scene sufficiently well to understand the need to ensure that his words would not be subjected to later shenanigans, and thus only communicated privately to those as he saw fit.

Nevertheless, the terms: purloining, haranguing and blackmail, do indicate some form of biased thinking about Ed

See above actions by Mr. Schröder. Briefly: after he left the Panel (the last time), he then later contacted the Panel members, asking/demanding to be allowed to publish everything, was told by MarkL that the Panel discussions were private and he should delete the material from his hard drive, to which Schröder replied that such things were for babies. This forms (part of) the basis for my word choices. I discussed this and other incidents (regarding Schröder and the Panel material) in Yokohama. If this represents "biased thinking" about Mr. Schröder, I think my conclusions are based upon his actions, both in this incident and in others. [The word "purloin" is I think MarkL's, as it seemed to him particularly that Mr. Schröder never had any intention of obeying the Panel privacy rules when he was admitted (post-verdict), but rather only wanted to snoop]. A decent man would have understood what the word "private" means, and would have not put the Panel members into such a predicament in the first place.

That's a lot of text for a simple yes or no question and yet I can't find a yes or no.

But I notice Mark already gave the answer the 2 of you are not willing to answer. It's one of those things I still wanted to know after all these years. So my instincts were right, the cancelation of a critic (who could have made a difference) because of historic conflicts and personal dislike. How objective. And childish. I know you guys inside out. I am glad I resigned.

If the answer is "yes" it is a sign of past Levy/Whittington conflicts coming to the fore, and if the answer is "no" it would have been a sign of something else (like the "all-powerful Secretariat")... I can't say I know all the intracommunications with Levy/Secretariat, but my impression was that he let them carry out the acceptance/verification, and would not typically have intervened. Whether the initial "consultation" (from the Secretariat to Levy) was anything more than a perfunctory courtesy email that X had been admitted to the Panel pending identity verification, I cannot say. After ChrisW's outburst, I think Levy was more directly involved, though MarkL's email (to me, acting as the go-between on ChrisW's behalf) indicates it was first and foremost an unanimous vote of the Secretariat to temporarily decline his application.

Levy's version of what occurred appears in his rebuttal to Riis (page 7, point [c] of the section "Biased reporting"). Therein Levy writes: For example, Chris Whittington, a strong Ralich supporter, asked to join and made the comment that he supposed that I would refuse to admit him. Quite to the contrary, I was in favour of admitting him. Unfortunately, when we asked him as part of the registration procedure to verify his email address, which no longer matched those he used for older forums, he responded using phrases such as "wasting humiliation" and "occasional little hitler"? The Secretariat felt he was unwilling to have civil dialog with others and all three of them felt he should not be a member if he was going to be rude. Then, after a brief period, he was invited to re-apply but declined to do so.

[Rebel]

In fact, we had decided to accept that email but by the time everyone concurred you had left. And you DID "leave in a huff." And Ed left right behind you. It is always "in your way, on your time-frame, etc." I have to wait on others all the time. I have joined message boards where it took 2-3 weeks for approval. I don't expect everyone to work according to MY time frame. You should do the same. Then you would have been on the panel and at least THAT point would not be up for discussion. But we weren't fast enough for you, even though we had 30-40 applications to deal with. Not to mention other responsibilities. That seems to be more an issue of your lack of patience rather than our lack of interest.

Just tell the truth for a change so we can bury this subject. Chris subscribed and you guys went into panic mode. Consulted David. And in the meantime (the next days) I saw others approved. Then you guys came up with this poor excuse the delay was about identification of Chris while a) I already told you were connected to Chris and b) you answered Chris with -

From: Robert Hyatt <....>
To: chrisw......@yahoo.com
Sent: Thu, 24 February, 2011 18:54:17
Subject: Re: Wikispaces request to join icga from chriswhittington

here we go.



--------

Indicating you very well knew who was subscribing.

You guys were buying time, right?

[BB+]

I might point out that Amir Ban interrupted me on this, and he and SMK had an extended side discussion about whether (or to what extent) doing a bitboard rewrite of Fruit would be "legal", both from the "Nintendo" (copyright) standpoint and also concerning ICGA's Rule #2 on originality.

Did they come to a conclusion on those two points?

It went back and forth (and I think someone else joined in) for a couple of minutes (recall, the presentation was ex tempore, at the end of the round, and we had to leave the building soon too). My recollection is the following (all quotations are approximations). After I described LOOP briefly, and at some point [perhaps near a conclusion] labelled it with some phrase such as "essentially a bitboard rewrite of Fruit", Amir Ban interrupted me and said: But that would be legal, to which SMK intervened: "Legal", in what sense? Certainly not for our rules. AmirB then continued saying: Well, you can definitely take ideas from another engine, and SMK said: Yes, but what's happening here is much beyond that. Maybe it was Johannes Zwanzger (or Harvey, as the HIARCS operator) who chimed in: Surely you can't just rewrite Stockfish and call it your own, which then caused some discussion and nuance (from myself and others) to be added about what "rewrite" and "call it your own" should mean, and after some cross-chatter I think I rephrased the statement as (the unanimously agreeable): Surely you can't just re-implement Stockfish and enter it into an ICGA event. But as I say, time was short, and to my mind the debate never really handled anything but the extremes, and gave little if any guidance toward the middle. At the end of this, I think AmirB returned briefly to his statement about "legality" (which I took to mean copyright), and I don't recall anyone disputing with him at that juncture, though I think I said: It could depend upon how the rewrite was undertaken --- and in the same breath: OK, let's move on to Thinker (as to my mind, no one else in the room still seemed interested in what AmirB was raising).

Right before my short presentation (when the last people were still sitting down), AmirB had noted how "obvious" (post-disassembly) the Rybka case was, and wanted to know what could be done to stop the "smarter" guys who might be more careful to hide their non-originality. I'm not sure he was too happy with the end result of the discussion. Though as above, he was later quite adamant that ideas were of course non-exclusive. My recollection as to the audience were the 6 participants in the WCCC, namely: SMK, AmirB, JonnyZ, Harvey, Gyula Horvath, and Balasz Jako (the Merlin author); also Levy, Jaap, and a few other interested persons like Jan Krabbenbos (who might have made a comment or two at some points), and maybe Johan de Koning (definitely not HGM, who undoubtedly had better things to do). Some people might have departed before I finished, upon realising the subject matter was not the most interesting. I chatted some more with various people (including AmirB if my recollection is correct) at a short dinner at the restaurant at the metro station, and some of us rode back together on the metro to our hotels.

[hyatt]

In fact, we had decided to accept that email but by the time everyone concurred you had left. And you DID "leave in a huff." And Ed left right behind you. It is always "in your way, on your time-frame, etc." I have to wait on others all the time. I have joined message boards where it took 2-3 weeks for approval. I don't expect everyone to work according to MY time frame. You should do the same. Then you would have been on the panel and at least THAT point would not be up for discussion. But we weren't fast enough for you, even though we had 30-40 applications to deal with. Not to mention other responsibilities. That seems to be more an issue of your lack of patience rather than our lack of interest.

Just tell the truth for a change so we can bury this subject. Chris subscribed and you guys went into panic mode. Consulted David. And in the meantime (the next days) I saw others approved. Then you guys came up with this poor excuse the delay was about identification of Chris while a) I already told you were connected to Chris and b) you answered Chris with -

From: Robert Hyatt <....>
To: chrisw......@yahoo.com
Sent: Thu, 24 February, 2011 18:54:17
Subject: Re: Wikispaces request to join icga from chriswhittington

here we go.



--------

Indicating you very well knew who was subscribing.

You guys were buying time, right?

I have explained that email once. I will do so again, for the last time.

UAB had made several attempts to combine several schools into one college. For reasons most of us never bought in on. The first time it came up a huge debate erupted about promotion and tenure, and how can we have uniform rules when the disciplines are so different. For example, a science department writes journal and conference proceedings articles and applies for research funding that is peer-reviewed. What about a music department? When they compose a musical score is that equivalent to a journal article? A conference article? What about a nursing department? History? English? I went through that discussion when I was at USM. And it happened again. This died down. Then along comes the decision to form the college of arts and sciences even though nobody was against it. I simply pointed out that this is once again going to degenerate into a promotion/tenure/publication debate. And about the time the panel was being formed, I had just gotten an email from a faculty friend that sent me an excerpt from a discussion that had just re-started on this topic. I was in the process of replying to him, when the email from either Mark or David showed up. My "here we go" went to that email by pure accident. In retrospect, HAD it been intentional, it would have been quite prophetic don't you think? But it was really nothing more than my communication to another faculty member here indicating that we were obviously going to have this debate yet one more time, when it had NEVER been settled previously.

If "here we go" is that damning a statement to you, you have serious problems. I don't do that very often, but I have sent email to the wrong recipients on occasion. In the past three months our dean has done it three times and then sent out "cancellation requests" for those emails. It happens. It does not mean any dark plot is afoot.

The only time _I_ tried to buy was enough time to search through old emails to match the one Chris used. I could not find that email address ANYWHERE. I believe what I had was somehow related to oxford or oxfortsoft or something similar. And just that search took forever. You should try copying 4.5 gigabyte chunks of old emails, then unzipping them, then trying to search through them for an email you are not sure how to spell. My .signature has not changed in years. Search for "Hyatt" is good enough since that has always been my UAB and USM username. For Chris? Who knows. Chris. ChrisW. Trotsky. I don't remember all the names he has used. So yes, for me at least, it took time. Time that eventually led to "I have no record of that email, sorry." For most user applications, David was involved. For many we would tell him how we confirmed, for a couple he confirmed for us, etc. And while there might have been some approved while he was pending, there were a couple that were pending for far longer than his. And they didn't leave in a huff, they waited patiently and politely, something that would have easily gotten him on the panel.

[Chris Whittington]

In fact, we had decided to accept that email but by the time everyone concurred you had left. And you DID "leave in a huff." And Ed left right behind you. It is always "in your way, on your time-frame, etc." I have to wait on others all the time. I have joined message boards where it took 2-3 weeks for approval. I don't expect everyone to work according to MY time frame. You should do the same. Then you would have been on the panel and at least THAT point would not be up for discussion. But we weren't fast enough for you, even though we had 30-40 applications to deal with. Not to mention other responsibilities. That seems to be more an issue of your lack of patience rather than our lack of interest.

Just tell the truth for a change so we can bury this subject. Chris subscribed and you guys went into panic mode. Consulted David. And in the meantime (the next days) I saw others approved. Then you guys came up with this poor excuse the delay was about identification of Chris while a) I already told you were connected to Chris and b) you answered Chris with -

From: Robert Hyatt <....>
To: chrisw......@yahoo.com
Sent: Thu, 24 February, 2011 18:54:17
Subject: Re: Wikispaces request to join icga from chriswhittington

here we go.



--------

Indicating you very well knew who was subscribing.

You guys were buying time, right?

I have explained that email once. I will do so again, for the last time.

UAB had made several attempts to combine several schools into one college. For reasons most of us never bought in on. The first time it came up a huge debate erupted about promotion and tenure, and how can we have uniform rules when the disciplines are so different. For example, a science department writes journal and conference proceedings articles and applies for research funding that is peer-reviewed. What about a music department? When they compose a musical score is that equivalent to a journal article? A conference article? What about a nursing department? History? English? I went through that discussion when I was at USM. And it happened again. This died down. Then along comes the decision to form the college of arts and sciences even though nobody was against it. I simply pointed out that this is once again going to degenerate into a promotion/tenure/publication debate. And about the time the panel was being formed, I had just gotten an email from a faculty friend that sent me an excerpt from a discussion that had just re-started on this topic. I was in the process of replying to him, when the email from either Mark or David showed up. My "here we go" went to that email by pure accident. In retrospect, HAD it been intentional, it would have been quite prophetic don't you think? But it was really nothing more than my communication to another faculty member here indicating that we were obviously going to have this debate yet one more time, when it had NEVER been settled previously.

If "here we go" is that damning a statement to you, you have serious problems. I don't do that very often, but I have sent email to the wrong recipients on occasion. In the past three months our dean has done it three times and then sent out "cancellation requests" for those emails. It happens. It does not mean any dark plot is afoot.

The only time _I_ tried to buy was enough time to search through old emails to match the one Chris used. I could not find that email address ANYWHERE. I believe what I had was somehow related to oxford or oxfortsoft or something similar. And just that search took forever. You should try copying 4.5 gigabyte chunks of old emails, then unzipping them, then trying to search through them for an email you are not sure how to spell. My .signature has not changed in years. Search for "Hyatt" is good enough since that has always been my UAB and USM username. For Chris? Who knows. Chris. ChrisW. Trotsky. I don't remember all the names he has used. So yes, for me at least, it took time. Time that eventually led to "I have no record of that email, sorry." For most user applications, David was involved. For many we would tell him how we confirmed, for a couple he confirmed for us, etc. And while there might have been some approved while he was pending, there were a couple that were pending for far longer than his. And they didn't leave in a huff, they waited patiently and politely, something that would have easily gotten him on the panel.

Let's see now, who was involved as prime mover in each little episode ....

sends rude email: "here we go" in response to the application. Hyatt.
doesn't apologise for the rude email. Hyatt.
takes it apon himself to be email checker. Hyatt.
unable to check against 4.5 Gbytes of emails. Hyatt.
takes two days to not check. Hyatt.
rejects Ed's confirmation of the original email address. Hyatt.
pretends "little hitlers" was said about Secretariat and/or icga when it wasn't. Hyatt.
has track record of long and difficult arguing with Chris. Hyatt.

meanwhile, Lefler claimed he didn't know who Chris was, so he appears ro have no motive. Dungbeetle unlikely to care too much and anyway, just goes wit the flow. Levy not that stupid, would have waited for a good excuse later, if necessary, and made a ban.

Hyatt, you are guilty of deliberately sabotaging my application to the panel because you know perfectly well, that, when you are wrong, but trying to drive your points home, I am one of the most effective opponents around to stop you. That was your motive.

[Chris Whittington]

From this I infer that the breaching of the Panel privacy requirements was thus OK'd by Rajlich (cf. March 2015 publication on Rybka forum). ... [The purloining of said Panel discussions, and particularly subsequent "blackmail" attempts by Schröder therein, was a subject in Yokohama, and generally it seems that this type of behaviour is bound to ensure that the "Panel" is not going to be used in subsequent cases, at least not in the same form].

Secondly you have no idea at all as to the source of the panel discussion leak. ... Accusations against Ed merely show your bias.

Yet, Mark Watkins states firmly it was Ed ...

Your reading comprehension underwhelms me. I never accused (nor "stated firmly") Mr. Schröder of being the "source" of the Mar 2015 Rybka forum panel discussion leak (done by Trotsky/Whittington). I merely stated that Schröder had "blackmailed" various persons back in 2012/3 regarding this, and that the topic was brought up in Yokohama, particularly as to how this might affect the Panel in working with LOOP.

BTW, now that you spoken out, I have removed the text you took offense.

I don't see why you did After all, it was part of your email (as Rajlich's representative) to Levy, and thus part of the procedural history. A better option would have been to put a sidenote/footnote somewhere on the page saying "MarkW disputes the veracity of this account"...

If ICGA wish to negotiate with Vas Rajlich they should approach his negotiators, myself and Ed.

I don't think the ICGA has any reason to accept Schröder and Whittington as representatives of Rajlich. If you want to drum up the "court" analogy again, leaking private documents (a la Trotsky/Whittington) would likely lead to disbarment, though admittedly the activities of Schröder [purloining these and then haranguing others about them] might only be seen as "contempt". Given these prior actions (among others), it seems perfectly reasonable to me that the ICGA would not accept either to act as Rajlich's representative.

Did you [Harvey] (or Bob or Lefler) consulted David to allow Chris (a critic) in or not?

Yes, they did. If you recall the history, ChrisW contacted me regarding his temporary ban from the Panel, and I was then involved in some circular emails with the above four. In particular, Levy was consulted by the Secretariat regarding the application of ChrisW, particularly the subsequent difficulties therein.

And you guys were deaf for Watkins plea to investigate R3 first

This is not my recollection. My opinion was that the ICGA should "move forward" (end the Panel Investigation) regarding the 2006-7 entries, and then if Rajlich had not sufficiently addressed the situation by (say) the next WCCC, then actions regarding later entries should be contemplated. I don't think I was ever eager to have the Panel "investigate R3" (even if I had already done lots of work vis-a-vis the R3/IPPOLIT), one reason being that it was not freely available to all Panel members.

Good. I'll take that as your acceptance of the obvious. The data was sent anonymously. There are about 50 panel members. The only valid deduction is that there's a 2% chance that Ed was the anonymous sender. Any increase on that 2% has to be down to personal bias.

Nevertheless, the terms: purloining, haranguing and blackmail, do indicate some form of biased thinking about Ed
Ed Schroeder has a reputation for being calm, cautious and conciliatory, it takes quite a lot to get him angry. I for one do not accept your characterisations, and, anyway, this is about an unjust verdict against an innocent programmer as more and more readers agree. Decoys and diversions into character assessments of those arguing are probably just chaos-makers and the process would be quicker and less unpleasant if we ALL refrained. At least here, on the one forum with a reputation for the possibility of reasoned and constructive argument between those of different views.

There were NOT "about 50 panel members". There were maybe 15 that participated, a total of 34 were approved.

For blackmail, do you know what it means? It would seem not.

34 panel members? 3% chance it was Ed then. Frankly, I have no idea who it was, Ed would not be my first choice though. There are others, shall we say, unhappy, with the process.

Blackmail is a really silly characterisation. This is about whether or not an innocent programmer has had his life work, career, reputation and business gratuitously destroyed . Attacking Ed's character, especially when most people find him quite a reasonable kind of guy who means good, is really a sign you've lost the real battle and are desparately casting around to play the man and not the ball. Readers are not dumb, you realise?

[Chris Whittington]

.

[Chris Whittington]

So in a group mail I asked (each of) the Panel members if they had an objection to document their input for reasons of transparency and being accountable for their reasoning that led to their vote. And I got mixed reactions. Some had no problem among them Ken. Some needed to think it over. Some were flat-out against it.

The Panel deliberations were private (just as the FIDE EC deliberations were private). You can argue whether the Panel should have been private, and indeed with LOOP there was some discussion of that, but the decision in March 2011 was for privacy. It would be little more than pedantry to explain why such discussions are sometimes/often preferred to be private, the only thing that matters is that in this case they were. And so, my opinion regarding this request of Mr. Schröder (as a purportedly neutral truthseeker concerned with "transparency and being accountable") was the same as Don Dailey's: given that we agreed in the first place for this to be private, there was really no choice but to say NO, and that Mr. Schröder's action was little less than blackmail (fairly certain this was Don's term, Peter Skinner was also quite vocal on the matter). If anyone wanted to explain their reasoning, they could do so themselves, on one Internet forum or another. Mr. Schröder continued to harangue the Panel members, essentially saying that he would let their refusal (obviously a sign of some deep dark secret) be known far-and-wide if they failed to cave into his request. Some people understand "privacy", others understand it only when it suits their purposes...

Incidentally, the totality of Ken's Panel comments was to answer "yes" to both poll questions. The cynic would say that he knew the ICGA scene sufficiently well to understand the need to ensure that his words would not be subjected to later shenanigans, and thus only communicated privately to those as he saw fit.

Nevertheless, the terms: purloining, haranguing and blackmail, do indicate some form of biased thinking about Ed

See above actions by Mr. Schröder. Briefly: after he left the Panel (the last time), he then later contacted the Panel members, asking/demanding to be allowed to publish everything, was told by MarkL that the Panel discussions were private and he should delete the material from his hard drive, to which Schröder replied that such things were for babies. This forms (part of) the basis for my word choices. I discussed this and other incidents (regarding Schröder and the Panel material) in Yokohama. If this represents "biased thinking" about Mr. Schröder, I think my conclusions are based upon his actions, both in this incident and in others. [The word "purloin" is I think MarkL's, as it seemed to him particularly that Mr. Schröder never had any intention of obeying the Panel privacy rules when he was admitted (post-verdict), but rather only wanted to snoop]. A decent man would have understood what the word "private" means, and would have not put the Panel members into such a predicament in the first place.

That's a lot of text for a simple yes or no question and yet I can't find a yes or no.

But I notice Mark already gave the answer the 2 of you are not willing to answer. It's one of those things I still wanted to know after all these years. So my instincts were right, the cancelation of a critic (who could have made a difference) because of historic conflicts and personal dislike. How objective. And childish. I know you guys inside out. I am glad I resigned.

If the answer is "yes" it is a sign of past Levy/Whittington conflicts coming to the fore, and if the answer is "no" it would have been a sign of something else (like the "all-powerful Secretariat")... I can't say I know all the intracommunications with Levy/Secretariat, but my impression was that he let them carry out the acceptance/verification, and would not typically have intervened. Whether the initial "consultation" (from the Secretariat to Levy) was anything more than a perfunctory courtesy email that X had been admitted to the Panel pending identity verification, I cannot say. After ChrisW's outburst, I think Levy was more directly involved, though MarkL's email (to me, acting as the go-between on ChrisW's behalf) indicates it was first and foremost an unanimous vote of the Secretariat to temporarily decline his application.

Levy's version of what occurred appears in his rebuttal to Riis (page 7, point [c] of the section "Biased reporting"). Therein Levy writes: For example, Chris Whittington, a strong Ralich supporter, asked to join and made the comment that he supposed that I would refuse to admit him. Quite to the contrary, I was in favour of admitting him. Unfortunately, when we asked him as part of the registration procedure to verify his email address, which no longer matched those he used for older forums, he responded using phrases such as "wasting humiliation" and "occasional little hitler"? The Secretariat felt he was unwilling to have civil dialog with others and all three of them felt he should not be a member if he was going to be rude. Then, after a brief period, he was invited to re-apply but declined to do so.

Good example of Levy dishonesty by omission. he left out the word "time" in front of "wasting humiliation", whatever wasting humiliation is supposed to mean, something "rude" we are invited to assume. The expression was "time wasting humiliation" and was a complaint that it was humiliating to be kept waiting for so long when others were having their applications nodded through way quickly. That is not "rude", it's a complaint. "occasional little hitler", again,the reader is invited to assume "rude" when in fact, in context, it was a passing comment about another situationaltogether and NOT directed at anyone icga/secretariat, or connected to. Actually I was being chatty, and their misinterpretation was deliberate, imo.

I doubt the embargo was Levy generated, he is not so dumb. It smells way too strongly of Hyatt. He's the one with the motive.