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Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club

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Re: Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club

#91

Post by JoshTriplett »

paulddraper wrote: post #84
JoshTriplett wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense that the legal system and individuals' freedom of association would have different thresholds for deciding to act. Suppose we say that the legal system needs to have 95% probability of guilt to render a guilty verdict, and its associated consequences such as imprisonment and/or restitution. A high threshold makes sense for such systems ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio ). Suppose, fo…

That's absolutely true of criminal cases. But civil cases have a far, far lower bar. 4/5 is acceptable, especially considering that sentencing can incorporate uncertainty. Plenty of cases succeed in civil court where they would fail in criminal court.

Absolutely true (civil cases are "preponderance of the evidence"), but the same principle still applies, just with lower numbers. 51% likely might be enough for a verdict against someone in a civil case and a legally enforceable monetary judgement. But if you have someone 30% likely to have done something (where the baseline should be close to 0%), that's still enough that reasonable risk-averse organizations may reasonably choose to not associate with them.

A court that can render legally enforceable judgements against someone should absolutely have a higher bar of certainty than an organization that is simply excluding someone from participation in that organization.

Re: Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club

#92

Post by notreallyauser »

COGlory wrote: post #5

I'm confused what Lichess wanted here. One woman complained. USCF assigned her an escort. More women complained. USCF banned the guy. This sounds completely reasonable, unless the first woman provided proof, you can't just ban someone because of an allegation. But they took steps to ensure her safety at future events. What does Lichess want here? They say it's insufficient, but they never really say what should have…

They seem to want confidence that US Chess and STLCC leadership are able to handle these complaints appropriately going forward: a change of leadership would be one way. Per the intro, they're looking for scrutiny and accountability of the handling: with that the current leadership might be able to regain confidence, I guess.

Your characterisation ignores the other case, of course, but on the one you're referring to note that there were two complaints prior to the multiple ones and the ban was a secret, partial ban.

It's very likely there would be no proof, but a competent investigation can talk to those involved and come to a conclusion. Patterns of behavior can be established over time. And there may have been say CCTV that an investigation could obtain that the woman herself couldn't immediately provide.

Both of the offenders here have multiple allegations against them -- escorting one woman doesn't protect other women (and presumably ends at the edge of the venue), and escorting all women isn't a scalable solution.

Timely, competent investigations of allegations and the removal of predators is the only way. But orgs are learning this stuff, and are staffed and run by humans. Where mistakes are made they should be owned up to.

Re: Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club

#93

Post by bluGill »

nickthegreek wrote: post #40
roschdal wrote: post #24

[flagged]

This is about Freedom of Association, a protected right under the first amendment.

Do you really want to belong to an organization that bans based on accusations? That seems like a great way for someone dishonest to avoid playing someone they know they will have a problem beating - just accuse them of sexual harassment and you don't have to worry about it.

Things like the above have been done in the past. That is why the courts have complex and slow procedures to solve problems. I hate it as well, but any alternative is at least as bad - though perhaps in a different direction.

Re: Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club

#94

Post by rolandog »

glenda wrote: post #19
paulddraper wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, we have such organizations...they are called courts.

And from what I can see those courts have shown to be pretty ineffective against crimes like sexual assault.

And I shudder to think of the amount of information an actual adult and politician has to willfully resist to learn to say things like: "If it's legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down, [...]".

Re: Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club

#95

Post by bluGill »

kstrauser wrote: post #55
veave wrote: post #16

Lots of allegations, lots of testimonies, zero police reports, zero convictions.

I don’t have to see a conviction to kick someone out of my living room.

No, but if are a large organization like USCF you probably want to have a higher bar than just an accusation.

Re: Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club

#96

Post by ajkjk »

nonethewiser wrote: post #85
ajkjk wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lichess is in the convenient position of having a lot of negotiating power over other organizations because of its ascendancy, which means that since it apparently has a sense of ethics it can assert those ethics on the more-despicable organizations that don't. We are lucky to have them in that position.

I agree that they are obviously championing a social justice cause.

Weird way to phrase it. Most people, even the ones who rail against social justice, would not categorize "actually doing something about sexual abuse" as a social justice cause -- a phrasing which is obviously intended to politicize it and disable your need to care about it, anyway. Is your preferred alternative "don't do something about sexual abuse"? Good luck with that.

Lichess is doing something because (a) they can and (b) the people who could, won't. That's pretty much how progress happens. c.f. every labor movement ever.

Re: Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club

#97

Post by [deleted] »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #3

One thing I'm really struggling with for all these kind of issues is do we really want to create another legal system? That's basically what every organization is being pushed into at this rate. From Universities to chess Leagues they are assembling what amounts to their own judges, juries, and prosecutors. If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system a…

[deleted]

Re: Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club

#98

Post by dragonwriter »

the_lego wrote: post #72
giraffe_lady wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the way you want to approach it, which does have some value, the starting question is "why isn't the legal system sufficient or able to address this?" Which is a many-layered question but let's go. The needs of a small organization are different from an entire state. Transgressions can be disruptive or destructive to organization-scale relationships without rising to criminality. And the the traditional fem…

> A famous quote on this is that from a woman's perspective rape isn't illegal it's regulated. "Regulated" in the sense that the average prison term for [edit: federal cases of , see reply for closest approximation I could find for non-federal average sentence] sexual abuse is 17 years? their average sentence was 211 months - https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...

The US Sentencing Commission:

(1) only gets referrals related to federal sentencing (which are a small and not-representative minority of “sexual abuse” cases (if you look at your own document, the majority of the cases are charges specific to one form or another of child sex trafficking—almost half for production of child pornography alone, while only 10% are rape, the specific thibg being referred to in the post you responded to.)

(2) Doesn't include statistics covering situations where law enforcement, prosecutors, etc., decided not to pursue charges.

Re: Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club

#99

Post by rexpop »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #3

One thing I'm really struggling with for all these kind of issues is do we really want to create another legal system? That's basically what every organization is being pushed into at this rate. From Universities to chess Leagues they are assembling what amounts to their own judges, juries, and prosecutors. If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system a…

> do we really want to create another legal system?

Yes, yes we do. The current legal system is inadequate to the task. It is costly, intimidating, strenuous to wield and aggressive in its penalties. Accountability and recompense can be more judiciously attained by interpersonal conflict-resolution practices at the lowest institutional level, ie at the leaf-nodes of the social hierarchy.

By asking us to rely on an unreliable legal system, you are asking us to accept victimization. If institutions return to "passing the buck" as they broadly were before, eg #MeToo, the buck will not stop. It will ricochet off the indifferent law.

Re: Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club

#100

Post by kstrauser »

bluGill wrote: post #95
kstrauser wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have to see a conviction to kick someone out of my living room.

No, but if are a large organization like USCF you probably want to have a higher bar than just an accusation.

Sounds like they have multiple allegations from multiple victims across multiple years. That seems like a reasonable cause for USCF to investigate those allegations.
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