My statement from Rodent homepage

If You found out about Rodent at Talkchess forum, please be aware that I, and other people from Poland, cannot access that site , because host decided to block the ip numbers coming from that country. This situation persists for half a year. And that hurts me greatly. I no longer believe that chess programming community is an inclusive circle it once was. Apart from a few select people (and they know who they are), hardly anybody speaks up against this discrimination.

In case You don't know me, here is some background. As a former academic (PhD in mediaeval literature) I care for sharing information. My stint with open source code lasts for at least 15 years. Not only chess stuff, but also a program that modernizes spelling of Polish texts printed somwehere between 1850 and 1936. For 10 years I worked for a NGO whose main activity is publishing books that are in public domain (sadly only 1 of them is in English, but here it comes: https://wolnelektury.pl/katalog/lektura/argonauts-of-the-western-pacific.html). Situation when I do something for free and then need to go through jumps and hoops to even access the content I created, or when I cannot reliably share a link to such content, is simply against my core values.

Not sitting behind an arbitrary, discriminatory wall created by forum host, you cannot even see the amount of damage this decision caused, especially for the new users. Links that direct to "Forbidden" page severely limit the usefulness of Chessprogramming Wiki. They destroy the value of Google/DuckDuckGo searches related to chess programming. They even make my current job more difficult, since I have to explain stuff to my collegues instead of pointing them to more reliable sources.

Soem people told me to use VPN. But it does not solve all the problems - the software may scramble links to freely accessible content, hide chess diagrams etc. Beside that, it constantly reminds me that I was made a second-class user.

What can you do?

• Please consider writing to the admins of the discriminatory site of Talkchess about the issue. Please ask them politely when and how they are going to fix this issue. Or please do away with the politeness and remind them that they participate in something utterly immoral. The choice is yours. Please do that often.
  
• Please consider not posting there, because your content will be inaccessible in some parts of the world.
  
• If you care for spreading information about computer chess, please look for other venue. Talkchess no longer guarantees that.
  
• For Your own good, please backup any stuff you posted there, because you can lose access to it on a whim.
  
• If you happen to posses technical ability, resources and spare time, please consider backing up technical information from Talkchess. Replacing links at Chessprogramming Wiki with actual quotes might be a good way to start. Reposting it somewhere else [like this forum - PK] will work too.
  
• All of the above is especially important if Your work is in any way connected with open source. The discriminatory site of Talkchess goes totally against that spirit.

Pawel welcome. Many countries have been victim of the Talkchess country discrimination. But at least you could pass your IP to the Admin and then the owner unblocked you. Happened to me and many others. Have you tried this, sending a PM to the Admin (Sam)?

Unblocking my IP would solve only part of the problem - part that I consider less important. Other people would still be blocked from accessing information I post. Talkchess turning into a closed club, tacitly agreeing to shut some readers out, is not a solution. I would not join such club in first place.

Apologies for a silly question (you must have thought of it), but why not use a VPN service to hide your location?

TheSelfImprover wrote:

Apologies for a silly question (you must have thought of it), but why not use a VPN service to hide your location?

This fixes only one of two problems. I can post, but I cannot guarantee that my post will be visible to other users. I still cannot create a link to it reliably. Because of that, not only Talkchess is broken in Poland, but also Chesprogramming Wiki which contains many links to Talkchess, and Google/DuckDuckGo searches. Imagine a new programmer searching for some piece of knowledge only to receive "Forbidden" message. This sucks beyond limits. This is not what forums are created for.

This is a well-articulated complaint, clearly demonstrating that you deserve your PhD in mediaeval literature. But it's all a self-constructed reality distortion. You say that because you're geo-blocked from the forum "I no longer believe that chess programming community is an inclusive circle it once was.". What an utter nonsense. I'm affected by the geo-blocking as well, welcome to the club! And this has nothing to do with the chess community, simply with the fact that webservers cost money, no one wants to donate, so people were happy that talkchess could be hosted by chessusa.com. But this company runs the servers, they say what's happening, and they installed the geo blockers to protect their site (which may or may not be justified, but it's their business and they pay for it). It has absolutely zero to do with the chess community or with Poland or whatever. All this was explained at length and many times. And you know all this exactly and still try to depict yourself as some sort of a victim. How about organizing donations for webservers, or even donating a webserver? Why don't you do anything? I hope you're demonstrating against the anti-abortion plans in Poland as loudly as you're targeting people trying to run a forum in their spare time and for free.

Forza wrote:

This is a well-articulated complaint, clearly demonstrating that you deserve your PhD in mediaeval literature. But it's all a self-constructed reality distortion. You say that because you're geo-blocked from the forum "I no longer believe that chess programming community is an inclusive circle it once was.". What an utter nonsense. I'm affected by the geo-blocking as well, welcome to the club! And this has nothing to do with the chess community, simply with the fact that webservers cost money, no one wants to donate, so people were happy that talkchess could be hosted by chessusa.com. But this company runs the servers, they say what's happening, and they installed the geo blockers to protect their site (which may or may not be justified, but it's their business and they pay for it). It has absolutely zero to do with the chess community or with Poland or whatever. All this was explained at length and many times. And you know all this exactly and still try to depict yourself as some sort of a victim. How about organizing donations for webservers, or even donating a webserver? Why don't you do anything? I hope you're demonstrating against the anti-abortion plans in Poland as loudly as you're targeting people trying to run a forum in their spare time and for free.

This company runs the server, but we did not asked them to block people.
If they cannot make the hosting the way our wishes get fulfilled we have to go to another place.
IMO blocking people is a serious Charta break,

nescitus wrote:

If You found out about Rodent at Talkchess forum, please be aware that I, and other people from Poland, cannot access that site , because host decided to block the ip numbers coming from that country. This situation persists for half a year. And that hurts me greatly. I no longer believe that chess programming community is an inclusive circle it once was. Apart from a few select people (and they know who they are), hardly anybody speaks up against this discrimination.

You have an absolutely terrific chess program.
I support your efforts to gain straightforward access to the site.