Talk:Free Internet Chess Server

Old talk

This paragraph is incomprehensible to laymen, and irrelevant: "The original GPL chessd has been extensively updated, including PostgreSQL and MySQL backend support, at the Universidade Federal do Paraná in Brazil. They have published their work on Sourceforge as chessd "Chrysallis" (see external links) and continue to enhance the daemon." It may be important, and it may not. Since I can't understand it, I'm not going to delete it, but whoever wrote it should re-write it so that a layman can begin to understand it.--Sam 01:10, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree 100% and I attempted to rewrite to make it more layperson friendly. I decided the the term "daemon", while correct, is an unnecessary detail of how the software operates so I removed it. I also restructured the information a little. Incidentally, there are other versions of chessd floating around: "Lasker" was a big one a few years back. I said that Chrysallis was "notable" (and it is) but I didn't want to give the reader the opinion that no others exist, or that the only work being done on this comes from the Brazilian university.--Daniel Freeman 07:06, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I removed this sentence "As there are 100 topic channels, the conversation on channel 50 often falls into categories intended for other channels," because it reads more like a complaint than anything helpful. --Sam 01:15, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Why is the paragraph about cheating removed? Many people feel like this - and is criticism not allowed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.199.32.71 (talk • contribs)

Although I did not delete it, I probably would have. Do you have any sources you can cite, specifically regarding the claim that 30% of users cheat. Where did you get this statistic? Themindset 20:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The 30% is an educated guess from my clubmates and me (about 35 people (including 2 IMs) who used to play on a more or less regular basis at FICS - even the IMs have have enormous troubles winning games under 4 0 against persons 1450+ - mostly due to lagcheating, but sometimes people make no mistakes at all in fast time controls...and now dont tell they are that good... And about the fact that the admins support cheating: none of us has ever seen that an admin has taken notice of any complaint...if you are lucky you will get answer in maybe 1 out of 10 cases saying something like: well, dont bother, everything is ok

FICS has terrible rating deflation,1450 FICS blitz sustained can be well 2000 OTB. 4 0, 4 15 and OTB are very different games. The lag (or lag cheaters) can be a problem with x 0 games but these aren't chess anyway, they are mouse racing. Perfect moves may be luck, cheating or they just played that opening 1000 times and know what to do. --88.74.129.29 (talk) 09:25, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I've played 100 games on FICS and only encountered one verbally-abusive player and one cheater. The administrators handled the verbally-abusive player within one day and the cheater within one week. I've chatted with several folks online who've had similar experiences. I strongly disagree with the claim that 30% of FICS users are cheaters. likesforests 05:19, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I frequently encounter, if not always abusive, people who make negative comments about the play. The most sporting players, interestingly, are those with a high rating! They don't seem to mind giving a weaker player a good game. I applaud those players who give encouragement to the weak, it is surely one of the aims of the site to encourage improvement at all levels. {I wish I could understand the protocol of this site wrt posting. maybe one day some javascript will be around to help.....Mike

Throwing up a random number such as 30% based on your experience with 35 players from a chess club can hardly be considered a random sample of the thousands of users which log on to the site each year. Furthermore, the accusation that admins support cheating is outrageous. The admins are on there to help prevent cheating.

I really dont care if people waste their time with FICS - and I dont care about people who are in their first year at university and who think they know the acedemic rules either...It just makes me sad to see that the once cool FICS (I had been playing at FICS since its very beginning) has deteriorated so much - and what is even worse: Wikipedia is being destroyed by the same smartasses who think they know something by the same mechanisms

At least check your spelling and punctuation before posting!

Wow, what an impressive argument!

Channels?

I removed the channel "duck channel" from the list, as it's just a silly 10 year old joke that nobody even understands anymore. On the same subject, do we really need a list of channels at all? Why not just explain what the channels are (something the section sorely lacks at this point) and then name two or three of them as an example?

Where's FICS?

The article states: The server was brought online March 5, 1995, and remains operational today.

Really? I haven't been able to connect since 19. October. Is Fics history? GBWallenstein 00:08, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

It was up a few days ago, and there was no news item on the server saying they were shutting down, but you are correct that it does not appear to be up right now. It's probably server or ISP troubles, which is not unprecedented. Give it a week.  Cjpuffin  17:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. What worries me is that it's also not unprecedented for a site to shut down permanently without first publicly saying good-bye. In the last few months -- to judge from the rank and hrank figures -- the number of active users went up by several thousand. Maybe the admins finally got to the point where it was too much work and too much aggravation. I'll just wait and hope. FICS was, for me, hands-down the best place to play chess. GBWallenstein 23:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

This is extremely worrying, FICS is really a wonderful community and I sincerely hope that we may hear news that this downtime is only temporary? There was indeed a great deal of totally unnecessary criticism and complaint about a hugely difficult task of maintaining order. I would say FICS has greatly contributed to to the chess playing abilities of thousands of people worldwide due to it's accessibility and the sporting nature of it's regular players. GUEST xxxx ..18:10, 23 October 2006

FICS is back up. The following news item was posted on the server:  CjPuffin  17:51, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

1189 (Thu, Oct 19) IMPORTANT: FICS experiencing hardware problems!

FICS is currently experiencing hardware problems, which have blocked our Web 
\   page, the registration system and our email system. This also means that 
\   we are unable to issue new passwords. However, if you have password 
\   problems connecting with Jin (the main Web interface), it is probably not 
\   due to a forgotten password, so please download, install and connect with 
\   another GUI (Graphical User Interface). Possible options are WinBoard, 
\   available as a self-installing .EXE from 
\   http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/winboard/winboard-4_2_7a.exe, BabasChess, available
\   from http://www.babaschess.net/ and Thief, available from 
\   http://www.thief-interface.com/

Posted by MAd.

I also used to log in via the web site as I am often not on my computer but on a public computer which doesn't allow downloading Jin or other program. Obviously this is an inconvenience- maybe however it will reduce numbers of some of the more destructive people who just log in and waste time of people who want a serious game of chess. Such people might not bother to download an interface. Guest XXXX (genuine user) 02:28, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

As of today, Nov 15, 2006, they still appear to be down. Anyone have an update?

It's up. Check your firewall and/or ISP.  CjPuffin  07:20, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I tried to go to the site @ work (Sun box) and @ home (PC) & both got nowhere. They're on different ISPs, firewalls, etc. Is the server up, but not the site?

The section, October downtime, needs to go on the grounds that it isn't relevant. That entry, along with some of the comments left about it on this page, looks like enemy action more than constructive encyclopedic editing. Without an intelligent objection, I am deleting it Tuesday. Sam 07:11, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. --Ideogram 07:31, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't login late yesterday (November 20), nor today, but it was working earlier yesterday. Any word from those in the know? --65.57.245.11 17:38, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the website has been down for more than a month and now the chess server itself (port 5000) is also down. So, you can't play directly with a board either, as news item 1189 suggests. Is FICS dead?

This silence is the weird thing . No explanations, nothing. Last week a friend wanted to subscribe, the server was still up and when I asked on ch1 I was told it is going to be at least week before the site would work. The only information I could find is here, and that is not much. It would be an absolute shame if such a great thing just disappeared. 88.100.35.17 18:51, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I should take a drive down to San Jose and visit the registrar of the domain! Bring back FICS! :) --65.57.245.11 19:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

FICS was taken down to be replaced with a new machine. They announced this in a news item. --Ideogram 20:35, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

That's great, but I can't exactly check that now, can I? :) --65.57.245.11 22:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Great news! I just tried a `free 1 week subscription` on ICC, which works only with Blitzln interface, which works only with windows :( Then I tried some others, but I have to say none compare to FICS... (88.100.35.17 21:03, 21 November 2006 (UTC))

Details about the efforts to revive the FICS server can be read here: http://www.chessvillage.com/profile.php?sub_section=blog&id=96

This is dissapointing, is there no other free chess server available to play on. I am amazed that fics would be the only free server on the internet.

Yes, FICS is down from time to time

Every time FICS goes down for an hour, everyone goes ballistic and starts saying it's dead, and sections to that effect appear in the main article. It has some hardware problems from time to time; wait an hour before posting.  CjPuffin  06:13, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

--- The website has been down for about two months now. So I would replace that section in the main article. --- I agree with the above. A two month downtime of the front-page of any website (or a two month period of inability accept new members by an online community) is a significant part of their description/history...

An update for those unable to connect to the server (which is different from the website) CjPuffin  05:18, 28 November 2006 (UTC):

1192 (Tue, Nov 21) The chess server is up but some of the other services are still missing

The chess server has been moved to the new machine, however we still have to 
\   install and/or configure some other services including the website and the
\   mailer.

Posted by MAd.

Server

Is server down - unable to log in for last 30 mins —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.26.85.24 (talk) 20:45, 24 October 2008

"Official Interface"

The text below the image of Jin says that it is the official interface, but under Usage/Interface it says "Accordingly, FICS does not have an official interface, nor does it endorse any particular interface." I think the latter one is probably correct, but I have no idea where we could get a reference. Can anybody help? c 0 l f u l u 5... 12:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Possible alternatives?

FICS is full of mods with inferiority complexes (such as Pulga) that enjoy making excuses to ban you. Does anyone know a free alternative to Free Internet Chess Server without such a problem? (Not FlyOrDie, Yahoo, and whatnot, please) --24.184.200.190 (talk) 21:50, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Article issues

There are a number issues in the article - I will try to point them out.

'started in the 1980s.'

I don't believe ICS goes back that far. I was under the impression the first version (Michael Moore is credited) was early nineties (1992 spring to mind but I cannot validate that or be sure). My introduction to ICSs as a player started in 1993, when ICS ran at news.panix.com, and my involvement with running and programming started with the new FICS server in 1995. Whether there is any further legacy I don't know.

'Volunteers coded and ran it free of charge.'

This is true, although the number of active maintainers fell until one was left who rewrote the code base, added many of the features that now come standard with a chess server, and spent a lot of his own time on it. Such a statement makes it look like this individual had (if not materially, morally) stolen work which was not the case. He had that right, whether it is agreed that it was the correct thing to do is a different matter. Certainly my position in this has matured as I have and can better understand his reasons.

'Unhappy with the commercialisation of ICS, which they saw as exploiting their work'

This is not entirely true. Certainly we were unhappy at the commercialisation of ICS, and some of those who were unhappy had put work into ICS either as programmers of the original code (which it was claimed no longer existed in the ICS instance and had been rewritten by its maintainer), or maybe they had supported it as administrators, provided resources or so on.

There was a worry about having to pay fees (many people were students) for somewhere people had played for several years and where they knew many people they called friends - fees would disrupt this - there was few other places to play at the time, certainly no where comparable, and there was no guarantee friends would move there. Also it meant difficulties in sending payment to foreign countries (a significant proportion of users were outside of the US) especially for those who didn't own credit cards. Other means were limited then.

The main alternative sites at the time (if my memory serves me correctly) were EICS (the European server based on the ICS code), DICS (the dutch server also based on ICS code I think existed) and FICS at pitt.edu (I believe which ran FICS code). Both EICS and DICS were requested to close new membership, but under some agreement they were allowed to temporarily continue operating (TheDane would be a source of information for this).

(The original) FICS was no longer maintained, it had been a project which had forked from the original ICS code before it was rewritten and copyrighted. This fork was because a little while before this incident there had been talk of commercialisation. The code was available for anyone to use to make their own server, as a way of making it harder for ICS to go commercial. It was not maintained though, had a lot of bugs, crashed a fair bit where as ICS was relatively mature and stable.

Finally there was a lot of ill will because while there was a grace period before fees came into force, there had been little notice of the commercialisation and no discussion outside of the admin group. This is echoed in comments from users quoted in articles, and particularly in the pun title of Brad Stone's piece.

'a handful of programmers, led by Chris Petroff, formed FICS'

It wasn't just programmers, there were a number of admins, particularly the European admins from ICS who were responsible for running the server and providing other resources. The programmers cannot be given the full credit for forming the freechess.org FICS. In addition, Chris Petroff (aka Sparky) was the leader, but there was at least 2 other efforts that came together under Chris' leadership (led by foxbat and Hawk). Other effort which was being discussed on Usenet and in mailing lists folded before any production code was made. Some of those on that list came to the FICS project.

Saying 'formed FICS' is confusing, because FICS already existed (server elsewhere and code base). What actually was formed is the FICS server now located at freechess.org which then was titled the American Free Internet Chess Server. This started with the code base from the original FICS. Development started and the EICS server quickly moved to use this code base as well. Other servers sprang up such as the Dutch server running FICS, a German server, and a British server among others. Other forks lead to a server to play variants on, MEWIS, the Middle-Eastern Server.

The problem with the term FICS is that it can refer to the freechess.org server, the original server, the code base, the organisation that runs it, the people that run it, other free servers using branches or forks, or even generic servers. This must be kept in mind when reading articles and making statements.

'The original software package, called "chessd", was released under the GNU General Public License, and has been extensively updated by many people and organisations. The last version dubbed "Chrysallis," engineered by volunteers at the Universidade Federal do Paraná in Brazil, includes backend support for the PostgreSQL and MySQL databases. Chessd is freely available on SourceForge.[6]'

This at best confused and at the worst is very incorrect and in the wrong article.

Chessd is not the original software package, which implies chessd came before FICS, and probably does not belong on a page discussing the Free Internet Chess Server (certainly no more than a footnote in the history). It also reads like an advertisement and technical spec which is irrelevant to FICS.

The history is that as FICS was coded a number of organisations (especially commercial) took interest in the code base, one of which in 1995 used the code (they took over a server an ex-admin ran known as SPAM-ICS - a Python reference, though of course it was renamed) and employed a FICS programmer. It was decided that the group was there to run a specific server, not write servers, the code base was no longer distributed.

Allowing well funded servers to set up would have been to the detriment of the service that was being run at freechess.org, and the code base was deemed commercially valuable. While it was regrettable that other smaller services were not able to use new features, it was felt that all the hard work which had been done should not be available to commercial entities to exploit for profit, at least not without the FICS service users and/or those who had done the work benefiting in some way. FICS itself had no commercial interests. No one at the time had any legal means to protect the code base and hard work from this exploitation.

Of course there are differences in opinion and so a user started the chessd project. The chessd project had two branches named after grandmasters (Fischer and Lasker I believe). One of the branches used the code branch which was available from the German FICS. The other branch was a new server from scratch. It would be more accurate to say that one branch of the chessd project is based upon a discontinued branch of the FICS project. In addition the FICS code itself was rewritten after this branch took place, and therefore chessd branch is not relevant to the article any more than say the MEWIS branch.

'which could be as simple as a telnet client, but is usually an interface designed specifically for playing Internet chess'

While it is true, it's clumsy and should be mentioned elsewhere if at all. Indeed simple text based client/server based protocol is used which can be accessed by telnet. Personally I would only mention telnet for historical reasons. Almost all users use a client and telnet would be used by staff members or people just connecting to chat or see who is on (probably a very small %age of users). Very few people if anyone uses telnet to play chess today.

'FICS does not track lag centrally, nor permit user preferences that exclude persistent laggers'

This is not quite true, although for almost everyone it is the case. Certain versions of timeseal can measure lag, but were never officially released. Some reverse engineering of GamesParlor clients (which did measure lag and did disconnect persistent laggers) allowed some FICS clients to incorporate the fixes needed for lag checking. I cannot remember if there is a formula item for average lag (to avoid playing people suffering from lag), but it is kept internally but not logged for these clients. For example it informs a player that their opponent (with this enhanced timeseal) is lagging and they may 'courtesyadjourn' the game.

'Interfaces'

If telnet is to be mentioned at all, here is probably the right place.

If the history of FICS is to be told, probably the GamesParlor period 2000-2003 should be mentioned. This is when FICS did a deal with a commercial entity which gave myself employment to program the service which both services benefited from, and that money from this deal was used to ensure the freechess.org would be able to pay its maintenance bills for a while to come. Previous to that goodwill of employers and donations by staff and members had kept the service alive, but with its growth it became less affordable and we were required to find our own hosts. It brought back the original ICS commercialisation to many people's minds and so there was some discontent about a commercial organisation being involved with FICS, although again such discontent was short lived.

Thanks for your consideration,

DAV (FICS server programmer at freechess.org)

167.206.189.6 (talk) 13:30, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Info about hack edited

I have edited the section of the article regarding the recent security breach of FICS. I added some info about the possible return of the server. I removed a link to a forum discussion, since links to forums do not usually belong in encyclopedia articles. I also removed information about a temporary server, because it is not intended to replace FICS, and is not equipped to handle the number of users who normally log on to FICS.

The hacking incident is worth mentioning in the article, but it is likely a transient situation. Users who want more details and information about the temporary server can still follow the ficsgames.org link in the article (ficsgames.org is operated by a FICS administator).

―Wmahan. 19:45, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Too many details...and hacking

Just saved a few copyedits and tags, but didn't get to much more than the beginning and end of the article. It strikes me that if this article just appeared as it is, it would likely be tagged as promotional (or something of the sort). Way too many details about aspects of the server, features, events, etc. Also, it seems like the subject of the defacement the other day may be worth mentioning, but I don't have the message saved and furthermore have no source. Something about it going from open to closed source? I'm guessing this has something to do with the GamesParlour deal some years back? --Rhododendrites (talk) 21:23, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a good place to announce whenever you can't access a website/server

Anybody can try to connect and see that it's down if it's down. And if it IS down, there's no reason for an encyclopedia article to reflect this.

Unless we can find better sources, frankly, the hacking section should go completely for lack of sources and [related] notability issues. As of right now there are 0 sources cited that even say it went down, nevermind for hacking. (I know that such was the case, mind you, but just because it affects FICS users doesn't necessarily mean it meets WP standards for V, RS, and N. --Rhododendrites (talk) 15:46, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion it is notable that hackers target this chess server. It is not common that this happens. There are plenty of sources for the hack. There is no question about that. Many users are effected. Otto (talk) 16:02, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

It is very common that websites go down. I'm not contending that FICS wasn't hacked, but as far as WP is concerned it didn't happen unless sources are cited (which is also more or less necessary to show that something is notable). If you know of some, I would urge you to add them (but websites that temporarily indicated a hack and message boards where people say "FICS was hacked" don't really count). --Rhododendrites (talk) 16:14, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Who operates it?

This article (and the FICS website) lacks important information on who currently operates the FICS server and webpage. Several of the email addresses on the site return with mail errors.

* What are the names (or aliases) of individuals in charge?
* Who accepts the donations?
* Are donations tax-deductible?
* Is there any corporate entity that is associated with the assets or operation of FICS?

Full Decent (talk) 17:28, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

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