Slashdot Mirror

mbravo writes "I work in a largish company, heavily into IT, and in a complex and quickly changing market. Employees are predominantly in the 30 or younger age-bracket, and as you might expect we rely on a lot of internal e-mail. Despite that, lately I'm finding myself increasingly frustrated by a complete lack of e-mail etiquette in the company. A typical thread might look like a hundred-message-long chain of one-line replies, with full quoting and hundreds of recipients in the 'To:' field. It feels like it is happening more and more often. I don't seem to be seeing much success in explaining to my co-workers what the problem is here. How do you deal with this at your place of business, and does your company care? Does the company take any policing or educating measures?"

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

The following is by Richard Bean, Queensland, Australia.

Starting June 19, 1999, an experiment in playing chess over the Internet was held at the Microsoft Network's Gaming Zone. The world's highest rated player, de jure world champion Gary Kasparov, was to play a game versus "The World" at a rate of one move every 24 hours. After Kasparov decided on his move, he would send it to four expert teenage analysts who would suggest moves for "The World" with analysis. Internet users were to vote for whichever move they preferred, with the move receiving the highest number of votes being played. Voting was by use of Microsoft Zone software or, later, simply authenticated by entering a valid email address.

In the course of the game, it became obvious that the effort being put in by one analyst, US Women's Champion Irina Krush, far exceeded that being put in by the other 3 analysts (French Grandmaster Etienne Bacrot, US International Master Florin Felecan, and the German Elisabeth Paehtz). The quality of her work and the number of lines analyzed by her dwarfed anything the other analysts provided. She was aided by several grandmasters, the St Petersburg Grandmaster Chess School, and most of all by the World Team Strategy Bulletin Board. She became the unofficial team leader, and of the first 57 moves, her recommendation was played 53 times by "The World" (the exceptions were moves 3, 6, 51 and 52).

At move 51, the play had been virtually forced since move 40, and the World Team Strategy BBS had determined that the best move was 51... Kb1-a1; this move was recommended by Irina and endorsed by the GM Chess School. However, 51... b7-b5, the recommendation of Elisabeth Paehtz, was played. A BBS member, Jose Unodos, claimed to have "stuffed the vote" simply by entering multiple different email addresses and voting repeatedly for the same move. To test whether this worked, another BBS member, Martin Sims, stuffed the vote about 250 times on move 53 for a move that no-one else would play - 53... Qd1-e2, giving the Black Queen away for nothing with check, which would never be played by a sane player. This move made it into the top five votes (search for d1-e2), proving that vote-stuffing was possible by another method - creating multiple Zone IDs while still using the same IP address. Previous Microsoft denials that vote-stuffing was possible became a change in policy - non-Windows users could not vote, as at the beginning of the game.

On move 58, due to a problem with delayed e-mail, Irina Krush did not receive Kasparov's move until after 1am EST, when she had gone to bed. Due to school tests the next day she could not post her analysis until later. Microsoft was warned that her move recommendation would be delayed. It had been determined beyond doubt on the Strategy BBS that 58...Qf3-e4 lost and 58...Qf3-f5 was forced to retain drawing chances. (The endgame was too complicated to say for certain what the correct result should be - 6-piece endgame tablebases would determine it for certain but would require vast amounts of computer time & memory to generate.) Paehtz & Bacrot, who did not follow the BBS, recommended Qf3-e4, Felecan recommended Qf3-f5, and Krush's move recommendation was never posted. (Krush's recommendations were almost unanimously followed up to this point, even in the case of the other 3 analysts recommending one move and Krush recommending another. Hence, had her analysis been posted, Qf3-f5 would have been played, as it would have been a 2-2 split with Irina explicitly stating that Qf3-e4 was a losing move.)

E-mail posted by Smartchess, Irina's corporate sponsor, demonstrated that her recommendation had been sent at 12:20pm PST. The submission was repeated at 5:10pm PST. The voting page at the Zone claimed throughout the voting period that "Irina's move recommendation will appear here shortly." Irina continued to post to the Microsoft BBS, demonstrating that any network problem was not at Smartchess's end. After voting began, Microsoft corrected a mis-spelling of Kasparov's name on the Zone webpage without updating Irina's analysis.

On previous moves, a similar message had appeared for other analysts' delayed recommendations, with the analysis being posted later. On move 58, with Irina's analysis not posted, the moderator, Grandmaster Daniel King, calling 58...Qf3-e4 a "sensible option", and the analysts 2-1 in favour of the losing move Qf3-e4, it won the vote and was played.

Outrage ensued on the BBS, and in the live chat with Danny King, Microsoft representatives attempted to smooth over the furore. Acknowledging that Krush's move recommendation was sent at 12:20pm PST, Microsoft spokesman Eddie Ranchigoda, Marketing Manager for the MSN Gaming Zone, stated that it was "not received by MS e-mail till after 4:00 PT [after which] we generally do not have resources to update the site unless an emergency occurs." (Apparently, even though voting was a 24-hour international affair, no-one at Microsoft realised the importance of Irina's contribution or worked after 4pm.) Another spokesman, "Ben", implicity acknowledged that vote-stuffing was possible, stating that Microsoft "generally [relied] on the honor of the World Team members to keep the game on track" (without explaining how Kasparov could have been prevented from stuffing the vote with a second-best move himself).

As a protest against what was seen as Microsoft incompetence and/or malevolence, and in an attempt to leave a lasting memorial of move 58 events, BBS members rallied together to vote for 59... Qe1, another move which gave the queen away for free with check. This won the vote with 66.27% of the votes. Despite this being a legal move with many members having voted for it exactly once, Microsoft "disqualified" the move by deleting all votes for it, due to alleged vote-stuffing, without explaining how it had been detected at that point and not before. The final tally of the modified vote-count added to 100.07%.

The event showed that World Team discussion on the BBS, led by Irina Krush, and assisted by computers could provide a series of moves equal in quality to Kasparov's. However, due to the fact that an e-mail was delayed on Microsoft servers, and despite an advance warning that an analyst's move recommendation would be delayed, a losing move was played at move 58 due to Microsoft's failure to post Krush's analysis. On the next move, BBS users were deprived of their opportunity to protest the handling of move 58 due to the disqualification of votes for a perfectly legal move. International Master Ken Regan, an associate professor of Computer Science at Buffalo, among others, called for a Microsoft explanation of this failure in electronic democracy, which had not been delivered as of this writing.

A newbot shows no major newspapers have yet covered the story; however, other accounts can be found at a Norwegian net newspaper and a German chess newsletter.

(Note: The MSNBC BBS articles have a 48-hour expiry time and hence copies have been provided rather than the original links. The expiry time, as well as the 55-character column width making URLs difficult to include in text, was introduced as the game dragged on longer than expected.)