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                 IECC CHESS BITS & PIECES

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      Published by the International Email Chess Club
       Devoted solely to E-Mail Correspondence Chess
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Volume 1, Issue 5         April  1995         Published SemiMonthly

                        Special Issue
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Editor: Sherman Klausner - klaus@interaccess.com
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*********************************************************************
                        Just MY OPINION
                       By Sherm Klausner
*********************************************************************

Have you had difficulty finding the articles that interest you in
rec.games.chess lately? You have? Well, so have I.

Thing is, I have other interests in chess besides the chess-by-email
aspect, but I find it difficult weeding through pages of articles in
which I have no interest -- which proliferate like flies around crumbs
at a picnic.

As editor of this newsletter, I receive many messages on the subject of
chess for us mere mortals. Some Newbies tell me they only found the two
email groups by accident as they scanned the list of articles in
rec.games.chess.

We estimate the readers of rec.games.chess to be in the thousands, many
of them browsers and lurkers. None of us has ever been able to take an
accurate census, but we know that there are at least 1500 - 2000 active
and semi-active email chess players out there.

Take a guess at how many non-email players read rec.games.chess
frequently and you soon realize that the postings to this category range
from books to politics, to almost anything you can think of related to
or not related to the game.

Think back a few months to where there were checkers articles were being
posted under rec.games.chess. They had been posting these articles there
since rec.games.chess originated. A hue and cry was raised last year
that it was hard enough to find chess articles that you were looking
for. Why didn't they do the sensible thing and separate them to their
own classification? They finally did, and now we do have a bit less
clutter.

My point is this. Email chess has a large enough following, along with
many, many postings each week, to deserve a sub group:
rec.games.chess.play-by-email.

Even for those who don't wish to join the two email groups, but wish to
fish for their own games, would find such a subgroup to their benefit.

An RFD [Request For Discussion] proposing such a subgroup has been
crossposted to rec.games.chess and to news.groups. It will need 100 yes
votes to carry the day. Response has been small to date. There have been
curious negative replies. One stated that we shouldn't support it
because Lisa Powell uses the IECC as a commercial enterprise [sic!].
Others either don't want any subdivisions at all -- and some ask for a
laundry list of great length. Another is against it because it is
proposed as a moderated group that will be moderated by Lisa Powell,
without whom neither IECC or IECG would exist today!

Bottom line: we need the new subgroup! Many of both the IECC and IECG
have worked very hard to get the RFD to this stage. They need your help.

To help you only need to post your opinion in rec.games.chess. If you
are against it, than vote that way, but VOTE!!!
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