CFC Facebook

[Christopher Mallon]

Hello,

I would like to know who exactly manages the CFC Facebook account, as there are illegitimate warnings being handed out against some longtime CFC members on a controversial post made today. Specifically for violating some sort of "community standards" which were a) not actually violated as stated, and b) don't seem to actually exist, at least as far as I can find on the CFC Facebook page.

I particularly take exception to a warning being given to Hal Bond, who spent decades as one of Canadian chess's greatest assets. He's definitely earned the right to state his opinion!

590591592593594

[Fred McKim]

I could be wrong, but I don't think the CFC Facebook page is the CFC Board of Directors Facebook page or the CFC Voting members Facebook page. It is the Facebook page of the organization including all of it's members. In this case I agree with the post (presumably written by our Executive Director, Bob Gillanders) who applauded the efforts of Vlad and Patricia. I saw all of the work they were doing, and feel we would have lost this event without their efforts in a very narrow window of time. Above and beyond the call of duty.

As for the warning(s), that is another matter. I hope those who made "inflammatory" comments would withdraw them once they knew all of the facts.

Fred

[Olga Mushtaler]

I manage CFC Facebook and I gave you a warning. I am not sure what you are doing on CFC page if you publicly slander CFC. To say they are 'patting themselves'???? Do you think Vlad wrote a congratulation message to himself? Have you seen the amount of work everyone on the board has done to make the Candidates happen???????
Vlad did a tremendous amount of work and so did Patricia and so did I and so did others on CFC board. Instead of a THANK YOU, you blame CFC we pat ourselves???
If you have nothing good to say, don't say anything at all.

Olga

[Olga Mushtaler]

I am a firm believer that being part of any group is a privilege. If you wish to remain in the group, you must treat others with respect and kindness, whether they are your employers, volunteers on the board of CFC, or others.

[Christopher Mallon]

I manage CFC Facebook and I gave you a warning. I am not sure what you are doing on CFC page if you publicly slander CFC. To say they are 'patting themselves'???? Do you think Vlad wrote a congratulation message to himself? Have you seen the amount of work everyone on the board has done to make the Candidates happen???????
Vlad did a tremendous amount of work and so did Patricia and so did I and so did others on CFC board. Instead of a THANK YOU, you blame CFC we pat ourselves???
If you have nothing good to say, don't say anything at all.

Olga

First of all, you might want to look up what the definition of slander is. Because, "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."
Second, I stated how the post made me feel. Are you saying that I was somehow lying about my own feelings, and thus somehow deserved a warning for breaking a rule that's not actually a rule?

When there is a post saying it is by the "Chess Federation of Canada" (and otherwise anonymous) congratulating the leader of the federation, then yes, that is exactly how it comes across. If you posted it under your own name in the group, I wouldn't have had a problem with it.

Telling someone who doesn't agree with you to effectively shut up is very unbecoming of an executive board member.


I am a firm believer that being part of any group is a privilege. If you wish to remain in the group, you must treat others with respect and kindness, whether they are your employers, volunteers on the board of CFC, or others.

If you want my respect, you will have to earn it. You are off to a bad start.

You are entitled to your opinion, as am I by the way, as is Hal, and as is Heidi, and as is everyone else. But at least the three of us weren't hiding behind the CFC name, making up rules on the fly to suit our own purposes. And none of us slandered anyone in that post.

And finally, treating others with respect and kindness is something you might want to reflect on as well.

[Christopher Mallon]

As for the warning(s), that is another matter. I hope those who made "inflammatory" comments would withdraw them once they knew all of the facts.


I don't see my comment as at all inflammatory. The post still doesn't sit well with me and it has nothing to do specifically with the content or the reason for the post, but the way it was handled. The fact that it turns out to not have been Vlad posting it doesn't change the fact that it comes across as if he had, or had requested/ordered that it be posted. The fact that me pointing that out was somehow deserving of a warning for violating some kind of community standards which are not actually in existence just took the whole situation to a new level of ridiculousness. I would have made my post and moved on and forgotten all about it.

[Olga Mushtaler]

Slandering involves making false statements about someone with the intention to harm their reputation.

Your comment was slanderous because you said, 'Like they are patting themselves on the back and waiting for everyone to applaud,' thereby diminishing the efforts of CFC in obtaining the visas. You made a false statement that undermined the efforts of CFC, while in reality, it was quite the opposite, and CFC invested a lot of efforts in getting those visas.

[Olga Mushtaler]

I'm also not making up the rules of Facebook pages or groups. If you read the Community Standards, it states "We expect that people will respect the dignity of others and not harass or degrade others."

[Christopher Mallon]

Slandering involves making false statements about someone with the intention to harm their reputation.

Your comment was slanderous because you said, 'Like they are patting themselves on the back and waiting for everyone to applaud,' thereby diminishing the efforts of CFC in obtaining the visas. You made a false statement that undermined the efforts of CFC, while in reality, it was quite the opposite, and CFC invested a lot of efforts in getting those visas.

I made no comment whatsoever about the efforts of the CFC in regards to the visas. I made a comment about how the Facebook post felt to me. You can't just quote the second half of my statement and ignore the context of the first half.

I'll help you out, though. Slander is only possible through spoken word. The term you are looking for is libel - a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation.

I have not slandered anyone, as I have spoken no false statements. I have also not libelled anyone, as I have not written (much less published) any false statements. You, on the other hand, by accusing me (in writing) of committing both slander and harassment, in fact HAVE committed libel, since both of those actually are false statements.

[Olga Mushtaler]

Christopher,
Do you go to a birthday party and say out loud "this cake is disgusting"?
Do you go to a wedding and say "this couple doesn't match"?
Do you come up to a person and say "you look so fat"?
Yet, you, Heidi, and Hal find it acceptable to go to a CFC Facebook page and make rude comments on a congratulatory message I wrote, even if it may make you feel a certain way.

If your ego is too big to apologize, so be it. I'm not going to continue this any longer as I'm busy with other things.

[Bob Gillanders]

It is the Facebook page of the organization including all of its members. In this case I agree with the post (presumably written by our Executive Director, Bob Gillanders) who applauded the efforts of Vlad and Patricia.


Fred, no it wasn't me. I have no involvement with the CFC Facebook page.
I do applaud the efforts of the executive, but many others were involved as well.
It really was a whole chess community effort. Great to see.
Aris has put it very eloquently on chesstalk (that other blog), where he acknowledges a few key people.
There are many more unsung heroes making the 2024 Candidates in Canada possible.

Let's all work together to make this something special.

[Olga Mushtaler]

I just wanted to clarify why I included Vlad and Patricia in Facebook post. Among myriad tasks (booking venues, arbitrating, ticket sales, etc.), that were being undertaken for the Candidates by various organizers, Vlad and Patricia were specifically assigned the key task of obtaining visas. Given the challenge of securing visas for over 40 individuals, it clearly should not be a job for just two people. So, once again, I extend my gratitude to everyone from the community who assisted: the CFC executive board, the Local Organizing Committee, and all of our friends. You may wonder why I singled out these two individuals in the Facebook post. The reason is simple: they were tasked with overseeing the visa process. Had the entire operation failed and we lost the Candidates as a result, Vlad and Patricia would have been the ones held responsible.

[Heidi Gay]

You are completely missing the point of our criticism, preferring to brush it off as "rude," "harassment," and "slander."

The organization giving sole credit to Vlad and Patricia for "saving the Candidates" comes across as extremely tone-deaf, considering the myriad of people who jumped in to help, several whom (Lyle, Aris, Salim, and Anna for starters) deserve it equally as much. Of course, I am not discounting the efforts made by Vlad, Patricia, and other CFC members that I'm personally not aware of.

As for why this comes across as tone-deaf, well... here's some light reading. Why good leaders pass the credit and take the blame. Harvard Business Review. (2014, July 23). https://hbr.org/2011/10/why-good-leaders-pass-the-cred

DEFAMATORY PORTION OF STATEMENT HAS BEEN DELETED.

[John Brown]

I think if the Chess Federation had taken full control of this Candidates Event at the start instead of relying on others to up hold the Canadian reputation, none of these threads would have been presented. This is supposed to be a Canadian First. Stop patting each other on the back and show to the world that Canada can run the ultimate tournament and get a thumbs up from the FIDE delegation to run more high class events in the future. I wonder what these posts would have said if FIDE had moved the event?

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Fred, no it wasn't me. I have no involvement with the CFC Facebook page.
I do applaud the efforts of the executive, but many others were involved as well.
It really was a whole chess community effort. Great to see.
Aris has put it very eloquently on chesstalk (that other blog), where he acknowledges a few key people.
There are many more unsung heroes making the 2024 Candidates in Canada possible.

Let's all work together to make this something special.

There are lots of unsung heroes and heroines but there are also some singing that did not contribute significantly to this effort. Some ran off in the wrong direction and did the wrong things and are wanting credit for their work. No participation trophies here. As Yoda says, "There is do or not do. There is no try." I prefer to move on but if this nonsense persists when I am trying to spend some quality time with my family after a job well done then we will do a deep dive into this whole situation and some people will not be happy with the outcome. I am so pissed at this moment that I am probably going to wait a day or two to respond to this absolute nonsense.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

I think if the Chess Federation had taken full control of this Candidates Event at the start instead of relying on others to up hold the Canadian reputation, none of these threads would have been presented. This is supposed to be a Canadian First. Stop patting each other on the back and show to the world that Canada can run the ultimate tournament and get a thumbs up from the FIDE delegation to run more high class events in the future. I wonder what these posts would have said if FIDE had moved the event?

This is FIDE's show. Full stop. We came to their assistance when they needed it. We are now being attacked for delivering that assistance and for not genuflecting towards some people who frankly did little useful. I will quote from my chess.com post.

The Canadian government and the immigration authorities were reasonable throughout all of this. There wasn't any political agenda that I observed. The media campaign launched on X (formerly twitter) worked. We got confirmation from an insider in the government that it was working and that we should keep it up. I did multiple interviews with the Toronto Star with three different reporters. They did a great job of reporting what I said. I did an interview at 11 pm on the Friday March 1st with BellMedia and they did a good job of reporting our conversation. Finally I did a television interview with the CBC which aired on Sunday Night and they played the conversation where I conveyed what I wanted conveyed.

FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich, FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky, GM Pavel Tregubov, Maria Balashova and Anna Burtasova at FIDE distinguished themselves throughout this process.

Aris Marghetis is going to be a great chief arbiter for this event. Salim Belcadi has been handling much of the local details.


Patricia Gamliel our CFC board member who has worked as a lawyer in the field of immigration for almost thirty years worked tirelessly and contacted many individuals who assisted us on our journey. Without her I am not sure that we would be where we are now. She and Lyle Craver our CFC board secretary contacted Minister Jonathan Wilkinson on or around February 29th which resulted in him forwarding the information to his colleagues in the immigration department. Patricia and I also contacted Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Marc Miller separately. FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich promptly provided us with letters for numerous Members of Parliament and Ministers. We contacted the Ministers for Tourism and the Ministers for Sport and Physical Activity and they forwarded what we sent to them to the immigration authorities. Our newest board member Veronica Hitchlock (woman's coordinator) also organized the presidents of multiple university chess clubs across Canada to send a very well written letter to the Honourable Minister Marc Miller. CFC Vice President Olga Mushtaler also put us in contact with an immigration consultant who talked to Patricia Gamliel and offered suggestions for us.


FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky applied to Minister Marc Miller and received a meeting on Thursday March 7 with some very high officials in the immigration department. The officials indicated that they were well aware of the situation due to submission of documents from Minister Wilkinson and promised to do their best. I believe that by the time of the meeting we already had all the player visas.


Gary Gladstone a chess player and a chess parent and also a person who ran for parliament for Liberals in the Thornhill riding made extensive use of his contacts and friends which reached into multiple government departments including that of the Honorable Minister Miller and including some of the high officials in the meeting with the FIDE CEO Emil. He also put us in contact with the Member of Parliament Kevin Vuong, an independent who represents the riding where the tournament is to be held. MP Kevin Vuong played a key role early on getting us information on the progress of the visa applications and deserves great credit for his work.


There were many dozens of people who contacted us and their MPs on our behalf offering help and encouragement. Every time I asked for help I got it. At some point, I will write down and publish the full story with all the names attached. Here you got the condensed version.


Another chess parent who wants to remain nameless contacted a friend in the government who told us that the publicity campaign was working and to keep it up. That friend in the government indicated that we would get our player visas the day before we did.
Did someone drop the ball to provoke this crisis which caused multiple people in the CFC to lose sleep and live in a state of constant anxiety for two weeks? They did. It was not someone in the CFC. It was not someone at FIDE. We still have to do an investigation to get to the bottom of it. Someone may have bitten off more than they could chew and some extreme and massive action had to be undertaken to pull our fat out of the fire. Fortunately we had capable people in place who were able to do this. It did not occur without a cost. Hopefully as we move back to our normal routines and start sleeping and exercising at our usual frequency those costs particularly the physical cost of being part of this influence operation will fade.

In the midst of this I went to a short online seminar with Robert Cialdini the author of multiple books on the subject of Influence. He described what you had to do to influence people in this type of situation. Every step that he outlined we had already done.

We successfully climbed Everest figuratively speaking when faced with an almost impossible situation. A band of heroes accomplished the mission. Some people who had little to do with the final outcome climbed a small hill in Appalachia and declared their enormous contribution to the cause. It was irritating to the people who actually made a difference.

[John Brown]

Sounds like to me you like blowing your horn.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Hello,

I would like to know who exactly manages the CFC Facebook account, as there are illegitimate warnings being handed out against some longtime CFC members on a controversial post made today. Specifically for violating some sort of "community standards" which were a) not actually violated as stated, and b) don't seem to actually exist, at least as far as I can find on the CFC Facebook page.

I particularly take exception to a warning being given to Hal Bond, who spent decades as one of Canadian chess's greatest assets. He's definitely earned the right to state his opinion!

590591592593594

There are multiple people managing the facebook account. Olga Mushtaler, Christina Tao, John Upper, Victoria Doknjas and myself have thread posting privileges. I would ask everyone to attach their first name at least at the bottom of the post or if it is an official post their name and title to avoid confusion. It is obvious to me who is posting from the CFC account but that is not the case for everyone who does not have admin privileges.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

I don't see my comment as at all inflammatory. The post still doesn't sit well with me and it has nothing to do specifically with the content or the reason for the post, but the way it was handled. The fact that it turns out to not have been Vlad posting it doesn't change the fact that it comes across as if he had, or had requested/ordered that it be posted. The fact that me pointing that out was somehow deserving of a warning for violating some kind of community standards which are not actually in existence just took the whole situation to a new level of ridiculousness. I would have made my post and moved on and forgotten all about it.

You are just coming off as a very immature individual. In this moment of triumph when everyone came together to successfully save this tournament it is all about your feelings? Seriously? More than one voting member is rolling their eyes. The world is watching. FIDE is watching Mr. FIDE Arbiter. How do you think your post made them feel? Olga was one of those people on the board who stepped up. So was Veronica. So was Christina. Of course Lyle and Victor. Patricia most of all. What did you contribute to the effort? An explanation of your feelings? Grow up.

The community standards are facebook's community standards and as one of the administrators of the facebook page she is well within her rights to react the way she did. I do not want the posts removed except perhaps by the people who posted them but truthfully I don't think those people are mature enough to do so. Prove me wrong. All of you. I won't be disappointed but rather pleasantly surprised.

And no, you are right it was not slander. It was defamation.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Sounds like to me you like blowing your horn.

Sounds to me like you are not adding anything positive to the discussion.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Here's a summary of the key points regarding my role in the local organizing committee:

Representation: CFC President Vlad Drkulec will represent the Chess Federation of Canada at official functions and serve as the "face of Canadian chess."
Volunteer Position: Vlad understands that his role is voluntary.
Non-Organizer Status: The CFC is not officially considered an organizer of the event.
Communication: Aris will ensure that any relevant information from FIDE leadership reaches Vlad, and they will debrief each other after FIDE-related communications.
Invitations: The Annex Chess Club will issue invitations to traveling players, following Canadian tradition. However, the CFC will provide supporting letters highlighting the event's importance if needed.
Visa Rejection: In case of visa issues, Vlad has political contacts in Ontario and Canada to assist.
Financial Support: The CFC will not provide financial support for the event.
Location of Side Events: All side events will take place within the Greater Toronto Area.


In actual fact, while the above was the initial agreement, I wound up writing the invitations combining the letter highlighting the event's importance and invitations into one letter for each of the people that needed visas. This was what FIDE asked of me and it was a reasonable request so that was what happened.

[Salim Belcadi]

Invitations: The Annex Chess Club will issue invitations to traveling players, following Canadian tradition. However, the CFC will provide supporting letters highlighting the event's importance if needed.



ACC had no role in the visa matter. FIDE declined the LOC's proposal quoted above and decided that they had to go through CFC.

[Christopher Mallon]

You are just coming off as a very immature individual. In this moment of triumph when everyone came together to successfully save this tournament it is all about your feelings? Seriously? More than one voting member is rolling their eyes. The world is watching. FIDE is watching Mr. FIDE Arbiter. How do you think your post made them feel? Olga was one of those people on the board who stepped up. So was Veronica. So was Christina. Of course Lyle and Victor. Patricia most of all. What did you contribute to the effort? An explanation of your feelings? Grow up.

The community standards are facebook's community standards and as one of the administrators of the facebook page she is well within her rights to react the way she did. I do not want the posts removed except perhaps by the people who posted them but truthfully I don't think those people are mature enough to do so. Prove me wrong. All of you. I won't be disappointed but rather pleasantly surprised.

And no, you are right it was not slander. It was defamation.

I defamed nobody, since I didn't say (or type) anything that was untrue. If you keep accusing me of defamation (or slander or libel), THAT will in fact be defamation on your part.

[Christopher Mallon]

Sounds to me like you are not adding anything positive to the discussion.

Is there a new CFC rule we've all missed about all discussion must now be positive in nature?

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Is there a new CFC rule we've all missed about all discussion must now be positive in nature?

There are social rules not CFC rules. The FIDE Candidates tournament is coming and we are getting views from FIDE and from journalists. The CFC has great momentum having broken the 5000 member ceiling. If we want to carry on with that momentum we have to talk about it. We have to like "tooting our own horn". We need to keep winning.

Of course we can go back to the old days where we were hovering around 1800 members and the CFC was held in derision, contempt and even hatred. I know because when I was master's rep, I was part of the group that contacted old CFC members. There was a good reason that most of them were former members.

We can't hope to row the boat to greener shores if we have someone constantly drilling holes in it. Everyone needs to concentrate on rowing in the same direction. Don't you want chess to have a more prominent place in the world? If you do, we all need to be making positive moves that help and not hinder forward progress. A house divided cannot stand.

I have a great love for chess, almost an irrational love for chess and the community of chess players, organizers and even the parents of young chess players. For this reason, I put up with a lot and exert every bit of my ability to solve the problems when faced with crises. However, I am not immortal and bursts of stress like what happened over the last month are not helpful to my long term ability to continue in this position. You also signal people with ability that it is not worth getting involved with all these dysfunctional people. If one or two of them drop out then maybe next time we will not be able to solve the problem.

[Patricia Gamliel]

Hello,
I am not on facebook and, generally speaking, not a social media person (too busy for that). I just would like to add that one does not apply for a visitor visa to compete in a tournament taking place in Canada and this was a large part of the reasons for these applications being stalled. When I was asked to help, it was too late to correct these applications (48) and the risk of rejection was facing us. My only concern was to get all players in because otherwise the tournament would be moved to Spain. I don’t know what was written about me on Facebook and anywhere else. I don’t need anyone to recognise my volunteer work: I am very happy Canada was granted this tournament. It’s great for the Canadian chess community. I am also grateful for the opportunity I had to “meet” (phone, email) great chess lovers who stepped in to call and send emails to their MP (among many already named, Lars from Calgary).
I pray this tournament will be so successful that it will incite FIDE to come back to Canada with another one 殺

[Vladimir Drkulec]

I defamed nobody, since I didn't say (or type) anything that was untrue. If you keep accusing me of defamation (or slander or libel), THAT will in fact be defamation on your part.

You supported someone who made an untrue statement on Facebook and the CFC forum that made you and her seem ridiculous to everyone who knew anything about the situation. That statement by the other person was made in an attempt to injure the reputation of the two people who volunteered their time and considerable effort to save the candidates tournament by obtaining visas for the players and important FIDE staff members. Claiming that responding to defamation is in itself defamation is a poorly reasoned argument. My experience with going to court, to any tribunal, into any situation where the facts have to be weighed is that I will always go in prepared and if the tribunal is fair, and it always seems that they are, I will win.

I have been part of a defamation action. I know what is involved. The people on the other end of that action certainly regretted their actions when their lawyer read them the riot act and communicated to them just what they could be looking at by way of consequences and by the way when they had to pay their lawyer bills. In that case the law and precedents were unformed as it was more than twenty years ago. The laws are clearer now.

Let us close this chapter now but rule of thumb, if you are going to defame someone in the case of another or support defamatory statements in the case of you and others, try to make sure that one of the people that you are going on about on the other side are not top litigators. That's just unwise.

I am not happy that I had to censor someone on the CFC facebook page and the CFC forum for just the second time in my close to eleven years as CFC president.

[Christopher Mallon]

Interesting, you say you want to close this chapter and yet you are resurrecting the thread that died out over a month ago, with additional talk of potential (and still baseless) legal action.

You yourself already effectively admitted I was right to feel the way I did, by instituting the rule that posters on CFC Facebook must "sign" their posts. Had it been signed by someone not promoted in the post in the first place, I would not have had that feeling that I did.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Interesting, you say you want to close this chapter and yet you are resurrecting the thread that died out over a month ago, with additional talk of potential (and still baseless) legal action.

You yourself already effectively admitted I was right to feel the way I did, by instituting the rule that posters on CFC Facebook must "sign" their posts. Had it been signed by someone not promoted in the post in the first place, I would not have had that feeling that I did.

You could infer that but your logic would be twisted into a pretzel. I pay close attention to legal precedents. The legal action would not be baseless. Someone had to pay close to $200,000 for a similar situation with the big difference that the allegation in that instance was true but still resulted in a big award. I presume the downside would be more for an allegation that is untrue.