#9 I can't see what's harsh in what I've said.
In answer to your question, rhetorical though it might be, other sites don't work in this way at all. That's because they are pay sites (unless you only want the basic version), so they work according to market principles - namely, people pay if they think it is worth paying for. Competition between sites should, in principle, keep the standards high. There must be a reason why so many people pay to be members of these sites instead of using Lichess.
Lichess is free, and privately owned. It has the same desire to expand that other sites do, nonetheless. It can only do this, and attract better players, by listening to the users.
You are right, users may indeed make requests. In addition, if things go wrong, one may tell the moderators. None of this means that any requests will be acted upon, nor mistakes rectified.
For example, recently an excellent player was labelled a cheat. There was no apology to that player when he was exonerated. A thread was not deleted where that player was consistently referred to as if he was a cheat. I don't know if the player concerned still plays here, but if I was a quality player who had been wrongly accused, not apologised to, and then referred to afterwards as though I hadn't been "cleared", I'd be at chess.com shortly after.
If Lichess wishes to compete for the attentions of the best players, the site needs to look at where it has gone right and wrong. The problem is, in my view, whereas people love to be told about the "right" stuff, they get offended when told about the "wrong" stuff. I'd suggest keeping it simple, sorting out the little problems, making accessibility and ease of use a priority, bring back rankings, and have more imagination about tournaments and the direction of Lichess TV. Also, find out what people want with regular polls. These are the key things that I think make Lichess potentially the best chess site around.
- "Little problems" are things like the "favourite players" having all the numbers wrong and missing out actual favourite players. There are various things like this that don't work properly.
- "Accessibility" and "ease of use" are about ensuring that the layout is simple and straight forward, that one can easily and smoothly access all the features. It's a bit of a mess at the moment, tbh.
- "Rankings" refers to the old system of telling people where they are compared to others. For most people, Glicko2 is irrelevant. Knowing that one is nearly in the top 1000 players on the site, however, is a spur to people's naturally competitive nature. We should have separate rankings for Classical, Blitz and Bullet.
- "Tournaments". What's the difference between hourly, daily, weekly and monthly tournaments? More people in the "more important" ones. Tournaments are potentially the most crucial attraction on the site. Why not have a cycle of tournaments, with a separate points system attached, that go towards a championship title? Think F1 motor racing, where each race counts towards the title. It'd be easy to implement... for example, have weekly "Grand Prix" tournaments where the top 10 receive "Championship Points". All the top players would want to take part. At the end of the cycle (3 months, 6 months, year...) you have a Lichess Champion with a trophy.
The TV is another big possible draw. It'd be interesting to expand on it, either with more games, a wider choice of games, or perhaps adding streamed commentary. One annoying current feature is that a game can be interrupted when a "better" one comes along. That's because it is decided by a computer algorithm rather than a human, I guess. Perhaps adjusting this so that games are not interrupted would be a good idea. Also, a channel per type of game mightn't be a bad plan.
Anyway, I've got to go now and get sausages from Tesco... but I'm not trying to be negative; rather, I want lichess to succeed. It is doing well, but it could be so much better.
PS has anyone seen the Wikipedia page? You're better off with NO page than this.
In answer to your question, rhetorical though it might be, other sites don't work in this way at all. That's because they are pay sites (unless you only want the basic version), so they work according to market principles - namely, people pay if they think it is worth paying for. Competition between sites should, in principle, keep the standards high. There must be a reason why so many people pay to be members of these sites instead of using Lichess.
Lichess is free, and privately owned. It has the same desire to expand that other sites do, nonetheless. It can only do this, and attract better players, by listening to the users.
You are right, users may indeed make requests. In addition, if things go wrong, one may tell the moderators. None of this means that any requests will be acted upon, nor mistakes rectified.
For example, recently an excellent player was labelled a cheat. There was no apology to that player when he was exonerated. A thread was not deleted where that player was consistently referred to as if he was a cheat. I don't know if the player concerned still plays here, but if I was a quality player who had been wrongly accused, not apologised to, and then referred to afterwards as though I hadn't been "cleared", I'd be at chess.com shortly after.
If Lichess wishes to compete for the attentions of the best players, the site needs to look at where it has gone right and wrong. The problem is, in my view, whereas people love to be told about the "right" stuff, they get offended when told about the "wrong" stuff. I'd suggest keeping it simple, sorting out the little problems, making accessibility and ease of use a priority, bring back rankings, and have more imagination about tournaments and the direction of Lichess TV. Also, find out what people want with regular polls. These are the key things that I think make Lichess potentially the best chess site around.
- "Little problems" are things like the "favourite players" having all the numbers wrong and missing out actual favourite players. There are various things like this that don't work properly.
- "Accessibility" and "ease of use" are about ensuring that the layout is simple and straight forward, that one can easily and smoothly access all the features. It's a bit of a mess at the moment, tbh.
- "Rankings" refers to the old system of telling people where they are compared to others. For most people, Glicko2 is irrelevant. Knowing that one is nearly in the top 1000 players on the site, however, is a spur to people's naturally competitive nature. We should have separate rankings for Classical, Blitz and Bullet.
- "Tournaments". What's the difference between hourly, daily, weekly and monthly tournaments? More people in the "more important" ones. Tournaments are potentially the most crucial attraction on the site. Why not have a cycle of tournaments, with a separate points system attached, that go towards a championship title? Think F1 motor racing, where each race counts towards the title. It'd be easy to implement... for example, have weekly "Grand Prix" tournaments where the top 10 receive "Championship Points". All the top players would want to take part. At the end of the cycle (3 months, 6 months, year...) you have a Lichess Champion with a trophy.
The TV is another big possible draw. It'd be interesting to expand on it, either with more games, a wider choice of games, or perhaps adding streamed commentary. One annoying current feature is that a game can be interrupted when a "better" one comes along. That's because it is decided by a computer algorithm rather than a human, I guess. Perhaps adjusting this so that games are not interrupted would be a good idea. Also, a channel per type of game mightn't be a bad plan.
Anyway, I've got to go now and get sausages from Tesco... but I'm not trying to be negative; rather, I want lichess to succeed. It is doing well, but it could be so much better.
PS has anyone seen the Wikipedia page? You're better off with NO page than this.
