A plea for transparency

I've seen increasing signs of bureaucratic grandstanding and abuse in Lichess, but I always assumed that they were flukes. I am talking about forum posts deleted and people posting them added to secret lists that change how the site sees them. And it's inevitable that some people, mistaking moderator responsibility with personal power, are going to abuse the system from time to time.

But lately this has become the norm, it seems to me. Please make it stop!

If you are going to take unilateral action about some person or behavior, be transparent about it. Warn them first, record and publish it somewhere so people can see what happened and why. It makes little sense to punish behaviors (some that were previously allowed) with no explanation, visibility or accountability.

This is how today a friend tried to challenge me to a match and I didn't see anything. I tried to challenge him and he didn't see anything. Not a warning, not a "this happened because", just silence. And this is not related to something public, but a simple chess game between friends. This is not the only case, but I found it particularly disturbing because it was all hidden. In the darkness anything can happen.

So consider this a plea to bring all of these actions to light. If they are justified, then this will help everybody: people will easily find out why they were targeted and others will see what they should avoid in the future. If they are not justified, then we will be able to avoid the rot that has consumed other gaming forums and servers by exposing power hungry psychos hiding amongst chess enthusiasts.

Thank you!

Can u get a bit more specific about ur issue. I dont rly get whats ur issue, is it about players get banned without them knowing?
Sry for not understanding...

Maybe for political reasons.

>This is how today a friend tried to challenge me to a match and I didn't see anything. I tried to challenge him and he didn't see anything. Not a warning, not a "this happened because", just silence. And this is not related to something public, but a simple chess game between friends. This is not the only case, but I found it particularly disturbing because it was all hidden. In the darkness anything can happen.

You and your friend might want to check out lichess.org/account/preferences/privacy
Whatever technical issues you have experienced are not related to any "secret lists."

Please read and follow our lichess.org/page/communication-guidelines if you don't want any of the posts or threads deleted. Don't spam, don't troll, just behave, can't get any more transparent than this.

I know how to use Lichess Preferences, thank you. Also I know for sure non spam forum posts disappear daily.

Wondering, is your reply behaving? Trolling? Spamming? How do you know?

you're a dev. check the source code. there is nothing implemented that would prevent two players from challenging each other via some sort of secret list. and what would even be the goal of that? why would they do it?

@TotalNoob69 said in #1:
> I've seen increasing signs of bureaucratic grandstanding and abuse in Lichess, but I always assumed that they were flukes. I am talking about forum posts deleted and people posting them added to secret lists that change how the site sees them. And it's inevitable that some people, mistaking moderator responsibility with personal power, are going to abuse the system from time to time.
>
> But lately this has become the norm, it seems to me. Please make it stop!
>
> If you are going to take unilateral action about some person or behavior, be transparent about it. Warn them first, record and publish it somewhere so people can see what happened and why. It makes little sense to punish behaviors (some that were previously allowed) with no explanation, visibility or accountability.
>
> This is how today a friend tried to challenge me to a match and I didn't see anything. I tried to challenge him and he didn't see anything. Not a warning, not a "this happened because", just silence. And this is not related to something public, but a simple chess game between friends. This is not the only case, but I found it particularly disturbing because it was all hidden. In the darkness anything can happen.
>
> So consider this a plea to bring all of these actions to light. If they are justified, then this will help everybody: people will easily find out why they were targeted and others will see what they should avoid in the future. If they are not justified, then we will be able to avoid the rot that has consumed other gaming forums and servers by exposing power hungry psychos hiding amongst chess enthusiasts.
>
> Thank you!

So you have the skills and knowledge to check the code and find the secret list but yet dont nor do you bring it up.
Which means you either didnt check or know it does not exsit and using it as an excuse to proove your point.

Also lichess just like report feedback lichess does not want to add because "we are always right and dam anyone who says otherwise addutide"

also people already complain in forms when they get banned.
Now you want peoples post who get deleted aswell (which happend which only lead to more spam)
your solution will only 10x the problem

If you feel any moderator action against your acct was unfair you can ask about it in lichess.org/appeal . sometimes posts are deleted because they violate the sites rules but aren't a serious enough violation to warrant a separate warning. While some posts are serious violations and those posters do receive a separate warning.

Privacy laws make publishing lists of every action against every account impracticable. But users are permitted to enquire about their own acct through appeals

Seems like tinfoil hats become the norm if anything.

@TotalNoob69 said in #5:
> I know how to use Lichess Preferences, thank you. Also I know for sure non spam forum posts disappear daily.
>
> Wondering, is your reply behaving? Trolling? Spamming? How do you know?

Many duplicate topics, political, religious or simply spam topics disappear and this is normal. can you imagine if Lichess kept and left open or archived all the forum topics with the title "hello"?

why always justify, what is the need? justifying such a decision would provoke a response. imagine: Lichess closes a topic titled "hi".

Lichess says : "we have closed and removed this topic which represents spam and is against our usage policy."

the creator of the topic will say: "I did nothing wrong". ect... this would encourage provocation, denial, aggression and would mean the simple and obvious death of the forums. None of the regular, well-meaning forumers have had such problems, unless they have entered into sufficiently sensitive or ambiguous topics. For exemple, i never had problem in forum or never saw any of my message that disapeared