5 ms·
Kind of fascinating that their biggest cost is site moderation! This seems... odd for a site whose main mechanic really isn't social networking.
by ChicagoBoy11 3y ago
Kind of fascinating that their biggest cost is site moderation! This seems... odd for a site whose main mechanic really isn't social networking.
- faaabio1618 3y agoI might be wrong, but I think it's considered moderation (at least some of) the anti-cheating controls in place.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wirrbel 3y agoI play regularly on lichess. I got insulted a couple of times in the game chat. Looking at the scale of lichess, I am sure it adds up.
- zackb 3y agoMe too, but it's still much better on lichess than chess.com in my experience. Also, cheating is not as bad on lichess
- patrickdavey 3y agoHave you looked at "Zen mode"? It removes the chat while you're playing ... you'll still see any insults after the game though ;)
- wirrbel 3y agoI know Zen mode, however, most interactions are pleasant so I don't enable it by default, but typically when someone bothers me in the chat.
- Mystery-Machine 3y agoI've never ever looked at the chat. And knowing that it costs money, and quite a lot, to moderate that, I'll never report anyone. It's just vanity. I don't care what you write to me. I just beat you in the game. Just cry it out. There you go.
- absoflutely 3y agoI report these people in the hope that other players don't have to experience their hateful comments.
- digging 3y agoGoes to show you how difficult and demanding moderation truly is, and why popular sites/services routinely fail to do it effectively. It's a quite proactive process.
- ChicagoBoy11 3y agoThat's an incredibly good point. I would think you'd need a pretty modest operation when it comes to that for a site like lichess, and the fact that it is the biggest expense really puts into focus the kind of scale the problem likely is at the bigger social media sites.
- lukhas 3y agoNothing is modest at Lichess scale, we have a few million users, several thousand of them post in forums daily and chat with each other. Also, we're a chess website with more than one million games per day, and some people like to cheat. We're classifying "fair play and anti-cheating" as "moderation" in our expenses because the two are intertwined.
- TylerE 3y agoThere is all kinds of player bad behavior that needs to be manually verified - cheating is the obvious one, but there's also smurfing, excessive sandbagging, clock abuse (e.g. letting your clock tick down to zero in a loss, just to be annoying).
- lelanthran 3y agoWhat's smurfing and sandbagging? EDIT: I ask because I was once accused of smurfing (I'm only a casual player) in the chat during the endgame.
- mlyle 3y agoSmurfing is when you disguise yourself as a noob on an alternate account when you are really more skilled. Sandbagging is related: deliberately losing to play people with lower ratings.
- tech_ken 3y agoChess players are some of the saltiest people on Earth, people can get really mean in chat. Also cheaters galore
- Tenoke 3y agoThe saltiness is much, much less than in some games (shooters, mobas) but a portion of every playerbase thinks they are the worst one even if they are not.
- tech_ken 3y agoExtremely good point, I don't really game outside of online chess so I can't say that I have a very wide sample pool. TBH the chat I used to see when my brother was playing League blew any chess experience I've had out of the water. I'd almost use a word beyond "salty" for that