Block spectators

@Rider_of_Theli said in #10:
> The only point to be spectating instead of analyzing post-mortem is to comment in real time
Definitely not. If that were the case, why would there be the "Lichess TV", for example? It's quite common to spectate games of your frieds, other games in a tournament you are playing, your teammates in 4545 League etc.

> comment in real time ,which is something we could call "mild cheating" but still unfair for the player that is not being coached or receiving commentary
Commenting in real time is perfectly fine, I do it quite often. As the players don't see spectator chat until the game is finished, it has nothing to do with fair play violation. If they are using some other channel than spectator chat or if an active player works around the limitation to visit the game chat, it would violate a fair play but obviously you don't really need to watch the game on lichess for this kind of cheating.

In other words, disabling the possibility to spectate live games would not prevent the kind of fair play violations you are afraid of but would prevent other, perfectly legitimate, use cases.

I have nothing against my friends spectating, or league spectating, or tournament spectating. That is one thing. Other thing is people I don't know spectating my 1 vs 1 game.

When I say commenting I mean chat in real time between the spectator and my opponent in a game he is playing against me outside any kind of event. That has happened to me enough times that I care to write these posts. Last time I actually messaged both persons and they responded like I have mentioned above. You don't really need to watch the game on lichess, but it facilitates this kind of behavior a lot, so it doesn't prevent it, but at least doesn't make it so easy. Otherwise the players would need software to share screen or a good camera pointing at the screen. Nothing out of this world but definitely more cumbersome than spectating the game and just talk on a video or phone call or discord or whatever.

As I said before, the idea would be to have the choice to disable spectator for your 1 vs 1 random games, if you join a public arena or tournament, or it's a league game, it should allow spectators by default disregarding user settings.

@Rider_of_Theli said in #12:
> When I say commenting I mean chat in real time between the spectator and my opponent in a game he is playing against me outside any kind of event.
What I wanted to point out that this (potential) problem is completely independent of spectating.

> That has happened to me enough times that I care to write these posts.
How do you know? Did they tell you every time? After all, you played only 29 games in total so far, 19 blitz and 10 rapid. What should we imagine under "enough times"?

Anyway, if you are confident enough that your opponent violated the fair play policy, reporting them is the way to go. But I have serious doubts, to be honest.

> Otherwise the players would need software to share screen or a good camera pointing at the screen. Nothing out of this world but definitely more cumbersome than spectating the game and just talk on a video or phone call or discord or whatever.
Is it? Almost every common software for video calls (which is more common today than audio only communication software) has a function to share screen or selected window. So if they open a call anyway, sharing the lichess game is trivial.

Let's be clear that the overwhelming majority of spectators of games are watching because chess interests them and they want to see a game being played. It's not really any different from any physical chess club, any match between two physical clubs, or hall where a tournament is being played: you will see as many people standing by the chess tables watching as you see playing.

Here's a personal touch. Someone close to me finally plucked up the courage to join Lichess about 6 weeks ago. Since then he has spent a lot of time here watching games between strong and not-so-strong players and trying to learn from the games he sees. He has not, so far, had the confidence to play a human opponent here on Lichess but I hope he will soon. If he had been prevented from watching even just some of the games he's seen here, it would have been very disappointing and discouraging for him.

Chess is a spectator sport like any other for spectators who are enthusiastic. Let's keep it that way.

Concerns about people giving illegal help to one of the players can be legitimate. But as mkubecek points out, preventing people watching your game isn't going to stop that happening. Anyone who believes that their opponent is receiving help from another player should report the incident, with whatever evidence they have, to moderators of this site.

@ Crtex it just hide the names of people in the audience
I though maybe it helps for some if they prefer to hide the audience :).

I just play in zen mode and don't see them either (among other things).