Lichess rating compared to standard rating

@Notjana
All you talked about is what you think Lichess ratings are MEANT to do or INTENDED to do. That's why your answer totally misses the point. What online ratings COULD do SHOULD do and what many people WANT them to do. What they are meant to do is not everything. If it were then improvement would never be possible.

@adondevamos
Your example of the metric system is a good example, and it proves my case, not detracts from it. In your own words you don't care about someone's height if it was given to you in cm or weight in kg. You want the measurement to be given to you in something that's meaningful and useful to you. And for chess ability the most meaningful and widely understood system, by a large margin is FIDE ratings.
But the mess that is the Lichess ratings is even worse. That's because at least if you are given kg there is an easy formula to convert it to pounds. What's the formula for Lichess ratings hmmm? Oh that's right there is none.

I'm missing the point? Fide uses Elo, we're using Glicko system. The fact that you would like your rating to be 100% comparable is just not possible. That the most meaningful system is Fide rating is only your opinion. Nowadays, a lot of people only play internet chess, never appearing in OTB chess, and only play (a lot of) fast games. Elosystem couldn't cope with that properly, so Glicko and Glicko-2 were the alternatives.

There is no fixed formula (although some people gave it a try) to convert ratings. Besides, comparing Blitz/Rapid/Classical rating here with Fide tournament ratings with each player 90 or 120 minutes for a game is just no comparison.

To those asking for comparable ratings: What you are doing is like complaining to the orange merchant that their oranges don't look, smell and taste like apples. Demanding that lichess rearrange their scale so it looks more like ELO ratings would be like making the orange salespeople paint their oranges red or green so that they look more like apples.

By the very nature of relative measurements, you cannot have comparable ratings, only the illusion of comparability.

@Notjana
It doesn't matter that Lichess uses Glicko and FIDE ELO because, they are both measuring the same thing!!!!! Chess ability. Glicko, just takes into account more factors and therefor is more accurate/reliable but they both attempt to quantify chess performance. Do you think a person's intelligence is dependent upon what system you use to express their level of chess play? That makes absolutely no sense. It's the same person!
Let me explain it to you using this example. Suppose you had two scientists measure the weight of some objects. One old school, using a ballancing scale and another using a highly accurate electronic scale. Just because we would expect there to be differences in accuracy doesn't mean that one is measuring weight and the is measuring distance or volume or time etc. So therefore it would make no sense if the scientist with the electronic scale decided to make up a new unit of measurment just to be different from the scientist with the scales. There would be no reason to do that, and I'm sure if you are honest you would agree with me on that point. So what makes chess ratings any different? Hmmmm? I'd like to hear your answer to that.
If you're going to talk about time controls as some people already have in this thread, don't even bother. Both systems assign players distinct ratings for each different time control. So that's just a total red herring.

@caughtinarut
Where do you get the idea that there are oranges and apples? There's only one thing being measured here, and that's chess performance.

The problem I see: in internet chess there‘s barely anything except your rating. In otb events there are more facets, don’t want to elaborate on that.

So day in, day out there‘s just playing and praying to a number. You define yourself by means of your rating.

(otb is very much different. Winning otb competitions - you just can’t compare!)

@President_DonaldDuck
You keep claiming (especially with your comparison to scientific measurement) that chess performance was an objectively measurable quantity. That is simply not the case.
As long as the measurement is made by only considering game results, someone's quality of play can only be measured with respect to their opponents. That means that any rating system is always and inherently dependant on the composition of its players.

If, for example, suddenly a lot of grandmasters created an account on an online platform and started playing tons of games, the ratings of all players would still average around the same value (1500 in lichess' case), therefore all other players would see a relative decrease in their rating, even if their quality of play had not declined. The same is true the other way around: Lots of amateurs creating accounts would certainly cause an inflation of everybody else's rating without the oldies having improved their play.

That is why I said that you are comparing apples and oranges. For FIDE and lichess ratings to be comparable, you would need to force all FIDE rated players to join lichess, and throw out every lichess member that is not FIDE rated. Then and only then could it make sense to try to align the systems with one another.

Ha, it's been a couple years since I wrote my last treatise about comparing rating pools. Rather than simplify matters, allow me to make them more complicated:

* FIDE ratings are dependent upon your opposition (localized player pool). Some FIDE players travel and some don't. Some only play in large prize events and some don't. Some players are only able to play by traveling to areas which host tournaments.
* Anyone who reads the first page of http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf should know what questions to ask to determine whether Lichess is actually using Glicko.

So I'd say this isn't a case of comparing apples and oranges, but instead comparing tomatoes and bananas. Comparisons can be made, but don't bet the farm on them.

Look at any chess standings list and try to imagine where you might fit in the standings list.

The only way to discover where you could probably fit in the list, is finding someone in common with you. Like someone you have already played. Without that knowledge you do not know where you could be in the standings list.

If FIDE, USCF, ECF rated chess players solved Lichess puzzles, than that could be a common point to display. The puzzles could then show the three difference rating systems for the same puzzle.

The feature could help others to compare their ratings with other rating systems.

National federations also have their own ELO ratings. As far as I know national federations apply periodic corrections to their national rating system so that the national ratings of their FIDE rated players get as close as possible to each other.

It would be an improvement, if new lichess members with a FIDE rating were initially seeded at theit FIDE rating instead of at 1500.