Years of reports with no indication that any reported user facing any consequences.

Yes I see the hand-waving and hear the put-downs. Are there not substantive and fact based responses to this issue from someone who has used the service for many years.

@petri999 said in #6:

• you reported player who are not violating
• almost never one game is sufficient evidence i.e. your report was handled but action was taken so much later that you did not receive any ratings point compensation hence no notification

Could it be that there are more than two reasons for this? I would assume for a professional service more care and thought would be put into this discussion for someone who has used the service as directed for so long.

Let this be a warning to all: fair-play manual reporting should now be considered largely a waste of time and effort on this platform.

Not that you have been user is so long. Most people responding to have used it lot longer. IF you check year 2024 review https://lichess.org/@/Lichess/blog/lichess-a-review-of-2024/hYZssXbK
you would see that 174k reports cheating (there other type of fair play reports in addition)
and 196k moderation actions taken of fair play violations which is over 500 actions a day. I do not know as I am not affiliated with the process BUT I am sure most of the actions are taken due reports. But evidence still rarely on just one report and never from just one game. The evidence is obviously statistical in nature.

@Rite2LeftOne
No, what I have presented you with is evidence.

@LeechessMothsRGhey
I don't understand how you can say this about a free website with excellent facilities. Anyway if it's so bad, what are you doing here?

@boombox2000 said in #11:

would assume for a professional service more care and thought would be put into this discussion for someone who has used the service as directed for so long.

You mean free and run almost exclusively by volunteers and financed by donations?

I've only ever seen one cheater that I was sure about and that person was banned BEFORE my report.

You've according to your estimate filed cheating reports on 11% of your games, if we take into account that you only played 545 games in the last two years, it's no wonder you're getting ignored...

OP, if you want to know, you need to make a list with the people you report. you check the username after a month or two, and you see that several are banned or account doesnt exist (i assume because they deleted after getting banned) . I have done that for a while. many of the reported people are gone, others stopped playing before they could get banned i guess. but i feel like lately there is less response and also never seen a ban from blitz games, but from rapid. It really gets me when I lose for days in a row and then opponents start finally making mistakes that i am able to recognize abd i start winning. it's complicated but well in the end, the best approach is to ignore it. so maybe if you want stop reporting i dont blame you.

I'm sending reports from time to time and some of the reported opponents get banned, I get notified here and there. The system isn't optimal, but it works somehow. It could work better, but it's much easier to criticize than to come up with a better solution.

@boombox2000 said in #11:

Yes I see the hand-waving and hear the put-downs. Are there not substantive and fact based responses to this issue from someone who has used the service for many years.

Could it be that there are more than two reasons for this? I would assume for a professional service more care and thought would be put into this discussion for someone who has used the service as directed for so long.

Let this be a warning to all: fair-play manual reporting should now be considered largely a waste of time and effort on this platform.
90% of my reports go through. I frequently report. Maybe 3ish times a month. You're probably just reporting the wrong people. Don't act like Kramnik.

Imo the community should start adapting to a simple guideline in response to threads like this:

"I-G-N-O-R-E"

@boombox2000 said in #1:

This is my experience now. Please explain how this could be true. Lets say there are 500 reports over 2 years. How could this realistically be the case. What am I missing.

Are those people who usually seem like cheaters to you actually cheat? What makes you think that? Were you able to substantiate their cheating in your reports well enough? Or did you just imagine something and send a link to the game? If so, why are you surprised if the results are predictable?
For example, my personal statistics for catching cheaters here are roughly as follows:

• I registered on the site about 17 months ago;
• As far as I remember, I sent reports with detailed justifications on about 11 suspected cheaters;
• As far as I remember, about 9 of them were banned based on my reports with detailed justifications, and I received a thank-you email for that;
• As far as I remember, another one was banned later (meaning, I probably correctly identified him as a cheater, but he wasn't banned based on my report, but only later);
• And, as far as I remember, only one is still playing. That's most likely what happened with this one: I was probably right about him, too; but he wasn't a brazen cheater at all, he just cheated a little, and not 100% definitively, and then he stopped; I didn't see any anomalies in his subsequent statistics either.
  These are approximate values, meaning: roughly like this, not exactly like that (as far as I remember, like that). I wrote reports with detailed justifications like these about obvious cheaters, in my opinion. I also saw about the same number of suspicious types, but they behaved in ways that weren't 100% obvious, and proving their cheating was difficult. There's definitely no widespread cheating. I don't even see a significant percentage of cheaters, in my opinion.

The only rebuttle you hear many give is basically no one cheats.

Here's the thing. There is a decent sized list of things you can report a player on. They are all various forms of cheating the system and fair play here, or, just ruining the experience and fairplay competitive chess here so they are reportable. Whether it's rank fixing usingg multiple accounts, throwing games with throw away accounts, hijinx of delay during game, leaving games hoping you will give up on remaining time, or straight up cheat cheats lettting a bot play their game for them or whatever the case may be.

But here's the thing. I'll give you one recent example where someone clearly was going to take his actions beyond fairplay to atempt to get an edge. And while reported, nothing came of it yet and likely never will.

in a 1 minute game. In a tournament within the last two weeks, I played someone so far above my rank he maybe should have swatted me like a fly. But he didn't find it that easy I guess, so a couple moves in when I felt I already might have caught an edge over him, at least I had been able to do what I wanted so far, and was also keeping up in time, the opponent pulls a classic delay tactic. He pushes the button for a Draw offer. Classic attempt to delay me and try to steal an edge on time. How many times have all of us seen these pricks pull this? I lost the game on time in the end but I would otherwise say it was a good game and played well by both of us, even told him so afterwards. But also let him know it wasn't cool to pull those hijinx as he did. I reported the user and offered the game link in report. Of course I don't hear back that anyone looked at the report at all. No judgement reported to me on whether he shall be castrated or not for pulling that draw delay. And this is the kind of thing I think the OP was pointing out. We can report these things a hundred times and might hear back one obligatory response from all of them. "...yo, a person you reported was dealt with...". Oh really? One huh. Which one and when, and for what did you finally find was worthy of your action against them? Because as far as I know it maybe should be a hundred, not one. But how would we know since all the reportable hijinx in their list of reportable offenses happen pretty much daily and we can report daily and not ever hear if any of them have been dealt with. Not even at least hearing if they just got a warning for doing what they've done.

Oh yeah, again that same one example, same game. The opponent waited nearly the full 12 seconds or whatever and just before he was about to forfiet by not playing, his double move rolls out. I know many of you know what that means. I'm so used to seeing that here it doesn't phase me anymore. But again, this game was reported and a link offered to review it for his draw delay tactic in a short timed tournament game. Not only did he use a lame cheat delay during, but while setting is pregame junk up using the 12 seconds to start he kept me from getting into more games that tournament. Ruining more chess fun while he scams the system here. Another worthless report, wasted time and energy for bothering to report, and another example that tells us most anything is allowed here.