Doubling Down on Why Lichess Should Add a Report Denial Feature

Thank you for your post, @InkyDarkBird. I also militate for the same thing !

Even if it's easy to understand that mods & devs are reticent to give any information in that matter, there is some form of opacity in the handling of cheaters and reports by Lichess that goes directly against the final objective : get rid of them. If the userbase doesn't know how to argue in a cheater report, Lichess will forever be contaminated. To form the userbase, users should know when their requests are rejected... It's a simple fact

OP ain't wrong.

It would be interesting to know how many times per day somebody gets reported to the moderators. I’m sure the data exists. I’m also sure that the data will not be shared with us.

It would also be interesting to know how many active moderators are operating on a given day. Perhaps there are part time ones too. Who knows. Well, lichess knows, but we humble users are unlikely to know, even those of us who pay for our wings.

Could it be the case that there are 5000 reports submitted daily and only 3 moderators on any given day? It could explain why the OP is experiencing the concern that he mentioned. Perhaps cheating reports are just automatically run through Stockfish and a decision is rendered without any human involvement? It could simply be the case that lichess is inundated with reports and it has been decided that it isnt feasible to have enough moderators to address everything directly. I’m just spitballing here. I guess we will never know.

@InkyDarkBird

"It encourages Lichess moderators to perform better since the more people whose valid reports get denied, the more confusing the Lichess moderators appear to be.
Users do not necessarily need to re-report users, but they could take talks to the forums."

lets take the witch hunt to the forms
Lichess has the no public shamming policy to stop this exact thing called witch hunts

also if form post in encourages the mods to work better what about all the ones currently about cheating
the mods are surly working alot harder on those cases /s

"Exactly, and moderators telling them that they are wrong would at least show that their reports are being read and analyzed to some degree, which would dissuade some from arguing that someone cheated."

To what end whether you get told denied or accepted there would be nothing you could do about it.
If you write in the forms public shamming, talk to a mod they say to report.
The reason for this system for moderation is so that all reports are handled in the report section and not in forms
Where thousands would be reenacting the Salem witch trials

@InkyDarkBird Sorry, I'm not reading the whole thing so maybe it was discussed but you get a notification when a person you reported gets banned so in essence that's exactly what you are asking for. If you don't get a notification he wasn't. Getting another notification is redundant. The reports are being look at as I've reported a user just today and he was banned within a few hours.

@for_cryingout_loud said in #15:

lets take the witch hunt to the forms
Lichess has the no public shamming policy to stop this exact thing called witch hunts
Non-unique argument.
The main reason why public shaming even occurs in the first place is BECAUSE of the dissatisfaction with the report system.
In addition, players can simply omit the violator's name.

also if form post in encourages the mods to work better what about all the ones currently about cheating
the mods are surly working alot harder on those cases /s
Your point here is unclear. Lichess moderators will still be able to understand the thoughts of the userbase more effectively and how they got to the conclusion of cheating. By doing so, they will be able to give more effective responses to the users and satisfy them better.

"Exactly, and moderators telling them that they are wrong would at least show that their reports are being read and analyzed to some degree, which would dissuade some from arguing that someone cheated."

To what end whether you get told denied or accepted there would be nothing you could do about it.
No, you could send another report, as I said before, bring it to the forums, or email Lichess.

The reason for this system for moderation is so that all reports are handled in the report section and not in forms
This system's negatives outweigh the benefits, as I have argued in #1 and #1 of the original topic.

@i-bex said in #16:

InkyDarkBird Sorry, I'm not reading the whole thing so maybe it was discussed but you get a notification when a person you reported gets banned so in essence that's exactly what you are asking for.
Yeah no worries.

If you don't get a notification he wasn't.
That is exactly the issue.
We do not get to understand why our report is denied, which is bad for the reasons mentioned in #1.

In fact, to add on to why we should allow anonymous talks about reports, multiple sources have proven that random groups solve issues better than a few experts or sole individual.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0403723101
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd
https://www.wondriumdaily.com/the-wisdom-of-crowds/

By allowing reports to be released into the forums, users would be able to present their own viewpoint on the situation and work together with the moderators to improve the quality and accuracy of reports, as well as increase both the users' and moderators' understanding of each others' thought processes.

wisdom of the crowd only works when the individuals of the crowd are independent, i.e. they don't influence each other. just check your first link for how often it assumes independence for the maths to work. or read the wikipedia page all the way to the bottom (section "problems").
anyway, that's what distinguishes wisdom of the crowd from a simple witch hunt. what you want introduce is the latter, not the former.

edit: but fortunately it won't happen anyway.

@InkyDarkBird said in #18:

We do not get to understand why our report is denied, which is bad for the reasons mentioned in #1.

I thought your main concern was whether reports are being checked in the first place because of:
"ANY SORT OF NEWS is better...rather than players not knowing if moderators checked their report at all"
"Lichess moderators could (but would not be obligated to) also add a reason"

I can just attest to reports being checked (which you can verify in my game history, a person winning +27 got banned after my report, hopefully this doesn't break any witch hunt rule). So getting a rejection notification is not needed, just assume it was denied.

If your main concern is actually getting a reason for rejection, you should probably reword your original post. The issue is that's going to add a lot of work for already busy mods (pretty much a full blown statement arguing the case) just to bring a lot of controversy and animosity by people that do not understand their mathematical models and the statements will inadvertently expose some cheating detection methods that will then be exploited.

If you would be satisfied with a notification "Your report was denied" then no notification does the same. If you want a reason for rejection, that opens a whole can of worms. There is no good reason to implement this.