Off-topic section is becoming a liability.

I shouldn't say Idiots at work but it is not far from truth..
I am speaking very straightforward and will sound insulting.
But it is what it is..
(Sorry anyways)

@clousems said in #6:

It seems to me that moderation would solve a lot of that (maybe not the Sonic stuff-- that's going to remain so long as kids use the site). Would you agree, or is there another potential fix?

(Regarding your edit, I tend to engage because of past interactions with the user in question. When you go through long periods of constantly being accused of horrible things, and when the traditional avenues of dealing with that problem fail, you develop a need to defend yourself from accusations of criminal and sadistic behavior. IIRC, my reaction towards your post was more a reaction to the way that it was worded than content)

Everytime you engage you give the trolls what they want. Their main aim is to provoke. If a random idiot on the street started accusing you of all sorts of crazy things, would you feel the need to defend yourself? I certainly wouldn't.

I think your argument against my post at the time was that I choose to call some people trolls and you disagreed because you didnt think they were being deliberately provocative. Most of these trolls know what they are doing. Do you really think someone posts a topic about Israel/Palestine and doesn't expect fireworks? That person is either a troll or the most naive person on the planet. Or the guys would ONLY post about Trump, Nazi's, Hitler, Musk in the most biased way possible and can't understand why there are areas of disagreement!. The outrage is the point!

@betternever said in #12:

Everytime you engage you give the trolls what they want. Their main aim is to provoke. If a random idiot on the street started accusing you of all sorts of crazy things, would you feel the need to defend yourself? I certainly wouldn't.

a) I would if said individual decided to break out of jail every so often, pop up with fake identities, and specifically harass me and a few others while thumbing his nose at authority for two years.

b) You're missing the point. I'd love to go more in depth on this specific problem, but as annoyed as I am about it, the bigger problem is that the lack of moderation points to potential safety issues for kids down the road.

(side note: I'm also concerned that unmoderated forums combined with bad actors could potentially open up lichess to litigation, but I'm not a legal expert, so I don't know how realistic that is)

@clousems said in #13:

a) I would if said individual decided to break out of jail every so often, pop up with fake identities, and specifically harass me and a few others while thumbing his nose at authority for two years.

b) You're missing the point. I'd love to go more in depth on this specific problem, but as annoyed as I am about it, the bigger problem is that the lack of moderation points to potential safety issues for kids down the road.

(side note: I'm also concerned that unmoderated forums combined with bad actors could potentially open up lichess to litigation, but I'm not a legal expert, so I don't know how realistic that is)

a) Real life and the internet are very different and you cannot draw parallels here. There is a difference between being harassed and choosing to engage with a troll. You can simply block the person here and refuse to engage. You don't have to read their posts or reply to any of their topics. But you choose to feed the troll. Repeatedly. You even troll the troll by mimicking his behaviour.

I do believe the blocking options should be improved here though.

b) not sure which point I am missing because you didn't elaborate. Not sure what safety concerns you have for kids on this forum, but would be happy to hear your thoughts. I do believe it should be the parent's responsibility to ensure they know what their kids are doing online and Lichess can't really police bad parenting.

I personally think we should get rid of the passive aggressive emojis. The downvote/upvote, horsey is just a tool for the trolls and actually serves no other purpose imo. But that is for another thread...

The obvious safety concern is cyberbullying, which is a major concern even on well-moderated sites. Other concerns in an unmoderated forum could be things like stalking or putting malicious links in forums. Kids are especially susceptible to this kind of behavior.

Lichess used to push back more against kids using the forums, but they lost that battle when COVID hit. Upon review, I think their ToS shields them from litigation (but again, I'm no lawyer), but the site's communication features are still dominated by those who shouldn't have access to communication features. And I can't imagine having those ToS tested in court is a desirable outcome for anyone involved.

I'm 100% with you on the emojis thing.

Postscript: I'll answer you again regarding the particular scenario, but I'd really like to focus more on the issue of whether or not the off-topic section is a liability. I don't think the specificities of my example are the underlying problem here. If that's what you really want to discuss, you can use DMs.

I make no claims to be acting as a saint at the moment. I am well aware that the "correct" course of action would be to peacefully ignore people who continuously say nasty things. At the same time, I have a combination of pride, frustration in the current mods to enforce rules, and past experience that make it hard for me to ignore.

In times long past, I ran into a similar situation with a different troll where false things were said about me on this site and caused some reputational harm. Now granted, I think most people are going to realize that I've never actively participated in genocide and am probably not a child abuser, but I also think that if the mods are going to allow others to slander me, I have a duty to stand up for myself. Again, I am fully aware that this is probably not the best course of action, but I maintain that the very fact that I feel compelled to do this is a reflection on the inability of mods to do their jobs effectively.

In my opinion, the problem is not so much the quality of moderation, but rather the excessive responsibility of users in certain threads.

the greatest number of disputes are particularly in political, ideological or religious threads... as in real life. but if you go to a bar and get into an argument with a guy you don't agree with, that's not a site moderation issue. the police will not prevent an energic debate of ideas in a bar, provided that it respects the law and that the protagonists do not insult each other, do not take the road drunk and do not hit each other.

on the other hand, if you engage in this same politically vehement behavior 20 meters from a school in the morning, while the young people are in the playground, it would be much more problematic.

I therefore call on the responsibility of the users, do not forget the human behind the computer and that you have no idea if your interlocutor is drunk or tired. if the user represents a real danger, Lichess will quickly see this, but there are cases where a vehemently expressed opinion is not enough to incriminate a user and ban him permanently.

@CSKA_Moscou

The problem is that the behavior goes beyond vehemently expressed political, ideological, or religious opinion.
See post #1

@betternever

I happen to know the troll referenced here. It's not just a matter of engaging or not. They downvote almost every single post, however unrelated to the original topic they disagreed with you on, for the next couple weeks after you say anything. Which I think counts beyond trolling to go into harassment. So it's not even just about not engaging since even not responding to things will still get you attacked. And of course, I would love to be a bigger person - but when attacked repeatedly for simply existing on the wrong side of things...well, I have a short temper.

And I don't think this is about bad parenting. Parents can't control the influx of trolls, nor can they control it when said trolls attack for almost no reason.

@betternever said in #3:

Off topic is an absolute cesspit and also a safeguarding nightmare. On a recent What Are Your Favourite Books post you had Viktor Frankl mentioned alongside Sonic the Hedgehog!

There is a running Comic book series of Sonic the Hedgehog... in case you didn’t know. So if you ask that question it’s only fair that you’ll get an answer from someone.

I just think that most of the conflict comes from the Tournaments. It just is because the chat is live and has a higher risk of cyberbullying to happen, even though I made very good friends from those.