The -500 +500 Rating Range Is Already Getting Very Annoying, Can We Please Change It?

I wasn't going to, but there are some points in this thread that are being overlooked, perhaps intentionally, that need to be addressed.

1. Before this change, there were complaints in the forum about people wanting pairings in their rating range and not being able to get them, both in quick pairings and custom seeks. Those complaints may have stemmed from a technical issue that the new system was installed to address.

2. The reason that the change also applies to non-rated seeks could be that challenges and seeks are handled universally and only branch off at the assign-rating step at the end of the game. I haven't seen the code, but my guess would be that to separate rated and non-rated seeks/challenges would require additional code to handle each case, and at present that code does not exist. This would explain why all seeks/challenges are handled the same, whether rated or not.

Sazed's position is quite clear and perfectly logical from a developer's point of view: Demonstrate where the code is broken and it gets fixed. If the installed code now works as designed, then there is no technical issue to address. Code works as designed or it doesn't, and no one in this thread has even suggested that the code is flawed. "But I hate it cuz it sucks" is in no way a technical issue that a dev can hope to address.

Lichess is one man's vision, implemented the way he sees fit, and while I'm sure he appreciates feedback, without concrete examples or better yet working code, he decides to incorporate it or not. Does that make him a dictator? Am I a dictator when I write a book and ignore critiques if they interfere with my story? I say no, you might say yes. But the bottom line is that being a user or even a patron gives us users no right to dictate demands, whether for changes or explanation, from those who have provided this service for us.

Creation implies ownership. You want a say in how things work? Learn the code and submit patches. Find concrete examples where code is broken. Give the devs something they can use, and they'll be more than happy to use it.

Why is this thread being hidden way down the board with 15 hrs old stuff when the last comment was made 40 minutes ago?

There is something incredibly fishy about all this. Has anyone actually seen @thibault in person lately? Maybe he has been replaced by evil chess people? Lichess seemed to have all the cyber hippy good stuff about it. He can't have sold out just to accommodate all these new players.

@reclusive_writer

Thank you for your spacious comment. I see much of it as a polemic with some points I have raised before, so I hope that you have nothing against me trying to discuss with or correct some of your points.

First paragraph: as far as I managed to understand the code, the thing that was changed is the method by which the user interface allows to choose the rating boundaries of the created custom challenge. Because the new method severely restricts the freedom of this choice, the challenge is not truly "custom" anymore. After the system gets these boundaries, the rest of searching for the opponent seems to work as before, therefore I doubt whether any issue of the kind you mention could have been addressed this way.

Second paragraph: I have never mentioned this topic before and I fully agree with your observations. I have no problem with non-rated and rated seeks working alike, of course as long as they work well.

Third paragraph: for me (and many others), it is a bug. It is a bug that I cannot accept a challenge of someone 700 points below me when I want to give them a chess experience of their life. It is a bug that someone 700 points above me cannot accept my challenge when he wants to give me a chess experience of my life. It is a bug that you cannot create a challenge for people 100-200 points below you in order to practise beating them regularly. It is a bug that you cannot create a challenge for people 100-200 points above you in order to learn something from stronger players. If the developers perceive these technical issues as features, they should give some justification for it, but they never tried to. They imposed these bugs on us and claim that everything works fine.

Fourth and fifth paragraph: I hope that it will not sound rude when I say that, in my perception, you "overlooked, perhaps intentionally" the subtle difference between legal and moral obligations. From a legal point of view, the developers can at any point devote this website to professional snail breeding and we will have nothing to say. Do you imagine the outrage? From a moral point of view, if you develop an international chess community putting their trust in you, you cannot implement so serious changes without prior consultation.

#AbC

So you insist on your freedom by taking away the freedom of the site owner for moral reasons?

@Otienimous

My disagreements with your position are twofold, one technical, one philosophical. I'm willing to concede the arguments in the first paragraph because I have no way of knowing whether or not the rating range code was the only part of the matchmaking algorithm that was changed.

My first disagreement stems from your continued use of the word "bug". That word relates solely to code that either malfunctions or induces an unintended consequence in otherwise working code. Unless you can comply with Sazed's request to produce such malfunctioning code, or evidence that it exists, then the word simply does not apply. In the interests of science, you could file a bug with your complaint as you've set it forth, and when it gets closed as "Not a Bug - Won't Fix", you'll have demonstrated that specific words have specific meanings.

My second disagreement is with your insisting on assigning responsibilities to the ones providing us this service. Our presence here implies no obligation, legal, ethical or moral, to provide anything not specifically outlined in the TOS, which they have agreed to abide by voluntarily. That state of nature would exist whether Lichess had 1 user or 100 million. We are not customers, we are guests, invited to share in one man's vision of what a chess server should look/act/feel like. That vision may agree with our preferences for how that vision should manifest, or it may not. But at the end of the day, Lichess is a gift to the world, given freely and with no expectation of any reward whatsoever. To require anything more of the ones who have already given (and continue to give) so much is, seen in its best light, entitlement.

@MercuryTrismegistus Look at the topic lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/probable-bug-report. Only don't ask why it was closed, I haven't got any idea either.

@sheckley666 Thank you for this important question. It is rather typical - it always happens - that one person's freedom ends where another person's freedom begins. And yes, I would argue that our (not only mine!) freedom to make truly custom challenges on this website is morally (but not legally, of course!) more important than the siteowner's freedom to render it impossible with no explanation whatsoever.

@reclusive_writer It is a real pleasure to finally talk to someone making valid arguments. I say it without any irony at all, I begin to like this discussion. Let me try to answer you two-fold argument...

First fold: the core of my answer already exists in #93. "If the developers perceive these bugs as features, they should give some justification for it, but they never tried to". If we want to give an objective differentiation between a feature and a bug, it has to be like that: "a particular aspect of the code functioning is a feature, not a bug, when the developer is able to justify its existence". We cannot differentiate them along the line of "(...) when the developer wants it to exist", because the developer's wish is subjective, it isn't something that could be logically analysed and discussed.

Second fold: I slowly begin to think that it is about cultural differences. In my environment, we have a widespread proverb "who gives and takes away, may he rot in Hell". It is my perception, it is the perception of most people I know. Obviously, I don't speak about objective difficulties. When the developer falls ill or has no money to support the project further, we say "what a pity" and move along. When, however, the developer decides on a whim that from now on this website will be devoted to professional snail breeding, I perceive it as seriously unethical for the sake of all the people who put their trust in him and his reliability. Although I know that snail breeding may seem an unreasonably exaggerated comparison, I think that at least it allows to comprehend my philosophical point more easily. Besides, creating the forum section named "Lichess Feedback" and then completely ignoring all the inconvenient feedback seems like a trap specifically designed to swallow our free time... Why to design such a trap? I don't know...

Thank you once again for this interesting discussion.

#AbC

@reclusive_writer I think there is a potential confusion between "code" and "configuration" in your statements. It is the "configuration" part that has been configured to pair players only within the said rating ranges where people are taking issue. As far as I can tell, the "code" part which supports that configuration is working fine (more or less) and that is not the issue. So the point of soliciting fixes for bugs does not arise. It is, however, a question of the intent for the configuration, its driving factors and the process of its incorporation that is of concern here.

Say, if some mechanic does a shoddy job at re-calibrating the steering or wheel-alignment of a car which can potentially result in damages and injuries while driving, then it is not the fault of the car manufacturer who only implemented the parameters for calibration.

Also, the changes cannot be categorized as bugs just because they no longer support existing functionalities considering how software evolves over time. Its only a bug if it does not meet established requirements or against "generally" acceptable practices. Note my emphasis on "generally". By not clarifying the drivers of the change in requirements and by not allowing the community to arrive at an acceptable consensus on the matter beforehand, it seems the developers have taken things into their own hands.

It is the Github's approach that anything starting from enhancement to support-request to bug-fixes goes through their issue tracker and hence gets categorized as issues/bugs. There is of course, no contractual obligation for the developers to provide fixes or even address such issues/bugs. It would be a folly to submit fixes to problems they do not acknowledge in the first place.

There have been enough concerns raised from significant number of folks in the community regarding the new changes. If the admins and their minions still want to disagree on that then I foresee more serious problems down the road than this change by in itself.

@MercuryTrismegistus Thanks for bringing this out. Here's a screenshot that its actually happening: This thread has been buried 5 pages deep in the forums. Is @thibault in loop with all this?

@Otienimous

When seen from the cultural perspective that you're talking about, the position you're taking makes sense, and I can now see where a change of this nature could be construed as a betrayal of trust. As I wrote above, it's not a belief that I share, but it is one that I can (and do) respect as being a valid basis for complaint when seen from your different worldview.

@SimpleMove

I was only talking about bugs because that's the word that's been used to describe this change. I absolutely agree that this is a matter of configuration, and would go further to posit that the results of the change in themselves explain the reasons for them. For some reason, prioritizing game pairings by rating class is more important than catering to what they may consider a fringe case. At some point, I'll take a stroll through the github and see what the commit comments may tell about that.

You also make an interesting point about problems down the road, but look for a moment from the developers' perspective, and then ask yourself, "What's the worst that can happen?" The people who don't like the development model leave for alternate sites? A concerned group of users with the technical skill fork Lichess and start their own site? Everyone leaves and the site disappears? People will use what best suits their needs for reasons that seem best to them, and the devs are users, too.

As I write this, there are 66K players in 28K games. Assuming that all of them are aware of this change, how much difference is it making to them? Apparently not much or none at all, which certainly doesn't minimize complaints, but it does help us see them in relation to the picture as a whole.

@reclusive_writer

I deeply appreciate your willingness to "differ beautifully". If, in your culture, it is typical to expect that a gift can be taken away at any moment even without justification and if, additionally, these changes (for whatever reason) do not diminish your game experience, I do understand perfectly well why my previous posts had to seem baseless and maybe even rude in your eyes.

The world would be much easier if not for cultural differences, but - on the other hand - significantly less interesting. I had the strongest experience of that type when talking to a young Norwegian girl who told me that, after finishing her high school, she plans to join an army. I said that it is a demented decision and that, most probably, she will be degraded, humiliated, outraged and infected with hepatitis C. After an elongated discussion I got to know that the Norwegian Army is quite different to the armies with which I had been more familiar.

#AbC