I hope it's not from donor money.
Hi,
The titled tournament prize does come from donations.
Thanks to you guys, we now raise enough money to pay for the server and a developer salary. Over the last few months, we slightly exceeded the donation goal. What to do with the extra money?
We decided to inject the extra donations into chess itself. That means paying professional players:
- with tournament prizes. This attracts chess professionals, which is a very good thing for lichess. It gives us visibility, the one thing we lack the most at the moment.
- with paid content. By paid content, we mean we will pay chess professionals to create chess content. That content will always be entirely free for everyone, and do I need to mention it, without any ads.
I hope lichess patrons can agree to that. But let's discuss it: when the donation goal is exceeded, what do you think we should do?
Cheers and thanks for your support.
The titled tournament prize does come from donations.
Thanks to you guys, we now raise enough money to pay for the server and a developer salary. Over the last few months, we slightly exceeded the donation goal. What to do with the extra money?
We decided to inject the extra donations into chess itself. That means paying professional players:
- with tournament prizes. This attracts chess professionals, which is a very good thing for lichess. It gives us visibility, the one thing we lack the most at the moment.
- with paid content. By paid content, we mean we will pay chess professionals to create chess content. That content will always be entirely free for everyone, and do I need to mention it, without any ads.
I hope lichess patrons can agree to that. But let's discuss it: when the donation goal is exceeded, what do you think we should do?
Cheers and thanks for your support.
Maybe tournament prizes are a way to increase lichess visibility for chess professionals.
But I doubt, that this is really sustainable. My concern: The professionals come competing just in one tournament for the prizes and then disappear again.
But well, without having tried it, we will never now. Let´ s give it a chance.
I would rather vote for a higher developer salary in case exceeding the donation goal - Thibault you really deserve it!
Or donate the donations...
But I doubt, that this is really sustainable. My concern: The professionals come competing just in one tournament for the prizes and then disappear again.
But well, without having tried it, we will never now. Let´ s give it a chance.
I would rather vote for a higher developer salary in case exceeding the donation goal - Thibault you really deserve it!
Or donate the donations...
I don't necessarily disagree with the decision but have two remarks:
1) You should probably add these costs in the "where does the money go" spreadsheet on the donate page for full disclosure—and not to upset some donors.
2) Since the website is now kept running by donations, I feel that the community should have a more effective say in decisions like this. I am totally fine with you making the final call, Thibault, but some periodic questionnaire on the state and future of lichess would be healthy I think.
Anyway, I agree with #3 on a higher developer salary.
1) You should probably add these costs in the "where does the money go" spreadsheet on the donate page for full disclosure—and not to upset some donors.
2) Since the website is now kept running by donations, I feel that the community should have a more effective say in decisions like this. I am totally fine with you making the final call, Thibault, but some periodic questionnaire on the state and future of lichess would be healthy I think.
Anyway, I agree with #3 on a higher developer salary.
I'm really not sure how to respond to this. First, I feel out of place since this is not my site, project, business, etc. I don't really deserve an opinion, even though I donate a little every month. You're free to do absolutely anything you want with the money.
But since we're having a discussion about it, I personally *think* it's a little wrong for a few reasons.
1) Highlighting that you're making more than you need from donations and you have no other use for the cash other than to pay it out to chess masters sends the wrong message. Who is going to become a patron after hearing that? I've encouraged people to become patrons here (not sure if any have yet).
2) As a patron myself, I have no problem at all having the team get compensated more than they currently are. This service is worth a ton to me so I donate what I can. It's like me being angry that my Netflix fees go to their employees. The idea is to support the service and organization that provides it so it does not go away (and to say thanks!).
3) I agree with pemo. I can't see how this can really accelerate lichess adoption (but what do I know?). Besides, who doesn't know/love lichess already?
4) What's wrong with storing the excess donations in case future donations dry up, or you have the need for bigger servers, another developer, etc, etc? I think the idea of the donations is to keep the service running forever.
5) Not that I have any chance in hell winning any tournament on this site, but it seems wrong that the prize money is only available to titled players. But if it was open to everyone, the cheating would be out of control.
Just some thoughts..
Thank you again to all that make this incredible site possible and available to us all.
But since we're having a discussion about it, I personally *think* it's a little wrong for a few reasons.
1) Highlighting that you're making more than you need from donations and you have no other use for the cash other than to pay it out to chess masters sends the wrong message. Who is going to become a patron after hearing that? I've encouraged people to become patrons here (not sure if any have yet).
2) As a patron myself, I have no problem at all having the team get compensated more than they currently are. This service is worth a ton to me so I donate what I can. It's like me being angry that my Netflix fees go to their employees. The idea is to support the service and organization that provides it so it does not go away (and to say thanks!).
3) I agree with pemo. I can't see how this can really accelerate lichess adoption (but what do I know?). Besides, who doesn't know/love lichess already?
4) What's wrong with storing the excess donations in case future donations dry up, or you have the need for bigger servers, another developer, etc, etc? I think the idea of the donations is to keep the service running forever.
5) Not that I have any chance in hell winning any tournament on this site, but it seems wrong that the prize money is only available to titled players. But if it was open to everyone, the cheating would be out of control.
Just some thoughts..
Thank you again to all that make this incredible site possible and available to us all.
I like the concept of lucky prizes in tournaments so non-titled players also have a chance to win something
#4
1) I agree that the «where does the money go» section isn’t ideal at the moment. It will be revised as soon as possible.
2) I don’t think users understand how much say they have at the moment. The team reads every forum post, reddit thread and message we receive. If the suggestion is good I can assure you it has been discussed in length. We have also used polls as a tool to get an understanding of what users actually want. But in the end I think it is important that the Lichess team makes the final decisions.
#5
1) It is not true that we do not have a use for more donations. It is true that the donations now are more than the server costs and the salary of one developer. But we strive to make Lichess the best and freest (if that’s even possible to say) chess platform possible. Sure, we can leave it as it is, and it will still be an awesome site. But we want to offer more.
2) Only two team members are compensated financially. Thibault is paid a very modest salary and one mobile developer is paid a very small sum every month. Full breakdown of costs can be seen here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CGgu-7aNxlZkjLl9l-OlL00fch06xp0Q7eCVDDakYEE/preview. No other team member is paid. None of us, not the developers, or other staff, joined Lichess to make money. We are all passionate chess players, or at least chess fans, that want to make Lichess the best chess site possible. In my opinion it is already the best chess site available, by far. But we dream to be able offer our users much more in the future. To do this we might have to increase our spending on other areas.
3) One of the problems of running a donation driven, free, and ad-free, chess site is that we have no way to attract the professional chess players. We can’t offer to give them a premium membership for free, because we have no premium membership. Chess players and chess fans want to play on the site where the best players in the world are playing. But how can we attract them if we have nothing to offer? There are already incredibly strong players playing on Lichess. But, no one knows about it, because they are anonymous, because they have no incentive to verify their account. The titled tournament is an experiment that hopefully will have a positive outcome both for our users and the site.
4) As far as I know funds are stored and there is no reason that Lichess won’t run forever. Of course, our funds are finite, for that reason donations are needed to make sure it does run forever. If we didn’t receive enough donations to keep the site running it would probably be covered out of the team’s pockets. Team members have already done this for years before the donations were able to cover all costs.
5) We have high faith in our moderation team. Making an open tournament would be possible. This time we decided to make it titled only. One thought is that this forces users to verify their accounts and not play entirely anonymously. We hope that this will enable lichess users to see their chess heroes in action.
Disclaimer: This is my personal (somewhat educated) opinions.
1) I agree that the «where does the money go» section isn’t ideal at the moment. It will be revised as soon as possible.
2) I don’t think users understand how much say they have at the moment. The team reads every forum post, reddit thread and message we receive. If the suggestion is good I can assure you it has been discussed in length. We have also used polls as a tool to get an understanding of what users actually want. But in the end I think it is important that the Lichess team makes the final decisions.
#5
1) It is not true that we do not have a use for more donations. It is true that the donations now are more than the server costs and the salary of one developer. But we strive to make Lichess the best and freest (if that’s even possible to say) chess platform possible. Sure, we can leave it as it is, and it will still be an awesome site. But we want to offer more.
2) Only two team members are compensated financially. Thibault is paid a very modest salary and one mobile developer is paid a very small sum every month. Full breakdown of costs can be seen here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CGgu-7aNxlZkjLl9l-OlL00fch06xp0Q7eCVDDakYEE/preview. No other team member is paid. None of us, not the developers, or other staff, joined Lichess to make money. We are all passionate chess players, or at least chess fans, that want to make Lichess the best chess site possible. In my opinion it is already the best chess site available, by far. But we dream to be able offer our users much more in the future. To do this we might have to increase our spending on other areas.
3) One of the problems of running a donation driven, free, and ad-free, chess site is that we have no way to attract the professional chess players. We can’t offer to give them a premium membership for free, because we have no premium membership. Chess players and chess fans want to play on the site where the best players in the world are playing. But how can we attract them if we have nothing to offer? There are already incredibly strong players playing on Lichess. But, no one knows about it, because they are anonymous, because they have no incentive to verify their account. The titled tournament is an experiment that hopefully will have a positive outcome both for our users and the site.
4) As far as I know funds are stored and there is no reason that Lichess won’t run forever. Of course, our funds are finite, for that reason donations are needed to make sure it does run forever. If we didn’t receive enough donations to keep the site running it would probably be covered out of the team’s pockets. Team members have already done this for years before the donations were able to cover all costs.
5) We have high faith in our moderation team. Making an open tournament would be possible. This time we decided to make it titled only. One thought is that this forces users to verify their accounts and not play entirely anonymously. We hope that this will enable lichess users to see their chess heroes in action.
Disclaimer: This is my personal (somewhat educated) opinions.
I think it will be good to set the prize fund up to everyone who makes the top page. I'm saying this knowing I will never have a chance to make top page. lol. I'm glad to see lichess hold such strong events and will be watching the hyper today!
Well I support the site and the team with whatever decisions they deem are the best. I don't think any one should be shy about compensating themselves more if there is enough money around. You provide an amazing service to all of us. The amount of value and entertainment I (and most players) derive from this site on a daily basis is overwhelming and more than worthy of a donation. Everyone that uses this site that can afford to give some money should.
I've been in the open source industry my entire career so when I found out about this project I immediately joined and became a donor. I wish I was well-versed in the technology that powers this site so that I can donate my times and skills as well.
Thanks
I've been in the open source industry my entire career so when I found out about this project I immediately joined and became a donor. I wish I was well-versed in the technology that powers this site so that I can donate my times and skills as well.
Thanks
Wonderful way of investing Lichess budget, bravo Lichess Team once again for the super event !!! going to get some popcorn and enjoy watching games ;) Best site out there >>> Lichess
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