Lichess suggestions

Lichess is the best app ever made (change my opinion), but nothing is perfect and everything can improve at least a little bit. Just like you and me right?

Here are two "neat (I learned this word from my cousin)" improvements:

1. Feature "play nearby players" (app and web):
   Would be great to be able to play people nearby yourself. Maybe you get in touch through chess. Also nice for travellers.

2. Chess clock on the left position (app):
   Would be nice if there is an option to switch the chessclock with the usersname/userrating. I think right-handed people cover the time quite often with the thumb which makes games tricky in time scrambles.

Back to 1.:

• I'm not a programmer
• maybe it's possible to locate accurately with GPS, and rough estimation via network
• the game shows you then the distance to your opponent behind his username (e.g. 5km, please dont meassure in acustic miles or similar)
• maybe a checkbox "prefer nearby players" on the quicksearch page in-between the rectangles and "create game" button.
• so if a player searches a game with nearby search activated, lichess have to check not only the rating but also the location. Maybe there is a smart way to do it to not waste too much resources.

For those one who read this far: go to the gym

First of all kudos to your cousin, great dude for sure.

Secondly your suggestions are pretty nice, it would spice up the game for sure. Not sure though if the "nearby search" one is that easy to solve. But ill pass that to the programmers, I gotta head out to the gym now.

Dont think lichess wants to store peoples location nor do i think it would be used alot you play online because you want to play people around the world.

I play online because it's the most convenient, not necessary to play a dude from China.

If you install LiChess Tools it has an option to swap clocks and names on mobile.

I would love to use the "play with the nearbys" feature. But I think players must be warned to enable this feature and it should be banned in Kids Mode.

There are lot of kids playing chess online. It would be dangerous to leak information of kids to strangers.

I think there are good reasons the site doesn't want to go down the road of pairing based on location. Anecdotally, there have been plenty of instances on the other site (which more prominently features nationality flags) where players are refusing to play people from certain countries, and in some cases, even coupling this with verbal abuse. For me, one of the beautiful things about online chess is getting to play people from even small countries halfway around the world.

A location based matching is a terrible idea. Similar attempts lead to all kind of stalking, violence and other monkey business like that. If you want to play with people from your area, there are multiple ways to set that up.

What Lichess could do is probably some way of setting up OTB championships, similar to broadcasts and simuls, but I feel this would be a very complicated feature for a very small audience.

Let's accept reality here and recognize that the main feature of chess web sites is to allow you to safely play against people you never have to meet.

All arguments are valid, nevertheless I am convinced that a lot of people are not evil, afraid or have any harmful intentions. They might want to get in contact with people similar interests and I think chess (or any other sports) are perfect ways to do so. That's the beauty of sports. Everyone plays with everyone.

I am sure there are some ways to enable/disable nearby play, so people who are not interested in such feature can easily play without any concerns.

@TotalNoob69 I found Lichess Tools for the browser, but unfortunately no version for Android.

@schlossboss said in #9:

All arguments are valid, nevertheless I am convinced that a lot of people are not evil, afraid or have any harmful intentions.
Same as in real life. Most people don't rob banks or murder others - and yet the society needs to take precautions not to make it easier for those who do.