This forum format is not really suitable for feedback, as there's no persistence, that I can tell, and no search functionality. Github issues or some other medium, e.g. a proper forum, would be more suitable? How can people vote for issues they cannot find?
I've also added legitimate requests (and sensible ones) to Github issues, and they were simply closed as "not planned". It doesn't seem the Lichess development community is very open to feedback?
There is a search, you'll find it on
lichess.org/forumThere is also #support channel on discord:
discord.gg/lichess@supermitch If we looked at your suggestion on lichess
the first one:
lichess.org/forum/redirect/post/H1u2jDPzwas answered with it will take alot more space to.
the other is:
lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/what-do-you-want-changed-in-lichessorg-?page=9#89which does not make sense considering most dont come back until way after or never so you would just be waiting for nothing
I think one issue is that the admins seem to want to close issues as "complete" or respond to them immediately. The timezone comment is a good example. The topic should be renamed, and people should be able to find and continue to vote for it as an improvement. Admins don't need to close (or even address) forum topics immediately, not should they. The giant feedback thread is great, but do you expect that people will wade through 14 pages of topics from 3 years ago? I also don't see how to sort by most highly voted?
My suggestion, to implement a better forum with better voting, is still I think a valid suggestion. Do you have to do it right now? No, of course not. Should it remain as a potential for later improvement? I think so.
I also don't want to be off-topic here, but "saving space" for timezone support is a terrible excuse: every software in the world has timezone support, but store times in UTC. Lichess is one of the only sites I've ever used that doesn't do local timezones.
> I think one issue is that the admins seem to want to close issues as "complete" or respond to them immediately.
yes. because lichess is a collaborative project. if the main devs do not want something implemented, than they need to close the issue as "not planned" – otherwise someone might waste his or her time implementing it, and then they have to reject the pull request.
i think it's a *really* bad idea to tell the devs how to organise their issues and handle their development process, unless you are a seasoned developer yourself.
> I also don't see how to sort by most highly voted?
no, but it also does not matter much what the most highly voted is. development decisions on lichess are usually based on technical discussions first, and not on votes by random people on the forums.
> My suggestion, to implement a better forum with better voting, is still I think a valid suggestion.
it is a valid suggestion. and i happen to know that one of the devs already implemented voting for the forums, i have already tried it and it works well. still doesn't mean it will ever land on the main lichess site, see above.
The order of topics is just a date sort of the most recent post in each. Once a topic reaches a certain size, new posts no longer push it to the top. You're right that thumbs/heart/horsey cannot be searched. They also do not affect topic ordering.
> It doesn't seem the Lichess development community is very open to feedback?
Devs do read this forum but don't often respond here.
> My suggestion, to implement a better forum with better voting, is still I think a valid suggestion. Do you have to do it right now? No, of course not. Should it remain as a potential for later improvement? I think so.
There are some that agree 100% that improving the forums can be a goal. However, others prefer not to invest resources there. That reticence to invest time and effort improving forums isn't just a personal decision. It is made on behalf of all potential contributors when a maintainer refuses a PR on the grounds that they do not wish to fix bugs and support the new feature on an ongoing basis in the event that the original contributor moves on.
> i think it's a *really* bad idea to tell the devs how to organise their issues and handle their development process, unless you are a seasoned developer yourself.
I am a developer, yes. But more importantly, I'm part of many different services. Strava, Garmin Connect, Github projects, an actual company I work for, etc. I know there are many different ways that services can gather feedback from the community.
Lichess is an amazing service, but there a ton of UX/UI issues. It is not perfect. Obviously, as someone else commented, the devs need to allocate resources. That's why having a good system for feedback is more important, not less.
My suggestion with this post is simply that a better Lichess mediaum for feedback and suggestions would be helpful to the developers, and to the community.
@supermitch said in #8:
> I am a developer, yes. But more importantly, I'm part of many different services. Strava, Garmin Connect, Github projects, an actual company I work for, etc. I know there are many different ways that services can gather feedback from the community.
>
> Lichess is an amazing service, but there a ton of UX/UI issues. It is not perfect. Obviously, as someone else commented, the devs need to allocate resources. That's why having a good system for feedback is more important, not less.
>
> My suggestion with this post is simply that a better Lichess mediaum for feedback and suggestions would be helpful to the developers, and to the community.
Lichess does its call the feedback fourm and github or the discord
But just because you post there thinking your idea is good does not mean it is and/or does not mean lichess devs want to add it and maintain it
> My suggestion with this post is simply that a better Lichess mediaum for feedback and suggestions would be helpful to the developers, and to the community.
Well put and I agree 100%. Actually, we are actively working on improved feedback about user issues. This comes in tandem with the ability to safely customize javascript behavior on a device basis to debug hard to reproduce issues such as persistent "reconnecting". The hope is that even if we cannot mitigate those, we may be able to provide more concrete information allowing the user to do so.
To my knowledge, noone is currently working on ways to better surface or aggregate suggestions. As glbert pointed out, that has been worked on previously to no effect. Github, discord, and feedback forum provide us more info than we can really handle, though it would be nice to supplement those with better prioritization.
