Cheats, cronyism and Frankenstein's Monster.

Point taken

The only reason we're having this discussion is because of Wesley's idiotic tantrum. Let's just get on with enjoying this great site.

Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat.

My opinion to the suggestions of the OP:

1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th suggestion would IMHO destroy the character of lichess.

There are plenty of other chess sites that require names, addresses, credit cards etc., and guess what: Cheaters are still there!

If you encounter a cheater, you can still block and report him.

too much personal information just for a chess site.
what is lichess? big brother.

I personally think the no of cheaters are limited.. The same person creates a new id after getting tagged and starts cheating once again until he gets an another tag .. Its more like a psychological problem to satisfy your ego...

As an example take this guy Ali-Tarabein who creates a new id every week and cheats until and unless he was labeled as an engine and repeats the same thing again..

So, my point is we need some effective system ,unlike mere ip ban which is so easy to over ride, to ban this persons permanently from lichess to make it a better place..

Thanks and Regards,
Jeff ;)

One simple measure Lichess can take is to display a message about cheating during the account creation process. Something like

"The use of chess engines to enhance play is strictly forbidden on Lichess. Engine abusers will be immediately marked as such and will have their accounts (IP) banned."

I do think engine abusers should be banned and not just tagged. Although there are ways to work around an IP ban, it will not be worth the effort to most cheaters and would eliminate a vast majority of the problem.

#97 That message wouldn't do much.
And flagging the cheaters, rather than deleting their accounts, is a better measure. They apply the same on ICC, maybe on other sites.

IP ban can only be applied for users with fixed IP. I think the vast majority of users have dynamic IP, in which case IP ban is not just useless, but it can also affect some innocent people using the same IP later on.

I'm glad that my Draconian ideas at least provoked a relatively civilised discussion!

I'm not personally that worried about cheats as I play mainly 1+0 and 0+1, where they are somewhat rarer than in classical; but I am put off playing classical games by the number of cheats.

I also had a personal experience which really - for want of a better word - upset me at the time. I had an Indian lichess pal with whom I played often, and we used to chat about stuff generally. It was really nice. Then he was done for cheating. I was shocked and disbelieving until he admitted it to me and then closed his account. I'm sure you'll all think it's really stupid, but I felt personally betrayed.

Anyway, back to ideas on what could be done...

Perhaps the first thing would be to register only one account per person from one IP address. If someone registers from a school or college they should declare that so a whole establishment doesn't get barred.

One thing for sure, the exponential growth of lichess hasn't helped - as there hasn't been a similar growth in the number of moderators.

Does anyone know how many accounts there actually ARE here?

Does anyone have any ideas on what CAN be done, rather than how rubbish other people's ideas are? :D

PS I like the idea some guy came up of a list of 'good eggs' - mainly because I was included :D

Oh, I remember now - Toutatis - you were the guy that gave KingsCrusher a very hard time because he suggested your friend was using an engine.

Well, one can be certain but wrong, apparently :)

So it seems Lichess cheat detection is quite effective then, but not yet perfect. As the team seems already convinced that improving cheat detection is important, I trust them to deal with this issue as they see fit.

I don't see any downside to Lichess' success, and would rather congratulate them with their fantastic website and achievements so far, and wish them all the best for the future.

THANKS LICHESS TEAM, FOR A FANTASTIC JOB ! :)