28 of Chess.com's innovations 2023
Let's have a look on a few examples of innovations, that appeared in 2023.
Most of them are expressly introduced to create a better user experience and are specially intending to develop Chess.com's design for clubs.
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- Announcing clubs redesign
Chess.com's product manager @jdcannon about upcoming innovations for clubs:
Project in progress.
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- Voiding players' homepages
Customization, links to clubs and events disappeared.
Innovation since February 2023
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- Partially suppressing notifications
Notifications for matches with rating limits disappeared.
Introduced in February, retired in April.
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- "Frozen" daily games
No chance to make a move until you'll loose or be forced to take vacations.
Introduced in February, retired in March.
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- Hiding private descriptions and notes
Clubs redesign's early release showed a static club presentation (without customization) forced to all clubs (Screenshot: @Green_Sleeves).
Innovation since June 2023
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- Suppressing relevant information about daily matches
For an unknown reason registrations for both clubs and their logos aren't shown any longer (Screenshot: @Lord_Hammer).
Innovation since June 2023
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- Showing closed accounts as active admins
Screenshot from July 4: Admins of the World League.
Introduced July 4, retired the next day.
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- Starting all daily matches with "Kings-Indian Attack"
Without any known reason, all daily matches started with the same book opening.
Introduced July 6, retired five days later.
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- Voided / Disappearing Top players list
After a long period of dysfuncitionality top players list for daily chess has been voided and finally disappeared.
Innovation since August 2023
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Side note: At this point @Tricky_Dicky posted the below picture ... as a comment to the level of clubs redesign:
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- Showing challenge to daily matches as fictive open challenges
Links to pending challenges are showing these challenges as fictive open challenges to all clubs.
Innovation since August 26.
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- Live events are always shown as open for registrations
As screenshot was taken, registrations were only open for the first event in the list, all others are wrongly shown the same way.
Innovation since August 2023.
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- Unfilterable list for upcoming and current events
Finding the event you're looking for becomes difficult since they are all put in the same list, which is – for an unknown – reason unfilterable for event categories. (Screenshot: @knetfan)
Innovation since August 2023.
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- Aborted live events are shown as "current events"
The above Multi Club Arena has been crashed in March by a live server restart. It's still shown as "current event".
Innovation since August 2023.
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- Flickering messenger (Android App)
Messenger tries to load all previous messages, which ends in some "flickering" for seconds, minutes or hours ...
Innovation since several months.
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- Statistics without value
Screenshot taken from a club, which biggest event had 16 participants (all 19 events together had 111 participants).
Innovation since September 2023.
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- Clubs progress update
Announced as a weekly update, it was updated twice, paused for two weeks, updated twice and paused for the next five weeks ...
Innovation since September 2023.
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- "Unviewable" challenges to Multi Club Arenas
If you've incoming or outgoing challenges to Multi Club Arenas you can't view them: You simply are redirected again and again to one of these pending challenges. If you accept/decline/delete this challenge, you can act on one other.
Innovation since September 2023.
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- Gifting a club to a member of your choice
Probably the shortest lasting innovation: You could gift a club to a member of your choice. Gifted this one to @DanielRensch. Fun fact: This club still exists.
Innovation on September 27 only.
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- Aborted daily matches are shown as drawn and completed
Intention was showing matches, which don't start in time as "cancelled". Result is, they are shown as drawn and completed and the parameter, which has caused abortion isn't shown any longer. Fun fact: Players are ranked any longer by their ratings.
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That's @jdcannon's initial proposition:
Innovation since September 26.
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- Nearly forgot this one ...
Picture shows CCO Danny Rensch assisting with server problems.
Innovation since February 2023 (repeated from time to time).
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- Unignorable "toaster" notifications
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It's no longer enough to check a notification: If you don't accept or decline, it appears again.
Innovation since November 2023.
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- Unreliable notifications
It happens again and again that e.g. daily matches open without notifications to players (like the match in the above screenshot, which was finally aborted due to missing players). Last check showed more than 20% missing notification.
Innovation with unknown start time ... and probably increasing impact.
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- Wrong offline results in Multi Club Arenas
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Example with wrong offline results (first screenshot) and correct online results (second screenshots): For offline results the parameter "eligible scorers" is ignored.
Innovation since several months (before offline results were shown without any Multi Club Arena element).
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- Suboptiomal presented results in daily matches
After several months without showing results, they are now have clubs' logos in their background ... yes, yes, they are really part of the background ... (Screenshot: @MasterMatthew 52).
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That's a screenshot from the good, old club design ... (Screenshot: @Ximoon):
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Innovation since November 2023.
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- Dysfunctional "toaster" notifications to Multi Club Arenas
If challenges to Multi Club Arenas show an arrow on the left side, they only can be opened with some fantasy.
Innovation since November 2023.
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- Auto advertising everywhere ...
In live events memberships plans and employing information is now shown (even including trial memberships for temporary events ...)
Innovation since November 2023.
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- Clicking on links redirects to homepage (iOS App)
Links are wrongly redirecting to your own homepage (Screenshot: @Kookaburrra).
Innovation since November 2023.
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- Incoherent adjudications for FPV closures in Multi Club Arenas
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Both accounts have been closed during the same 24 hours Arena: One is still counted for the club, this other one isn't.
Innovation reported first in December 2023.
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Let's try a summary: Chess.com is hard and actively working on a better user experience for club members and club admins. Unfortunately results are not always clearly pointing in the right direction, are they?
