I submitted an Entry for the Redesign Contest...

... and a lot of it was about promoting ideas to do with Chess variants. So I thought I'd share the main ideas of what I submitted here. Also, I love Chess, but given the opportunity there's nowhere else in Chess I'd rather be than right here in the Variants community.

- Eldar for Chess President 2028 >:]

Profile Page

Most of what I have came up with revolves around the idea of making Chess.com easier to operate as a Social platform. This is what I miss most about OTB so I tried to incorperate some of the better aspects of social media into the ideas and designs for my submission (not the scary data stealing, propaganda, dictator propping aspects that some social media platforms seem to be adopting).

I've introduced the idea of a "Feed" for a flow of information that works similar to the stream on Facebook but that you don't necessarily need to get notifications for. They feature aspects of a friend (or followed person) that a person is subscribed to including posts that others can reply to specifically or even react to with emojis.

On the Profile page one can link up their other social media profiles, produce a longer profile introduction (I forgot to include an "About" tab), only the top 3 stats (as selected by the user) are initially displayed on the profile page to others and you can also access a users "Album" which is a selection of pictures or games a user particularly wants to share.

Naturally, the stats on the page can allow for the choice of all variant stats, the games and archives display variant games as well and if someone is titled in 4pc then this is displayed along with the other banners that are typically found on a profile page.

Variants Tab

I came up with a whole system of Sidebar mapping including whacking Puzzles and vote chess in the Play section, putting many things in the Learn category like drills and endgames and created a "World" category to encapsulate the greater Chess community (thing's like Chess TV, News, articles etc.). A feature of the Sidebar was to include the idea that the "New Game" button would be customisable so a user could input exactly what preferences they wanted for their most commonly played game (including Variant games).

One of the biggest highlights of course was the feature of a Variant Category I included which includes subcategories enabling users to quickly access the Variants server, the Variants club, the main variant games and... Variant articles and Variant Puzzles.

Variant Articles to read and learn about the progression of Variants and Variant Puzzles for... um... now what was it? I don't remember what I designed a Variant Puzzles page for...

As well as this I have also introduced the idea that Chess.com could expand into other areas of the Turn-Based-Strategy game market by suggesting the inclusion of games like Checkers, Reversi and Go.

Text Editor

- Allow Print Screens to be pasted into the editor (it doesn't for me >:I).
- Improve Smileys, include variant smileys and pieces that can be used for variant notation.
- Have an option that stops the Editor from forcing smileys (seriously annoying).
- Have an "Insert Variant" option that enables users to analyse or make puzzles for variant games.
- All posts including forum ones should enable users to react with emojis.

Error Screen

The Error Screen should be Snakes and Ladders.

Custom Flair

Let premium members customise their flair and let non-premium mebers obtain flair by joining certain clubs (that have enough members).

Choose name colour

Better English

There are a lot of grammatical errors in the text... (>:I) My suggestion is to allow for other English speakers to be represented and allow alternative date formattings to be chosen. Collectively the idiosyncrasies as featured in the spoken and written English of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the English speaking world, apart from the U.S, are significantly more common than the formalities as associated with the deliberate deviation from the English language that was taken and promoted by Noah Webster in 1828. Rather, the lack of representation for the vast majority of English speakers in this world is really only indicative of a preference for some persons to negate the voice of the majority in favour of American pontification. It is an outrage I tell you... an outrage >:I

Laxer rules on colloquialisms

Word's like the "A" word commonly used to refer to a donkey shouldn't be censored. Nor should private messages be censored. If a message in a post is not sent because it breaks community guidelines, the default should be that the message is not deleted within the text editor... It's a real pain in the donkey when you've spent ages producing a post or message just to have it deleted because of linguistic pendanticness in favour of (let's face it) a pretty darn stupid custom (seriously though, what even is a swear word?). If someone is that offended by a phonetical utterance or scribbles representing a word, then perhaps they should be using chesskid.com and teaching their kid that free speech is only something to be practiced when you are within a particular class of people and have money because you've inheritted the fruits from the aftermath of systemic slavery and classism (RISE WITH ME COMRADES >:0 ).

Clubs

I came up with a few ideas for clubs...

- Clubs should be able to be categorised or classed as variant clubs for directory search ups.
- Clubs should be able to be categorised as physical clubs so a directory can be made for those looking to join OTB communities.
- If a club doesn't hold events or do live tournaments, this shouldn't appear in the sidebar.
- Remove the Top Gifters page link from the sidebar - I don't want everyone knowing I'm a stingy donkey.
- Allow some threads to be viewable (or only commentable) by Admins and coordinators (or just admins).
- Allow sticky/pinned threads to be organised and rearranged by admins according to their preferences (and not auto-jump to the top of the forum page just because someone commented).
- Allow SuperAdmins to create their own forum categories (that look similar to the Post/Chat/Activity/Info tabs from the Clubs front page).
- Include social media bar if the club chooses to represent themselves on other social media platforms.
- Allow clubs (especially Variant clubs) to have variant matches against other clubs.
- The main "clubs" page should be dedicated to finding new clubs with a sidebar indicating trending clubs. The algorithm for the "activity indicator" should be re-evaluated to indicate what percentage of members visited the club over the previous 30 days.

Club perks

If a club reaches a certain number of members then they are allowed to have certain perks such as:

• The ability to give out Trophies to members that win Internal competitions.
• Custom flair for club members (including non-premium members).
• Custom Emojis.
• Ability to get written about in Chess News when they reach 10,000 members (provided they are not a club associated with anything commercial).

More Variant Stuff...

- Variant Thursdays and Four Player Fridays on Chess TV.
- More Variant based achievements.
- 8 Player Chess ;D
- Have a hub where members can literally create their own variants with their own custom fairy pieces, their own size of board and whole bunch of other variable mechanics that can enable the creation of thousands of TBS games. They can then submit these variations/games to a "Variation Bank" where they can be accessed by others and Variant Clubs can feature a specific game within their club so others can access and play it quickly for their own leagues and tournaments around this home-grown variant.

Thankyou for reading. If you read the whole thing, treat yourself to this super-rare guide that will teach you how to become a super-pro at all variants overnight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgc_LRjlbTU

-

If you would like to see some of the other work I'm involved with feel free to check out the following:

• https://www.chess.com/club/8-player-chess
• https://www.chess.com/club/4pc-opening-explorer
• https://www.chess.com/club/4pc-correspondence
  
• https://www.chess.com/club/4pc-university (needs updating)

- Eldar

Interesting, I support these ideas

With these ideas added to Chess.com I strongly think that it will create interest in the millions of people that, in the future, will join Chess.com.

yey

cool

cool design. Especially for variants.

cool

but fr this is CHESS.COM not pychess -______- 
oh and i like the suggestion for variant puzzles and 6, 8, 10 player chess.

Wow cool

I like Custom flair And Profile page

thanks for the feedback guys

@peaPer27 a load of us play a a forum based version of 8 player chess (search for it in clubs), we got a couple guys developing an app atm so hopefully we can see it live in the future :v

Whoa whoa whoa, that's a lot there. What you're saying is making chess.com more social media like. Plus I don't like the idea of no kids in chess.com and swear words allowed. (I know there is free speech but I was taught never to swear in my whole life) Maybe we can have some of your ideas and chess.com can have more features on chess improvement. If you are really into this, then you can look here - https://www.chess.com/news/view/chesscom-redesign-contest

this is amazing

How did you make it

Oh, you already put it in the contest. -_-

I'm saying borrow some ideas from social media so players can interact more communal like but don't become so like the main social media out there as to forget who we are and where we come from - we should learn from the mistakes of corperations like Twitter and Facebook and not make those mistakes (hopefully avoiding politics as a whole).

Of course kids can play here (not arguing that they shouldn't at all). I'm really arguing for less pendanticness and a consideration for the broadness of language that isn't really defined as any one static thing but an infinite scale as is understood by each and every unique individual (everyone has their own unique language you might otherwise call an "idiom").

I could go on a massive tirade of why I believe that the very concept of "swear words" are inherently classist but I respect your right to disagree. I grew up with swear words being taboo myself but I'd later come to disagree with the concept entirely. All I'm really asking though is that the website consider those who have idiomatic differences (to what is considered spoken by "better" people) not be punished for the cultural differences they have with the apparent "elite and good" of society. Swear words are not a scale I use to measure the moral fibre of a person. It is their action and the context of their vocalisations that determine the intent and morality of an individual. Briefly speaking, It is not the swear word itself that is bad for society, is the very concept that a word could even be considered a swear that degrades the progression of a compasisonate civilization.

Thank you for the feedback though, I actually did submit most of this (and then some) for the Redesign contest :v

There is a lot there, but what is the progress page? 

I came up with a way categorising all the pages, The Progress tab has Stats, awards, Leaderboard (maybe), archive and ones personal collection of games. I considered aswell having badges and trophies in there as well. The idea of it is to measure the Progress one has been making through Chess etc.

I have a website mainly for clubs, maybe you can improve in the future?