Why is it STILL possible for people to find us on the interactive map???

Seven out of the people who have given their opinion. The number would be far larger if more people knew about this, and larger still if they all knew what an IP address was. I'm also willing to bet that hardly any would take the time to opt-in, were that the system in place.

Also: Yes, it would be fairly easy to code such an option.

If this is indeed a mistake, and it has still not been fixed, then it's perfectly acceptable to draw attention to it until it has; from the site owner's response in this thread, it is clear the matter had mistakenly been considered solved.

artfizz, I don't understand your attitude. Clearly, it never was an issue of throwing away the map, only not to locate those members on it that do not want to be located. Is this so difficult to understand, or are you just playing the devil's advocate? Moreover, it is pretty clear that the admins have made a mistake (see post #2); I really wish they would respond to let us know whether they will correct the problem or not.

Make your mind up.

You are not referring to my posts, are you? The issue here, from the very beginning, has been to allow those not wanting to show their location to have their privacy. You are diverting the whole question into a direction that was definitely not intended originally. That's what devil's advocates tend to do

The "strong case" does not come from a majority vote here. My view is that even if only a single member wants to hide his/her location (for whatever reason) it is in his/her right, and should be made possible.

You're just wasting your time, some people are impossible. I hope the staff isn't as difficult.

It was the Original Poster who, in a recent post, who first mentioned "that map can be easily removed" - not me.

Quite frankly, I virtually never look at the map: it's too slow to load and I'm not particularly interested in seeing who's online or approximately where there are located.

I admire the technical effort that went into creating it and I'm dismayed at the thought of such a cool feature being discarded on a whim.

I completely agree! No reason at all to discard it. Just make it possible to hide those few who don't want to be located

How does the 'strong case' for this change differ from other 'strong cases' where one or more members want to hide various details because of their 'right to privacy'? e.g.

• online status
• profile
• past games
• viewing a live game in progress

I've no issue with that; as long as this is just another feature request alongside the hundreds of others that are suggested.

What I do take exception to is the emotional baggage (i.e. that this is a matter of life or death!) that this proposal is dressed up in, in an attempt to help it jump the queue.

Agreed again, but I have been told that the admins promised to correct this feature already quite some time ago, so it should be fairly high up in the queue

Well, if we can prolong this debate just a little longer, the fix will be finished before we are! 

so, how to make a kurogkug out of this, which lives forever?

just leave the location blank

Phobetrix wrote: so, how to make a kurogkug out of this, which lives forever? 

Mentioning k... is the equivalent of Godwin's Law on this site.

That does not help!

I dislike the quotes system here. It's so clunky and restricting...

1: Whichever way you look at it, there will be a large number of people who do not mind, or do not know enough about the issue to care. However, if they were presented with an option somewhere when creating an account saying, "Would you like your GeoIP information to be shown on the interactive map? This will allow people to see your approximate location", the numbers would be very different. Again, it would not be difficult to create an option such as this, because...

2: A new 'country' choice [i.e. "Hide me"] doesn't need to be created. The options available for selection need not consist of a specific country, International, and Hide me, and any coder who tried to implement such a thing might indeed run into problems with other site areas. However, any coder who designed such a system wouldn't be very good anyway. There are much less difficult solutions, such as adding a single boolean value in the form of a check box to a profile ["Show my location on the map"] that the site checks at the same time as checking your IP before displaying you on the map. If 0, the map won't show you. If 1, it will. Either way, you can keep your country/International on your profile if you like, no problem. Something akin to this is already done several times for other values, I imagine, as there are already filters available, such as checkboxes showing your friends; if not, then the same system used for those could be implemented. There will be no change to the rest of the site, as this is map-specific. Besides, "International" doesn't really mean much if your approximate physical location can be found anyway.

3: There is no other website that I can think of - and I tend to visit a fair number - that openly displays the locations of members without first asking permission, let alone without giving them an option to turn it off. Considering that the vast majority of free members, and a good portion of paying ones, very likely don't even know the map exists, they definitely aren't aware that their location is displayed. However small such a thing is to you, it wouldn't be to others. As for stifling debate, that isn't what I intended to imply; merely that, if Eric is mistaken about people without a location not being shown on the map, he might appreciate knowing about it.

Every website you visit has access to your IP address and your GeoIP location, just as chess.com does. For most websites which process this information, it is too valuable to simply display it; instead they use it to analyse their visitor demographic or to customise what they display.

The only sites on which it would make sense to display it are social networking sites. These are predicated on the notion of directories which you use to locate fellow members.

Facebook lets you search by name and location. I can enter the name of small town and it will show me the members from there.

Skype lets you search by Country, state, City, Language, Gender and Age range.

Friends Reunited shows you all the people in the school class you claim to have belonged to.

Such sites as these don't display maps but they make equivalent information available, in my view.

Just make it opt-in, and clear.

If you select this, we will use your IP address to determine your approximate location, and we will display it to other members.  Unless selecting this, no location information is shown.  It's not a problem for the site and doesn't have legal ramifications, it's just that you can treat the users better.  Don't make anything more annoying thatn meebo.

It's not that difficult.