Sigh. Was so and so a good sport?

The block button helps, but there are so many members that the odds of running into the same person again is small, although it has happened to me a couple of times.  But the report button and feedback buttons purpose is to benefit other good members in the future, not just yourself.  

@haroldschris lol Yes dude, check out Shakespeare's usage of satire in a midsummer night's dream.

Ciao

People are getting banned because of people that just like to say no and cause problems. My girlfriend is banned now from playing because some people voted her down. She's new to chess probably never resigns so people get pissed. Now she cant play on here. Do Diamond members get banned? Everything was fine without this option. Garry Kasporov hasn't always been the best sport in chess. He still represents.

Getting banned due to the down finger seems draconian.  That must have been an error.  I would email support and explain the situation, if you care to.  Best of luck.

So, I agree that there is a general lack of civility in online chess.  It's not difficult to say hello & good luck before a game, nor good game after, and yet so few do.  Some proactively block all chat, which is its own kind of bad sportsmanship.  Much of the online chess experience is alienating, to be sure.  It's a grim reflection of modern life.  But I haven't noticed any change for better or worse since c.c implemented this system. 

I doubt this very much.  I am sure that chess.com reviews the chat logs from games in which a member was downvoted for poor sportsmanship.

Of course, one might always have a blue streak cussed at them, but short of that...I can imagine little in what the conduct of an opponent in *internet chess* would be that would rise or sink to a notable level of good or bad sportsmanship unless the person with a strong opinion of the opponent's conduct might need to review whether their own social life is a bit lacking beyond a certain website. I usually don't use the feature. If I occasionally do it's probably only over time control conduct. A player offering draw rather than accept an inevitable win by flag and flag alone is obviously a good sport. A player at whatever time control who obviously has no interest in a competitive chess game but only aims to live by flags and flags alone is a bad sport if it's a chess site they signed up for. Other than that, it's difficult for me to even have an opinion. It's just a website.

Chess.com can't leave things alone.  At some point the interface is going to be so baroque that the board will be a small object in the corner while the rest of the screen is flashing this that and the other nonsense.  There are enough distractions in life.  I come here to play chess not indulge in some baloney Facebook rip off junk.  The up/down thumb just make me feel like the devs think we're a bunch of morons that need hand holding to figure out how to block or report someone -- which actually only shows how messed up and obtuse they've made the interface in the first place.

They should strive for simplicity and responsiveness....but of course that's hard and may well be beyond the abilities of people that only think about adding things rather than subtracting things.  

There are so many things they could get rid of in order to improve the impact the site has on our machines...so much cruft and chrome...sigh.  Version 3 was supposed to improve things.  Nope.  Fail.

I emailed chess.com about this. They should really get rid of this crap. Chungle you are right. They keep adding and just can't leave the site alone. Years ago people were begging them to leave things alone. I must say I like some of the new options. Simplicity chess.com and don't let people decide users fate of using this site.

and yet, it is now a new "feature"! wait, your achievement of getting multiple thumbs up is on the way! receiving too much negative feedback? send us money and you won't have to see it! complaints, gone. 

really, why doesn't erik just sell to zuckerberg already.

With minimum intelligence and a lot of data, random downvotes can easily be ignored. Chess.com isn't so dumb to screw it up.

I'm not saying the feature is necessarily useful, but this sort of worry is unfounded.

you claim to have been here previously, then you post this? 

so, if you were here before, do you remember the v3 rollout? 

do you also realize this type of thing will end up putting bots in control of if and when we can play? 

V3 would require a lot of programming and a lot of people. It'd have technical and coordination challenges.

How to use the downvote info could be handled by a bright high school student.

Just my opinion.

lol

I've never yet clicked either button and don't intend to.  I disable chat so there's really very little opportunity for my opponent to be either a good or bad sport, they just play chess, which is what I'm there for.  And I'm not one of those ultra-suspicious folk who think anyone who beats me must b cheating.

Why I sometimes want to know whether it is poor sportsmanship. 

In a recent 10 minute blitz game, I had a king and pawn (that was not very advanced, and easily capturable) remaining and about 20 more seconds on my time than my opponent. My opponent had a king and a knight. 

I offered a draw because, well, it was a very clear draw. 

My opponent refused the draw, blocked the pawn but refused to capture it, and tried to move quickly and win on time. Fortunately, I had pre-move turned on and won about 40 moves later. 

The reason I care if this is poor sportsmanship or a valid strategy has nothing to do with my opponent. It has to do with me. Initially, this behavior seemed like poor sportsmanship to me, so I would not do it to another player. However, if I learned that I am wrong and that other players consider it a completely valid strategy, then I would use it. 

@HowFaresTheKing Thanks, that's an interesting post. Very thought-provoking. On balance, I would say that your opponent's strategy was legitimate. It was self-defeating and frankly a bit stupid (esp given that you were ahead on time) but legitimate, and not bad sportsmanship in my opinion. In shorter time controls, it doesn't seem to matter the state of play on the board. I don't really play short time controls any more, as I'm hopeless at them, but my impression is that, the shorter the time control, the less important traditional tactics become. My kids play 30-second games and at that level the only strategy is to move quickly. They're not in the least concerned if, for example, they lose their queen after ten seconds. It's not really chess as I know it but those are the rules and it works for them.

So like I say I think your opponent's strategy was valid. He got what he deserved (a loss when he had been offered a draw) but he was within his rights to try.

The more important point, perhaps, is whether we should be prompted to judge the sportsmanship of other players in the first place. Bad sportsmanship happens, unfortunately, in all walks of life, and unless it reaches the level of abuse (and there are procedures for dealing with that) I'd prefer not to be prompted for feedback on my opponent's conduct (or on most other things for that matter). I'd just rather be left to play games in peace. If my opponent chooses to engage with me outside the parameters of the game (eg via chat or whatever) then we can take it from there but I don't need any extra prompting from the site.

Some interesting points raised here!

I'll just give my own perspective, fwiw. At the moment, we aren't doing anything with data related to a given user's thumbs-ups, thumbs-downs, and no-thumbs.

The vital need that this post-game question intends to address is a lack of member education about the tools available to shield oneself from disrespectful or abusive behavior. Someone earlier said that blocking was the best feature in Live Chess.  That's maybe a little jaded, but it IS important - and new members don't know.

I appreciate the difficulty of assessing nuances of sportsmanship & the culture of Live Chess - or even the sub-cultures of Bullet vs Rapid - or even between people who play with an increment vs those who never would. Resigning vs playing on in a lost position. To draw or not to draw. But that's not really what this question is asking about; it's asking about this stuff and this stuff. So...

- Please don't worry about your opponent thumbing you down for not resigning fast enough (or for winning, etc.). If they don't follow through and actually Report or Block you, nothing has actually changed.

- Likewise, if you don't actually wish to Block, Report, Friend, or say "Good game!" to your opponent, then feel entirely free to ignore the question.

Does that make sense? Would rephrasing the question help? (Of course, we didn't want to go with "Was your opponent a jerk?"  )

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