lichess suffers badly with time wasters. It is not such a problem on other web sites where they get penalised harshly.
Please get it fixed ASAP or I will simply stop using and donating to lichess.
Enough is enough. Do something!
Agreed, it's not hard to fix, many suggestions have been made.
#1 Players who deliberately time out are punished, but you don't seem satisfied. A logical next step would be to require players to identify themselves, but Lichess isn't interested in that.
“Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining.” –Teddy Roosevelt
It's not his responsibility to propose a solution, though... I don't think a better solution exists.
That's my point, don't whine if you can't find a better solution.
Here's a solution - it's been suggested before. 1) You identify what a time waster is. For example, someone who makes no moves in the last 5 mins of a game, or for the last n% of the game, depending on the game type. Or perhaps they wait until the last few seconds - having done nothing for n% - then make a move, but have no time left for subsequent moves. You pick the numbers such that non-time wasters are identified as such. Then 2) in addition to the existing system of warning/ban you identify these people before the game starts - like with a warning "this player has wasted time in x% of the last y games" or just "this person wastes people's time". Perhaps this message can stop appearing once they've resumed playing properly for a few games.
Additionally:
3) New players get less trust for a while, in terms of cheating/time wasting. You assume that some percentage of new players, sadly, are banned players coming back for another shot at playing/cheating, and you make it less likely that existing players will get paired with them. Perhaps new players can play other new players, and people who've wasted time (recently) can spend their time with other time wasters. 4) Allow people to set their preferences to not even be bothered by someone currently suspected of wasting time.
But really, in the first instance, there's possibly no need to make sweeping logic changes. Just let people see, before any game starts, a little more information about the prospective player in terms of time wasting. Make it easier for a player to identify - be told - that a prospective opponent has wasted time recently and allow them to just cancel out of it and pick someone else. This seems both reasonable and extremely straight forward to code once the metric has been decided upon.
@ChesswurmOTB He did propose a solution: stopping donations and leaving the site. If what he's identified is a real problem - and it is; you see it on youtube/twitch streams - then it would be foolish to ignore him.
@Doofenshmirtz as to your first solution, it seems reasonable. It could be set at some game completion percentage threshold as that is already a metric Lichess analyzes.
I don´'t think its wise to threaten n lichess with "stopping donations" when one´ isn't satisfied with something. Giving donation doesn't imply to the lichess team that they are at your order.
I would personnaly reformulate your demand, starting by a " Thank you for the amazing job ! ", and then explain the issue you have with time wasters...
But that's my opinion
