Thoughts about the off-topic forum
Just a heads up – this post is going to be rather long winded. Please bear with me.Followers +Teams + Fan-clubs
I’m sure many of you are aware that those things make up a large component of the off topic discussion. There’s nothing really fundamentally wrong with wanting publicity since we are social animals by nature and get joy out of social interactions.However I believe its important to find a balance and not get too obsessed with such superficial popularity. IMHO, threads in celebration of getting a certain number of followers are unnecessary and take up space. I will even go as far as saying I find users who create such threads to be extremely egoistic as well as lacking social awareness. The idea of a public forum is to have “discussions” that everyone can relate/contribute to. I understand that some posters like sharing their personal achievements and get fulfilment out of it however please do refrain from doing so since its not very helpful on a social level and people should really keep in mind that the internet is not their personal journal and that things cannot be erased once shared.
Upvotes/Downvotes
This coincides with the paragraph above. Just want to point out that they only represent the number of people who agree/disagree with your post and has nothing to do with personal prejudices so It shouldn’t matter very much which one you get as long as you think it was necessary to share. Though it is important to reflect on why certain posts get a lot of attention...
Relationships+ Personal Problems
People are free to post whatever they want and I do have a certain respect for those who share their personal stories on a public forum but sometimes just throwing out the problems and stating how crap your life is isn’t really the way to engender a constructive discussion. Rather than wasting time blaming the world for your misfortunes, you might as well use that time to think of solutions to get out of that situation. Sometimes its helpful to seek advice from people outside your life as they see it from a third person perspective but going on a full rant won’t do you any favour and you will just get more hate.
Horsey + Rickrolling
It’s a fact most people like the ‘Horsey’ symbol and think it adds more character to the site as a whole. Personally I think it’s a really cool emoticon and I often react to people’s post with it but recently there seems to be an avalanche of horsey related threads in off topic and they are all rather repetitive. Different versions of horsey has started appearing all over the site and imho, this trend is becoming rather unhealthy. There’s no harm in wanting to belong to a flock but you have to keep an eye on the direction its going and be ready to bale out. To be honest I don’t even know what to say about ‘rick rolling’. I have received countless ‘Rick roll’ links from random users this week and I’m really fed up with it. The joke is getting old, people should give it a rest! What satisfaction do people get out of supposedly ‘Rick rolling’ people? Do enlighten me if you are one of those rick roll spammers.
In short – It would be nice to have a wider range of topics e.g science, arts, humanity etc as well as forum games, music, quizzes..Lichess is an international platform with contributors of all ages and reflects a wide variety of interests. However despite all our indifferences, we can all agree on that this is the best chess site ever and it would be great if we can complement each other’s interests on a social level.
