The word problematic is problematic :) I agree so wholeheartedly with the desire to keep politics out of... well... everything! Yet this simple post about a random flag assigned to a random nation is one of the most read and thumbed (up/down) posts here. Not the ones about chess, not the ones about chess tools ( ;-) ), but politics. We might declare we don't care or want politics, but the inner-monkey says differently. Such is life.
That being said, in a vain hope that someone would actually listen to me, I believe the source of politically sensitive data should be coming from outside, an authoritative source, like Wikipedia for flags, for example. Let them fight it out and if someone complains, go there. I find it illogical to not add features because they require maintenance, but accept to fall into the trap of politically charged debate for something as meaningless as flag icons.
@TotalNoob69 said in #11:
> I find it illogical to not add features because they require maintenance, but accept to fall into the trap of politically charged debate for something as meaningless as flag icons.
how so? if i was a dev, i would be absolutely worried about maintenance, because that's something *i* have to do. on the other hand i wouldn't be the least bit worried about whether people on the forums have politically charged debates. i can easily keep out of those, no problem. and if the debates annoy me for some reason, i am gonna tell the mods to shut them down.
@glbert , once you implement a label that says Taiwan is a territory of China, for example, you are going into politics. Same for anti-war flags, anti-misogynism posts and actions, gay rights banners and so on. People might choose to boycott your application, raise negative sentiment against you, rating bomb, etc. Worse, once you do it once, they will demand you do it for everything, else they start harming you for NOT implementing something. THAT is maintenance! And for what?
Making sure a feature stays up to date and plays well with other changes to the site is trivial in comparison.
@TotalNoob69 said in #13:
> they will demand you do it for everything, else they start harming you for NOT implementing something. THAT is maintenance!
it is actually not.
You know, if Lichess were THAT political, they would have removed the Russian flag or even banned Russian IPs.
They did neither of these things.
Also OP would have a point if the white-red-white was also just called "Russia", but no, it's descriptively and unambiguously called "Russia white-red-white".
Hello Lichess team, admins and community. After I had wrote the original post and got your comments (thank you VERY MUCH for it), I have made several more attempts to drag attention to this issue, so here is some update for you:
1) I followed the advice from comments and proceeded to pull request on Github, where it all started and where this change was introduced and questionably approved by Lichess team. I asked to revert the change and explained in detail why, however my request and comment were simply deleted without any explanation or reply.
2) I started to raise this issue in social media, so some people also joined my rally and asked to revert the changes, however they were deleted and banned too. I created an issue on Github, but same - it was simply deleted without any dialogue. So much for freedom of speech and treating everyone equally.
3) I have sent 4 emails directly to lichess (contact@lichess.org) - no reply and complete ignore.
So, what do we have in the end? Absolutely no possibility to contact, communicate and establish any dialogue with the team that favors the questionable and unrelated ideas of very few people who bring confusion and heat to the community with their irrelevant ideas, and complete ignore of the majority of people who simply and reasonably ask that the chess remains out of politics (as it should be originally) and that the basic data about country flags is respected (even writing "Russia white-red-white" is still misleading and confusing, since it questions the real Russian flag)
Any ideas how we can get the attention of adequate Lichess team members who do care about the community?
First off, I realized it's white-blue-white, that other thing is the belarusian pendant.
But seriously, both flags were created to represent a better vision of Russia and Belarus (no war, no suppression, no dictatorship). In case you're not a putinist-neofascist clouded by propaganda, why does it offend you?
(well I see you already showed your attitude in #9, which means you have not a bit of a say anyway)
get a Lichess/Antarctica/Rainbow or pirate flag dude, you call this flag confusing and irrelevant, then handle it so.
It doesnt change a thing.
Cheers and have fun playing
Each country has one official flag to represent it (as in Olympic games, no matter how low they have fallen now into politics as well).
There is no need to create a better version of the existing beautiful and actually official Russian flag. Nobody asks you to do it.
And of course it offends me, same and equally as every Russian person, when someone tries to distort our flag, especially when this someone supports terrorists and nazi regime. And for sure this should not be a topic in a chess community, and it wouldn't have been, if the chess community hadn't satisfied this miserable request in the first place. Now we have to make things right again.
Still looking for some advice how to reach Lichess team (and not for comments of people who drag it into politics due their narrow-mindedness)
Just to put the records straight... the github issue wasn't silently deleted. It was closed, and a sensible reason was given.
Everybody is entitled to their own opinion. But the final decisions for this server are up to the lichess team, and they can handle it the way the see it fit.
You can put up the Russian flag beside your username, but if people are ashamed of their governing body and want to share their disgust, they now have an alternative option to still be able to be recognized as a Russian citizen, but maybe without receiving the hatred.
The flag here is not some official thing. And I doubt that people showing Antartica are very honest with their location, but I may be wrong with that.
If you want people to use the official Russian flag, maybe contribute to changes to make people less ashamed of it.
