live streams

Yes - forum communication, that you can go back to, is key. Or email, or something.

Zug might've been whitelisted before, but I don't he or anyone else knew the reason. If a streamer was kicked off the whitelist and then added back a week later without a word (ie, email, message on lichess) from the admins, I definitely see reason for confusion - something I think is the case here.

For whatever it is worth, I've never been "kicked off" before for any rule infractions. There was, however, a week where Twitch's API was particularly broken(1) and my stream invisible to lichess, and for awhile I did jokingly claim to have been banned for playing "Eye of the Tiger" too often during coordinate trainer sessions.

- Zug

(1) Incidentally, this is what led to my now mildly infamous excursion to Hitbox and fateful match with GM "Feel The Bits" Thipsay (who sadly turned out to be an imposter). But I digress.

Zug understood Thibault's warning, that is key.
I hope Zug turns this thread into one of his plays and acts out all the posts with his weird voices :)

Ok, some remarks regarding Thibault's post / reasons to ban Zug's streams from lichess:

<quote>
"I am picky about what is featured on the homepage, of course. It makes 260,000 page views every day, to it's my responsibility to ensure great content quality."
<end quote>

Hm, slightly self important :)

It's a chess site. A great chess site, but a chess site nevertheless.

If somebody clicks on a link and doesn't like its content, I think it would be safe to assume that he/she has enough sense to stop watching, without blaming lichess for serving the drivel.

<quote>
"Imagine if you arrived on lichess.org, found a "LIVE" link on the homepage, clicked it, only to find a stream unrelated to chess, where nobody is even talking."
<end quote>

Well, yes, imagine that.

No need to patronise your patrons :)

I love Zug's streams.

Yes, they are sometimes silly. No, the guy isn't perfect (just check out his piano play in the background :)

He's witty, entertaining, and fully deserves to be streamed on lichess. It's a better site with him than without him,

cheers, Chris

I don't even have speakers hooked up to my PC, BUT I like Chris's attitude

@cr2015: How is it "self-important" to be picky about, or to take responsibility for, the content of your own website? As the lead developer and admin, he needs to ensure great content on the homepage. Sure, he can delegate that responsibility to other staff or moderators, but he is ultimately responsible for that content. There is nothing self-conceited about that.

Furthermore, how has Thibault "patronised" his patrons exactly? Give some clear instances where Thibault has talked down to users as if he is superior or better to them.

And how does any player "deserve" to be streamed on lichess? Being a guest or user on any website, whether it's a chess or non-chess website, is a privilege, unless you have paid for the website's services. Zug violated the rules, so his privilege has been revoked. Thibault is totally in the right to do this.

I love ZugAddict's stream, but the delisting is not much of a mystery to me. It felt like 90% of the time I tuned in (through Twitch e-mails, not lichess TV), he was playing Hearthstone or coding or something. I honestly thought he'd quit chess or something.

The solution to me seems simple. Have a separate Twitch account for chess, and only use it for chess. Then you'll never run into the mistake of forgetting to change the stream title to remove the lichess tag (which I know is very easy to forget, since you can't set the title in Xsplit/OBS so you have to remember to log onto the dashboard before you go live. It's annoying). I think everyone wins in that scenario.

Maybe the question for everyone to ask themselves is: who here is one who has achieved a title of National Master in chess?

I stopped watching the streams some time ago because most of the time none of them were very instructive. Maybe if the streamers turned off the twitch chat and ignored communications from the viewers, the streams would be more focused and productive.

Since this seems to have become a public referendum upon the chess content of my lichess streams, I feel I should mention a few points in my defense.

First off, I was initially terrible with essentially every technical aspect of internet streaming. Hours would be spent trying to adjust OBS settings, tweak monitor resolutions, replace suddenly melted graphics cards, etc, and I suppose it's possible that once in awhile I would occasionally forget to change the stream title. However, most of these mishaps were several months ago, and I think it would be fair to say that there's been a great deal of improvement since. I mean, yes, I'm still besieged by ants and occasionally someone in the channel buys me takeout food from a place five miles away and I have to interrupt the stream to bike there and back, but these are isolated incidents.

In spite of some fanciful claims to contrary above, I suspect that over the last few months one would be hard pressed to find a featured stream of mine which was anything less than 90% (possibly even 91%) chess, and that ape is grossly mistaken with his "90% non-chess" comment, unless he means my streams in general and not those specifically intended for lichess.org, in which case, well, OK, then he's probably about right. That said, if the required chess content of my stream needs be 100% or above, I can do that.

In summation, with the American Football season being over and the city of Arcata recently forbidding "Ritual Goat Sacrifice Fridays", I feel I am now ready to redouble my efforts to provide lichess with the most mathematically impossible percentage of chess content available anywhere on the internet. I know mistakes have been made in past, and I publicly ask forgiveness for straying off the path of chessic righteousness. I have transgressed, but with your help perhaps I can overcome my weakness for Hearthstone, LoxBall, and Fish Betting Simulators and once again return to lichess.org and the joys of coordinate trainer, atomic chess, and reading the forums out loud in silly voices(1).

Sincerely,

- Zug

(1) I can also not do that if you'd prefer.

We're with you ZugAddict