#Blog Post of new account (ChessMonitor) not visible (+ is it promotional?)

67 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

timber hazel
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Hi,

for context: I'm Thomas and I'm running a website called ChessMonitor (https://www.chessmonitor.com/).

I published a blog post with a relatively new account (that contains the "ChessMonitor" in the name...) as I'm planning a small technical series on API development (Chess.com/Lichess) and storing games, etc. soon, but I wanted to do a quick introduction of my project first.

Now I have two questions:

  • I checked the "promotional content" but I'm only talking about my project (so no other things I'm advertising). So I'm not sure if you consider this promotional content?
  • Second, I noticed my blog post does appear anywhere close to the top list blog posts. Is it down-ranked because the account is new or maybe because of that "promotional" ticked box or do I need to do some kind of verification or anything like that to have other Lichess users discover my post?

Here is the post in question: https://lichess.org/@/ChessMonitor_Stats/blog/introducing-chessmonitor/FWt5cR1E

Thanks in advance 🙂
Thomas

lichess.org
Introducing ChessMonitor

I've been working on ChessMonitor for more than four years and finally wanted to introduce it to Lichess users.

celest jasper
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hi Thomas, if your website ChessMonitor has paid or subscriber features then it is correct to tag it with the affiliate or commercial tag.

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If your post gains a lot of likes then it may appear further up the list of community blogs.

timber hazel
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It reached 14 likes so far (which is probably close to the max it will get from my community) and it's sitting at the same spot in the overall since beginning.
I guess a post needs much more likes from "outside" then?

celest jasper
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What do you mean "outside"?

timber hazel
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I mean that probably nobody who has discovered the post has found it via the Lichess page (as it's burrowed somewhere down in the Blog page).

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I shared it with some people and that's likely where the likes are coming from. That's what I mean with "outside".

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I'm sure I saw posts with almost zero likes linked to from the frontpage. That's where my confusion is coming from.

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That's why I imagined my post might be blocked or something.

timber hazel
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I did some digging and there are user tiers set by mods as pointed out by here: #1228363352410030254 message
Is there any way to apply for a higher tier then? Wondering if my tier is somewhere in the negative or how it's set initially.. 😁

grim pike
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Outside is a poor way to get likes, like posts that have hit front page on hackernews do not pick up many likes

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(Just my observation)

timber hazel
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And sorry if my mention of the post pinged you, that was not my intention.. (just in case Discord does this)

timber hazel
timber hazel
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For future readers: TLDR: Top blog spots are picked or boosted by moderation. Likes matter little.

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I did a quick experiment for this and checked out only the blog posts published today (six so far). I wrote down their rank in https://lichess.org/blog/community, likes and whether it's advertisement. Results:

Findings:

  • Looks like #18, #19 and #21 are the "unboosted" spots
  • #2 and #3 are boosted really strong (so advertisement does not seem to matter)
  • #7 is only boosted a bit (32 likes but still only rank #7 after two posts from the same day with less likes...)

So likes don't really matter, your blog needs to be boosted by moderation to make it to the homepage.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

winged umbra
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Pretty sure that’s not true. The top 3 bloggers have a larger audience from posting many blog posts over a long period of time

timber hazel
winged umbra
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Once again, doubtful

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Maybe get proof before accusing people of stuff

timber hazel
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I posted all data fully transparent so that it's easy to follow. Not sure what is doubtful about it.

grim pike
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I wanted to reply properly here btw, i just ran out of time. But I will try to tomorrow. It’s not a secret how blogs work after all

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Frontage is more like top 15 blogs i think, in that they rotate on the homepage.

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Followers are important, in that the blog shows up in the timeline for them

grim pike
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First, @ people is indeed annoying on discord.

Blog is sorted by " artificial date" , which is made up of likes and "user tier". The "advertisement" toggle has no direct impact on that. The difference between the tiers is not big, the lowest removes them from community listings, and the highest is not used ( maybe Lichess still has it?) . The default tier is "low", but we have seen "low" tiers make the frontpage. In practice, it comes alot down to timing - some weeks have many good blogs and some have very few. ( As in, " low" user tier blogs with 1 like have made the frontpage in the past). Probably with a bit more luck in terms of timing the blog would have been on the frontpage with 14 likes.

Making a new account to blog from is not really a good strategy ( at least initially). You loose the timeline/follower effect. But either way, most bloggers wants a good " user tier" - this is not really a hard barrier. Instead of writing a blog that is "TL:DR click this link" , I would suggest showing how to use the data. Like " I analysed Ragehunter's play in the marathon to see if the openings was the same at the begining or the end" or whatever. It's the difference between a blog that says " pay me for coaching" and a blog that analyses a game, and mention that they offer coaching at the end. People don't mind the latter, but the former feels like a full page add. So how heavy a blogger is on advertising commercial services will likely have an impact on "user tier" - but that is not tied to the toggle.

Btw, are you still using ChessMonitor? I remember you were one of the early users...

Not as often. Think that bug is still there, I just didn't complain. But also since I play more OTB now. Still the best chess stat site I know about for sure

Finally, I will add that blogs do still receive attention - so things could change over time here. ( ie the recommended blog thing is very new)

timber hazel
# grim pike First, @ people is indeed annoying on discord. Blog is sorted by " artificial ...

The difference between the tiers is not big

Unless I'm missing something, this is not true. My post had 20 likes and was ranking 16 positions behind a post published on the same day with 12 likes. That means "user tiers" (what I called moderator boosts) are the most important factor regarding what is shown on the homepage and what not.

Even right now you can check the posts published today (three posts so far). They are at position #18, #19, #20 which shows they have a low tier and none of these posts will have a chance to reach the front page (unless a moderator intervenes ofc).

It just feels a bit strange that what ultimately decides what is shown to users or not are these secret tiers basically making it a matter of personal taste of moderators rather than a transparent system.

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And thanks regarding ChessMonitor! ❤️
Just checked your account and wasn't able to reproduce the bug. I pressed Update and it fetched your games... Feel free to give it another try. 😊

celest jasper
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if you consistently write good blogs, they are more likely to have good visibility. From what I can tell this is your first blog.

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and being honest, this is just an advert for a paid site that you have made, which isn't going to increase your likelihood of getting a better blog tier than the one that everyone (including mods) starts with by default.

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in fact sometimes, if someone blogs just an advert, the blog tier could even be lowered from the default tier.

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It just feels a bit strange that what ultimately decides what is shown to users or not are these secret tiers basically making it a matter of personal taste of moderators rather than a transparent system.

it is not personal taste, we follow the above Blog etiquette guidelines when deciding what, if any action to take with a user blog

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specifically:
Advertising and promotion
Although some advertising and promotion in blogs is allowed, we reserve the right to restrict the visibility and 'reach' of posts that appear to mainly focus on promotion.

timber hazel
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Thanks for your reply, but not sure why you're quoting and linking that when I actually did tick the "advertisement" box. I didn't expect to receive a better tier (I didn't even know of tiers when I started this thread). I came here thinking my post was down-ranked for being from a new account maybe.

And now I'm complaining (maybe too much 😁) about this very non-lichess-like secret rating system. In most other cases, Lichess is all about transparency and here it's a not-explained tier system that has secret tiers for blogs which basically decide what is good and what is bad. And then on top you are pretending that the tiers don't matter that much when they clearly do...

vernal cosmos
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Hello. Social medias are all about algorithmic rankings. You can see how bad it went. That's why human moderation is used by Lichess, it's much harder to game.

celest jasper
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You have two games, two forum posts and one blog post on this relatively new account. You just have to do the work and write a number of good blogs and if they are of good quality, useful and interesting to users and not primarily advertising your paid service, then hopefully your overall blog visibility could improve. You can't expect to suddenly get the front page with your first post.

timber hazel
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I'm not saying there shouldn't be any kind of moderation. But currently the tier decides whether the post makes it to position #1 or #20 while the likes only decide whether it's #20 or #21 (or #1/#2 if you are in a high tier...). The balance is wrong IMHO.

timber hazel
drowsy ledge
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What would be your suggestion for a perfect or ideal design of a blog system? I'd be interested hearing how that would look like and could be implemented? E.g. offering fair chances to everyone, yes sure, but how?
Most social media, as Sol said use an automated algorithm, which has the mentioned downside. They are too big to monitor manually. Lichess, benefits from being much smaller compared to Twitter or Insta to afford keeping the human element in moderation thanks to moderators volunteering in manually reviewing them, and thats already a step up from automation. So I'm curious about your design that improves that even further.

Social medias dont expect new users to come and bang out the post of the year with one shot (that d be unusual and edge case, but not the commonly expected) they are rather built on engagement overtime. It is a bit like building a trust in a relationship, you need time and activity. Imo expecting thousands views on twitter or landing on explore page with huge exposure on insta with your first post, with no followers or anything is kind of unrealistic.

timber hazel
# drowsy ledge What would be your suggestion for a perfect or ideal design of a blog system? I'...

Thanks for asking.

First, I would like to point out the flaw of your current system: You are making it hard for people to make obvious advertisement while encouraging "hidden ads". This combined with the fact that you have to "prove yourself" by writing some posts, is just asking for existing users to game the system while discouraging new writers.

Some of the posts from your "top blogger" are just an AI image header with AI image after AI image in the post with some text in between and then a "hey check out my course/blog/whatever" at the end. And I understand it. They made it to the highest tier and now they can just sprinkle in some ads here and there. As long as it's not an obvious ad, it seems like it's okay from your end.

And this is just what you are asking for. You are asking users to game the system.

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My recommendations would be:

1. Increase Transparency

Call your tiers "Approved Authors" or whatever but make it transparent that there is a tier system. Put this in the blog FAQ, explain that you need to write at least X good posts to increase your tier.

2. Fine-tune your tier vs. likes system

It's good that you have the ability to boost or downgrade blogs, but currently it's just impossible for good posts to reach the top without moderator intervention. It seems like the tiers make up 90% of the position and the likes 10% (making up these numbers, just to make the point clear). The likes should have more power in my opinion so that good posts can make up for a lower tier by receiving more likes. Of course, you would still need the option to "nuke" a blog if someone games/spams the system, but sounds like you can already do that.

3. Don't make the algorithm "all-or-nothing".

Right now you either make it to the Lichess homepage or not. Looks to me like you just take the Top X posts and randomly show some of these on the frontpage. So all posts in position X+1 are basically invisible. Instead use a algorithm that spreads the "homepage time" across posts.

For example (assuming 3 spots on the homepage), the top post in position #1 is shown for 20 hours per day on the homepage, #2 for 18 hours (-10%), #3 for 16 hours (-10%), etc.. The idea is that even position #30 would get a few minutes per day of homepage exposure. If these few minutes convince users to like it, this might then "up" the post and give it even more exposure. (I didn't do the math regarding the hours/percentage, but I hope you get the idea).

This is even easy to implement based on a "randomness factor". The advantage of this is that good posts will make it to the top naturally. And you could still keep your current system of tiers, which would just give posts a higher starting position. Another advantage is that it's not as luck-depended regarding the timing as you current system.

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I spend too much time writing this. Maybe this should've been a blog post... 😁

drowsy ledge
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Thanks for the detailed feedback and the essay 😁

Firstly, indeed writing a blog about blogging, basically a meta discussion about how you envision an ideal blogging system or improvement suggestions, could be definitely good idea - as long as it is framed with a constructive intent rather than the complaint being in the foreground- perhaps leading to some constructive brainstorming and different perspectives 👍

While I understand that you put a lot of efforts and time in your work, in essence your blogs main focus is promoting it. Imo, that part is already answered by @qrm above with the quote "Although some advertising and promotion in blogs is allowed, we reserve the right to restrict the visibility and 'reach' of posts that appear to mainly focus on promotion.". And you say it yourself: "They made it to the highest tier and now they can just sprinkle in some ads here and there. As long as it's not an obvious ad, it seems like it's okay from your end." So yes, it seems logical to me that a post, that is not focusing primarily on the ad (they write the chess part and sprinkle in the end with your words) does better or gets more exposure than to a post that focuses mainly on promoting, as in your case.

  1. Fine-tune your tier vs. likes system
    Increase in the power of likes results in the increase of incentive for gaming the system, resulting in more posts to be nuked. Why not prevent it in the first place, rather than creating the problems just to solve them later in bigger efforts?
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  1. Well, even if that was the case, to be picked from Top X, you gotta be first landed on Top X (lets say 18, as I'm currently seeing the #18 post already on the front page). So to get to top 3, you gotta get to top 18 or whatever, and getting to top 18 is impossible without mod intervention? This would assume that there was even a bigger pool, where mods cherry pick them into top 18, then a bigger pool where mods pick them from into the pool and so on recursively lol which obviously isn't the case. So question is how did they get into top 18 or whatever? There could be many ways, e.g. building it up with prior good posts over time, having some followership etc. etc.
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"For example (assuming 3 spots on the homepage), the top post in position #1 is shown for 20 hours per day on the homepage, #2 for 18 hours (-10%), #3 for 16 hours (-10%), etc.. The idea is that even position #30 would get a few minutes per day of homepage exposure."

Currently the top 18, from my observation, maybe 21 or X is visible already, that is a lot of posts to be front-paged already, so already low-ranked ones get to top. So you are basically asking it to extending it to an even higher enough to cover the current rank of your promotional blog post. So it will be again X+1 problem. But if you want to cover all the 100 posts on the front page, if you do the math you suggested or with different mathematical ratios simulated, the resulting exposure given to #100 would be too insignificant or just seconds. It eventually ends up creating a fast noise at the end, resulting in bad user experience.

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"Another advantage is that it's not as luck-depended regarding the timing as you current system." Again this assumes that there were no ways to for the current top posts to got to the point where they got to it.

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"Don't make the algorithm "all-or-nothing". But how you explain makes it sound as if it is all "Front page or nothing" for you, or for a post that focuses primarily on promotion.

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There are other ways to get exposure, you appear in the timeline of people who follows you etc. as well as here https://lichess.org/blog/community. Again, to build organic audience or followers, one needs to engage with the community over time. After all, somehow all those low-ranked ones made it to the top 18 and higher in one way or another.

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So in short, imo there could be no perfect system design - no matter how you design it - where a post that primarily focuses on a promoting a paid service that comes on top of other posts that focuses on less to no ads.

timber hazel
# drowsy ledge So in short, imo there could be no perfect system design - no matter how you des...

Thanks for the perspective! I guess you are right about my post.. For me it was a lot of work with a custom image for Lichess, but for you it's just an ad...

But how you explain makes it sound as if it is all "Front page or nothing" for you [...]

In practice, it is, not just for me. Even your top-tier bloggers have their own space (Youtube, newsletters, whatever). They obviously publish on Lichess to reach Lichess audience (outside of their own space). If you honestly believe, their goal is not to reach frontpage, just downgrade them to a lower tier and wait for them complain.

Ultimately, I guess we just disagree on the part who should decide what gets exposure. In the current system you mods decide, I would prefer a system that gives more power to Lichess users.

drowsy ledge
# timber hazel Thanks for the perspective! I guess you are right about my post.. For me it was ...

"They obviously publish on Lichess to reach Lichess audience (outside of their own space). If you honestly believe, their goal is not to reach frontpage, just downgrade them to a lower tier and wait for them complain." - It’s natural that all bloggers want exposure, nothing wrong with that but there's a crucial difference:

They create the content, 'value', first, which can be directly consumed on Lichess first without leaving the site. Any promotion they add is secondary, optional. I don't want to post links but an actual example, someone writes about tactical motifs, or about a particular opening. I can follow these authors, get some insights or benefit from their content, and may never click their personal link at the end.

In contrast, a post that's mainly promotional requires leaving Lichess to gain any value, meaning it offers nothing substantial on-platform itself, regardless of how useful that tool or service is.

That's why the system imo rightly favors posts that prioritize providing on-platform value — not simply external promotion — and it's fair to treat them differently. In chess terms, move-order is the key.

But that being said, the current state of things is that your post has actually started with default conditions, like any other posts. There was no downgrading or anything that sort of. At least from the info above.

"Ultimately, I guess we just disagree on the part who should decide what gets exposure. In the current system you mods decide, I would prefer a system that gives more power to Lichess users." This sounds like to me as if the mods "manually" pick the blogs, which is not the case. Mods rather intervene mainly if posts violate rules (spam, excessive self-promotion, etc) and community upvotes / likes already have real impact.

timber hazel
drowsy ledge
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Lastly I wanna add this: You mentioned that some front-pagers "made it to the highest tier and now they can just sprinkle in some ads here and there." (Yes, maybe not all posts are very high quality to my personal taste either — but it still implies they got there somehow and over time, which is exactly what I was saying: building it gradually through content creation. For example, one was doing follow-along coding tutorials long before referring to his tool, which is quite similar to yours.)

But if even those sprinkled ads were punished more strictly, then in such a system, your post would likely struggle even more, not less. So ironically, the current system is actually more forgiving than it would be under stricter rules — even if we sometimes complain about certain ads being allowed in moderate doses.

Anyway, don’t get me wrong — your tool and your work look great, and nothing personal at all. Just sharing my view on how I believe platforms prioritize “inside vs. outside value.”

Hope that clarifies the points you raised. Have a great weekend!

timber hazel
timber hazel
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Sorry to warm this up. But I have published another blog post...

This time, it's a multi-week data mining effort based years of data collection. It's a never-done-before comparison between Lichess and Chess.com regarding GM activity. It shows how Lichess is even ahead of Chess.com in some time controls.

I tried to reach out before publishing this, but never got a reply back. As I guess this should be big news to Lichess as Lichess could even market itself as the "number one chess platform" (for GMs/bullet).

According to a journalist I spoke to, this is big chess news... Now, I'm wondering if that's worth a higher tier according to Lichess Mods.. 😁

grim pike
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Nice!

Afaik, nothing like this has been published before - but internaly someone did compare titled player activety on the platforms - so your results does match our what I would expect 🙂 ( still hopeing they blog about it )

This will be very handy, since it's quite a common missconception around this I think. So your blog will be a nice reffrence in reddit etc. I bet.

timber hazel
# grim pike Nice! Afaik, nothing like this has been published before - but internaly someon...

Thanks! ❤️

I don't even remember where the inspiration came from. It was something I wanted to do for a longer time, but never really did until now for no particular reason... Most of the time I put this kind of effort into new ChessMonitor features 😁

I started with a simple analysis but then the results were rather unexpected (was expecting ChessCom to be much more ahead tbh). So I ended up putting much more work into this than I initially anticipated 😁 For example, I also analyzed some particular time controls, checked the influence of events like Titled Tuesday, etc. but these things turned out to be not as interested in the end. So it's just the main comparision + Bullet vs. Blitz that stayed.

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If you want some (or more) data for you internally, let me know. If it's just for you internally, I won't make it look as pretty but then it's also much less work for me...

grim pike
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I think you should sit on the data - well at least for now - since maybe you will find it useful for a blog post or something one day. My understanding is that one of the hard parts is actually getting all the games/data 😅 but thanks for the offer

timber hazel
hallow siren