Lila: The forum is well designed, but poorly featured and I think it needs an overhaul

[ghost]

There is so much open source forum software like Flarum. Why not integrate it into Lichess?
https://github.com/flarum
https://github.com/discourse

[niklasf]

These would be huge dependencies. What particular features are you missing?

[ghost]

A "vote system" only for feature requests that makes it more visible to the devs. That way, the devs will know what they need to work on. To avoid abuse, it will only contain upvotes, and chatbanned users cannot vote.

[ghost]

Also, if someone has been banned from the forum or from Lichess, it should say "Banned" under their name, which is visible to everyone except that person. This will help people know that their reports on trolls are working.

[ghost]

Also a real set of forum rules, warnings, and temp bans. This may make some trolls change their malicious ways.
I ran into a troll on one on my posts and a mod closed the thread without even saying why. If a thread is closed, a mod should say why.

https://lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/a-novel-way-to-ban-cheaters?page=1
The mod didn't say anything to why the topic was closed. I think the last post on a closed thread should be the mod saying why the thread is being closed.

[ghost]

Also the ability to comment on comments, like in Reddit. That way, threads can feel more organized.

[ddugovic]

Every system or feature is prone to abuse... I'm afraid new features would be a moderation nightmare, somehow.

When (other) players create forum topics like, "What do you want changed in lichess.org ?" with 94 comments and dozens of topics, I don't respond to those. I've said this in that forum a few times but communication is hard.

Threaded discussions could be nice from a user perspective but again new features are prone to abuse so likely more moderation effort would be required.

[ghost]

@ddugovic Well them add an option to directly report comments/posts.