False advertising - being open to giving takebacks

Thanks @a_pleasant_illusion , I appreciate you’re points, I agree players shouldn’t feel any obligation to accept or expect takebacks, I don’t think however the premeditated example you give is the only way an opportunist who never gives takebacks would have to be underhanded though. I just think it’s not good sportsmanship to gloat about how you only have them on so your opponent can notify you when they have made a mistake and you have no intention of giving them. If I noticed gaining an advantage in that way a shiver would go down my spine and I’d search out the tool to disable them straight away, not to mention knowing already and gloating about it, that’s all, I suspect there are more people out there doing the same.

I’ve had opponents claim victory on games where I had all my pieces and they just had king or I was one move away from victory, because my wi-fi flickered out for a few seconds, it’s just not on in my opinion to abuse the site features, and not in the spirit of the game.

I completely accept people with the philosophy of mislicks will happen on both sides it roughly evens out, I just wish those people would turn off in preferences so I know before I commit to a series of games against them on a long train or bus journey, where I will inevitably misclick once.

And I accept your concern that any attempt to fix ‘it would have more problems than it might solve.’ I think an opt in and out option of players who have never given a takeback like you can select rating range when creating a new game, would work but be incredibly difficult and time consuming to implement for developers, so not holding my breath.

yes we want to be able to sort seeks by number of takebacks the player has ever given, also make that number part of the graph on a players profile

It's actually quite embarrassing how much and how often you misunderstand a sentence @alex_beneath

That's a topic that comes up all the time.
I see people repeating the same weak, cliche arguments over and over and given that I think that if someone doesn't spend any time to think about his statements before publishing them then replying to them is a waste of time I have avoided to reply so far. But in this case I feeling empathy with StalemateKing's frustration and I will spend some time arguing so that he/she doesn't lose faith in humanity.

So, the first argument that always people come up with is that "in over the board chess there are no takebacks".
True.
And given that without mistakes the result of chess is probably a draw, giving takebacks would make the game meaningless since there would be no way to win. However in over the board chess there are no misclicks... The analogue in over the board chess would be someone's nail touching the piece next to the one he was trying to move and being forced to move the neighboring piece. Technically that's what the rules say. But in this case you have to understand what the point of this rule is. The point is not that chess players should cut their nails nor that people who suffer from tremor should not play chess. The reasoning behind this regulation is to determine when a the final decision of a move has been made and is no more revertible. So when you touch a piece then your final decision is considered to have been made and you have to move it.

But more importantly if you force the other player to play a move that he never intended to then you have destroyed chess. The essence of chess is choices. No physical characteristics matter nor any other exterior factor besides the players' thinking. By forcing someone to play a move that he didn't intend to you remove exactly this characteristic of chess. In principle I think that chess should be played the same way no matter the means of transmission of one's choice. One could use a mouse, do it manually, recite it or ideally somehow transmit their decision directly from their brain to the board. Even if the rules were saying the opposite then I would be an advocate to change them. Just imagine how would that game be if according to the rules at any point of the game a random move could be played for any player determined by some random algorithm! I would definitely not want to play that game!

But here the problem arises from the fact that practically there is no way to determine when a move was made intentionally or not. That's the reason I guess that the takeback feature is optional and it is up to the player to decide what to do. If one decides to disable the takeback feature then he has decided to play a game where random moves can happen depending mainly on the player's ability to control their body movements and their familiarity with the interface and the equipment they use which apparently is not even the same for everyone. Leaving those weird people aside, the takeback feature delegates the players to decide whether their opponent's move was intentional. So here a moral issue arises. When someone understands that the move was not intentional but doesn't give the takeback then it's like breaking the mechanisms of chess trying to get a win. An interesting question that one should ask one's self is what kind of win is this and against whom since the other player never decided to play this move. So given that one has the possibility to fix this mistake which occurred due to our inability to transmit one's decision to the board, by not giving the takeback is similar to moving your opponent's piece and apparently breaks the rules. So the conclusion is that morally not giving the takeback when one knows that it was a mouseslip is equivalent to cheating, a possibility that one is given by the means we use to play chess.

Here I would like to stress a similarity to the over the board chess. In over the board chess again the players have the option to not call a "touch-move" violation, and we have numerous occasions where this behavior has been observed and more recently in the world championship match. At some point Carlsen touched a pawn for unknown reasons before moving a rook and Karjakin didn't call the arbiter. That was a wonderful example that demonstrates exactly my points. Technically Carlsen should have moved the pawn. Actually in this case it turned out that it would have been a better move but just imagine how meaningless the world champion title would have been if it had been determined by this incident! Fortunately Karjakin respected chess by not trying to force his opponent to do a move that he didn't intend to and at the same time he respected himself by not

Now the second argument is that "it is the player's who had the mouseslip fault".
Indeed it is.
Precisely it is a transmission error.
But I don't see how not allowing the player to correct his fault corrects it!
Of course nobody thinks that this way the mistake is corrected but this statement actually reflects the simplistic perception that people should be penalised for any mistake they make.
But what is the point of penalising an unintentional action as the mouseslip is?
It is like penalising someone for sneezing in public places!...

So, to sum up if someone considers the online chess a different game than over the board chess or blindfold chess depending on the means of the transmission of the players' decisions and wants factors as one's ability to accurately transmit their decisions through the given interface and equipment to matter for the game then it is reasonable to not give takebacks at all.
From any other point of view it is equivalent to cheating but unfortunately not provable...

If you go to your preferences there is the option to select the move conformation. This way you can correct any miss clicks you might make without proposing take backs because your move will not appear until after you click the "conform move" button. While I can understand that you did not intend to make a move if you know that you will make miss clicks and you want to be able to correct that mistake I think you should have your preferences set so that you must conform moves as that way if you make a move you did not intend to make you can avoid having it be an actual move by not conforming the move.

I have never heard about Western Sahara. According to wikipedia, this is a country in Africa, but among official languages there is no English. How the heck guy from Western Sahara can be so fluent in English?
I gather, you intentionally deceive people in regards of your country. So the question is: if you deceive people with such a trifle, what can stop you from cheating people with takebacks? That's why takebacks should be turned off, cause there are so much dirty people, lying about everything.

Oh get a grip @tangibletremor , you are jumping to a lot of big conclusions and insults from guesswork you’re doing about something you admit you have never even heard about.

The most steady location that I inhabit and work is refugee and nomad camps full of Saharawi’s and West Africans. My closest family are all Tunisian but I was raised in a different country in Europe almost every year, it would be like someone from America who lived in a different state all their life having to choose between them, I could have gone Luxemburg which is like the American Washington but it’s also just a tourist attraction full of beurocrats, and I’m not in favour of the EU. So there is no easy answer to 'From', but more accurately lichess asks ‘Location’; my most steady location is West Africa, there again we don’t have the luxury of European historical cultural geographical borders and nation-states, we have colonial partitions between different empires, the technical location is Morocco, but that’s only because it occupied and resettled it’s population into land historically governed by sarahawis, so saharawis are an occupied people forced to make do in Morocco’s monarchy, rather than flying the banner of an oppressive ruler on my page I chose to use the flag of the people I live with most and the culture that I participate in where they camp.

I've had lot's of lovely conversations with people who challenged me to a game because they are roma-nation or think of themselves as pan-african, pan american etc.

You are a very close minded and ignorant person, there are no absolute should’s for takebacks, each to their own, the deceivers who never intend to give takebacks but like being asked are the only ones to blame, for those who don’t want to use takebacks they should turn them off. I'd go as far as saying maybe the solution is takebacks should be off by default is all.

Thanks for the suggestion @acgusta2 , I did have that on but ended up losing more games on time than I would have on misclicks, If I create games with longer time controls less people show up or I get bored waiting for them to make easy moves. Plus I enjoy taking down the bullet climbers when they show up in the lobby and it's not possible to go away change my settings each time and come back to them still being there.

Very thorough breakdown @qweasdzxc88 , agree transmission errors spoil the game and its nice when you play someone who isn't pedantic to the point of forcing you to move a piece you brushed against.

I never ask for takeback. I have takeback on. but I just accept it in unranked games.