Stockfish on the analysis board: luring people into cheating in vote chess

I was looking at a diagram posted by a team mate in a vote chess game earlier. I noticed they didn't analyse a move I liked, so I clicked the analyse icon to enter some moves of my own. To my surprise, i was immediately shown stockfish' evaluation of the position and its three best scoring lines! 

This is just making it way too tempting for people to cheat: chess.com now made computer evaluation one click away! So I guess if we want to analyse a diagram posted by a team mate, what are we supposed to do? Click the analyse button, but not look at what stockfish tells us on that page? 

I think the engine's evaluation should at least be disabled by default when reaching the analysis board page for two reasons:

• vote chess: don't put the computer evaluation right in the user's face when he clicked through from a vote chess discussion. This would actually make the user cheat, as computer assistance is forbidden for an active game. 
• don't make people lazy: when a player is analyzing a position outside of a currently active game, where computer assistance would be allowed, it makes no sense to constantly show them the best moves. The player should try to work them out first, and then maybe ask stockfish if it agrees or why a certain move shouldn't work. 

Also, when clicking through from an active vote chess game, there should be no way to activate the engine. When starting an analysis session from scratch, it could be turned on manually after being disabled by default. I agree that this is not bulletproof either, but at least this behaviour of the site would make it less tempting to cheat. 

Also, maybe when analyzing a position from scratch, computer evaluation should not be given the way it is now (three best lines with a score). Maybe a more quiz-like system could be developed, like where from a position, the user can give what he thinks are good moves, maybe even guess the continuations' evaluations (white is winning, white is better, equal, ...). Then, the computer could score the user's guesses and propose moves the user ignored. Then, the user could give his evaluation for those moves (maybe they are good as well? Maybe they can be refuted and the engine can quickly build a little puzzle to see if the user finds the solution? Maybe these puzzles can even make it into tactics trainer?). A bit more like humans would analyze together. 

If this quiz-based analysis feature would ever be developed, I'll humbly accept it to be called "Hotwax' awesome computer assisted epic chess quiz and analysis". 

Waw hotwax, you never cease to be the most humble chessplayer I ever met :D 

You do make a valid point though, especially on stockfish being enabled by default on Vote Chess analysis boards. 

It was my understanding as well that engine use by default is not allowed in vote chess, except when both parties agree that it is. 

So why let humans vote at all?

In some of those computer assistance allowed vote chess games? Beats me, why anyone would want to play those, but that's besides the point of this topic. 

I keep trying. 

It appears something has been fixed. Although now I feel like I'm being accused of trying to cheat, while I just clicked analyse on a diagram in a vote chess game discussion. I am allowed to use the analysis board, right? 

Alright, the fix is flawed, the second I do one move, stockfish shoots back into action. 

I better not get banned for clicking on links chess.com provides for me on the vote chess page, or I'm going to be so pissed. 

There is a bug in v3. I asked for a computer analysis of a game after my opponent resigned, and got the same message: "Analysis cannot be performed on this position ...: etc

For some reason I now can't see the lines it suggests just the score.

It's better for your OTB chess, anyway, to set up the position on your real chess board when analyzing.

Probably so, thanks for the tip. 

But I for one, spend most of my chess.com time on the train, commuting. 

I found this and logged a bug report today. Ouch!

This is one V3 bug I don't expect to last very long.