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KGSWishlist Old
The following are features and requests KGS users hope can one day be implemented in the server or client software.
In 2003, wms has more constraints on his time and is less able to extend KGS[81], but nonetheless, we may dream.
To see exactly what wms is working on right now, you can look at the KGS Status page. For more long term plans of wms, see KGS Plans. If I like an idea enough to decide that I will definitely implement it eventually (or if it is implemented already!), I will erase the entry here and add an entry to the status or plans page. So if I delete your entry, don't be mad! Just check those pages, it probably means that I really liked your idea. I will never remove an idea here because I do not like it.
If you just used KGS for the first time this page may be quite confusing to you. Your experience, however, is very valuable and you can help improve KGS by adding it to KGS First Time User Experience.
If you are an experienced user, please enter your comments at the bottom of the appropriate section. Don't worry too much about if it's in the right place - if it isn't, someone will move it there.
Please read the FAQ before adding anything to this page!
Voting: If you like an idea, mark it with "[+|YourName]", if you don't with "[-|YourName]". (Attach them to the end of the paragraph you like. If you write them on a new line they can get moved out of context when someone inserts a comment.). -- See Discussion
Table of Contents
- [1] Social
- [11] Logging In
- [12] General User Handling
- [13] Chat handling/room use
- [14] Handling Nasties
- [15] Design Discussion: Should Games be arranged by Chat?
- [2] Game Handling
- [21] General Game Stuff
- [22] Editing
- [23] Score Estimator
- [24] Rule Systems/Time systems
- [25] Ratings
- [26] Game Start
- [3] File Handling/Database Use
- [31] User Info
- [32] Game info
- [33] Game File Format and Saving
- [4] General UI and Design Issues
- [8] Technical/Other/Dunnos
- [81] Development Fundamentals
- [82] Connection and Responsiveness
- [83] Other Technical Issues
- [9] Discussion of this Page
- [91] Voting
- [92] Categorization
- [93] Deprecated subjects
[1] Social
[11] Logging In
[12] General User Handling
- Steve Fawthrop: The ability to store info about a player in a file on disk. A button on the user info would invoke a text file, saved on the hard drive (presumably in the cgoban directory) so that details about a person can be recalled at a later date. This would be very useful because I talk to a lot of people and cannot always remember everything about everyone.
- Gedh: I think this would be a very useful thing to implement, too.
- Tamsin: I like it as an idea, but have a reservation: isn't this kind of thing getting perilously close to making a database on people, which I think is prohibited by law in some countries? I suppose it depends on the kind of information which is being stored, but even so it seems a slightly dangerous area to me.
- Gedh: Hmm, my understanding was that the original suggestion above by Steve Fawthrop was for a feature whereby one could store one's own personal notes about individual players, for instant recall at the press of a button. As such, everyone's 'database' would be different. I was supporting the original idea above on that premise. So for example you could have as an entry 'xxxxxxx gave some helpful comments' or 'yyyyyy passed and scored the game and then resigned after I pressed 'done' ' etc etc. Surely there is no law about keeping personal notes (which no one else has access to) about people? ++++
- Sebastian: Make this in a standard file format, so that users can add their own comments, e.g. what they want to remember about someone.
- Skelley: Very good idea. A local memo per user.
- Dolgan: Don't do it in the cgoban directory but in the users home dir, so that every user on a machine can have their own database.
- Steve Fawthrop: To those who were concerned about my suggestion implying the creation of a database I must stress that I meant that the information should be on your LOCAL machine and only available to you. Others would have no access to it. I speak to so many people and not everyone has their name in their info so it is sometimes hard to remember details when I don't chat to someone for a long time. I would like to be able to add a personal comment such as "This is Joe Doe. I met him at the Chicago tournament." or "This guy asked for an undo several times after long delays and escaped when I would not grant it."
- crux: It would be nice if you could set your rank to e.g. "1D-", which would work just like "-", but give people an indication of your strength.
- Dolgan: I don't think it worth the work. After a few rated games your rank will be obvious. Until then you can use a comment.
- crux: It would be nice if the main chat rooms also added ranks after the player names, just like the in-game chats do. It makes it easier to find someone if your player list is sorted by rank.
- Dolgan: Great Idea. Still better, but probably more work: have the Usernames in the Chat pop up a context-menu on right-click.
- dnerra: In User Info and in the private chat box, have a button "Observe this player's game" in case he is playing.+++
- mgoetze: Possibility to leave a short status message like in an instant messaging client, e.g. "Be Right Back" or "Out for lunch". ++
- Gedh: A facility to scroll down the right hand players list, whilst keeping the buddy-list area locked at the top? Or for those with enormous buddy lists, a scroll bar in each, with adjustable divider?
- ChipUni: I log in both via the web page (at work) and at a downloaded client (at home). My list of censored people doesn't seem to be remembered when I log in via the web page.
- wms: Yup. Some preference info is saved on server, some is saved to disk. Things like buddies & censors are saved to disk, so when you switch computers, they are lost. Maybe would be a good idea to eventually move all prefence data to the server...for most people there isn't all that much so it wouldn't overfill the server. I may add this to the KGS Plans page.
- Bisqwit: If you do, leave the font size setting as local. I use cgoban on various different resolution screens. Probably many other settings also deserve to stay local.
- ZeroKun: Would be nice if there was a trailing option so I can know when my friends/favorite players start a game.
- phenomene: Indeed! For people who love watching games this feature is really needed.
- (Sebastian:) This could elegantly be realized with a game/request search feature (see [32]).
- bojo: It would be nice to have some simple slash commands. For example, having to go through the name list to find someones information, or go to the User->View User's Information menu is a bit tedious. It would be easier to type /who <nick> in most cases, although I admit I have a little bias towards typed commands. I'm sure there are other slash commands that could make peoples lives easier, but that was the first one off my head.
[13] Chat handling/room use
- Hu: Sort rooms by current members.
- Hu: Semi-public rooms that anyone can join, but the room owner can exclude people individually.
- crux: (Much) bigger history buffer for the chat windows.
- Jochie: Or just make it configurable so people can pick what they like?
- Notochord: This is actually microscopic, but for those of us who don't have sound, or who tend to have it off, it would be nice if opened chat windows could be given some kind of timestamp upon their creation so that one could know how long a message has been hanging and act accordingly. +
- dnerra: Additionally, it would be nice if the "chat bell" would make a less annoying sound, so that it becomes a little more attractive to leave sound on.
- Dolgan: It almost made me get a heart attack!
- wms: IANAFA (I Am Not A Foley Artist). Give me the .wav or .mp3 file, and I will replace the phone ringing. :-)
- mdh How about giving us the ability to change the WAV/MP3 sounds in our client. You could place the fields in the client's prefences page. That way we can set our own sounds for chat windows or stone placement. The default would be the current sounds there now (for the web client)
- s: I don't think this would be necessary. I don't think it's the artistic quality of the sound, but the volume. I, for one, am sometimes happy that it is loud. When I'm away from the keyboard I get a nice loud alert that calls me back. In short I think everybody would be happy with a simple solution: If there were some place in the user options to set the ring volume. (Conversely, please also consider my other request about avoiding chat during a game.)
- Gedh: A tab next to room tabs at the top in the main window, for each game being played or observed. This would make it a little easier to get the game back up following a change of focus to one of the rooms.
- Gedh: Set room focus at log-on to be the same as the room which had the focus at log-off. At the moment, focus seems to shift to the right-most room tab at log-on.
- mgoetze: Ditto when closing a private message.
- Gedh: A 'leave message' button when looking at an off-line players info. Also maybe a 'leave message' button in a players private chat box who you have been chatting to but they have disconnected.
- Gedh: I wonder if there is any way to see, say, the last 10-20 comments made in a room when joining it? As someone else has mentioned, time-stamps for comments would be nice, too.
- Gedh: A check box in your personal preference to block private chat when you're playing a game. The prospective chatterer would then get a message like '?????? is playing in a game and has disabled private chat'. Actually, getting chat during play doesn't bother me, but I think it might be a feature which some would like. +
- Gedh: When leaving a message for someone, a confirmation box saying something like 'message to ?????? successfully sent' would be helpful. Maybe it's just me, but sometimes I wonder if my message went out ok. At present, a confirmation message is given when saving a game to disk, but not when sending a message. Also, an ability to view messages sent by oneself in the last 28 days (say), for those of us who sometimes send messages and then forget what they've said, and to whom! Writing the message down manually is a way around this, but it's not ideal.
- Gedh: The dreaded scrolling chat box issue (I can't believe it isn't in here already). This arises when one is trying to catch up with what's been said in the window, and has scrolled up in order to do so. As new lines are added to the chat, one seems to be drawn into a battle of will with the chat box window constantly trying to drag the focus back down to the bottom. Anyway, I'm sure everyone is familiar with this one! +
- mgoetze: Make the chat interface more like IRC. specifically, I'd like to see "chanops" for rooms with the ability to kick and/or ban people from that room, set the topic, etc., and also channel modes such as +m (moderated) - which could also be useful for lecture games, etc.
- jraitsev: it would be really nice to be able to have the chat sub-window optional, so that one may choose not to have it at all, so that he or she may concentrate more on the board itself. When two people are playing and are not talking, all the space dedicated to the chat portion of the client becomes a waste. It does not seem wise to dedicate 1/8 (at least) of the screen space to "hello", "hi". Everyone else, what do you think?
- Sebastian: I wouldn't vote for an option that generally hides it. The openness of chat is one of the main perks of KGS and its community, and I would hate it if I said something to you and you wouldn't see it just because you disabled it. This would be like speaking against a wall. But it may make sense to hide the pane after a while if there is no new message. Or to gray out old messages (like a person that has been inactive for a while). I often look at the pane just to check if there was a new message, which is really distracting. (Default time for graying out should be initially 4* the time per move and after 5 messages change to 2* the average time per message, or something along these lines.)
- SolidPlay?: Perhaps an ability to size the chat window to one's likings would be better. Some people like to chat, some people don't, but ultimately alsmost everyone has unique preferences to the size of the window. Personally i like to discuss game as i play it, however this does not mean that i like having 1/8 (or so) of the screen dedicated to it. My feeling is that most people would agree with this.
- wms: The chat pane in the game window will not take space that would be used otherwise. A board is required; some control buttons are required. The chat pane will always fit itself so that the board size is constrained by the buttons, not by the chatter. So the only reason to make it an option is for people who are really annoying by seeing others talk; I know these people exist, but there aren't enough of them to warrant adding the complexity of adding this as an option.
- Nico: have people's nicknames emphasized (boldface ?) in chat rooms. And why not a nickname autocompletion (on the tab key) as in popular IRC client?
- Jochie: Being able to right-click on a person's chat and get the usual pull-down menu. Easier than scrolling down a few hundred names to find the individual if you want to censor them or just look at their info. +
- mgoetze: Automatic optimization of tab order so as to have as few rows of tabs as possible. Or at least let me reorder them manually. ;)
- phillippe: A simple way to implement a buddy 'pounce' would be to color code the chat tabs with a light-ish color that signifies 'online'. This would mean three total colors, grey, 'blue' for new text, and probably a very light blue for 'available'. This way you could leave chat open with all your friends, and see who's online by scanning colors.
[14] Handling Nasties
- Fhayashi: tag next to name for guests, people who have a lot of unfinished games. some sort of sandbagger detection system to detect people who play to lose in ranked games, and have perfect free game records.
- Neil: Add a "game censor" flag that hides all game offeres by the person and auto-rejects the person on my offers, but lets me see the things the person says.
- crux: Unlikely to happen, but guests shouldn't be able to talk. There's too much abuse.
- mgoetze: This seems to extreme, but perhaps a "Censor All Guests" option might be viable.
- wms: Newbies are often guests, and often say things like "How do I watch a game here." I'm not going to censor guests, for newbies to be told after their first attempt at contact "sorry buddy you can't talk here" would be too unfriendly for words. I also don't plan on an option for hiding chat from guests. From my experience guests contribute only a very small amount of idle or offensive chatter, and I'm not going to add the complexity of such an option just so that some people can see 1% less chatter.
- mgoetze: I still think this would be a good feature, though certainly not as a default. There are many people who won't answer such questions anyway.
- Neil: Allow unfinished free games to be cancelled if someone leaves.
- W: a "ping this user" option to see if someone has network problems or is just not responding.
[15] Design Discussion: Should Games be arranged by Chat?
- Gedh: An additional symbol next to a player's name in the right-hand players list to indicate if they are currently involved in a game or not? (I know this can be done by clicking on the players info, at present). I suppose I'd have to rate this suggestion as 'very minor'. +
- mgoetze: I think this falls under the "don't encourage people to arrange games by private chat" design philosophy.
- Hu: Have user info show where a player is, for example watching a game, unless it is a private room, and only if the user checkboxes that it is ok to track them.
- crux: Problem is you can't really tell if someone is actually looking at the cgoban window or reading email.
- Obviously, but if a game window is open, that can be noted.
- Server user list. This includes monitoring rooms for members.
- Anon: Perhaps this could be integrated with another idea: some kind of interface to show all users in buddy/censor/whatever_other_status lists. Currently it's easy to mark someone as a buddy, then want to send them a message when offline, and forget the spelling of their account, etc. Or forget which users you have censored, etc.
- Fhayashi: It'd be nice if the username was in italics if they are currently playing a game.
- wms: This feature is missing on purpose. On IGS and NNGS I would sometimes only be interested in watching, so I'd set my status to "X". All the same, I'd constantly get hit with "game?" requests. When I'd say, "look I'm marked as X", I'd always hear back "yeah but you weren't playing so I thought I'd just check to make sure you didn't have X on by accident". Result: I had to either be rude and ignore people or have my game viewing constantly interrupted. On KGS I worked very hard to come up with a game setup system that discourages people from using private chats to look for games. I'm worried that if it were easier to see who on the user list is/is not playing, it would encourage people to send "game?" tells to those who weren't. As it is, you can try to talk to somebody to find out if they are playing, and once in a while I do get "game?" messages on KGS, but still - I don't want that info to be any easier to get.
- Fhayashi: Interesting, but as someone who did not use IGS for any length of time, I would never consider using private chat to ask for a game. In fact, being able to note who is playing would allow me NOT to initiate private chat with someone who is busy playing a game. Is it in KGS's best interest to leave out a potentially useful feature due to defects in the design of other servers? +
- W:Note that wms did not say "busy playing a game" but "busy watching a game", and I'd like to add "busy chatting or just watching who plays who" or even just "busy for none-of-your-buisness' reason". Read his justification of his decision carefully, as I strongly think he's groked a very Good Thing here.
- MarcinKaminski: It would be useful to give an option in settings to ban all incoming chats. Often I'm disturbed by people asking me for a game when I'm viewing other games.
- crux: Maybe it would be more useful if it banned all incoming chats by non-buddies?
- (Sebastian:) Talk To: Currently: If A talks to B, and B has a game request open, then A's "Chat with B" window displays next to B's name: "(Playing a game)". This is misleading, since this situation is, contrary to being in a game, one that begs for talking with each other. Proposed changes: Either leave out the note when B is not actually playing or change it to "B is challenging such and such game". Optional: Direct link to that challenge.
- (Sebastian:) Talk To: Proposed: If A talks to B, and B is currently in a (timed and rated) game, then pop up a message for A: "B is currently playing in a (timed and rated) game. Please choose between
- Postpone alert till right after the game is finished (default).
- This is urgent, send right away.
- Send this text as message instead. B will receive the message right after the game is finished.
- Cancel.
- automaton: Could games be started by automatic macthmaking? When I log on I don't really care who I play as long as it's within the rated range (+- 6 stones with proper handi) I don't even care what language they speak - all I want is a game. Could there be a button that I could hit that starts up a matchmaker and when someone else hits the same button we play?
[2] Game Handling
[21] General Game Stuff
- crux: It says on KGS Plans that there'll be a way to quickly find the player info in a game. This could be done by having the two players always appear at the top of the observer list. +
- Nacho: When java (or cgoban) decides not to let you play for a while, and you have to reconnect, the game you were playing should appear first thing, so you can rejoin it faster.
- Hu: A checkbox in New Game / Create Game windows that disables / enables Undo's. (suggested by Truc)
- crux: Why? You can always decline them. Disabling them entirely prevents you from correcting obvious misclicks.
- Hu: Of course, but by resolving the issue before the game, it would reduce rancor and ill-will and discussion during the game. It would put the players on notice, and would not require reading a person's user info in detail to get their policy, then chatting them to negotiate it. It would put the negotiation and notification where it belongs, where the rest of the game negotiation occurs.
- Hu: Don't start the clock until the first stone is played. Maybe only start the clock right away for rated games. Sometimes people have delays as the game loads up, or they might have to arrange windows. +++
- Jochie: Remember what type of game was last offered, just like the time and board-size is remembered? That avoids the situation of setting up a free 19x19, then canceling to change the 'Note' and re-offering, ending up offering a rated game.
- Jochie: Default to 'free' if your remembered board-size is non-19x19, or if you select that in the dialog?
- Fhayashi: Uneven time limits, i.e. 1 hour for black vs. 5 minutes for white. Don't know how you'd have a rated game with such a handicapping system, but would be fun for free games.
- (Sebastian:) Workaround: Give your opponent additional time at the beginning.
- Gedh: When observing a game, make the small horizontal bar which divides the observers list from the chat box adjustable. I.e. ability to reduce chat area and increase visible observers, or vice-versa.
- Araldo: Add an extra column in the list of currently played and offered games, to show the available time and the time system. For example "Japanese Byo yomi, 10:00/0:30(5)", "Absolute 30:00" or "Canadian Byo yomi, 0:00, 10:00/25". Then there is no need to check each game only to find out that it is too fast to play, too slow to watch, etc.
- Cheyenne: I believe that Wms already has this in plan. Look at the Plans waiting for protocol change in KGSPlans.
- LordOfPi: this will lead to a clobbered game list. It will be harder to spot the important details quickly
- Magdirag?: I agree that this will lead to a clobbered game list. It would be nice to have this info in the box you get when you hover the mouse over a game. Currently that box just duplicates the note.
- Velobici: An indication of the response time that your game opponent is experiencing. Saw a game today (20030911) in which one player claimed to be lagging,typed it in the chat window, yet his move did not appear on the server. Is this possible? When using a TCP based protocol over a single socket such behavior is not possible due to in order transmission and acknowlegement. The player winning by 20+ points lost on time claiming that his clock showed that he still had 18 seconds. Rules? 1:00/1:00/15.
- Hu: The current move is marked as an option. The effect is to write a circle in the SGF file for every move. Make this SGF file marking optional, or not done by default.
- sita: I second this strongly. Many tools have problems with this markup-property on every played point (and they could not be blamed for these problems), including cgoban1(!) and sgf2misc.
- mgoetze: And, while we're on the topic, marking the move automatically in newly-loaded SGF files would be a nice option for the preferences.
- Hu: There is something semi-automatic like this already. Under the Options button, if you select Label, you can choose the Label All Moves option from the popup box.
- mgoetze: I meant as a global default, it gets quite annoying to do it everytime when loading a bunch of new games, also I am never sure whether to leave these marks in the file or not, and I end up getting "Do you want to save messages?" and not knowing whether I've changed anything else.
- Nico: have a slider bar when watching games to navigate more easily between moves.
- Hu: DAGs (Directed Acyclic Graph), perhaps with a flip between DAG mode and tree mode.
- John Aspinall: Could you say more? What happens to lines of play with ko-fights in dag mode? How do the editing commands have to change? (Don't get me wrong - I highly approve of using DAGs; I hate it when some tsume-go discussion casually mentions that "moves 3 and 5 may be interchanged" when the real move-order discussion is more complicated and much more clearly conveyed in a DAG. But (having implemented a DAG-editor as part of an interactive compiler tool) I have first hand experience of my users tying themselves in knots with what I thought was a simple transparent interface.)
- joshual000: In-Game dialogue messages that are not modal (they can be removed from the foreground if the focus returns to the main game window) - annoying to minimize, acknowledge, restore.
- Velobici: Please do NOT make in-game dialog messages modal. Modal dialog boxes prevent the user from doing anything but dealing with the modal dialog box. Forcing the user to perform an action that can be deferred, at the user's discretion, is bad user interface design. Microsoft applications and operating systems are full of this behavior -- a modal dialog asks for data that exists elsewhere. One has to cancel the modal dialog to get the data and then re-enter the modal dialog. Much better to allow the user to get the data and enter it immediately. A modal dialog box could be used to force someone to lose on time by popping up a modal dialog constantly while their clock is running. Proper use of modal dialog boxes (and other elements of user interface design) is describe in
The Human Interface Guidelines
- joshual000: I agree, on further investigation this works quite well as the un-acknowledged undo dialogue is dismissed on the user's 2nd click on the main game window (the 1st click returns focus, the 2nd makes a move) I was unaware of this behavior!
- W: Some way for players to agree to delete their unfinished game. Me, and it seems several other players, are uninterested in playing on in an unfinished game after a certain time has ellapsed. My current resume games list has games from when I was 3-4 stones weaker, which I really have no intention of ever finishing, and that the other player has no intention of finishing either. Other games are with players who are on in a different time of the day than me, and that there is little chance that I can arrange to play with again easilly. Preferably this would be a simple "consent to delete" list for each player, so not both players had to be online at the same time to do it. Note that this has nothing to do with, and no effect on, escaping, nor would I ever refuse to continue in a game if the other player wanted it.
- Sebastian: Undo: If your opponent declined it, you should not be able to ask in the same move again. Or at least this should not block the chat. I just had a case where somebody did that ad nauseam, until I was so unnerved that I made a mistake in the next move. I couldn't even get a word in, because the chat window was not modal.
- wms: Note that the "your opponent wants to undo" window is on purpose not modal. Also, if the window is open, later clicks by your opponent are ignored. So, when they ask to undo, say no; if they ask again, just minimize the window. They can no longer send you more requests, and (if it is their turn) their clock will keep ticking down. The "Undo is wanted" window will disappear after each move is made, but still, they can only send you one new window each move.
- TJ: How about not restarting the clock after an undo in the scoring phase to allow for explanation or grabbing a dan player? It seems jarring that someone can dump you back into the game and start your clock again without warning after you both apparently thought the game was already over.
[22] Editing
- crux: Only the players can turn a game into a demo, but it would occasionally be helpful to give up ownership of a demo, so that a stronger player can review even if one of the players leaves.
- crux: Separate displays of move numbers: the one currently being played, and the one you're currently looking at. The first one eventually turns into the game result. Currently, if you go through a game after it is finished, the move number isn't displayed anywhere.
- Edit window to become a permanent part of the main board window, switching back and forth is cumbersome.
- wms: Depends on your window layout. I do hope to make it "dockable" eventually though, because right, people who make their game window fullscreen have a real hard time with the edit window.
- Sebastian: Dockable is good. Maybe a view where the stones are smaller, so it can fit easily beside the goban. Stones could be as narrow as a few pixels because users don't have to precisely click them, as long as they're in the right variation.
- Vesa: Undo/Delete move(s) in the Demonstration mode (revisited). When replaying a game from a printed diagram or when broadcasting a live game, mistakes happen and working around a misplaced stone looks very ugly during the demonstration and in the saved demonstration games. There are two proven user scenarios:
- Teaching sessions: KGS user "opettaja" is used for Finnish study circle every Saturday and several different players have replayed the game, commenting and answering questions. The sgf file is a good document afterwards, except for the confusing game/variation path due to misclicks that cannot be deleted.
- The file can be edited offline individually, or edited-uploaded by one for the others to download.
- Live broadcasts of amateur tournament games (see for example "SMsarja03" games): KGS is the best place I know to broadcast amateur tournament games. Still, the game recorders tend to make mistakes and if there is no easy and clean cut way to recover,
- the game record is unusable as such and needs to be rewritten with some better adapted SGF editor and
- in the worst case, the game recorder loses the game sequence and stops there. For live broadcasts, simple Delete for misclicks is a very serious usability issue.
- Hu: A clue in the commentaries to distinguish between those made during the game and those made after. Perhaps a dashed line separating before and after commentaries.
- Hu: Have the paired Editing Tools window pop to second from top when a game window is brought to the top. (Have the Editing Tools under the game window unless it is explicitly brought to the top.)
- Anon: Some way of distinguishing, in the comments/chat, what branch the comment/chat appears in. When someone is teaching, and uses one branch and comments at move 10, then making another branch and comments again at move 10 (now the display currently does not print a new "heading"), there should be some mark to distinguish the comments to different moves, even though the move number is the same, the branches are different so the "move" should be considered distinct.
- (Sebastian:) Currently, game review chat is added to the moves that are displayed when user presses return. Any chat is thus split up into disparate pieces. Similarly, oftentimes, A enters a comment, and B replies while A switches the display to another move. This can be mitigated by the following:
- When saving as SGF, add a sequential number for all comments done during editing. (This would also provide the "clue in the commentaries" Hu asked for)
- When displaying comments, do not display the comment under the move that was visible when user hit enter, but under the move that was visible when he/she started typing it. (This goes for both playing and editing. Also, of course, save them under the same move in the SGF file.)
- Remillard: I would like to see the full FF[4] capabilities in the editor. I would like to see the area, line, and arrow modes added to the edit window (or the conjoined docked editing box). For an example of what this looks like see
http://jeanfrancois.menon.free.fr/rubygo/screenshots.html and go halfway down the page til you see the screen where these tools are used. Honestly what I'd love is a whiteboard system, but that couldn't be saved with the SGF and might get heavy on the server to distribute the graphics. However the FF[4] are a great compromise. If I'm demonstrating something, I tend to be very visual with it (probably an engineer thing) and rather than say "in the area around N17" just plop down an A and grey out an area around it and say "here". Very direct and visual. As always, just one fellow's opinion...
- mgoetze: Integration with SL :). I'd like some markup (such as [[ and ]]) that would allow me to make something a clickable link to SL, and spare me the trouble of typing
http://senseis.xmp.net/?... all the time.
- Sebastian: The problem I see with this is that it wouldn't work anymore once you save the SGF file and replay it in any other program. So I'd separate this into two requests: (1) clickable links and (2) ease of entry. As to (1), it would be nice to have. As to (2), this would be easy if we had something like autotext - you could just define "
http://senseis.xmp.net/?" yourself. (I assume this must be a request already, but I haven't read the whole list yet.)
- Jochie As far as I can tell the *.sgf files that you can download either directly via the client or (from the archive) at the website do not contain information about whether the game was free, rated, demonstration, etc. Is there any way to add that, even if it's as part of a comment entry?
- Nixihou: I would like to have the possibility to change the orientation of a go-game (sgf-file). There are 8 possible orientations. To swich between them would help to compare openings.
- Nixihou: It would be nice to have the possibility to turn the "number moves" feature on for whole branches of a sgf-file. (with or without all subbranches, from a node down / up the aktive gamebranch etc.) This would make later game reviews easyer.
- Nixihou: For a better overview a possibility to expand and reduce the variation-branches of a go-game would be nice. (explorer like: with a small "+" or "-" in front of each node with brach connections.)
- Nixihou: some additional cut and paste features would be nice:
- a possibility to cut a branch from one file and put it into anohter open sgf-file (clipboard)
- a possibility to copy part of a board. Mark several stones or mark a specific area of the board. (nice for the preparation of go-problems from a games)
[23] Score Estimator
- Nico: Possibility to help the score estimator by manually specifying which stones are dead and which are alive (click to switch their status) where appropriate.
- Niklaus: wms told me (after I submitted a bug report) that he won't make any changes to score est. It was written by someone else and the code is supposedly quite a mess, so he won't touch it. He'd rather remove it altogether, if only it wasn't such a popular feature.
- Hu: Option when reviewing editing SGF files: to have Score Estimate window available and updated on every move. This one I would find very useful, since I am constantly doing the multiple clicks to get through the menu when I am reviewing games. The score estimator has its flaws, but it is very useful to compare relative scores for different positions.
- crux: I guarantee you'll get at least 4 stones stronger once you let go of this misconception.
- Hu: I am aware of the score estimator's limitations, I can see and account for those limitations when I use it, and I do my own counting in games. I am simply using the computer for what it is good for, as a labor saving device to efficiently compare relative scores, especially when reviewing other people's games.
- jraitsev: Being able to use score estimator in Free games (this is implemented in Dashn and i think is very popular)
- TJ: I hope not. I might be tempted to actually use it, and I'd not learn as much in free games. Also, I really wouldn't like to be playing a human plus a machine, even if the machine is usually wrong. If you want to use score estimation to help learn, there's always post-game analysis.
- Jochie: The score estimator seems to go into deep recursion or some endless loop on the end position of my
recent game against AndresD on KGS. While I can understand wms's wish to not touch the code, I hope he'll glance at this one and see if it's something easy/obvious.
[24] Rule Systems/Time systems
- dnerra: Fischer Time as an additional option. (Yes I know it's not well-known among go players, but I'd bet a lot that it would become popular quickly.)
- TJ: Heated discussion followed, moved to KGS Wishlist Fischer Discussion To summarize, many people expressed interest in seeing this system implemented. Arguments were given for why it was/was not a good system for Go. wms has stated that it will not be implemented anytime soon, and suggests further discussion be moved off the wishlist page, which I did.
- Doug Ridgway: On the time systems topic: Eggtimer (aka hourglass) time. Obscure, yes, but it's quite different from the other systems and sounds like fun. In particular, you can never lose on time as long as you're moving faster than your opponent...and conversely, you must keep moving faster than your opponent if you want to win on time.
[25] Ratings
- Phase: It would be interesting to be able to see what our ranks are in different rating systems (eg- AGA, BGA, etc). For instance, KGS could tell me my KGS rank, but also my BGA rank by working out what the relationship between the two ranking systems is.
- kritz: It would be nice to see statistics about how many people of a particular rank are playing at any given time. Maybe a graph?
- Hu: Weight ratings according to length of game and number of moves. Ratings are being distorted by blitz games (example: two seconds per move). Games won on time, which is common for experienced blitz players with fast internet connections and supple wrists, do not reflect true strength.
- wms: I tried this. I really looked for a weighting based on game time that would improve the rank system accuracy, but all tests I did indicated that putting a low weight on fast games made the rank system less accurate. I like the idea, but I'm not going to make any changes to rank system unless I can find statistical data indicating that it improves things. So many people think rank systems can be done based on what "feels right", which usually makes a really badly broken rating system.
- Scryer: What about separating the data rather than ignoring or integrating the blitz data? That is, give one rating for blitz and another for serious games. I understand some pros are much better at blitz than at the usual times, so there's some reason to believe that people at our level would also have different speed strengths.
- Hu: Change the "9d?" rating that gets awarded players who win a lot of games to something like "9d+".
- mgoetze: I think the question mark ratings are way too wacky. It seems if you only play one rated game, win it, and then just wait, there's absolutely no limit to how high you can go. Examples: gooxan, club, hsv. Just look at the rated games they have won/lost and compare with their rating. I think the algorithm needs to be replaced entirely but until then, I would propose the following: If the player has lost a rated game, cap his/her rating at the (adjusted for handicap) rating of highest-rated player who was lost against, until the question mark is gone.
- mgoetze: Revert [xx?] ratings to [?] if their last rated game is unfinished (examples: BabyApple, redmage).
- Sebastian: Display each lost and won game (or only rated ones) in the rating graph as little dots. The height is a function of the rating of the opponent, handicap and komi. Color codes win/loss (e.g. White = won, red = lost.) This would show at a quick glance if the rating has been earned actively or passively (see mgoetze's example "if you only play one rated game" above)
- (Sebastian:) Display rank curve differently where questionable (rank with question mark). (This doesn't have to be as fancy as in some other servers which show error margins. Just using a different color should suffice.)
- (Sebastian:) Try to minimize rank drift during a hiatus and sudden jumps when users resume playing rated games after a hiatus. This can be achieved by the following:
When computing Rank_A at time t, do not use the current Rank_B(t), but a weighted average such as
Rank_B_Avg := w(t-t0) * Rank_B(t) + (1-w(t-t0)) * Rank_B(t0)
where
- t0 < t
- is the time when the game was played
- w(delta_t) !
- = exp (-delta_t/t_halflife*log(2)):is a weighting function. On second thought, maybe it shouldn't even be time-dependent. A constant, such as 1/2, might just do as well. IT would reduce such complaints as "I won a game and my rank went down". It's your call.
- t_halflife
- is a time constant, probably best something like 60 days
(I assume that if Rank_B(t0) is not available (e.g. because the player had a question mark) you already just reduce the overall weight factor for that game.)
- mgoetze: I don't see how this fits in with the current rating algorithm.
- Cheyenne: Get rid of the ~ tag and replace it with a user rating defined ranking. When a game is finished, allow the players to optionally indicate if the game was helpful to them (put the question right on the same pop up that shows the "game done" and final score). Each player gets to make the selection and it is stored as part of the game record (doesn't have to be included in the sgf file). There would be two flags (one for each player.) Then when processing one's rank, use the flag to determine how many games one has that the opponent marked as helpful. If a certain precentage of games are marked as helpful then give that person a "gold star" next to their name.+
- wms: While this gold star system might be nice, I don't see it replacing the ~ because it is fundamentally different. If it were added, instead it would have to sit alongside the ~. The ~ was added because many strong players who would play weaker players complained that it was too hard for them to determine whether or not the weaker players they played were returning the favor (by playing yet weaker players). The gold star scheme seems more like a "who's a nice guy" thing, it isn't tied to playing weaker players, which was the reason for adding the ~.
- Cheyenne: Understand. Just trying to eliminate the situation of having a stigma flag (I have seen where a weaker player refused a game from a stronger player because the stronger player had the ~). How about only showing the ~ if the opponent is stronger?
- Cheyenne: Also.. keep the idea of having "gold star" as a seperate request (apart from the ~ issue)
- Sebastian: How about combining both ideas? Give special stars and lemons such as:
- "gave me nice feedback" from weaker players;
- "was polite" from any players;
- "escaped" from any registered players, or so ...
- mgoetze: Quoth KGS Plans: Add icons next to names in name list. What do those icons indicate? Many different ideas, not sure yet what ones will actually be there.
[26] Game Start
- Sebastian: Start time only after the first move. This allows users to chat a while, including clearing such important questions as "What does NZ rules mean?"
- Sebastian: Allow users to change game settings before first move. (Of course, the opponent needs to agree). This makes sense together with the previous wish, because such changes should be discussed. One application is e.g. if a novice realizes that he gave 9 handicap stones to the wrong side.
- W: I suggest adding a chat area to the "send challenge" window, where offers can be commented and/or discussed. Might even replace the current "notes", which only the game creator can change, and that can only be replied to by opening a new chat window with the user directly, or starting the game.
- gimpf: This has already been suggested. See moved text below:
- gimpf: When challenging a game offer, put a small chatbox below all the parameters (ruleset, time, handicap, etc.), so that discussion about some parts may be more convenient.
- rubilia: I'd greatly appreciate this, though probably too much work needed to implement it. It would help not only to negotiate the settings in a more "human-like" communicating way but also just to get in touch with the other person before being involved in a game. To speak about me, after several sort of unsatisfying experiences, I am not that keen on playing anyone anymore. On the other side, I don't want to stick to my buddies only. So I must check unknown opponent's info and/or chat to him/her when a game is about to start. Also, most questions about the settings I use to use are asked after the game is already begun. Thereby I get into annoying in-game-discussions regularly. Obviously, people prefer a single click at "accept" (or just "decline") rather than moving to the "rooms" window, looking for the opponent's nick, clicking at it, opening a chat and eventually asking/negotiating there.
- rubilia: Perhaps not necessarily an extra startup chatbox is needed. I think it should be comfortable enough just to let the nickname's pull-down menue offer the same options like it does elsewhere ("chat to", "see info" etc.) rather than to switch colors wich easily could be done by a small "change colors" button between the nicks.
- Sebastian: Oh, now I remember having read this. I'd be very happy about this, too. Some points I see for the in-game solution:
- Game window could be built up before game starts, thus eliminating the frustrating wait on one's game time.
- wms already said elsewhere that he feels the game setup is too complicated already. The in-game solution would not add any new user interface.
[3] File Handling/Database Use
[31] User Info
- hugh2: ability to search the user database. Currently you have to know someone's exact username to look up their info. Searching by (partial) real name, email address and even Notes would be useful. It might be nice to add a Location field too.
- Hu: Make names in game records live links so that clicking on one brings up the user info.
- Rich: As with the above suggestion, but in the list of names of players offering games.
- Gedh: Display the number of unfinished games a player has in the last (say) 40 as a number next to their name. This need not be available in the right-hand players list, but should be given when a player opens a game offer up, or matches someones offer.
- Hikaru: There was a conversation just today in the English room of KGS about a person's inability to remove their picture once they have uploaded one. They can change the picture by uploading a new one, but there's no way to go back to having no picture, is there?
- fhayashi: On User Information - Game list, color-code the games by win/loss for the user who's list it is. Or better yet, more stats in general. Jubango feature? win/loss percentage by date, opponent, etc.?
- Jochie: Have a list of languages from which you can choose the ones you yourself speak or understand sufficiently; then when you play against someone, review their userdata, or start a private chat, you could be warned (or verify manually) that you have no language in common?
- (Sebastian:) Or just display little symbols (flags?) next to the user name for the languages the user speaks. This would be visible sooner and would have the advantage that someone who speaks several languages can pick the one he likes best rather than having to default to English. ++
- Joonas Tyystjarvi: some way to view the complete rank graph would be nice. Currently, it seems that KGS clips it at a bit more than a year - I started around 28k, now my graph starts at 21k. Perhaps give multiple graphs?
- wms: Right now KGS only stores the past 400 days of data. So showing more isn't possible, since I just don't have the data. I could store more, I clipped at 400 because that seemed to be the most that could easily fit on a single graph with one data point per day. I could store more; the disk space wouldn't be so huge I suppose. But for now, I think best would be, visit the web page for your graph, save it, then you can cut & paste them together. :-) OK, I should just save more graph data I guess!
[32] Game Info
- Hu: Option to sort game records according to result. Secondary sorts. Put column headings over the columns and then clicking on those can control the sort, with the previous sort being the secondary sort.
- Gedh: Leave result field blank when displaying demo game info in players game information listing. I find it can be confusing in someones info to see for instance W+R 4 times in a row, only to find that it's actually two victories and two demos.
- mgoetze: Ability to delete unwanted demo and small-board (smaller than 9x9) games from permanent record. (I like a tidy game list.)
- jraitsev: Being able to request a particular progress chart. Lets say for last week, month, year etc.
- Nico: have a fourth tab in user infos displaying stats (ie. # of won, lost, rated, free games, ration win/loss, weakest player, stronger player.)
- Nico: have more filtering options in the games record (free games, unfinished, demo, simul, won, lost games)
- Nixihou: It would be nice to have headings in the chatroom window above the game-selection part. Like "Challenger" "Grade" "Opponent" "Grade" "Size" "Result" "Bystander". A few more categories would be helpfull though. e.g. "Time System" "Rule Set" "Game Status". I would like to have the possibility to sort the gamelist by clicking on one category. (windows explorer like) +
- (Sebastian:) Game/challenge search: Allow users to display a "room" that comprises all games of all rooms she currently opened. Combined with the sort and filter criteria requested by Hu and Nico, this would be extremely powerful and cover other requests as well, such as ZeroKun's trailing option request and maybe even render the auto match request unnecessary.
---
[33] Game File Format and Saving
- TJ: An option to save to server instead of just a dialogue that may or may not pop up depending on who took editing control first. It can be greyed out if the user isn't allowed to save the game to the server so that they'll know they'll lose the game unless they save to disk.
- TJ: An option to save all games played to disk by default.
- TJ: An interface like the server interface to open games offline instead of the current file and folder "who was that game against again?" system.:)
- Icepick: A better way to extract SGF files. There's no easy way for me to download all, or many of my games.
- crux: I'd like to be able to download tarballs of any given player's complete set of games from the website.
- Neil: Seconded. It seems to me it'd be easier for the server to be able to give me lots of sgfs all at once by date rather than having a script pound the web archive.
- Zarlan: Seconded. It would be great to get a set of all games a user (including oneself) has played.
- wms: Me too! The problem is just resources. A player with many games will take a bunch of CPU time and a lot of network bandwidth to put all his games together. I'm worried that if a feature like this is added, there will be people who daily download all the games of a half dozen players just to see what changed, and it'll slow down the server itself. So, usually saying "it might be too popular" isn't a good reason to not do something, but in this case I think it is.
- dnerra: Well, of course there are technical solutions for this. You could integrate it into the client, so that people cannot write bots to do this daily. You could limit the downloads to some number of games per day. If doing it via a website, you could still require login with KGS username and password, and limit the number of downloads.
- Neil: I like the ideas of being limited to downloading your own games and making the archives at fixed intervals. I can't imagine these restrictions would leave any incentive for abuse.
- crux: But you couldn't download the collected games of Solaris this way.
- crux: You could split them up by month. That'll reduce CPU consumption (archival is done once per month) and download bandwidth. It would still be more convenient than downloading them one by one. To further reduce the number of files that need downloading you could have additional archives of every game played before the start of the current year (per player, updated yearly).
- Joshual000: or at least an easier way to download your own games would be sufficient for me. By month or even by year would be better than the game history right click menu option I use right now.
- Christoph Gerlach: Default filename of manually saved games should use the timestamp (yyyymmdd_hhmmss) of the game before the filename, so it will be possible to save all games to one directory without renaming or losing order.
- Christoph Gerlach: Default filename of a D based on a played game should be the filename of the game with the postfix "_D".
- Ekted: There's a minor bug in the "copy game to disk" feature, If you change the folder, you lose the default name of the file. I end up having to retype it, or copy the original string before changing folders, then paste it.
[4] General UI and Design Issues
- ZeroKun: Tabbed game viewing.
- Ekted: By this do you mean having the game window just be another tab in the main window. If so, I agree. Having popups all over the screen is terrible. The edit tools window should also be a part of the game display. In its current form/layout it wastes too much space and has redundancy.
- Jochie: Remember different window sizes for different board sizes as it's almost scary to play 19x19 and then open a 9x9 board with the same window size. Huge! :)
- jraitsev: It would be nice to include a "fixed" option for the "invitation for game" window. For example if one wishes to play ONLY Free games, and does not want to be bothered by people suggesting a Rated, Simul or any other type of game, user should be able to make Game_Type parameter "fixed". The challenger, therefore, will be able to suggest any changes except for the ones that are fixed. The same goes for time and undos. Many times, people put a short description next to their game, something like "do not change time", or ?no undos?. If they make Time_param "fixed", all requests for time change, will automatically be declined and challenger will be made aware that his potential opponent will not play games timed other then originally indicated. Some people may want to filter guests, "~" players and others. If so indicated, all requests that do not match user's wish will automatically be declined or not eligible for changing. What are your thoughts?
- Zarlan: Excellent suggestion! Though filtering '~'-players should be done so that they are only filtered away if they want to play as Black.
- wms: Sorry, but the killer here is that the game setup dialog is too complicated already. Too many things to tweak, too easy to forget one. Since pressing "decline" is easy and straightforward, I'm really reluctant to add another button and make an already-too-complicated GUI even more complicated.
- Ekted: I don't like the display of the players in the game window. I think there should be a single black/white stone icon to the left of the name, not 3 behind the name. Prisoners should be shown by count only, as showing black stones under white player's name makes it confusing. Stones per unit of time style (eg 3:04/7) is hard to read. I suggest either adding spaces (eg 3:04 / 7) or have 2 separate fields (eg Time: 3:04 Stones: 7).
- Ekted: Game rules should be shown in the box over the game board (rule set, timing style).
- Ekted: Should be able to click on any user text in game window to set game to position when that text was typed.
- Ekted: Pressing ESCAPE key in any window with an input field should set focus there. It's too easy in this client to lose focus and start typing with no effect. Having to then grab the mouse is a pain. Would be better also if the tab key worked as it does in standard interfaces. No matter where focus is, typing text should switch focus to input field.
- Ekted: Allow keyboard focus on game window so players can play using arrow keys + ENTER. As above, TAB key should allow focus to switch between "obvious" places, which does not include up/down scroll buttons on scroll bars.
- Ekted: Very fun feature when watching high level games: being able to click on where you think the next move will be. The server keeps track of percentage of correct/incorrect. Maybe an option to see guesses of others in some different color/image.
- Hu: This could be very educational for "guess the next move" demonstrations.
- jraitsev: This an excellent idea! If implemented it will provide a lot of value to observers of all level that are trying to watch high dan's games. Count for correct/incorrect moves, should of course be local to a given player. This feature would surely be loved by KGS community.
- Snappy: Something i've always thought would be really cool is if you could rotate the board in the middle of the game to get a different perspective on the game.
- jraitsev: My 5 cents: great idea! Combined with idea suggested by Ekted (see above), this would greatly enhance one's ability to better understand and study the game. Rotating the board will provide user with completely different prospective which would increase deeper reading and finding better moves.
- Ekted: When looking over completed games, editing tool must be open. This causes serious delays trying to click through moves. Is this delay caused by the tool window updating? Is there a way to make prev/next work faster?
[8] Technical/Other/Dunnos
[81] Discussion of Development Fundamentals
- Jochie: Is it possible to synchronise the .cgoban2rc file (or whatever it is on non-unix systems) immediately instead of waiting until the program exits? I have kept it running for days if not weeks and would hate to lose changes to buddy lists and such if it crashed (which of course it never would).
- Jochie: Any reason not to use an text based configuration file?
[82] Connection and Responsiveness
- crux: If the connection dies, you can't close the room list. You have to exit and restart the entire application.
- mgoetze: Indeed, sometimes my ISP resets my connection to give me a new IP address, and in such cases KGS seems to freeze. I don't think the "Play on KGS" button should be greyed out when you're online, instead, if you click on it, there should be a dialog: "You are already connected to KGS. Force reconnect? Yes/No".
- kaiou: Don't close all the games that I was watching when it disconnects for inactivity.
- Joshual000: Currently if my internet connection is dropped, KGS closes (all fine and well). However, after I reconnect it is difficult to re-join my game in progress game. (Either I can search for it in the list of current games, or I can view my user info and dbl-click the bold game on the top of the list). What would be nice is one of the following:
- If I have a currently open, unfinished game when I login, open the game by default.
- Build the ability to go to the open game into a button/menu somewhere on the main window.
- Weight my game on the game list so the sorting is still applied, but my game is on top (excluded from the sort).
- Weight games of my buddies so the sorting is still applied, but my buddies games are on top (excluded from the sort) (My user is already on my buddy list to make it easier to locate on the user list).
[83] Other Technical Issues
- Hu: Have a way to force Garbage Collection (Java internal issue). At least have the New Game dialogue or challenging an offer cause it to occur so that it does not happen right when you accept a game and the clock is ticking. +
- crux: Are you sure it's the garbage collection and not network lags you are seeing?
- Hu: Yes. My computer has a disk activity light and makes disk noises. When network lag occurs there is none of that.
- Evand: Hu, it may be possible to do this externally without wms doing anything. Does this matter enough that it would be worth my time to attempt? It should actually be reasonably simple, but would be easier with the source available, obviously
- Nixihou: I would like to have a more powerful print option for games and sgf-files. Currently I miss the possibilities to define how many moves to display on the first diagram (e.g. 1-50 numbered) and how many additional moves for each following diagram until the end of game. And the possibility to say how many go-diagrams on one page. (and with or without the moverange as legend of the diagram, and a checkbox to print the game-informations etc. Many more printing features would be "nice to have".)
[9] Discussion of this Page
[91] Voting
If you like an idea, mark it with "[+|YourName]", if you don't with "[-|YourName]". -- Sebastian
- gedh: Weird. All I can see where Sebastian has tried to add "[+| 'Sebastian ]" or similar, is one of those ' +- ' symbols with no name visible. Clicking on the symbol takes me to Sebastian's home page.
- (Sebastian): This is not a bug, it's a feature. Normally, you can use it e.g. when you refer to a page from within a sentence where the name wouldn't fit. It seems that it is nowhere really explained. I use it here to hide the name, because it would only distract from the content. But I wanted the connection to a name so that no one is tempted to just add "+" signs after his wish. After you read this, could you pls move this discussion to a more appropriate place - maybe HowToUseWiki?
- gedh: I see. Having looked at your home page I can see that the symbol is not supposed to be a "plus sign above a minus sign", but a "plus sign underscored".Maybe it was/is just me, but seeing something like ' +- ' made me wonder whether you were entering a vote for, a vote against, or perhaps even registering a state of indecision! Maybe in your explanation on how to vote you could say something about how a 'for' and 'against' vote will actually look once cast, and the fact that the persons name will not appear alongside it. Maybe i'm just 30k at wiki editing, but perhaps others may find it confusing too.
- ({Sebastian}): Good point. I tried to put stones
or Unicode characters such as ♡, ☹, ⊕ or ⊖ into the link, but they only dispplay as code within links. (Besides, not all Unicode characters display correctly on all systems.) How about one of the following:
- Use a stone plus an initial, and put the link on the initial, such as
g for good or S for bad. [White is good, Black is bad? Better not go there. Besides, stone icons attract the eye too much.]
- Write yea and nay.
- Or should we leave it as is because several people have used it already?
- TJ: I'm curious concerning the usefulness of voting in this context. Isn't it more useful for interested parties to present different sides of an issue, and to leave well enough alone if their point of view has already been presented in the forum? I'm concerned that simply + or - won't help wms decide anything at all about making a decision based on merits, since people may be discouraged from putting in their thoughts for, say, why purple go stones would be a bad idea. Think of it like this: if two lawyers are to present a case before a judge, and one side presents a case while the other side gives a list of a million people who think the first side was wrong and little else, it's hard for the judge to see the merits of the second lawyer's case. I just think discussion is much more interesting and useful than a list of yays and nays disembodied from an interesting point of view.
- (Sebastian:) I can't follow your argumentation for the following reasons:
- KGS is not, like a court trial, an attempt to find the truth beyond doubt. It is, like most software, or even most products in general, an attempt to make a majority of users happy. This is why companies invest millions in polls, just to get a rough idea about how many users prefer their products in purple.
- Sensei's Library allows wms to obtain this information for free, and the plus or minus signs allows to display it with minimal disruption.
- If a million people all voted for purple go stones, then of course wms should favour their demand.
- We're all thinking people here (or else we wouldn't play Go). I can't see how anyone could be discouraged from contributing a new aspect to a discussion, just because someone else marked it with a minus sign.
- If you want to discuss something - by all means, do it. But if you just want your voice for or against purple to be counted, then you now have an appropriate representation.
- If wms really wants to find out why you hate purple, he can ask you, thanks to the link in your vote.
- Repp: How about we just forget about negative voting entirely? Good ideas will be supported by a wash of "+", and uninteresting ideas will be dropped. A negative vote is, in fact, a wish for a different feature... so suggest it!
- (Sebastian:) I proposed both because I love symmetry. But in reality people here are so nice, apparently they don't want to tag a minus to someone's contribution. Let's do it like this: If anybody writes a "+" to your proposal, we'll officially bury the minus. If someone writes a "-", then we'll keep it. Sounds fair?
[92] Page Categorization
mdh: Would it be possible to break this up page into multiple pages, each based on a Major catagory?
[93] Adddition of a summary section for deprecated subjects.
- TJ: I can see the whole escaper issue being revisited, and it was inane enough the first time around (including, if not especially, my own rambling contributions...don't make me do that again!). Some place to write a little blurb that it's been dealt with until such time as some brand new related issue comes up would be good for talked-out issues like this.
This page was wikiapprenticeedited by Sebastian on 2003-10-22.
mgoetze: I deleted a lot of stuff that seemed redundant, dealt with, silly or fruitless. If you really want to read it, check version 458 of this page. If you think there's a good reason to restore something, then go ahead, but please do consider that this page is getting rather big.
This is a copy of the living page
"KGSWishlist Old" at
Sensei's Library.
2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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