Ultimate Go Server/ Wishlist

Sub-page of UltimateGoServer

Table of contents

Wishlist

General Wishlist

nachtrabe: If we do a server calculated rank, then the idea of a delay-to-forfeit for detecting escapers is ineffective because older games are not weighted as heavily as newer games and therefore escaping works as a valid strategy.

Some kind of server-detection-to-immediate-forfeit is okay, but we need to think very carefully about implementation. Maybe something like Dashn?

Another alternative is to treat it as a social problem and simply give an indicator that people can see when they challenge you to a game (similar to the KGS-~). If you stay clean the indicator hangs around for some length of time (or some number of games), and then goes away.

We don't (and shouldn't) decide on any strategy yet, but you are right that it is good to start thinking about ways to handle such common problems earlier rather than later.

I support nachtrabe's "simply give an indicator" concept. Maybe we should call this a "disconnection ratio" or something? We should definitely have an "innocent until proven guilty" mindset, and I always feel bad for people who just have lame connections.

If we simply calculate and store a disconnection ratio (or whatever we end up calling it), we could even offer a dialog to users where they can decide what makes an escaper. You could set, for instance, "Escaper: 0.01", "Disconnector: 0.005". Then anyone who leaves 0.5% of their games under questionable circumstances could get a yellow icon and anyone who leaves 1% of their games could get a red icon. Someone else might be more tolerant or less tolerant, and set their figures accordingly.

Hikaru79: To differentiate between escapers and people with bad connections, we could rely on the honor system. When a person drops a game-in-progress, the opponent is given a choice of marking the game as "escaped" or "disconnected". This will simply be up to the better judgement of the player-- if your opponent mysteriously "disconnects" right after losing a huge group, and typing a few innapropriate words, then perhaps it's safe to assume that s/he is escaping. If it's a fun, interesting game that's still wide open, or if it's against an opponent you know and trust, you mark the game as simply "disconnected." Of course, the flag the opponent puts on the game will have no effect on how the game's result is decided, but it will influence whether or not the player recieves the stigma of the "escaper" icon. There's really not much of an opportunity for abuse with this system. The worst-case scenario would be that a player who is thoroughly disliked by everyone on the server marks all his games as 'escaped' even if it's obvious he's just having connection problems. I suppose that sort of thing could be reported to moderators. Hey, we have to trust our members at least a little, right? ;)

This could be a valuable -- or at least interesting -- social experiment. I'd be curious to see what kind of figures people use for the categories; we could publish averages on the website, maybe broken down by country, gender, age, OS. Maybe there could be another dialog box that lets you mark people for being too strict. "If this guy sets escapers at 0.000000001, I don't want to play him, he's too obsessed!" :-)

starline: This is just a few pennies worth based on my observations of the set-up on KGS. I've noticed that on KGS it is possible to see the opponents game list, and that unfinished games are emphasised in italic. But the system as it stands does not differentiate the person who got disconnected. So here is something that can be corrected immediately. If a person has disconnected from a game (for whatever reason - purposefully or not). Then that game should be given a symbol to make it easily identifiable (or in a different colour or whatever).

Here's my other observation - often it is really easy to tell an escaper based on their game list. There are normally an unusual amount of games unfinished. But normally people will not check this game list because (especially on a slower pc) this is simply too time consuming. But if when a person offers you a game and you can immediately see their game list in a simple and fast way then it will be possible to make a judgement. In addition it could be made possible to write a short explanation (which will also appear in your game list) expaining the reason why you got disconnected from games - e.g. there was a black out or my cat chewed through the phone line.

Analysis

Features about analyzing games and single situations (i.e. Joseki) can be discussed here.

Benjamin: I think having a nice way to analyze is one of the most important things a server should have. KGS wouldn't have become so popular without its tool. But still I think very much can be done...

Tderz Is both, hence a choice of options possible? User's are not alike, accept that they don't want to be patronized too much.

Benjamin: Well, of course it should not be forbidden to use coordinates. But the other way should be so comfortable that noone is going to use coordinates. It is just a bad style, like using "goto" in programming, so it should be avoided.

Benjamin: Yeah, that's the question of questions for me right now. Maybe after writing, just display it like chat text lead by the move-nr. Say the active node is move 50 right now and someone adds a comment on move 35 again, "35: (userXY) Still I don't like this move". With a mouseclick on "35", you will automatically get to that node.

Database

UGS should include a big "Go Knowledge Base" supporting good pattern search like kombilo or MasterGo

Goproblems

How should the server/tool deal with Go-Problems?

Creating Problems

Solving Problems

Pro Games

Lessons

Joseki

Webinterface

Besides the Client, there should be a nice web-interface to access everything in the database and work with it like in a wiki.

Playing

Everything about online playing can be discussed here.

How precisely would you implement this wish programatically?

Benjamin: I'm not a UI-expert, but I could imagine some ways of implementation, e.g. keyboard-shortcuts and/or choosing mode via click or something. Anyways, as this is just a wishlist for brainstorming, we should start thinking of the detail implementation far later

Ranking

Benjamin: Right now, at the German Go-web, you can't have a talk without discussing about whether EGF-Rating or just the old system or anything inbetween is the best - and this actually screws me off a bit. On the other hand, when designing UGS, of course we have to decide which kind of ranking system we'd like to use...

nachtrabe: Just to add my 2¢, I kind of like the way KGS does it with Maximum-Likelihood-Estimate based on the current ranks of your past opponents. The pdf KGS assumes also seems reasonable. If I get some time in the next few weeks I'll look at different ways of implementing a few different rating systems and see how they might work out.


This is a copy of the living page "Ultimate Go Server/ Wishlist" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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