KGS Wishlist / Social

Sub-page of KGSWishlist

1. Social

Table of contents


[11] Logging In

  • On the login window, being able to swich between different identities without retyping username and password (using a scroll list, or some icons like a WinXP login ?).++
  • When logging in, show "login since:" plus time of login (instead of showing "now"); when logged out, show "logged out since:" plus logout time (instead of last login time).
  • On the KGS: Log In window, the keyboard focus should be in the password entry box instead of at the end of the username.
  • Upon logging in, all new users could already have the Beginner's Room open in a tab. That way, instead of being directed through the rooms menu, they could be instructed simply to tab over to get started. For those new players who are not beginners, they could simply close the tab, or keep it open and be encouraged to tutor weaker players.
  • A command-line switch that will automatically log in to the server with the currently stored username/password (if it exists). There is currently the "-connect" option, but that just pops up the login dialog.

[12] General User Handling

  • Allow someone to see what a game looks like by moving their mouse over the game instead of having to open it. So if you are just looking for a game to watch you don't waste your time opening and closing.
  • Please add an user icon for teacher accounts
  • allow robots to be filtered out of open games window: see how cluttering: (and ive seen the ratio be 12 robots,4 humans at one point) see [ext] http://codejanitor.us/robots.png
    • I agree with the above, though I would prefer if the open games window was split into two parts; one with humans and one for computer players.
  • please add the "hide opponents picture" feature for the KGS client +
  • When will the opposite to the tilde be implemented? This feature should already be in existence! +
  • Being able to store your own personal notes about players. Stored locally, and kept private, just as a way to remember who's who. Not a public database (this may be illegal in some countries). Suggested that these notes be stored on the user's machine, not on the server +++++
  • Please get rid of the assumption that just because someone uses the english language version they are from the US (or Spain for Spanish, China for chinese etc.) Just replace it with a language (Chinese Language client, English Language client etc.)
    • This is not assumed. The feature merely reports what version of the client you are using - nothing more - nothing less.
    • Please show me where I can get an English english client instead of a US english client and I will download it and use it. Would it be really hard to add a question about where people are from as part of the installation? After the one about install directory, f'rinstance?
      • Nemir: Am I correct in guessing that this is an issue because the english language client is actually the "United States" client? If that is the case, isn't that adding a superfluous and possibly innacurate label? Should it not simply be a language version rather than a country version? This was the gist of my original request.
        • The problem is with the locales supported by the Java programming language. There may be nothing that wms can do about this. - Migeru
  • Gresil: Please separate language from locale in the user preferences. I'm Finnish, but am uncomfortable using translated applications and much prefer to use English. In 2.6.5 it seems that setting English as the language causes things like the showing of dates in the perennially weird month-day-year format. A bit of a tomayto-tomarto problem, yes, but still it would be a nice improvement.
  • Implement user defined ranks for people who don't want to use the ranking system. Con: game list should show this up eventually, and game notes work fine until then.----
  • Room chats include rank beside handles, as in game chats. Prefer not, could be embarassing...
    • ProtoDeuteric: I don't think that this feature should be added because the rank of the user shouldn't matter in Room Chat.
  • Context menu on right-click of handle in chat window.++ Also suggested upon right clicking anywhere on the chat. ++
    • This menu could also be present in the game chat window and should include options to ignore the user permanently or for this game only. This would be very useful in games with a large number of observers, so you wouldn't have to find the user in the observer list first.-
  • In user info and private chatbox, simple way to observe user's current game.+++++++
  • Short user-defined messages when private chat initiated, brb, afk, out to lunch.... +++++++
  • Buddy list in true separate pane locked on top or separate scroll bar? +++
  • Buddy list shows 1) buddy that is online, even if not in the current room and 2) which room buddy is in, if not in the current one. +
  • Keep buddy and censor data saved on server. wms ponders all preference data saved server side. Fonts might be one good preference to save client-side due to different resolution screens, other data should be considered carefully before going server-side as well. ++
  • Trailing option to be notified when selected individuals start a game. Integrate with game/request search feature mentioned in [32]? +? like the igs´ trace command
    • Related idea. I a way to see who in a room is playing a game. We can already see who is active/idle, admin/assist/normal, tourney winner, guest/rated/unrated, etc. I want to know if they are playing. If they are playing a public game, I would like a conrxt menu option to allow me to observe. +
  • Some IRC style slash commands? eg: /who <nick> faster than going through menus ++ +
  • When playing a game, be able to pull up a summary list of games that have previously been played by yourself and that user. ++
  • blubb: More than two personal "nick groups" (I think of something like the "buddy" and "censored" list are already), and make their properties configurable. To which group a player belongs could be displayed by toggable icons attached to his/her nick. There should be a way to sort players by these icons. E. g., there are people I don't like to play with again, but whom I still want to be able to chat with, which is why it´s not appropriate to censor them.
  • Jade: Ability to categorize buddies and give buddy nicks aliases (a la Gaim and such)
  • The new system of putting unsolid (?) ranks at the bottom with guests is great, but means we no longer see players that are 9d? who have never lost a game but deserve to be up at the top. With the new ranking system that means players can't get even 8k? without beating a 10k, Surely this could be changed back?
    • wms: Could be, but won't be. Before there was a lot of confusion where people would get upset when somebody with a rank of "1d?" ended up being not 1d. The "?" was there to indicate that the rank was just a guess, and could be wrong by many stones in either direction, but apparently people didn't realize this and would assume that "1d?" really meant that the person was 1d. The new system makes it totally unmistakeable that uncertain ranks are not on a par with accurate ranks, and I will not be changing it back. It caused too much trouble before, the problem of the new system (people whose "?" ranks are accurate being put down low in the sorting order) is much less severe.
    • (Nemir:) Would it be possible to alter the ranking systesm with a special case if someone wins enough games (say 4 or so) against players of 7d or greater rank? That would mean that strong, undefeated players are solidified and then are at the top of the sort by rank list... For example, Tartrate will never get a solid rank, because he won't ever lose a second game against an amateur player.
    • blubb: I guess the change should be done for "9d?" only, because "8d" and "8d?" definitely are different. The highest rank available is "9d?", so all the undefeated >"8d" players pile up there, no matter if they could give 2 or even 4 stones to "8d" opponents. I think that makes the questionmark to 9d ranks as reasonable as meaningless. (The latter applies if there is no 9d player without a questionmark. I am not sure about that.) Anyways, I agree, it would be nice to see their games at top.
    • Nemir: Well, perhaps, but as I am around 9k now I like watching games between players around 2k - 2d as much as anything else because I have some hope of understanding what they're up to. I guess the problem I see with this is that one problem (the error range of ? ranks) has been resolved by two different methods. One method, unfortunately, has a cost to the server in that we can no longer as easily keep track of players with some strenght. The other method, not allowing ranks greater than 10k? to be granted without defeating someone of a suitable rank would be a suitable method and still allow everyone to keep track of these players.
    • (Anonymous): "8d" and "8d?" may be different, but definitely "8d?" is not weaker than "25k", yet gets sorted below that level. This is the problem, I think. Suggestion: Players who already had a solid rank but lost it for some reason could still be sorted in the usual place, regardless of the "?". ("9d?" should still be a special case, I suppose.) Does this make any sense?
    • (Anonymous too): Some people find having to check two sorted lists highly annoying (e.g. me), and would like at least an option to sort these in one list. The other solution would be to not to show [Xd?] at all, [?] only. If it's not a real rank, don't show it at all (it just confuses/annoys people). If it is a real rank (all ranks are guesses anyway -- otherwise nobody would complain of "sandbaggers"), then sort them with the rest.
    • Cyclone001?: I'd also like to see the high dan ? players near the top. Currently I have most of them on my buddy list for this very reason. This whole situation came about because it used to be possible that a newbie would lose spectacularly to a 9d, become 8d? and decieve people. When the change was made (good change) that 10k and better had to win to get a temporary rank, this became more cumbersome than anything else to players 10k and up I think. Perhaps the best solution would be to give temporary ranks only to people who beat someone and have them grouped together like before - or at least have that as a sorting option.
  • Please add IRC style "/away" feature so if mark myself away, i will not be logged off when 30 (is it 30 min?) has passed.
  • I think it would be nice if you can give yourself a status.. like 'Away', 'Busy', etc.. which would appear in a private chat next to your name (same place were 'Playing a game' is.) Shouldn't be very difficult to implement I guess.
  • A different rank for guest would be nice as lots of users have bad experiences with guest [?] users and refuses to play new players with [?] because of this. Maybe [%] or whatever punctation of choice.
    • If guests had pictures this wouldn't happen
      • Then users would have to view info each time they accept a challanger wouldnt they ? And they would see that its a guest account anyway.
  • Okay my request has nothing to do with all of this off the wall discussion unfortunatly. I would simply like a tile window and other window handeling options in the windows menu. Perhaps if it's not too much we could get it to save the current window arrangement as well.

A note to the other posters that have posted reguarding request. This is a real feature request Bitching about weather your client installs with a label on it as the US client or not isn't a request it is simply wineing.

  • Invite option. My Friend Fox has a teaching account and loaded a game of mine for review. I took me a little while to find it among all the active games in english room. I'm sure i'm not the first person to search for a game in a populated room. My friend Fox sugested that there be some sort of invite button or other feature that would allow the teacher to invite the player to join the Demonstration rather than the teacher giving directions on how to find the demonstration game. I think this would or could have potential for abuse so maybe only avalable to teacher accounts.+
  • While on the same track as the previous sugestion perhaps a method for teachers or those with teacher accounts could have a way to manage a contact list of students or other teachers. This could be used to broadcast messages to the students in a certain catagory. As with the previous suggestion this has great potential for abuse.+
  • A feature to click on someone's name in a room's chat window (beside their comment) and it highlights their name in the user list would be nice. This way it would be possible to more easily look up people who make comments in the chat room - especially if, like me, people have the English Game Room for example, sorted by rank instead of name. This would not only make the rank of the player easier to find, but also look up their past/present games if they ask for a review.
  • Somehow be able to view your number of wins and losses against a particular player. Once this information was available, user's names could even be displayed differently according to whether you had never played them before, or you won against them more than you lost, or vica-versa.
    • This would have a dramatic (negative) effect on the accuracy of the ranks -
  • It would be nice to have a player approval rating, somewhat similar to ebay's. If you play a match, you would have the option of giving +1 to the other player if you thought he was a polite/considerate player, however you could give -1 if he was rude or otherwise not a good opponent (escaper, whiner, etc.). This summed approval rating would be visible to everyone. -+
  • I was thinking it'd be kind of cool if one could have a window that, when one holds one's mouse over a game in process on the active games list, one could see the board. It'd be kind of nice, say, if one were looking for a san-ren-sei game, or something of that sort, to observe.
  • Have a maximum number of times a player can request an undo of a particular move. I eventually escaped a game because I was bored of denying an undo request.
    • Maybe just an option in game offer, Allow undo, So you could disallow whole feature
    • That wouldn't solve the problem, because in fact I usually accept undo requests, as they are usually mis-clicks.
  • I would like to get Win/Loss statistics, Joncol page provided them but obvoiously that was very inefficient way of generating those. Montly Yearly win/loss for ranked ?

Petri

  • When the client has been inactive for a while a message pops up telling you that and that you should click OK to stay connected. When I'm busy using my machine for something else and this pops up I don't want to interrupt what I'm doing to switch to the client and quit it - instead there could/should be a Disconnect button on this pop up message as well as the Ok button to allow me to immediately disconnect and close the client. asbo?
  • Bonklers: I hope this suggestion is in the right place. I think it would be great to have a new tab that displays all 7d-9d games that have occurred in the last 24hrs.
  • Bonklers: I've been loggin onto the english game room 2 to reduce lag, but i find myself going back to the english game room to check out the latest 8d or 9d games that have recently been played and are currently at the bottom of the screen as "grey" games. It would be nice to have a new "grey games" tab, next to the "active games" tab and "open games" tab. I would then continue going to EGR2 without missing EGR. thanks.
  • (Toosexy) Pro game auction.

The idea is that you allow KGS users to purchase a block of $2 bids via paypal from KGS for a certain account name. At any time the player can offer a bid in the English game room. the total bids are displayed in the upper part of the interface. certified professional players will have another button labled 'accept bid'. when they feel the total amount bid is worth their time they click accept bid and as soon as another player also accepts they are randomly assigned colors and begin a game at a fairly slow time control.

  • A) only one bid per account at a time
  • B) bids last ten minutes. if no game is started the bid is cancelled
  • C) winner is immediately paid 63% of the total bid by KGS. The loser receives 30%, KGS gets 5% and the remaining 2% goes into a pot for the highest money winning pro of the month.
  • D) Only certified pro accounts allowed. I thought first about 9d too, but that would open up a can of worms with people making 9d accounts and giving/selling them to friends who are maybe a few stones less but could still play a credible game against a pro.
  • E) if the system is well supported I think KGS runs the table on pros just hanging out on go servers. If they know they could make potentially hunrdeds of dollars per day just playing online then why go anywhere else?
  • F) We win becuase we get to have many pro games to watch all for just $2 per game
  • G) what do you think?
  • Here is a very simple (to program) UI improvement. provide a "leave message" button on the user info window (i.e. when I look at a user's profile)

[13] Chat handling/room use

  • PAG2?: During a game, sequence suggestions are often confusing. Need to jump back and forth between coordinates and board. A dynamic way to visualize (and create?) a sequence in Kibitz would be nice.. something like in goproblems where you get the numbering on the board if you click the sequence suggested in kibitz. This dynamism would also promote "reading" and "sequencing" in kibitz I believe.
  • wayward: admins could have an extra option to silence a user for a specified amount of time (say 5-15 minutes) for minor offenses. Silenced user's input would then be ignored in both public rooms and games. This could be used as an intermediary measure between warnings issued in bold text and booting a user off the server.
  • Pilsun? Allow users to limit in-game chat to 1d+. In the games with 500+ obs it's implausible to censor every kyu, but several players are interested in what the dans have to say. Dan players may also consider their comments more carefully as a privilege and responsibility. Without this option the most popular matches inevitably suffer from an overwhelming barrage of chatter that makes one wish the entire room was censored.+
  • Anonymous Would like the ability to censor _all_ chat, in game, and in room. Currently many of us have to move the game window so the chat is off screen.

Phelan: Between the chat window and the game tree window is a grey separator with two small black arrows. If you click on them, they allow you to hide the chat or the game tree.

  • Velobici Cant censor chat from guest accounts. Would like an option to censor all guest accounts, especially during the Sunday Ing Goe School lessons.
  • comboy? Webcam ! Imagine watching your opponent face when you kill half of his stones ;)
  • Un correcteur d'orthographe automatique pour la salle fran�aise, merci d'avance.
  • Stop spamming all the rooms to anounce the beginning of lessons for KGS + users, why not using a pop-up instead? -?-
    • Ansgar?: I think a pop-up would be far more disturbing than an announcement in all rooms because you have to close the window again. +
      • Closing a window is not a problem to me, having to see those bold adverts for something I don't care in all the rooms makes my head ache
        • I think you are fairly unique in being more annoyed at a line of text than a pop-up. If KGS would start with pop-ups, people wouldn't just be annoyed, they would leave.
          • Let's give it a try
  • rainier: seperate the rank from a player's name (maybe using a tab delimeter) for aesthetic reasons...:-)
  • Perhaps this is already requested elsewhere: Please, make it easier to start a chat to someone who is offering a game.
  • Perhaps the cursor should always be ready at the input line when changing windows - any (non ctrl/alt) input by keyboard should go directly into the input line of the activ window.
  • Being able to chat with someone who propose a game directly from the challenge room (when that person is into a room you're not in, it's quite difficult).+
  • Since you are already considering having the game list between the two english rooms shared, maybe also think of doing the extra step and doing something of a decoupling of the game list and the chat function (each game list would by default be docked to a particular chat window, but we could also decide who goes with what, and have for instance a french chat window open while also watching the open games list at the same time on the same screen.
  • Sort rooms by current members.
  • Hu: Semi-public rooms that anyone can join, but the room owner can exclude people individually. ++
  • crux: The new "Active Games" window would be stellar if it could show open games, and if there was an option to show games played by buddies at the top.
  • vertigo: I think seperate "Open" and "Active" game tabs are fine, but the option to display buddy games would be a boon.
  • crux: It would be good to be able to entirely disable the games list in all rooms other than "Active Games".
  • (Much) bigger history buffer for the chat windows. Make it configurable? ++++
  • Timestamps
    • Timestamp on private chat window to show when the chat was initiated.++++++++
    • Timestamp on every message in chat rooms, PMs, and game records. Game record timestamp doesn't need to be saved to the SGF, it should be a client side feature. + +++?++?+++
      • Preferably the display of timestamps should be optional +?
      • tomicus?: I knew timestamps had to be in here somewhere already, I second this.
  • Less annoying chat bell. Ability to set a user-defined wav/mps file for this; volume control.++++
  • blubb: I'd really like an option to have the bell ring only once per chatting partner - until it gets re-enabled by me looking into that particular chat. Currently, frequent typers can make the alarm really annoying, whilst switching it off misses too much.
  • Tabbed boards, inserted alongside room tabs
    • This makes so much sense. I love it.
  • Default room focus to last selected room at log-off and upon closing chat tab
  • Leave message button on player info screen and in private chat screen when player has disconnected.++?
  • Insert last 10-20 chats in a room when joining that room.+++
    • Firstly, this would give one a context for any ongoing conversation. But secondly, and more importantly, it improves the 'feel' or 'mood' of a room. When people enter a room they often politely say hello. The people already present can see a history of hellos, and don't feel the need to reply to every new hello. But the new person only sees his own hello, and may get the impression no one cares. As a result he may decide to not bother saying hello next time. This could be countered by implementing this suggestion. - Catch22Rob? (Catch22 on KGS)
  • Preference setting to block private chats while you're playing a game. ++ - If this is implemented, do we take it off the wishlist? I think so.
  • Confirmation that messages left for others were successfully sent. Ability to save and view messages sent to others.+
  • Ability to lock the chat box buffer window to review the buffer. ie: stop it from jumping to the bottom with every new chat.++++++
    • sigue?: This is sort of implemented now. It no longer jumps to the bottom, but it does scroll a bit for each new chat. (Only if at the max buffer size?)
  • IRC ish rooms, including chanops and chat modes eg: +m (moderated). + + +
  • Ability to close the chat-window on a board +
  • Ability to resize chat window. perhaps better to be able to size it within a range the user prefers. wms says the size of the chat window is dictated by the size of the other elements, and that there's no reason to shrink the chat window (can't be bigger).
  • Bold user handles in chats.+
  • Nick autocompletion ++ +
  • Optimize tab order to minimize rows of tabs; allow manual ordering of tabs. +
  • 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. (not sure what this means, not summarized in WME...help.)
  • mgoetze: Ability to see who is the owner of a room.
    • ProtoDeuteric: Are you sure that you don't mean "owner of a game"? If that is the case, then ...+
  • Option to see joins/quits in selected chat rooms.
  • When trying to find a user - ability to query server for a name that start with "XYZ" and who is a stronger then Ak and weaker than Bk. Ability to recognize shortcuts like "*"
  • epilogue be able to resize the players list (as you can the chat window). this would permit users of low res screens to tailor the cgoban2 to their limited real estate.
  • Server interface to query online status of a user (e.g. return small "online"/"offline" pic appropriately; similar to the rank graph)

(Sebastian: [1301]) Improve Talk To - part 1: current bug. 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.

  • (Velobici) Seconded. I never know if the person's game offer has been accepted and I will be interrupting a game that they just started playing, or if they are still waiting for a game and therefore would welcome the talk.

(Sebastian:) Improve Talk To - part 2: further wish. 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 one of the following:

  1. Postpone alert till right after the game is finished (default).
  2. This is urgent, send right away.
  3. Send this text as message instead. B will receive the message right after the game is finished.
  4. Cancel.
  • Add a way into a Talk to... session from the game challenge window or the user info window. Right now, if someone challenges you, there is no easy way to chat with them. Trying to find their name in a room list is not fun, plus not always possible with the open games list. And, using the "Leave Message" faculty is not great either, because you need to figure out how to spell the name (or copy+paste). In any case, this seems more difficult than it should be.
    • blubb: I think it would be ok to find the same pull-down menu at the nicknames there like anywhere else ("chat to", "see info" etc.). To only switch colors by a menu feels like squandering rare recources to me. A small "change colors" button between the nicks would work fine (maybe even better). Rightclick at that little button could lock the colors - for those people who definitely want to take a particular color.
  • Would like to be able to set up shortcut keys for common phrases like, "Hi", "Thanks", and "Bye". This would be a great help for slow typists, and non-English speakers.
    • Neil: For what it's worth, I just hate the atmosphere that the canned speech on IGS gives. If my opponent doesn't speak English I'd rather be greeted in his own langauge anyway than to see the same, cold, emotionless macro used all the time.
    • blubb: So do I. Particularly, the "'hi', 'thx', 'bye'" kind of games is what I really dislike at playing go online. Those encounters mostly feel even worse than if my opponent was a program (which is what I also choose, occasionally, but for exercise reasons only). Playing with a human-being, I want to communicate like a human-being - as far as this is possible using a text chat interface. If someone actually doesn�t want to greet, to thank or to say goodbye at all, and types nothing but the scary "'hi', 'thx', 'bye'" everytime, I wouldn�t care if he didn�t type anything, or used shortcut keys, or even had it typed automatically by software whenever entering/leaving a game. (There�s a difference if I suppose the talk to be deficient because of language problems, e. g. if the opponent uses a japanese client.) -- Sure, shortcut keys might be convenient to those people who like to use them. But please, if ever, make them configurable, at least!
  • I doubt this will ever be implemented, but: What about an admin censor/ban for the English Game Room? If you're warned, and ignore the warning, the admin hits you with the chat bannish... All messages you type in the English Game Room get automatically forwarded to the English Chat Room. :)
    • I'm against this. In my opinion, if you can't follow simple requests from admins/assistants, then I don't want you on my server. I see no point in letting such people stay on with limited rights. Just act like a reasonable person, or get thrown out.
      • Hear, Hear!
  • Add mIRC like logging to file of room and private chat with timespamps on the local system. +
  • Semi-private teaching games.
    • As I watched a teaching game between a 3P and a 4D, I couldn't help but notice that no one would shut up. I would like to see semi-private teaching games that work the same way ranked and free games work, where the players can't see what the observers are saying. The only difference would be that they would never see anything the observers said, even after the game was over. This would give the teacher and the student a chance to review the game and not be bothered by peoples comments, without having to go to the other extreme of a private game.
    • wms: Already there. In a teaching game, the teacher has a "quiet" checkbox in their editing tools; if they click the checkbox, then only they can talk. Then they can right-click on any name in the game list, select "Grant access", and that person can talk too. So, in any teaching game, the teacher can shut off all chatter any time they want, then selectively turn on chats from individual users. As a side note, a further improvement of this system is coming in release 2.5.8.
    • impu1se: I've noticed lately that a lot of the chatter during lectures with a large class is irrelevant and distracting to the teacher. People can be prevented from making comments but then the teacher has the burden of dealing with them. Could there be a mode to separate making comments to the teacher and making chatter between classmates? General chatter could show up in a lighter gray font. Along these lines it would be nice if teacher comments were darker, if not bold.

Conan : i have 2 things to add.

  1. search function in rooms. the not 100% clear clasification and the number of rooms makes it hard to find them (i read it twice, once looking for dutch windmill, when it was THE dutch windmill)+
    sigue?: To be more specific, I would like to be able to search in the Rooms List window. It would probably be sufficient to have a text entry line and have the rooms list trimmed to only show rooms that match what is typed there (updated as you type).
  2. the other is some kind of library, like trans funcion in igs.
  • Foriegn Go Terms.
    • I am tired of "what is kikashi". It would be cool if they could write it and it gives a def, or directly goes to the definition in senseis.+
    • If that is not comfortable (it wouldnt be for me) kgs could have a gossary, for the which i could find a well defined one.+
    • An option to turn on floating popups with mouseover Japanese (and other languages) Go terms which tells you their definition would be a very nice way of implementing a glossary. +Zacrias
  • one extra room (just) for audio voice demonstrations, independent of the language
  • Cheyenne: A suggestion for handling the "please move the discussion". Before people get bounced, have a facility where a general announcement is made to the room (in a bold font), and then disallow all chat input for 30 seconds (maybe have the client's input area turn red or something). -
    • A follow up idea, once the room announcement has been made and all chat in the room disallowed for 30 seconds, an admin can "select" any subsequent text that is in violation of the warning. A "message" is sent to the author of the text (via pop-up). The message would contain the offending text, plus a standard message saying that this discussion is closed and any further dicussion will result in a bounce off the system.-
    • I believe the above will allow enough warning to people in a chat that a discussion is out of hand and needs to be moved, it allows a person to see the text of their discussion that is causing them to get the warning. The facility is easy enough for an admin to "warn" someone (would have to have some facility to ensure that only one warning is sent if multiple admins try to warn someone).
  • I think the behavior of the private chat window ("Talk to...") is not as intuitive as it should be: When the window opens, is the other person there already or am I still waiting for him to join? What if he's playing a game? If he's not there, do I see from something when he arrives? I think this should be made more clear somehow - maybe the other person yesterday thought the same, as there was a long silence before one of us asked "hello, are you there?" One solution would be to make the user interface similar to chat rooms, with the people present listed in a box on the right side. (This design has the merit that later it could be extended to inviting more than two people join the discussion, if such a feature is desired.)
  • gedh: The facility to open a chat with someone via their "user info" box would be nice. At present, if someone is logged in but isn't in any of the rooms you are in,you can't open a chat with them unless you enter a room they're in or find a game they're playing or observing and right click on their name.
    • blubb: You can (ab)use the "send message to" function from the user menue to start a chat to that person. In order to choose the wording appropriate to either chat or message, you may need to have a look at the user's info to see if s/he is logged in, first. (Right, that's a little awkward, and also you have to know, as well as to type in even twice, the exact nick spelling.)
      • gedh: I thought messages could only be sent to people currently not connected - The dialogue in the info box for "Leave Message" seems to confirm that. But yes, having tried it out, it works !
  • (Sebastian:) Room Alerts: Allow users to subscribe to alerts in individual rooms. When another user enters text that starts with an "!" every subscriber gets an alarm (similar to the individual chat ring). This should address KOCMOC's rengo wish and be useful for many more people, so it should have a bigger chance of being implemented.
    • (Sebastian:) Addition: Display last 10 alerts when a user joins a room.
  • jeremiah: A suggestion for handling escaper complaints: any string containing "is an escaper" in the English Game Room causes owl's user info to be displayed to the person who sent it.-
  • Right-clickable user names in room chat windows.
  • Bob McGuigan: Could some simple-to-use feature be provided whereby people observing a game could chat without the comments appearing to all the other observers or being recorded in the SGF record? See UsingHighDanGamesAsChatRooms. I find myself making the chat window as small as possible when I'm observing high-dan games because of irrelevant chatter that actually would be more appropriate in a chat room rather than in a game window. Of course the issue would be getting the logorrheic observers to use such a feature. As alternatives how about a switch the would allow observers not to see comments at all, or a switch that would allow commenters to choose not to have their comments go into the SGF record?
    • wms: Probably not. Any time you have two ways of chatting, people will 50% of the time use the wrong one out of carelessness. When people want to chat, they type and press enter. Having two chat boxes to type in is no help - people will always forget and type in the one that happens to have focus. Having a checkbox to decide whether or not chat is recorded will be the same problem. So, this isn't a technical problem, it's a human behavior problem, so unless you can think of a way to automatically direct chat in the proper channel, with no effort on the part of the chatting user, I don't think that it is feasible.
      • impu1se: I think having a modal chat box like this would be a good idea. To expand on my above comment under "Semi-private teaching games", I think users could be encouraged to reign in their behavior if there was an obvious indication that certain of their comments were being directed to the teacher and others were simply chatting among the students. At the very least it might reduce the number of offenders without placing the burden of censoring on the game controller. I guess this is more relevant to game types like teaching and demo with direct participation by the observers.
    • Velobici: an automatic thud-simple hueristic is to check the comment for game board coordinates. (allow a space between the letter and the number, perl-wise \ba-hj-tA-HJ-T?[ ]*\d{1,2}\b). Will not correctly sort all comments, but will get us significantly far with only one regular expression check. Getting to 100% will require natural language processing (aka hard problem) and is not necessary. One could add a second rule: must contain the words "white" or "black" (case insensitive ).
    • blubb: Actually, the the amount of useless comments in records doesn't bother me, since that's easy to remove (see KGSRelatedUtilities). Also, many valuable comments contain neither a coordinate nor a color - just think of hints of type "too late for such invasions". The more annoying (to me) issue is overflowing ongoing chatter which sometimes makes it verrrry difficult to pick out the few relevant gems by higher-ranked people while concurrently following the game. I'd definitely appreciate a client-side RegEx? kibitz filter. Adapting the censored list to every observed game is unpractical.
  • kouchi?: Dan-chat. Have two chat channels per game - the usual one, where anyone can comment, and "dan-chat", where only dans could comment, but anyone could see. DDKs and SDKs can't seem to shut up about irrelevant things, and I think there's no doubt that it reduces the amount of dan comments. (some dans may be able to ignore it, but some may not be... and therefore they won't comment). Treating this as a filter, not a seperate channel would also work - if you're watching a high level game, how wonderful would it be to just click a little box near the chat area and have it automatically filter all kyu kibitzes.

Klaus: You could make an option who would list the time of a message in the private message window, no big utility, but i think it's okay. Thanks

  • Ksi?: There should be a sort option in the game rooms, allowing people to sort by anything they want, ascending or descending on any column with just a click. The columns should also be able to be dragged and dropped, so users can reorder it. This layout would be similar to how an Excel spreadsheet would function.
  • Maaaarius?: It's great to get a audio warning when a private conversation is started because normally I would never notice such a private conversation. But there is one problem with this warning. As long as I stay in the chat window it's ok, but as fast as I browse the web or do something else, the audio warning beeps every time the other person writes something. This can be very very annoying. Would it be possible to have a warning option like "audio warning only on new private conversations"? Just one beep when a new conversation is started, and that there will be noe more beepings during that conversation (if not new conversations are started).
  • Taurus?: Custom graphics - ie. font, font color, background image, stones textures or skins in general.
  • Joorin: Chain of trust to allow chat in the EGR. Let admins give non-admin users the right to talk in the EGR and then let these non-admin users pass this right down to people they think should have this right. If a non-admin user misbehaves, his or hers talk right is removed by an admin and everybody else in the chain that that non-admin user has created lose their right to talk too. This can be tuned to not let a hain grow longer than a certain length, for example. For added control, the non-admin user who granted the abusive user the right to talk loses his or her right to talk too. This creates a clear structure with easy to understand rules and you admins can spend more time spectating interesting games or helping people instead of acting as language police.

  • Guichocha?: there should be a 30-second byo-yomi period for everyone in the EGR; it resets every time you contribute to the chat. If you run out of byo-yomi, you get booted off the server.

[14] Handling Nasties

Escapers

There is already a system in place to deal with escapers - if someone has a too high proportion of escaped rated games, their old games get forfeited. Anything beyond this is unlikely to happen because (1) wms does not want to burden admins/assistants with unnecessary tasks (since there is already an automated system) and (2) people should not be forced to play games they do not want to play. If you feel a really urgent need to talk about this, please go to KGS Issue - Escapers instead of cluttering up the Wishlist.

Bogus players in general

I want to be able to block people WITHOUT censoring them, so that you can see what they have to say without having to remember their names in order to avoid playing them in the future. I like to give people a second chance, but as it is now I can't do that because I have to outright censor them. Unpleasant people to play are not necessarily unpleasant people to chat with and vice-versa. Therefore a separate block list would be useful. It would not censor.

Other Nasties

  • Tags for guests and people with a lot of unfinished games. Autodetect of sandbaggers somehow.+-
    • LithiumTwo: The only way a sandbagger could be judged as such is by a human - so an automated system probably isn't possible, but I think assistants and admins, if notified could probably do something. However, I don't know what could be useful against sandbaggers other than boosting their rank - but as the rank system (as of v3.0.0) is entirely seperate from the rest of the server I don't see how this could be done. Tis a tricky issue.
    • Most importantly, differentiate people who lose rank from escaping from people who choose not to be ranked. {-|LithiumTwo]
  • Noplay option seperate from censor option.+-
    • LithiumTwo This is nice, but I think the complication it would cause to new users outweighs the gain (I only censor escapers, but I don't want to speak to them either).
  • Don't allow guests to chat/option to censor all guests. wms is dead set against the former option, and may be against the latter as well. -
    • LithiumTwo: Awful idea. You don't even need to say wms is against it, I can't imagine the logic that would be for it - it's horrible! Name one good reason? Just one? What do you have against guests? May I remind you that you were a guest once
    • impu1se: Would it be possible to add this as a sort of advanced option to the censor / buddy lists using regular expressions. If the user's rank is appended to their name for the purposes of matching a regular expression in the list something like "*\[\]" would match all guests and "*\[[^d]*?\]" would censor all non-dans. Or you could use hikaru* to add all 10,000 hikarus to your buddy list.
  • Allow unfinished free games to be cancelled if someone leaves. Possibly any other non-rated games as well. +++++
    • LithiumTwo: I'd prefer an option to allow to resign any unfinished game without resuming it (especially for free games).
  • Ability to ping users to see if someone has network problems or is just not responding.+++
  • Ban people I've censored from talking in my games at all. This way when I go back and read later I won't have to read irritating comments from irritating people.
    • LithiumTwo How about it banning them from even observing your games - I find it off putting sometimes when playing depending on who is there.
  • Make it possible to find an admin without going room-hopping.
    • LithiumTwo There are admins in most medium-sized to large rooms. I think a solution to this problem is more people to become admins/assistants?
  • When a censored commentator speaks during a game, do not display the move number unnecessarily. +
  • Against escapers: never close a game when it is unfinished. To resume a game later you will have to make a compromise with your opponent.. by hitting a button like resume. (just like undo). when someone has network problems and is kicked of the server well then you probably have to put the game in the resume. Don't think many escapers will close internet to escape from a game. It's now too easy to escape.. --> close the window and hit ok
    • (Sebastian:) This is too severe, IMHO. But it leads to a good idea: How about handling close like an undo request: Display a message "Your opponent wants to close the game. What do you want to do: Close and forget; Postpone; Ask opponent to resign" ++
    • This goes against the principle of forcing people to play games they don't want to.
  • If you cancel during scoring, add 30 seconds to opponent's time. This is to prevent abusing the cancel button during scoring to force opponent to lose on time. Also, an upper limit on the number of times you can cancel during scoring.
    • All cases in my games at least are due to players not seeing that the territories were not fully closed off,and I suspect that in about 99% of the cases that is what happens. -TimBrent
  • When looking at a player's profile, show total number of games, unfinished games and percentage of games played against equal and weaker players. Quick reference so one does not need to search the game list. Players become a better judge of the opponent being worthy instead of the 10% rule and the tilde system. ++++++
    • I believe there, somewhere on the wishlist, is a suggested system whereby players are given "nice guy/gal" points, so if they play weaker players they get some points.. if they give handicap they get lotsa points, if they give teaching games they get points, if they escape (by this I mean losing a game through it - not simply leaving a game) they lose an awsome amount of points (as this is the peek of impoliteness).
  • There should be some report bad manners button in the game, and when u think your opponent is not manner, u can sign him, so u can see how many games of some players were signed as umanner+-
    • LithiumTwo I might be tempted to take tesujis as bad mannered, and others might aswel, it would need to be checked by assistants, however this'd be too trivial a strain on their time.
    • ProtoDeuteric: I think that this would be too severe. Many players just don't know what good manners in Go are. Simply pointing out bad manners to the person in the chat window/section of the game would probably remedy the annoyance. Most people don't deliberately use bad manners.
    • lithiumTwo I agree with Photo, to some, even not starting in the top right is bad manners... and to some not having the right orientation in the top right for your first move is bad aswel.
  • Better system to encourage playing of ? ranked accounts. May not be an issue but I'm seeing alot of "No ?" in the game requests.
    • (Sebastian:) IMHO the worst experiences are with guests, because guest accounts are perfect for rude people. Many players want to avoid bad experiences, and therefore they just don't play anyone marked "?". The proposed "G" mark [2501] could help here and encourage people to switch from guest accounts to permanent accounts.Conversely, the current stigma on "?" accounts forces people to play rated 19x19 games (even if they would prefer to play small games, e.g. because they are beginners).
  • TJ: I'm rather disturbed to note a "better" system for handling escapers on KGS as of 2.5.6. This disturbs me because I remember a lot of discussion about this a while back. Now, if what folks are saying is true, if you leave 10 games first, you automatically resign any other games you might leave. Why is this instituted? Before there's a chance for an answer, here's why I've always said such measures shouldn't be.
    1. People aghast at the system previously in place generally were new to the server or people who really liked rules for the sake of rules. Several times I've had to ask "You've 3 (or less) unfinished games on your games list...out of 200. Why are you worried about escapers?" This basically means that
    2. There is currently no problem with escapers on KGS. Or rather, maybe it happens, but rarely enough that there's no PROBLEM with them. Why trouble the rest of us with some threat when no problem will be solved since:
    3. People who are jerks about escaping will just start a new account once they're branded. They're JERKS.:)
    4. The rest of us might now have an account for a few years and have left games first due to adjournments, some yutz deciding to take the dog for a walk in an untimed/slow-play game and sticking us until their client auto-disconnects (who's the real escaper there?), people swearing at us (yes, that's happened to me) or otherwise being a jerk, or for any random reason that occurs RL or online which doesn't mean the person is a habitual escaper (read JERKS). With an absolute number set, eventually we're forced to sadly retire old accounts we've had for years or be permanently flagged as escapers.
    5. New people don't know about escaping, and get strikes against them before they have learned how to/that it is necessary to resign.
    6. More rules and regulations and penalties means less freedom to just be nice because we're nice instead of because we'll be given a lethal injection if we don't toe the line. KGS is a nice place to visit most of the time because folks there are nice folks for the most part. (here, here - even ex-Jerks...) here, here
I've seen a place (a "cyberspace") go bad before because all the nice people got fed up with being constrained because there had to be "rules" made and enforced. wms runs KGS, and the admins...if someone isn't nice, chase them off the server. If they are nice, don't bust their chops for an accidental infraction. It's easier to find decently just admins/assisstants (and toss out the ones who turn out to not work well) than to make a legal system work without crushing the spirit of a culture. We've all been invited to play in your yard, if we don't play nice, send us home! If we don't like how you run the place, we can take all our toys and go home, right? It's not a country.^^ Not threatening to take all my toys and go home or anything...more like I'm suggesting certain other guests in your yard do so instead of bossing the host around and wrecking a good thing for all of us. Maybe that isn't what really happened here, but it just seems like a vocal minority called this shot. If I'm wrong, I'll eat a go stone or something.
  • Recognize that the "escaper problem" is nothing more that a bad etiquette issue and does not need any special "solution". All attempts at technical fixes to this "problem" are far more annoying that what they are attempting to fix. The ranking system itself is more than adequate for making escaping a useless endeavor. Please enlighten me as to why I am wrong about this.
    • blubb: Have you ever played at dashn, for example? There ARE better ways than merely to disavow the problem people obviously do have with escapers. (No matter if I understand why it's a problem to them or not). An even less restrictive way than "the dashn one" would be to avoid a player to start a new game as long as s/he rejects to resume more than N unfinished one(s) (while not playing) for e. g. 24 hours. Hardly any account would (nor could) ever escape more than N times anymore. Heck, what's the catch of this proceeding? +
    • Neil: People who get fixated on the "problem" with "escapers" (and I used to be one of them) seem to miss the reason wms doesn't do anything about it: It is desired that someone is not required to complete a game against an ill-behaved opponent.
    • Hu: Your point is good Neil, but additionally, wms implemented first the automatic loss of rank, and then replaced it with automatic Forfeits beyond 10 escaped games.
    • blubb: I have heard about that 10 games limit already but not read it at any official place (changelog, kgs site). Anyway, if it's right, I won't ask for any further "solution" attempt.
      • glue : see [ext] KGS help page about rank (rank cheating paragraph) or owl's info on the server (it is mentionned on 2.5.6's changeLog too).
      • blubb: Thanks for the hint. Actually, that criteria is quite harsh, and I'd rather see it "going my way", since
        • easily 10 games can happen to get unfinished with one-day fool account opponents, whilst fools hardly bother you asking to resume so many sick games that you have to reject 10 of them
        • to forfeit games which would have been lost anyways, sounds a little weak for being a reason not to escape
        • furthermore, to a person who plays 10 games a month and escapes 3 of them, the automatically forfeited games are about 100 days old, which means that those losses weight less than half as much as they'd weight if being ranked immediately.+

- - - - - - - - - - - - However, I'll stop concerning myself with this now. :)

  • Autocensoring via collaborative filtering
  • Display for how long one gets banned in the "bye bye" msg. +
  • Display the name of the administrator who enforced the ban in the "bye bye" message. Currently there is no accountability for frivolous bannings. +
  • Allow blocking a specific nick instead of the IP or better yet, allow "forced nick change" - Making the user re-login or allowing him to change the nick, staying online... (Since apperantly none cares if you don't get the note in french since you're in the french room...)
  • jeremiah: Create a "consensus ban system" so that some (large) proportion of the room can boot an offensive player when an admin is not around. This could well take some of the burden off of the admins/helpers if well-designed against abuse.+
  • Some mechanism to deal with people escaping from free games... just something like forfeit after X weeks or something.

[15] Design Discussion: Should Games be arranged by Chat?

  • LithiumTwo: Games can be arranged by chat now, it has no conflict with the current design
  • Symbol to show player involved in a game in user list. However, may encourage people to arrange games by private chat. ("Game?").+
  • Ability to see if a person is playing/observing a game and where, unless the person forbids being tracked.++-
    • Automatically see person's status by typeface/icons. This is against the design of KGS, for various very consciously decided upon reasons wms went into. -
  • Occasionally I'll want to review a game I've played earlier with someone or some such thing and it would be nice to either be able to search through games or to invite a particular person to play (who had, for instance, agreed to review a game). Peterius
  • Don't put (Playing a game) in private chat windows when a person has placed an offer, but is not actually playing yet. (Waiting for a game), perhaps, (Challenging such and such a game). Direct link to said challenge?+
  • Notification when a chat is sent to a person in a game, and options to postpone sending chat, don't send it, or send it anyways
  • Automatic matchmaking.
  • Merge game lists: whatever room tab I have selected, put in the game list all the games of all the rooms I have open. Make it optional with a checkbox in preferences. This would let me chat in the English Chat Room while keeping an eye on the interesting games of the French Room.
  • Move games to the top of a game list if one or both of the players are on my buddy list. +

[16] New Users

  • LithiumTwo: I would really like the name 力二, but I can't because we're only allowed latin characters and arabic digits... I see no reason for this? (as the server transmits chat and saves sgf in unicode anyway?). Please please please can we open up usernames to unicode?
    • It would only appear as "square square" to people who don't have the right fonts. Then it will be quite impossible to distinguish two "square square". And for users who don't have the right keyboard, no way to drop a message or look for their info...
    • LithiumTwo: I see what you're saying - but still, if it becomes popular then I don't see why people can't just add the fonts if they're really distressed by it (it isn't hard at all). This small modification would probably dramatically increase the uptake of KGS for chinese users - which can only be a good thing.

SirLyric: There's a further issue with Unicode names - for many characters, there are several distinct Unicode code points that map to a similar-looking character. This can lead to abuse via impersonation - someone creates an account with a name that looks exactly like a well known one, but has a different Unicode 'a' instead of the normal one, for example, and then starts making trouble and harms the reputation of the well known user.

  • I thought that maybe it would be useful if when a new user logs in for the first time he/she would get a popup that would give them quick instructions as to how to set up a game and what K and D are; A quick tutorial if you will. As anyone who spends time in the English room knows, we get at least a dozen questions like that an hour. I know there are help files, but most people are too lazy/unwilling to actually open them.
    • wms: As you point out, people don't read help. People don't read popups either if they are too long. The longer the popup, the less likely people are to read it. Right now, when a newbie comes, their popup tells them how to register. I don't want to make it longer - as it is, lots don't read it. so I'd have to get rid of that info to add the "what is k/what is d" info, and I'd have to say that registration instructions are more important that info on what k/d are. :-(
    • Rakshasa: Once they've registered and log in for the first time, they could get another short popup. And that one doesn't need to cover registering ;)
    • Planar: All that information could go into the registration mail. People are not forced to read it before proceeding but they can keep it for future reference, unlike a popup window.
    • Eratos: They can keep it for future reference, but they won't :(
  • Give new users a default picture so that it will be more likely somebody will want to play with them
    • cubyrop: Here's a great idea. When new users first log in, they check or uncheck a box labelled "Beginner?" If they are a beginner, they would auto-login directly to the beginner room (a fantastic place for newbies), rather than the EGR (a horrible place for newbies).
      • Create a new room called "The Lobby". Any new users (including guests as everyone starts out as one) would log on to that room by default. Additional information for new users can be put on the chat room message (including a repetition of how to register, and what is k/d). - Migeru
  • Place guests with "English" default language in both the EGR and the ECR? It's awfully easy for guests to start unrelated conversation in the EGR as it is.. ;) Reuven

[17] Privacy

[18] Management

  • Possibility to kick a user from a room you own

This is a copy of the living page "KGS Wishlist / Social" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2007 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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