Shouldn’t we close this board?

Also, in my not so humble opinion, OGS has meanwhile really deserved its own board here

Greetings, Tom

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

From my understanding the argument for not having an OGS sub-forum has been that OGS does have its own board via "Turn-Based Servers." However, OGS does seem to be more popular than other turn-based servers and it also allows for live games.

I could see this going either way.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

There was some argument regarding creating a separate subforum for Kaya around the time that it was created, and I argued against it at the time, based on its lack of history. OGS has become the new darling of the KGS-alternative community, but I would argue against its creation for the same reason as before. As Moyoaji mentioned, there is already a subforum for turn based servers, where OGS traditionally resided, and without a userbase and a similar number of questions surrounding it as the big ones, I'm skeptical that a separate subforum is needed to keep from cluttering the main subforums for go servers.

That said, I'm not touching the debate over whether it's a real-time or correspondence server with a ten foot pole.

EDIT:
I suppose the real question is that Bonobo stated that he feels OGS deserves its own subforum, but why?

What are the criteria that determine that? Is it that there are a high number of posts concerning it? That it's a big established server that's been around for a while and has a high number of users? That some of the forum members are excited about it?

I've argued for the second and partially the first previously, but I think it would be a good idea in advocating for or against what you think the criteria should be.

I guess the criteria is that since Kaya.gs got it because it was new, hyped and had HTML5, OGS should, too. It shares all these interesting things, while having the old OGS userbase (or most of it.)

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

With perfect hindsight, it's quite arguable that kaya shouldn't have gotten one, as it collapsed soon after. I'm not saying this will be the case for OGS, but it leads me to believe that the above criteria that were applied to kaya were not necessarily good criteria.

If we admit that Kaya getting its own subforum was a mistake, then it follows that.... you know. No offense.

I think the criteria should be the need rather than some kind of imagined "prestige" or "they got one so we want one too."

Is there a need to create such subforum, is there enough posts, is the usability hampered by these posts being in the general turn-based subforum, and so on... I cannot really answer any of that, since I don't really care about OGS, it being a turn-based server and all...

I guess what I am saying that the criteria for a new subforum should be the need, in the sense of number of posts/threads, mostly.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Actually I agree with you re:kaya.gs getting one, so... You know No offense here

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I find this thread utterly baffling. I would think that the main (only?) criteria for having a subforum is that there are enough topics on OGS (kaya or whatever) cluttering up General Go Chat that people want to segregate it in a location of its own. At the time that kaya was split, this was pretty much the case. Was it a "mistake" because kaya didn't last? What's the harm? If people think that the Index page is cluttered as a result, the admins should sweep up kaya (and various other nearly dead subforums) into an "Older Stuff" category at the bottom of the page. Note that kaya (as the newest server thread?) already is at the bottom of the page. Would 'OGS' go below it? What would be the benefit for OGS in that?

Since currently there are virtually no threads on OGS, how could it possibly need its own thread? If traffic picked up, why would we want to refuse to create a subforum until OGS 'deserved' one? Can anyone say, "Cutting off the nose to spite the face"?

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

If we wait long enough there will be lots of posts about admin overzealousness on OGS and then it may get it's own sub-forum.

ROTFL OK forget it

I just happened to stumble over this board/subforum and thought that it was odd that it still existed as separate board (perhaps we could have a graveyard board where all this obsolete stuff can rest in peace, as “read only”?) and since I’m all aflame about OGS, well, you know how irrational people in love can be

Cordially, Tom

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Speaking of OGS.

I have not logged in for a long while, but I logged in earlier today, there was 11 games going and like 3 open challenges. I logged in again a moment ago there were 5 games and also 3 challenges. Is that the normal state of the server?

I also noticed all the games I could see were real-time. I seem to remember I could also see the turn-based games (i.e. longer time controls) - is there a trick to that now? Also, how do I check the info/stats for a player? I know I can check a logged-in players when I mouse over their name, but when somebody is not logged in, i have no clue how to view such player's info.

Probably all stupid questions, but anybody knows what's up with that?

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

The activity level on the server is fairly steady although there are lulls during certain times of day.
To view correspondence games there is a list view of ongoing games.
Offline players are hidden behind a search field. Unless you know the player's name you'll not find them.

Oh, cool, thanks. I honestly did not see the search, and even after you mentioned it, I still had hard time finding it.
What do I click on to see the correspondence games? I can click now on "observe games" and see the real-time games, but i see nowhere to click to see the correspondence games.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I'm sorry. I guess that list is gone. That is a serious flaw IMO

Most of the activity on OGS takes place on ladders and tournaments.

Go to the 19x19 ladder or any of the ongoing tournaments to get lists of many ongoing games.

If you join the ladder, you can get a correspondence game any time you want.

Off Topic content

Cordially, Tom

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Ok, so I click on the Ladders link. It gets me to a screen with 3 columns: Site 19x19 Ladder, Site 13x13 Ladder, and Site 9x9 Ladder. Clicking on any one of those gets me to the list of player and challenges. Can I somehow see the ongoing games as well?

I mean - I can click on the player and see his/her games, but is that the only way? There is no way to just view the server-wide list of ongoing games?

And how about games played outside ladders? Are there such games? Can they be observed?

Its a learning curve, but I will figure it out eventually.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Afaik the possibility to observe correspondence games has been (nearly) disabled, or at least severely crippled (you can search a user and check their games list, so in theory it's still possible) in order to promote the idea that OGS is a realtime server.
They also don't have a userlist anymore.

It's these kinds of decisions that made me abandon that server.

All a bit off-topic here, but oh well...

Shortly after the Nova/OGS-merge they had only one list with both types (real-time + correspondence), but the real-time "faction" complained, that there were too many games. At the moment, you can't search for the correspondence games. I think the devs are working on a better support for the correspondence part, but as you don't see on what the devs are working, it's unclear when they change it.

Last year, they (Nova-admins) not only asked OGS for a merge, but they also asked DGS. But just as with the old OGS, also DGS was implementation-wise totally incompatible and so it was pretty clear, that it would have been only a "copy" of the userbase with a re-developing of features. I guess ca. 20% of the old OGS features are still not available and perhaps never will be or at least it will take a long time to do so.

IMHO the integration/combination of real-time and correspondence has its merits, but it's not so well done. At the moment, Nova/OGS has the focus on a better support of the real-time part. Time will tell, if they are able to support the correspondence-part in a better way.

Let's keep it at that here as this is a topic about an OGS-forum and less about OGS itself