I don't think it's so bad...if it were anything like the "EGR"s of other games, it'd probably look something like this:

britishmate: nice weather today eh?
sai8484: $$$$$$ 7D OFFERING 20% DISCOUNT ON LESSONS, $15/HR. OFFER LASTS JUST FOR WEEKEND, PM IF INTERESTED. $$$$$$
sai8484: $$$$$$ 7D OFFERING 20% DISCOUNT ON LESSONS, $15/HR. OFFER LASTS JUST FOR WEEKEND, PM IF INTERESTED. $$$$$$
sai8484: $$$$$$ 7D OFFERING 20% DISCOUNT ON LESSONS, $15/HR. OFFER LASTS JUST FOR WEEKEND, PM IF INTERESTED. $$$$$$
mach11: please stop flooding
narutoderp: hey gais how come chess is better than go?
joskiMASTER: ^^^^^^ TIRED OF LOSING IN THE EARLY GAME? MASTER THE GAME BY BUYING "JOSEKI MASTER", 500 PAGES OF JOSEKI KNOWLEDGE. COMES WITH TRICKS AND SHORTCUTS TO ENSURE YOU REMEMBER EVERYTHING. PLZ PM FOR PRICE INQUIRY ^^^^^^
topseller43: *** WANT TO GET BETTER? KGS 9D ACCOUNTS FOR SALE, OVER 50 GAMES PLAYED ON EVERY ACCOUNT SO IT WILL STAY AT 9D FOR MONTHS! PM FOR OFFER. ***
sai8484: $$$$$$ 7D OFFERING 20% DISCOUNT ON LESSONS, $15/HR. OFFER LASTS JUST FOR WEEKEND, PM IF INTERESTED. $$$$$$
sai8484: $$$$$$ 7D OFFERING 20% DISCOUNT ON LESSONS, $15/HR. OFFER LASTS JUST FOR WEEKEND, PM IF INTERESTED. $$$$$$
topseller43: *** WANT TO GET BETTER? KGS 9D ACCOUNTS FOR SALE, OVER 50 GAMES PLAYED ON EVERY ACCOUNT SO IT WILL STAY AT 9D FOR MONTHS! PM FOR OFFER. ***
bubbles000: lol narutoderp A/S/L?
joskiMASTR: ^^^^^^ TIRED OF LOSING IN THE EARLY GAME? MASTER THE GAME BY BUYING "JOSEKI MASTER", 500 PAGES OF JOSEKI KNOWLEDGE. COMES WITH TRICKS AND SHORTCUTS TO ENSURE YOU REMEMBER EVERYTHING. PLZ PM FOR PRICE INQUIRY ^^^^^^
winallgame: ######## KGS ESCAPEHACK v0.5 NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD, 30% OFF: KGSESCAPEHACK.CO.LOL.UK --- 100% GUARANTEE YOU CAN ESCAPE EVERY GAME AND NOT FORFEIT OR MONEY BACK. ########
mach11: please...please...
joskiMASTR: ^^^^^^ TIRED OF LOSING IN THE EARLY GAME? MASTER THE GAME BY BUYING "JOSEKI MASTER", 500 PAGES OF JOSEKI KNOWLEDGE. COMES WITH TRICKS AND SHORTCUTS TO ENSURE YOU REMEMBER EVERYTHING. PLZ PM FOR PRICE INQUIRY ^^^^^^
sai8484: $$$$$$ 7D OFFERING 20% DISCOUNT ON LESSONS, $15/HR. OFFER LASTS JUST FOR WEEKEND, PM IF INTERESTED. $$$$$$
sai8484: $$$$$$ 7D OFFERING 20% DISCOUNT ON LESSONS, $15/HR. OFFER LASTS JUST FOR WEEKEND, PM IF INTERESTED. $$$$$$
winallgame: ######## KGS ESCAPEHACK v0.5 NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD, 30% OFF: KGSESCAPEHACK.CO.LOL.UK --- 100% GUARANTEE YOU CAN ESCAPE EVERY GAME AND NOT FORFEIT OR MONEY BACK. ########

There is a practical solution. Many, in fact.

One is to go the way IGS went - and disable chat in EGR. Draconian and ugly, but hey, if that's what people want...

Another, more elegant, is what I suggested long time ago on rgg when the EGR/ECR split was discussed - just add a disable-chat button to the client, make it work per room, and voila - problem solved. Those who want to chat can do so, those who are not interested simply don't even see it. Pretty simplistic, but workable and easily implemented.

You can build up on that and introduce Tabs to rooms, for chatting, announcements, info, whatnot. Then you only see whats in the tab you have up top. Also easily implemented. If you are afraid to scare off newcomers, you can make the Announcement Tab active by default and the Chat Tag hidden. This can be applied to all the rooms, not only EGR - and then there will be no need for such stuff as EGR/ECR weirdness.

If you want to get really fancy, implement filters, like you set that you only see chats from your friends, or from people in certain rank range, or both, or whatever. The possibilities are endless, although this can be more challenging to implement. Filters like that can also be nice to filter the list of players on the right of the screen or color-code chat and so on.

Wms was not interested in any of this at that time, and he had his reasons, I'm sure. Maybe now...

Anyways - there are many simple solutions, the above ideas are just the examples I presented way back when.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I just closed the EGR room from my tabs

I didn't realize there were Advanced Squad Leader fans on EGR...

Bruce "6+1 Leader" Young

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Currently reading: Plutarch, Cerebus, and D&Q 25th Anniversary

My first day on KGS, there was some unpleasant jeering happening in the EGR. Like Topazg, I just left the room (forever!). Rooms like LGD and The Enclave are very fair-spoken and still quite high population (due to the popular lectures, no doubt).

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

Hah, this is a funny thread after so many "I was temp banned, wah wah" threads.

Personally, the first thing I do every time I log into KGS is drag the separator bar between the game list and the chat pane all the way down, so I can't see the chat at all. Problem solved

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Main Entry: zing·er Pronunciation: \ˈziŋ-ər\
1 : something causing or meant to cause interest, surprise, or shock
2 : a pointed witty remark or retort

I can imagine a few people being turned off of KGS itself, but surely most know that there are few places on the internet that do not suffer from puerile chatter. Blogs that prohibit comments, blogs that very carefully cultivate their commentariat (e.g. TNC at the Atlantic) and specialized discussion boards like L19x19 (and even other such boards are often terrible) are the rare exceptions.

Of course, I'd love to see improvements. But I wonder if you're not losing so many people as you'd expect.

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Occupy Babel!

You are totaly right. The EGR has become a room of morons and losers. Note that the people usually chatting there are staying at the same rating from 4 - 5 months
Maybe they are trying to cover their failure in Go by talking nonsense and only teasing people. When I see someone chatting in the EGR, I am 99% convinced that this person is not very intelligent.

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Stefany, web programmer

Yeah, I know someone who has been at 1dan for over 7 months. This person obviously fails at go. (for the sarcasm impared - insert sarcasm tags).

I know someone who's been 9d for years! It's astounding how slow some people can be.

Guys you make me laugh

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Stefany, web programmer

By the way, what's wrong with occasional stupidity? Conversation shouldn't always be nice and intelligent, or it'll become boring

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My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

The intelligent convesations are always boring to the stupid people.

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Stefany, web programmer

Hehe... can't... resist... urge to post...

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My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

Phew, that's out, time to get back to intelligent conversation

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My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

Most of it's simply playfulness :p. It does get rather silly sometimes (and I know I've contributed my share ...), but you know, it's the first online community where I've actually felt like chatting with other people for a long time!

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19/02/2011: this grumpy person takes a voluntary holiday from L19.

That explains many things.

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Stefany, web programmer

I've found that in many online forums/chat rooms, even when the talk is on-topic and 'serious', most people are just talking past each other. Thankfully (so far) the go community doesn't seem to be like that.

Anyway. Many kinds of serious discussions can be had by simply inviting people into a game (where having a board handy is useful as an aid anyway). What is left are light on-topic conversations (which do occur occasionally) and idle chatter (which can simply be ignored). What is unfortunate is when genuine questions are drowned out. On other hand, a silent room doesn't guarantee a useful response either, since no-one may answer.

Background noise in the egr is insignificant, it's really not worth any consideration, negative or otherwise.

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19/02/2011: this grumpy person takes a voluntary holiday from L19.

When I used to play on KGS ( stoped to play go like 3 months ago ) I almost never went to EGR. But from time to time, after a game, I would stop there.
What annoyed me a lot is not really people not speaking about Go, but all those people who spend their time testing every limits in place regarding what they could do. Mostly it was people setting up an account just to chat, no go games, and they would troll for hours. They go so far as to pride themself of the bad reactions they get from being aggressive and put quote of people losing their temper and yelling at them in their profile.
And what astonish me is that those people have followers.

It must be hard to be a moderator with those people around sometimes. "But, Admin_002, what is wrong with me correcting the spelling of every word this non english speaking new comer wrote instead of helping him out. There certainly is no rules again that !? It is not my fault if he quit !"

Or the kind of conversation that make my eyes bleed :
Player A : So my cat landed in my bath, is it safe to dry it with the microwave ? Most of the cats hate to be wet.
Troll : that is not true, my uncle's cat likes to take showers.
Player B : Yeah my cat drinks from the sink.
Player C : once my cat jumped from the second floor and landed in a bush.
Player D : my cat can lick his own balls.
Troll : see player A, there is a wikipedia article on tiger in micronesia who bath into open sea.
Player A has left the room *cat exploded in the microwave*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VfSl0iGAus

Welcome to the Internet. Learn to deal with it or don't use it. Pretty much the only realistic alternative is no talking at all. This is not going to change.