I have my KGS rank for almost 10 years now and it makes me sick that if I should not play one game in 6 months it will be gone forever. I can understand the idea behind, but after having an account for so long another rule should apply for such members. Imagine one gets cancer or needs to go abroad for the job...all that can take months.... What do u guys think about that?

You don't have to play a game, you just need to logon once to keep your nick.

That doesn't make much of a difference though.

I apparently lost two of my three nicks at KGS. I don't think this practice is good, but I don't worry about it either.

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It's an unusual practice, but considering the large number of people who try go very briefly, possibly never even playing an actual game, it's not outright crazy.

KGS's curious solutions to some problems do have their side-effects, but this one is easy enough to avoid in 99.9999999999% of cases.

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Central Mississippi Go Club
http://www.cmgo.org

Yeah, I wanted my user name on a server that didn't have this policy and couldn't get it. The person who had it never played a game and logged in only once over five years ago.

I prefer the way KGS has it, but I wouldn't mind some of the parameters getting tweaked.

Maybe an email when your account is about to go dark offering a link to click and prevent it?

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Central Mississippi Go Club
http://www.cmgo.org

I think names should be reserved based on the length of time that they were active. If I sign up and never play, it should expire. If I play for two years, and leave, it should stay longer. Thirteen years, like exactly four people on KGS, it should be damn near permanent.

(And an expiration email for older accounts would be a nice touch).

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Occupy Babel!

Encouraging us to embrace impermanence is a good thing. Go is about go, not about celebrity usernames.

Anyway, the games don't disappear.

this!

and an email notice when kgs plus is about to expire would be even more welcome.

I thought so, but there's something funny going on: http://www.gokgs.com/gameArchives.jsp?user=tartrate

Also, I find it undesirable that if a name expires and is reregistered that both games should appear with the same name. On the other hand, I'm the same guy who didn't start building his personal website for a year because I couldn't decide on information architecture and url schemes...

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Occupy Babel!

You forgot to check the little box.

I believe they did something to prevent accounts with active KGS+ subscriptions from expiring. It costs money, of course, but it is an option.

To be honest, I don't understand the issue. If keeping the account is so important, why not just log in every couple of months? If you don't log in and don't play, why is the rank important?

Agreed. If you don't care enough to login ONCE every six months (not even play), why should the administration spend server resources to let you keep your name?

Ditto.

Plus if you're strong enough to get to that rank, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to get it back. Besides, the wonderful thing about KGS rankings is the speed at which you can climb up! If you think you're 5d, find a 5d to play a ranked game with. You'll almost instantly be around 5d? and a few more games should stabilize the rank.

That's what I heard anyway. I haven't experienced rank stabilization on KGS yet because I hardly play, and when I do I keep going up.

Go servers aside, many places where you can register online also place time limits on unused accounts.

I think this comment about rating needs to understand why a rating exists: To allow both players to have an enjoyable game that both can learn from. No other reason. Do you make money from having a higher rating? Not likely unless you are a professional. KGS server sucks anyways. Bunch of stuck up admins and many(not all) stuck up players. You would be better off playing at wuzheng.me anyway. Try one of the "18 kyu" mainlander Chinese there against some of the 2 kyu players at KGS and the KGS players would likely get their rear ends kicked. At wuzheng.me the focus is on learning from the wei chi, not whether a rating exists.

Because once you get into adult-age-range there are plenty of things that can happen to prevent you for a couple of months to play. If you have an account for 10+ years and you lose everthing just because you didn't log in within 6 months - that's hard, because 10 years membership show some persistence and will to be a permanent KGS'ler.

I agree there might be bigger issues to address and I agree the 6-month-rule is vital and important for those who just create accounts and then do not happen to play for some years regularly. but those veterans with 10+ years under the belt should get some benefit. That's just my idea here....

I've had the good fortune to be an adult for quite a few years now. To be honest, I'm still struggling to think of examples which would prevent a person (adult or otherwise) from logging into KGS once in six months. Even if you relocate for work (which I have done), you'd have to relocate to a country or city that doesn't have internet access of any kind or is prohibitively expensive.

We could look at extreme examples (e.g., a car crash which puts a person in a coma for eight months). However, after the person gets out of the coma, I assume if the doctor said "the good news is that you're going to make a full recovery and your family is overjoyed that you'll be with them for Christmas. The bad news is that you're going to have to re-register your KGS account", the person isn't going to be too worried about having to register again.

I suppose that if you're a child, you can have your internet privileges removed for six months (and couldn't use the internet facilities at the library or school). Again, though, I wonder how often that would happen in real life.

That said, I'm certainly very open to examples of how a person would lose internet access for six months or more. If you could provide some instances, it would certainly help me to understand your perspective more fully.

It's also worth noting that there aren't any symbols of how long an account has been registered on KGS. The only actual benefit I can see for being a longer-term player on KGS is that if you're a member of KGS Plus for many years, you have a greater library of on-demand lectures (e.g., I have 200 or 300). Otherwise, I'm not aware of any special positives of being a long-term player on KGS.

Perhaps it would be an acceptable arrangement for KGS Plus subscribers to not have to worry about their account going dormant so long as they retain their subscription.