Life In 19x19

I'm puzzled about how this sniping and why a few days matter. Surely if you are trying to grab the "joseki" account, you need to know when the account was registered (or last accessed)? Which you can't realistically do, presumably. How does housekeeping work? Does it only run every six months? Or more frequently, and applies 6 month rules on dormant accounts?

quantumf wrote:I'm puzzled about how this sniping and why a few days matter. Surely if you are trying to grab the "joseki" account, you need to know when the account was registered (or last accessed)? Which you can't realistically do, presumably. How does housekeeping work? Does it only run every six months? Or more frequently, and applies 6 month rules on dormant accounts?

The last time an account was logged into is shown in its profile, so it's easy enough to count 180 days from that date. It would be even easier to count six months, of course.

There is some interest in re-registering ("sniping") certain names that have expired or are about to expire.

As far as I know, there's a housekeeping routine on the server that activates every few days to tidy up resources that are no longer needed such as older games, abandoned account names, unused rooms, and maybe other things too. It checks through all those resources and removes those that have passed their use-by dates since the last time it ran. That's 180 days for games and account names, but a shorter time for rooms. That process takes a while, so presumably that is why it isn't activated more frequently.

Uberdude wrote:Maybe making life easier for account snipers is not KGS's top priority?

Sure, but that does not affect the accuracy that an account can expire before 6 months.

quantumf wrote:I'm puzzled about how this sniping and why a few days matter.

Because someone else might take the account before you. If you think that it takes 6 months for an account to expire, it's possible, as I understand, that the account expires before then (around 180 days). Snipers that are waiting on KGS 24/7 need the lowest bounds possible.

If you're really paranoid, might as well start checking 24/7 for expiration around 150 days. But I'm pretty sure 180 days is the lower bound allowed by the system.

Kirby wrote:Because someone else might take the account before you.

Is there a thriving after-market in vanity account names? If so, how does one get involved in it?

I think it works like with all other such jobs:
1. The rule is account expires after 180 days (or 6 months or whatever)
2. The cron task runs every so often and deletes expired accounts

Now, if the cron happens to run exactly on the 180th day after last account access, this is when it gets deleted. But more likely, these two dates do not coincide, so it might always take a few more days before the account is actually deleted. For example - if the cron runs every 2 weeks, it might take anywhere between 0-14 days after the 180 day period that the account gets deleted. What's more, the amount of extra days is more likely different each time, as you can imagine.

Anyways - 'account sniping' is such a very minor part of what a Go server is that I am surprised people even make an issue out of it. Man, I am surprised people actually do it. Just pick a nice name, and stick to it... The only reasonable reason for such 'sniping' i can see is when you let your own account expire by mistake and want it back... But then - people are weird...

I suspect the housekeeping service runs nearly continuously, or at least several times a day. Click "File" and then "Sever Stats." Then, try it several minutes later. If there have been no registrations in those few minutes, you have a good chance of seeing that the Current number of Accounts dropped slightly.

UnclMartin wrote:I suspect the housekeeping service runs nearly continuously, or at least several times a day. Click "File" and then "Sever Stats." Then, try it several minutes later. If there have been no registrations in those few minutes, you have a good chance of seeing that the Current number of Accounts dropped slightly.

The number under server stats includes guest accounts, which are deleted immediately upon logout if they aren't registered.

If you look at the game lists for the older aya bots, which play pretty much continuously, you can see that the earliest games are generally within a few minutes of 180 days old.

Here is another question - what can be the reason if a game is "forfeited"? Can one always conclude "forfeit" -> "escaper who got punished"? I recently played "pomelo" and I noticed that whenever he left games he immediately lost due to "forfeit", but then I also saw an unfinished game in his list which shouldn't be there if my theory was correct.

Pippen wrote:Here is another question - what can be the reason if a game is "forfeited"? Can one always conclude "forfeit" -> "escaper who got punished"? I recently played "pomelo" and I noticed that whenever he left games he immediately lost due to "forfeit", but then I also saw an unfinished game in his list which shouldn't be there if my theory was correct.

You are only flagged as an "escaper" if you are the first to leave a timed, rated game. The unfinished games in his profile would most likely have been games that were either free, untimed, or he was not the first to leave.