Game finishing issues

[HKA]

We all should want folks to say "thank you" and "Hello" Such efforts are never meaningless.

I am not saying we should make anyone do anything. And we should strive not to be upset when they do not. Certainly the guy who refuses to play if he does not get a sufficent greeting within 4 moves is not adding to the civility of online go.

We should attempt, however "meaninglessly", to reach out because it takes two people to play this game.

There is a wonderful connection when you play someone at a club face to face. You make eye contact, you sort out the handicap, maybe choose for color, sometimes hand the bowls to one another. There is a palpable feeling of embarking on a task, a journey, together.

Clicking on a match request and having a game pop up does not create such a feeling. When I type "Hello and good luck" I am trying to create it, if nothing else, to remind myself that I am not alone with my rank graph, I am playing with...not against...with some other person. And I want his connection to be strong, his phone not to ring, his mouse not to slip. I want to win, but I want to win because I played better, not because of a lucky for me distraction.

It is not a meaningless gesture. I am reminded of "To Kill a Mockingbird" when the mob tries to lynch Atticus Finch's client. Tom Robinson's life was not saved that night by the lawyer's eloquence, bravery or rightness. He was not saved because the mob realized its racism and anger were wrong. He was saved because Scout saw a man she recognized and said "Hey Mr. Cunningham" That one, not even the most polite, "Hey" turned the mob into a bunch of individuals, none willing to do alone what they would gladly have done together.

So I make sure I turn the mob of the internet into an individual I am playing with. This is healthly for me, it prevents me from assuming that moves I think are mistakes simply because they pop up "stupidly" on the screen. There is a person on the other end of these moves, a thinking person who is not always stupider than me.

After the game is even more important. Again, face to face we work together, seperating the stones of our struggle and putting them away, along with much of the frustration of defeat. You are forced to chat, laugh at yourself, and discuss, however briefly, what you have just done together.

On KGS, done and it is gone. When I finish a game, win or lose I do not leave. My opponent usually types "thx" or nothing and leaves before I can type "Thank you very much for the game". When this happens, I find them and pm them "Thank you very much for the game" - not out of anger, but simply because I want to thank them.

Invariably, they are already playing another game. People often talk about how streaky they are online. I think this is a cause. They lose, get angry and try to erase the loss on their rank graph without any reflection on why they lost, no effort to regain some composure, they simply run off to make the same mistakes again.

We are better go players when we acknowledge each other, learn from each other, and take the time to value and digest our efforts together.

If online go is to be the future, and it will certainly be a great part of the future, I want it to be an online community of folks playing together, not alone with only a rank graph for company. "Hi" and "thx" are the first, albeit baby, steps in building that community. If 96% of them are meaningless to others, none are meaningless to ourselves.

And if 1% means a new player keeps coming to KGS because it does not seem a rude place, and 3% lead to a chat that could start a friendship - look at your game lists - that can really add up.

[Kirby]

@HKA:
The ideal that I feel from your post certainly seems admirable to me. I think that connecting with people on the Internet is a great thing.

The only thing that I'm a bit skeptical of is the degree to which "Hi" and "thx" build a community. They are just words, after all, and without feeling behind them, I do not see how they do much to add toward any sort of connection - especially when they become a habit, just because of what is deemed as "etiquette" on a go server. In other words, if everyone always says, "Hi" or "thx", it does not seem much different to me than the case where nobody speaks at all.

I also desire the communal connection that I feel from what you describe, but I feel that it should start with sincerity rather than some forced or assumed etiquette.

[SpongeBob]

WMS: If my opponent starts a review then leaves, wouldn't it be better if control reverts to me?

Well, it's not your review. You can always open your own if you want one. In some cases it would make sense, but what if your opponent went through and marked out his variations, then left intending to finish reviewing the game later. Then he comes back and finds his review is filled with *YOUR* variations, and he's lost track of what he was thinking about. See the point?

So probably the right thing would be to make it easier for you to start your own review.

Nope, I do not see the point. I am pretty sure that the use case you are describing is very rare. More than 95% of the time, the opponent just leaves the game without bothering to give back control.
And even if what you say is true, he wants to continue his review later, then he can save it at least to local disk and I guess also to the database and continue from there.

I often experienced this when a friend of mine watched my game and after the opponent left, I wanted to show something to my friend, or he wanted to show something to me - no chance, I have to direct him to another instance of the game. Sure, it is possible, but given the typical situation, I definitely agree that this would better be changed.

[Kirby]

...

If it was made "easier for you to start your own review", it seems that the issue would be resolved.

[hyperpape]

WMS: If my opponent starts a review then leaves, wouldn't it be better if control reverts to me?

Well, it's not your review. You can always open your own if you want one. In some cases it would make sense, but what if your opponent went through and marked out his variations, then left intending to finish reviewing the game later. Then he comes back and finds his review is filled with *YOUR* variations, and he's lost track of what he was thinking about. See the point?

So probably the right thing would be to make it easier for you to start your own review.

I didn't think of that, and I'm not clear on exactly how the server handles reviews. Does this mean that if I review something, then close the window or disconnect (for whatever reason), my opponent closes the window, without hitting the save button in the dialogue, I'll then be able to access my review later? How?

[Mivo]

Cultural differences mean a lot here I think, and ways of saying hello, thanks, and so on vary a lot between them, and also between people in the same culture

When I first started to exchange "mails" with native English speakers, especially Americans (early 90s, CompuServe), I was fairly put off by the "Name," beginning in letters and notes. No "Hello Name," or "Dear Name", just "Name,". You just don't do that in German, and if you did, it would signal aggression or annoyance with the receiver. After I noticed this a few times, I asked about it (I made sure the person I asked didn't have issues with me!) and learned that it was pretty much custom, not at all intended to offend, and certainly not an expression of negative feelings. Even after I learned this, it still seemed "wrong".

Anyway, as for online matches, I wish my opponent an enjoyable game and thank them at the end, often with a brief, positive comment ("Really well played in the upper right!"). That said, I don't mind if people are quiet, though when someone loses and just leaves wordlessly, it feels a little off. But that's preference and if someone doesn't want to type something, then I respect that.

[Dusk Eagle]

Mivo,

(sorry, couldn't resist). Anyway, that's an interesting anecdote, and it really shows to me how what is perfectly normal for one set of people can be incredibly rude for another.

[hyperpape]

I also desire the communal connection that I feel from what you describe, but I feel that it should start with sincerity rather than some forced or assumed etiquette.

Then be sincere.

Seriously, when I say "hi, how are you doing" to the people I encounter in daily life, what I express is something like "I'm here, I'll pay attention to you if you want to talk." Or perhaps just "I won't blow you off completely if you start talking to me", since sometimes, I really am in a hurry to get back to work. Most of those conversations go nowhere, because no one has anything to say, but it's not wasted because sometimes they do go somewhere.

I'm not naturally good at talking to people without a specific topic, or context (I'm definitely this guy: http://xkcd.com/222/). Pleasantries are something I only get in a pretty intellectualized way. But I think it's a really bad habit to go from "this doesn't come naturally to me" to "this is meaningless." Is HKA an unthinking sheep, incapable of meaningful connections with other people just because he thinks it's important to routinely greet his go opponents? Do the folks who say pleasantries are meaningless have so much deeper connections to the people around them?

[Kirby]

Etiquette is often superior to sincerity. It makes it possible for us to interact in a frictionless way even with those we despise and abhor.

What's wrong with friction?

[Kirby]

...
Is HKA an unthinking sheep, incapable of meaningful connections with other people just because he thinks it's important to routinely greet his go opponents?

I doubt it. I think greeting opponents is fine. I just don't think that it's the greeting itself that creates a meaningful connection. I think it's what's behind the greeting.

...
Do the folks who say pleasantries are meaningless have so much deeper connections to the people around them?

Not necessarily. I just don't think that a greeting, in itself, is related to a deeper connection. Whether I have a deep connection or not does not seem to have a correlation to whether I hit the keys "t", "h", and "x" on my keyboard.

...

Pleasantries are something I only get in a pretty intellectualized way. But I think it's a really bad habit to go from "this doesn't come naturally to me" to "this is meaningless."

Perhaps I have just been around some sneaky people - and I don't appreciate hidden motives. I would rather someone be rude to me but honest and open, than someone be polite with a secret agenda. That said, of course I don't believe that greeting your opponent means you have a secret agenda. I just don't see a real relationship between a socially standard greeting and someone's true feelings.

If someone says, "Hi, have a good game", then all the more power to them. But typing this text, in itself, does not seem to have much meaning if it is merely habit.


tl/dr: When such a greeting becomes so routine that there is no feeling behind it, I do not see much value in it. That's because it's the feeling which is the source of sincerity.

[Bantari]

This is not my impression.
Half of the time when people say 'hi' or 'bye' or 'gg' or 'thx' or whatever, I have the feeling that this is purely automatic, and really meaningless. A batch file could have been used instead and convey the same meaning.

Try making the comparison to real life. Is it meaningless when your wife or co-worker says "good morning"? Would you rather people not say "have a nice day"? These mindless utterings are also automatic and in the case of sales-people, even forced, but they have an effect on you and it's usually a positive one. Imagine that instead of saying "hi" and "thanks", people would say "kiss my a**" and "get lost." I prefer nice, and those who don't want to be nice can kiss my a**.


BTW @Joaz

noooO00b! :p Lolz

I hear you, and I do not have a clear answer here.
My impression is that on-line faceless games are different from face-to-face interaction.
I am not really sure why, but this is how I feel. There is so much more to face-to-face stuff... tone of voice, body language, and so on... to be nice to somebody takes an effort, since you can say the same words and stiff be offensive or polite... To be polite in 'real life' means more to me. I understand that the same reasoning can be applied, people can say 'thanks' automatically, but it is usually very easy to tell - and regarded appropriately.

Typing 'hi' and 'thx' is meaningless to me, and one reason for that is that this stuff can be typed in without any effort, and you still not sure if it is meaningful or not, sarcastic or not, or whatever.

As I said - a parallel for me in on-line interaction would be typing a whole sentence rather than some silly abbreviation like 'gg'. If you can't be bothered to type in 'have a good game' then how meaningful is the 'gg' that you type? And how should it show any respect for the opponent and for the game?

Well, but this is just me, and I understand that various people have various ways.
If all this 'thx' and 'gg' make you happy, I will keep typing it before/after games. Enjoy.

[hyperpape]

Dang, I thought I had written a P.S. that said that the last paragraph was more of something I'd wanted to say all thread, rather than something directed at you in particular, Kirby. Not that I thought you shouldn't respond, but I wasn't intending to call you out.

[Kirby]

Dang, I thought I had written a P.S. that said that the last paragraph was more of something I'd wanted to say all thread, rather than something directed at you in particular, Kirby. Not that I thought you shouldn't respond, but I wasn't intending to call you out.

Ah, man. I think I just get off on arguing too much. It's pretty fun.

Thanks, though.

[entropi]

Unbelievable, we are discussing whether greeting people is meaningful or not.

Politess, by definition, is a set of protocols. Greeting does not have to be sincere. As a matter of fact, it has nothing to do with sincerity.

"Good morning" is not to be taken literally, i.e. it does not mean "I wish your morning passes well". It can (but does not have to) mean "I am here, I saw you, if you wish we can start a conversation, etc".

[Mivo]

"Good morning" is not to be taken literally, i.e. it does not mean "I wish your morning passes well". But it can mean "I am here, I saw you, if you wish we can start a conversation, etc".

Isn't this dependent on the person? When I say "Good morning.", I do mean precisely what you said it doesn't mean: "I wish you a good morning." When I mean "Hey, I'm here, etc.", then I just say "Hello!". (A friend got me out of the habit of saying "Hey!", because she'd always respond: "Hay is for horses."