All I know is that i been playing more in OGS than I used to. KGS doesn't attract me anymore. I find good games in OGS, fast and lots of tournaments. I hope it keeps getting bigger and improving... is an excellent go server.

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si no puedes triunfar, muere gloriosamente

Accidental? ACCIDENTAL?!?!?!
Are you trying to say that this one post of mine was THE ONE SINGLE POST YOU DID NOT LIKE out of the thousands you read???
And all this time I though you used the LIKE button to mark posts you already scanned...

I am crushed, heh...
I want to say our friendship is over, but you are so cuddly... I still like you.


No worries, no tricks needed. As I said - I check out OGS (and other servers) periodically, and when one appears which suits my needs, I will certainly go there often. So in this sense, only the developers have the power to "lure me" to OGS - and this is by doing a good enough job and providing the options I want.

And as for the technical issue we speak of - having to log-in to be able to see the games as a list - it is a big turn-off for me. It means that the usability of the server for guests is severely limited. One always expects some limitations for guests - guests cannot have ranks, for example, which is understandable and pretty much unavoidable - but in case of OGS the issue is not functionality or ranking but interface, which goes a step further than necessary. I wonder if this is by design or for other reasons.

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- Bantari
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Technically there is no reason to log in to have preferences set, they can be (if the user gives the chance) set as a cookie. Or as data in localStorage in JavaScript.

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

Ha - that was too easy for me ... I'm influenced by all these web portals (hotel and flight reservation sites etc.) where pressing the back button of the browser can lead to confusion on the server-side application. At least you get something like a checkbox asking if you want to resubmit the content of the previous form etc. In contrast on OGS it simply works...



This maybe a point. However it seems that the login state on OGS is saved in a cookie - at least I'm always automatically logged in when I visit the site. Also the sign-up procedure on OGS is the easiest and fastest one I encountered so far - just type once a nickname and a password and that's it (i. e. no need to supply an email address, open an email with a confirmation link etc.)! However I agree with you that OGS is good for playing quick games for oneself rather than watching high-dan games. For the latter I would still prefer e.g. IGS.

edit: missing 'quote' tag

From a programmer point of view, forcing authentication simplifies the development of the user interface: it's one less actor (guest) that you need to worry about, so no hiding of particular buttons that are unavailable, no need to double test everything logged in and as a guest, etc. It's a trade-off, as always.

Requiring a user account for preferences is another trade-off. Either you use cookies/local storage to keep your settings, or you keep them in the server. If you keep them in the server, then you have the same settings if you log in using a different machine/browser, which is nice if you use multiple computers. Also, people that share a computer don't need to share preferences anymore. On the other hand, you might actually want different settings by machine, especially if one of them is a smartphone..

The new design took away a lot of the things I acctually enjoyed from OGS, and OGS is the place I get most games played. (I should get back onto KGS I guess)

The new design on the start page annoys me to no end, as I often log out from homepages. This extra click to login gets a bit to annoying.

Also the change with a hidden menu to start with made it harder for me to create games, there is a button there but I for some reason missed it was there. Probably because I tend to ignore things on screen that is not where I usally do something.

Also in the 18-30k range where I am , the ranking of course seems rather random.

I know.
But... what is the purpose here? Make it easy for the programmer, or make it easy for the user?

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- Bantari
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Technically, cookies expire, and sometimes are cleared, and generally their persistence depends on too many conditions, some beyond the user's control. So its not a good long-term solution. Just saying... Same with javascript storage.

But yes, some mechanics to remember the settings, even a cookie which needs to be reset periodically, would be nice.

Still, no biggie either way.

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- Bantari
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Cookies are annoying for settings when you do your personal browsing at work in incognitio mode, (just to not fill up the autosuggestion with non work urls mostly. It is not like the admins can't read our access logs anyway)

Well, we are talking about preferences without logging in. Servers can't read minds, so it's either cookies, localStorage or just register. If none of these options is acceptable, then we could all plug a cable on a unicorn's b*** and play over his back...

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

I realised that now, I was a bit to much morning there and not reading through, my appoligies.

(Also in theory creating unique Machine IDs based on browser footprint is on the verge of beeing a posiblity)

No problem, coffee first, coffee always

Browser footprint is actually not that unique depending on niche (you'll get a lot of Mac Air 13" latest-Chrome for a lot of users...)

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

Not really, not about preferences without logging in. Just options without logging in, thats all.
There is no reason not to give an option to display the list of games in whatever form is useful right there on the page. Just like you can set the number of games per page. I understand that the preferred setting will not be remembered without some kind of persistent storage (cookie, db, whatever) - but I dislike the fact that only logged-in players have such option. As I said - there is no reason for that that I can see... at least - no technical reason. And it has absolutely nothing to do with reading minds, or even cookies and other pastry.

Still, really, no biggie. Especially with only so few games being active at any one time.
Might become an issue when more people start playing real-time games, though.

Was very minor irritant, not sure why it gathers so many posts.

A bigger issue for me is an apparent lack of the functionality to display all active games, real-time or not, to make the server more kibitz-friendly.

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- Bantari
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Acctually we are starting to get so much unique data send with HTTP request and shared by browsers this is not exactly true, although still heavily in development. That is about all I can say about this for quite a while.

Oh for pity's sake! It is quite possible to code for both scenarios: authenticated users can have their server-side preferences and options and guests, without accounts, can have their preferences and options stored on the client in whatever way you choose (cookies) The extra work is minimal if your project is structured in any sensible way and you have an iota of programming ability.

I use OGS all the time for correspondence games and I have been playing on the ladders since about 2008 - long before the current developers were involved, long before "Nova" and the unannounced coup.

I think that the rating system is soft, today, since I am about 8 kyu on it. At my current KGS rank, I used to be 12 kyu on the old OGS! (My Go strength has stagnated since I moved to England.)

I think the problem with OGS, today, is that the focus is too heavily biased towards new players, not those of us who have been around for a while. The most blatant sign of this is the home page - the default use-case is to sign up for a new account yet the developers continually ignore the complaints by existing users claiming that it is annoying to have to click some white text that doesn't look at all like a button to achieve a log-in screen that doesn't support browser-based password storage.

Similarly, the focus across the site is on discovery of all the energetic activity going on at present. For example, consider the new "Play" screen and the pop-up tournament announcements. Both of these bombard you with information about all the completely irrelevant open games you are not allowed to join and tournaments you don't have time to participate in. They do achieve a sense of liveliness and activity so I am sure that they must be a good thing for people discovering the game. Unfortunately, they are completely useless to us existing players who know what we want and cannot use those features to find it because there are no preferences or options or filters.

Every time I log on to OGS thinking I'll go find a real-time game, knowing that I want a ranked, 19x19 game with proper handicap and moderate time settings, I browse to the "Play" page, am confronted with a dozen grey blocks and an obtuse list of things that aren't applicable to me, observe that there are no options or filters and leave to go play on IGS or KGS, both of which give me what I want in one button press: Automatch. (glGo even remembers my password, the horror!)

(P.S.: You can use Zulu to run KGS: It's also a JRE and it distributed as a ZIP file that doesn't include ad-ware like the Ask Toolbar.)

CGoban can also remember your password; it's an option you can enable or disable.

I'm not crazy about the home screen, but on the other hand, I hardly ever see it. OGS does retain logon sessions, across browser restarts. So in that sense, it's very friendly to existing users.

The sessions do timeout of course though so eventually you need to figure out a rather odd interface to get back to logged in.

The other problem being you might not even know you're logged out until you try to chat.

I get logged out regularly - as in every other day - for no reason. It also happens at the most annoying times. Quite often, I will open a board without issue and be punted to the obtuse login screen when I try to place a stone. This is detrimental to the experience of actually playing Go and this is exacerbated by the fact that you have to manually enter your credentials because the form is incompatible with browser password storage.

It turns what should be a single click into a chore. I LIKE playing Go. I do not like battling with poor web design.

Actually, speaking user preferences, it would be great if they didn't store them and other state in per-browser storage.

I use OGS from four different devices, and turning off the sound on each of them and so on (per server upgrade!) was a drag. Not to mention still getting four notifications for the same message, even though I had read it earlier! Multiply by number of PMs received and it's frustrating after a while.

That said I think each OGS update the current developers have made has been good, and noticeably improved my experience. They're on the right track.

(I agree with the general drift here about the forum... the OGS forum has some great posts and threads, but I don't use it much - the interface is a bit too clever for me, and I'd love it to come to L19.)

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Confucius in the Analects says "even playing go is better than eating chips in front of tv all day." -- kivi