I HATE playing go online

[Fedya]

Cheating, widespread on KGS? What do you mean by that? I never noticed anything like that. Of course, I mostly play slow games with 1k-2d opponents, so maybe that's a thing that only other ranks or blitzers suffer. In example, I frequently notice kyu players complaining about escapers, but almost never see them at dan level.

I'm 7k KGS, and don't notice escapers either. One thing that does irritate me is when I get a player who accepts the game I put up, and then complains that I acutally use the time. Thankfully, that's a fairly rare occurrence.

[Bantari]

that's really what I was getting at. faceless nameless people treating everyone like trash, no forgiveness for a 5 year old laptop mouse that misclicks all the time, and really just horrible ui's also, with horrible sound. it's the year 2014 and the best go ui was one that nobody played on the xbox 360? Why does everyone still use a 1990's modem era chat prgram with a board attached called KGS? It's horribly programmed, unintuitive and ancient....

Funny, I heard similar words recently, spoken about playing face-to-face.
Like... What the heck is that, wood? STONES?? What, are we in 2000BC? Its 21st century, for Pete's sake, can't we find nothing better to play with than frigging wood and stones? What is next, sticks?? Can't anybody make a better set? Why do I have to play with such an old design, this game must really be crappy if nobody cares to create a better set. Wood and stones, really.... its so... caveman!

Needless to say, this person much prefers the 1990s interface to a 2000BC one.
From what you say, I assume you would as well.

It takes all kinds to make the universe.

Anyways, we often need to accept what we have, do without, or work to create something better. Bitching is usually counterproductive. This is what I said to that other guy.

But between us, I think bitching can sometimes help as well. I've seen it happen.

[Charlie]

I am not going to respond to the bile in the OP but I do actually want to respond to the topic.

I have a "no undo" policy when playing online. I find it less stressful to make a blanket, unambiguous policy than to entertain the debate over whether a missclick was genuine or not. Being well briefed in the nature of the Internet, I do not feel that this is out of place, online.

I bend this policy when I know my opponent in real life.

I have seldom experienced online opponents treating people badly. Occasionally, you meet a denizen of the Internet on the Internet but this is rare in the Go community - even on KGS. Resigning from a soon-to-be-won game with such a denizen is incredibly liberating - for sufferers of O.G.A., I imagine that it would be similar to an alcoholic decanting a bottle of whisky into the sink. (Off-topic: A sinful waste!)

I also have a theory about O.G.A., built from experience of all forms of online competition: Simply put, if we're down the pub, with pints in hand, and you beat me, I can take some pleasure in the fact that you won. You are a real person with every right to win, at least half of the time. I take no pleasure giving a victory to an online account (particularly an IGS salon account)

This is not unique to Go. I spent my late adolescence playing Starcraft at LAN parties and spent a good six months of my adulthood playing Starcraft II online. The experiences exhibited similar contrasts.

[jug]

It's perfectly fine to not wanting to play online. I know quite some, that never play or want to play online.
However, then you might find it difficult to find someone to play with ... but where's a will, there's a way (see what DrStraw advised where to look).

Escaping happens, and most go-servers have a possibility to use blacklists for such people, so you only have to play them once.

If you like certain UIs or not is a matter of taste. Nowadays there are quite a lot different go-servers, that you might try (KGS, IGS, Tygem, wbaduk, Funnode, DGS, OGS, or see sensei's library for more). From time to time you might wanna try out another server to see if there are more "friendly" people around, that fit your definition.

[deja]

I think O.G.A. has a more fundamental explanation, and one that has little to do with Go in and of itself.

Most people playing online likely play ranked games. Most face-to-face games are likely friendly and non-ranked. (I have no data to support either assertion.) Who we are as individuals in modern society is based largely on evaluative rankings of some form or another, both subtle and explicit. From birth to death, we are inundated with criteria that measure our worth through some type of ranking – developmentally, educationally, economically, racially, ethnically, sexually, and on and on. This causes anxiety for almost everyone, certainly for those who fail to adequately measure up.

For example, as a new grandfather, I've watched as my daughter is routinely informed of my grandson's developmental rankings (plural) and what she and her husband need to do to improve this or that measure. It's infuriating to watch, but…instilling fear and inadequacy on new parents via their children is quite a lucrative system for healthcare providers – solutions looking for problems.

Ranking is an inherent part of Go as it must be. But, given the suffocating, anxiety-producing measures by which we all live and breathe in today's world, which in no way, shape, or form are inherently necessary, it's no wonder that O.G.A. is a problem for many Go players.

[Shenoute]

Cheating, widespread on KGS? What do you mean by that? I never noticed anything like that. (...)
"Treating people like bots" is a familiar feeling from random opponents. Expecting anything more than "hi gg" and "thx" from them is too optimistic, (...)

Mostly it is about people disconnecting when the position gets complex. They do their reading offline and then come back with very accurate plays.

By "treating people like bots" I meant that even the "hi-thx" is inexistent. I don't especially like chatting when playing and rarely review games with my opponents so my expectations of that are very low. But when the other player doesn't even care to greet and thank for the game, that kind of bothers me.

Wbaduk has a system of pre-set sentences like "I hope this game will be fantastic" Artificial ? Sure, but I've virtually never run into someone that didn't greet and thanked me after the game.

[Firebrand]

Mostly it is about people disconnecting when the position gets complex. They do their reading offline and then come back with very accurate plays.

By "treating people like bots" I meant that even the "hi-thx" is inexistent.

Strange, I meet "unspeakables" even rarer than escapers. And escaping to read things through with unlimited time is a new idea to me entirely. Though if you know a person does this regularly, you can simply ignore their attempts to continue. They left the game first, so system will mark them as escapers. If this happens frequently enough, they'll start to lose games automatically the moment they escape. Also, pointing out the problem to admins may work. Despite their infamous leniency to escapers, using it to win games is another thing entirely.

[snorri]

Why does everyone still use a 1990's modem era chat prgram with a board attached called KGS? It's horribly programmed, unintuitive and ancient.

Because people who make complaints like that either can't make anything better or---if they try---can't attract and keep enough users to make it viable.

[EdLee]

Wbaduk has a system of pre-set sentences like "I hope this game will be fantastic" Artificial ?

Factoid:

When the Korean and Chinese developers were working on these pre-set buttons,
they would poll people, including pros, regarding what phrases they thought
would be most annoying to the recipient. (True story.)

Once you know about this, you can now go through some of the Korean or Chinese clients,
and appreciate the pre-set phrases in a new way.

For example, after you punish your opponent's ridiculous overplays, kill his 30-stone group,
and he resigns, you could click the pre-set button, "I learned a lot today!"

[happysocks]

Reading the discussion has made me wonder about this question. Never considered myself one who hates or even dislikes playing online (sure would prefer OTB play but IGS is a gorgeous server - even Panda Tetsuki is beautiful - and I've never had a problem with anyone there ever) yet in spite of a love for go I play very little. Where as if there were opportunity for OTB matches am sure that would with pleasure, play often. Hmmm. Should make peace with the current situation and hold hope for the future - was just other day thinking what a joy would be to have a go friend reasonably close to my level. Probably the chances of that happening are fair if can make the peace with net play.

[DrStraw]

I suspect the original poster is just troll. He has not replied to the thread and has not posted anything else to the forum.