WBaduk Test Room
Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:29 am
Prompted by the thread on GoChild becoming a pay-for site, I've been trying out the WBaduk's test room. It is quite a mixed bag. First of all, I like the problems. There is a wide variety of problems sorted into categories, including haengma and Even in the 19-25k sets, the problems are challenging, sometimes the best move being seki or ko. The interface however is a disaster. It is designed to only work with IE or GoogleChromePlus, but is incredibly buggy with either browser. I regularly encountered: "invalid argument," access violation," and other such errors. When you close the window of one problem set in order to open another, you are greeted with : wrong log-in information, please log in again before continuing. Logging out and in however doesn't always solve the problem. There were plenty more bugs I encountered in these 2 hours of use, but I won't bother listing them.
Aside from this error minefield, there are a number of bothersome design issues. Not in look and feel, but rather conceptual. As far as I can tell, there are two ways to do problems: You can take the total test (no idea how many problems it includes) and eventually categorized results will be shown (which is a concept I like), or you can do problems sorted by level and your results for each level will be shown. You can clear the results of the level tests, but not of the total tests.
When taking the total test you are presented with seemingly random problems some of which are multiple choice and others in which you have to play one or more stones (both of which have enough bugs to clog a flyswatter). Above the answer button, which you click when you've decided, is written: "Short answer, Explanation about the right answer." There are however no explanations. There is also no way to go back to a previous problem and explore it. If you clicked the wrong answer, you won't be shown the right one, which is ok for some people, I guess. You do have the opportunity to re-do the problems you got wrong but ... hm, something itches.
In the section on problems by level, again, there seems to be no way to find a specific problem again - I had a question about problem 406 for example, but since I didn't make a screenshot, I can't ask it.
I must say again that I like the problems, and the idea of timed tests is also nice (you have 30 seconds for each, but the timer doesn't time out). Currently, they are conducting a survey on the site, presumbably to find out which services they can charge westerners for. At the end of the survey, you are asked to type in general comments, but of course you can't. Paying for GoChild is not looking so bad.
Aside from this error minefield, there are a number of bothersome design issues. Not in look and feel, but rather conceptual. As far as I can tell, there are two ways to do problems: You can take the total test (no idea how many problems it includes) and eventually categorized results will be shown (which is a concept I like), or you can do problems sorted by level and your results for each level will be shown. You can clear the results of the level tests, but not of the total tests.
When taking the total test you are presented with seemingly random problems some of which are multiple choice and others in which you have to play one or more stones (both of which have enough bugs to clog a flyswatter). Above the answer button, which you click when you've decided, is written: "Short answer, Explanation about the right answer." There are however no explanations. There is also no way to go back to a previous problem and explore it. If you clicked the wrong answer, you won't be shown the right one, which is ok for some people, I guess. You do have the opportunity to re-do the problems you got wrong but ... hm, something itches.
In the section on problems by level, again, there seems to be no way to find a specific problem again - I had a question about problem 406 for example, but since I didn't make a screenshot, I can't ask it.
I must say again that I like the problems, and the idea of timed tests is also nice (you have 30 seconds for each, but the timer doesn't time out). Currently, they are conducting a survey on the site, presumbably to find out which services they can charge westerners for. At the end of the survey, you are asked to type in general comments, but of course you can't. Paying for GoChild is not looking so bad.
