Is Gothic authorized to give refunds on our memberships?

And I realize that you have asked to have this done privately but it's time that things be said that should have been said a long time ago. I recognize that many of you have built up a community here which is an investment of your time and energy. I respect that. I cannot however respect this insipid cheerleading for a site that, in all fairness, is average. True, the scope of the games here is breathtaking and Fencer does play a more visible role in running this site than the owners of IYT or GoldToken (though I only have a passing knowledge of GT). That is commendable. I put my money where my mouth was and paid for a membership to a site that is really just limping along. I tried to encourage people to become members but honestly, how can I recommend a site that I myself am becoming dissappointed in? In short, this site is poorly managed by Fencer as a system administrator and as a benevolent owner. Between the bickering that he chooses to ignore by action if not by words and the ridiculous hardware issues I can no longer play here. However irrationally, I am angry at Fencer for his apparent inability to see that his creation is tarnishing and falling apart before him. What Fencer does not understand is that investment in time or money creates a certain expectation and when that expectation is dashed, it creates feelings of resentment and anger. This fiasco was completely avoidable and is avoided every day by companies with less money than Fencer has. I have been a system administrator for 8 years now, I am also a web programmer, I have made large enterprise web applications. I know what I am talking about when I say that money is not the issue at BrainKing, the underlying infrastructure and technology is. Coupled with Fencer's apparent innocence in providing customer service that is firm AND fair and really I don't see the value in being aggravated by playing here. I said I was angry, in fact, I'm also sad. I am a good player. Not the best but I am good. And I play some of the best here. But I won't be playing them any longer unless we can find some other mutually beneficial site to p(l)ay at.

I earnestly wish you all the luck in the world, Fencer. If anyone deserves to have his creation bear fruit and grow, you do. You've put a lot of time into this site and you truly care for it, which is rare. However, the future of BrainKing will not have me in it.

Greg

This discussion has veered into a very deep philosophical discussion on the nature of cheating the importance of rules. Let me be clear. Whether or not there is a glitch in the software, it is cheating by any definition to take advantage of a mistake. Period. There are no ways aroudn it unless you cheat and you require justification. There is now way in which you can call a game backgammon and not play both die every turn. That is the fundamental nature of backgammon. I defy anyone to find such a rule for backgammon anywhere that it is played seriously. As such, whether it is possible to lpay without using both die IS COMPLETELY BESIDE THE POINT. It's possible to shoot each other, that doesn't mean that isn't illegal. Possibility is never a justification for doing the wrong thing. I challenge every player on the site to never use a bug to their advantage. It not only tarnishes your reputation but it makes you an awful player because you have not learned to play backgammon and as such makes you worse than someone trying hard to do the right thing even though they may be tempted to cheat.

In many many cultures, to resign before the end of a game shows true sportsmanship. The idea is that one recognizes their weakness honestly and honors his opponent by showing that they have been beaten soundly with no hope of winning. Resignation is often seen as a recognition of superior skill. In this age of multi-culturalism, we must think first before we qualify our opponents' actions.

Done! thanks!

how do I do that? Do I just send PayPal to your email address here? Or do I go through swreg? A little instruction and I will send it toute suite.

I signed up to be a member but I meant to be a Rook not a Knight. Can I just send the difference and become a Rook since I havent' been confirmed yet anyway?

Can we get some number of actual users and the frequency of site access by users? This is not a hard thing to do since there is a last action value for each payer. That woudl give us some idea of what we are talkgin abotu in terms of necessary resources.

Also, Have Fencer and Liqui considered open-sourcing their code so that some of us who are programmers by trade could help out when we have time?

Well, I would just like to point out that I am in the top 20 of three games and the top 30 of another. DmitriKing is the top rated player in four games. It's not that I haven't been able to do well here but I think it is a difficult system to sustain competition if no one can figure out its consequences.

I have been playing on this site for about a couple of months or so now and I really do honestly appreciate the opportunity to play at somewhere other than IYT mainly due to the obvious attention to customer service that is exhibited among all the people on this site not just the official CS reps. Why have I not gotten a membership? Three interrelated reasons. 1) The unbelievable number of games that people can get involved with means that often the games with the top level people in a game's rankings take forever because they have so many games that are often difficult for them to work through in a day. I agree that part of it is my fault because I accepted games from them with 45 day move windows (which I have stopped doing) but I have seen some people with over 400 games. I think allowing that is detrimental to the site and 2) its performance. It is my uninformed opinion that the sit's performance is negatively affected by probably 5% of players due to these high number of games. Now, I am not a Java programmer but I am a web developer and I knwo that with hobby sites that is always the case, a core few usually use the majority of the resources on a site. In this case, I think it is extremely lopsided and does more for frustrating the rest of us than any server hardware. 3) The ranking system is so esoteric as to be indiscernable from magical incantation. ;-) I have no idea from game to game where I am going to come out in the rankings. sometimes playing peoepl higher than me does not affect my rating at all, sometimes I beat people lower than me and I gain huge advances in my ranking. If I don't understand how the ranking qworks thn I dont' knwo what I need to do to get ahead. It makes it very frustrating to compete when I dont' knwo hwo I get ranked, I can;t play fast enough to get ranked higher and I can't get on to get ranked at all. I will keep playing here because I like the people and I hate IYT just that much. I coudl suffer the performance issues and get amembership if I could be assured that the other two issues were resolved to everyone's benefit, not just mine. Thanks for letting me speak my peace. And, of course, I would love to help anyway I can. Have you considered offloading some of the more static or non-game stuff to another less server intensive language liek PHP or Perl?