Andersp: Bad videos are the videos i dont want my kids to watch,

So, Fencer is suppose to know what you find appropriate for you kids? How about my kids? How's Fencer supposed to know what I find appropriate for kids to watch? And for the other millions of parents out there? There's no universal rule of what is considered 'bad'. In the USA, it's consider 'bad' (illegal even) to have a beer a week before your 21st birthday, and if a nipple is show for a fraction of a second on TV all hell breaks lose. In many countries in Europe, it's considered bad to drive a car if you're 16, or for everyone to be able to buy a gun.

If you think your kids should not have the smallest chance to be exposed to certain materials you find questionable, don't let them lose on the internet without you watching over their shoulders.

Andersp: Could you define "bad videos"?

Eriisa: Simple. autopass only moves the game back to you if your opponent has actually found the setting buried between all the settings, knows what it does, and then turns it on. (The default is off).

Buz's request means "autopass on, always". Far more useful. Automove would even be better (that is, the system will move for you if there's no decision for you to make - incredibly useful for Ludo, Anti-chess and most checkers variants).

I don't think we'll get it - but we can dream, can't we?

If the border has a class name (different names for different games), people can change is to whatever colour they want with style sheets. ;-)

Gabriel Almeida: Nooooooo. Then you will get people calling other people names because their moves aren't granted to be taken back.

Fencer: Well, a candlelight dinner in a good restaurant, or the opera would be considered.

But as for things here, I can't think of any. I've never seen the point of fellowships (as far as I understand them, the only thing they allow you to do you cannot do otherwise on Brainking is team tournaments - but I don't fancy playing them). As for tournaments and games, if I want to play more tournaments or games, I do know how the 'Tournaments', 'Waiting games' and 'New game' pages work. No need to invite me.

Thanks Fencer for the setting to turn of fellowship invitations. While that code is still fresh in your memory, could you also add a "don't invite me for tournaments" setting? ;-)

Family Man: It says that 9.34% of the registered users that use English as their default language where active in the last 7 days. And 11.64% of the user that use French as their default language, etc.

coan.net: Last 7 days, as is shown by default on the new languages page.

I couldn't resist making a list of how many active users there are as percentage of the registered users, broken down by language.

         Danish: 77.78%
        Finnish: 53.85%
      Norwegian: 53.33%
      Bulgarian: 37.50%
         German: 19.12%
         Slovak: 17.28%
      Esperanto: 16.67%
        Swedish: 15.03%
         French: 11.64%
          Dutch: 11.04%
          Czech: 10.36%
        Russian:  9.68%
        Italian:  9.66%
        English:  9.34%
        Spanish:  8.19%
       Estonian:  6.73%
     Portuguese:  5.87%
        Chinese:  4.23%
       Romanian:  3.98%
        Turkish:  3.26%
          Total:  8.62%

Well, we don't need them (if they were needed, Brainking wouldn't be as it is right now), but IMO, they could be a nice addition.

To answer the question at the end, IMO, we don't need it. There are already a gazillion blogging and message board sites out there that anyone can join - and Usenet has been there for over 25 years as well. I see little use for "reusing the Brainking discussion board system to build a stand alone site". It will be a like a grain of sand in a desert. Now if Brainkings discussion board system has some unique features there might be a point - but it doesn't (and, being a discussion board system for a site that's mostly a game site - it doesn't need them).

Now, for those who might say, "but it will be closely tied to Brainking" - I say, read Fencers post again. The entire point is to have it *not* closely tied to Brainking, to avoid any possible negative feedback. If it would be closely tied to Brainking, there wouldn't be a point to separate if from Brainking.

Did I miss an announcement of game time suspended? One of my opponents is now more than 4 hours past his deadline of moving, and the game is still listed with a negative amount of time to the deadline, instead of him getting 24hours added, and a vacation day subtracted.

naughtypawn: Black has a move. It's *recycle* chess, so black can take its own pieces.

On Friday the 13th of October 2006, the tournament friday 13th will it be lucky or unlucky for you? started.

Today, Friday the 13th of April 2007, I won the Spider Line4 section of that tournament.

Now let me finish drawing my pentagrams....

Oceans Apart: I would play Ludo again if 1) there was autopass for Ludo, and 2) my opponent wouldn't have to agree on autopass.

Since 2) is likely not going to happen, I don't really care whether Ludo gets autopass or not.

Someone (Fencer?) said you couldn't get rid of the light bulb on the front page. You can, however. If you aren't interested in the deal, add the following to your style sheet:

    img.to-right  { visibility: hidden }

I can't garantee IMG elements of the class 'to-right' aren't used elsewhere though.

I've noticed that on various chess games (at least corner chess, fortress chess, dice chess and maharadjah chess) the border is white, while the game is played on a white background. Other chess variants do have the boundary in a non-white colour.

Now you cannot see you're playing a different game than normal chess by just glancing at the border.

I also note that he colour of the border isn't controlled by a style sheet.

TarantinoFan: More people make the same mistake.

Would it be possible to add a setting where one can enter a URL for a custom stylesheet - and if this setting is set, it's treated as another style to switch to? (Looking at the logic of styleswitcher-1.js this doesn't seem like a major change). This would make developing alternative styles much easier.

For instance, if I were to set the setting to 'http://www.abigail.be/style/brainking.css', I could work locally to develop a different style and if done, present it to Fencer as one of the user developped styles.

Fencer: Much better. Thanks.

I must say, I find the boards with the new style sheets harder to use than the old way. Can we at least have a different background for messages and the surrounding area? Just a tiny border doesn't do it.

And textboxes should look like textboxes (which are traditionally "lowered"). Now it's just a white rectangle in a sea of white among other white rectangles in the same white sea.

alanback: Actually, the US has never switched to DST on the last Sunday of March. From 1987 to 2006, the US switched to DST on the first Sunday of April; from 1966 to 1986, the switch happened on the last Sunday of April (with the exception of 1974 and 1975 when the US switched in January and February).

So even under the old rules, there would still have been a week where just one side of the pond would be on DST.

Having said that, it's a pity that all you can choose from for a timezone is a fixed offset of GMT (although if it would really be a fixed offset of GMT, everyone would have to switch their timezone twice a year as GMT is a fixed timezone without DST). There are publicly available databases with rules for all timezones (the Olson database for instance). But that would lead to a huge drop down list, and many people would get confused and start complaining.

gogul: Sorry, but I don't from your example that it follows that switching quickly between languages is important for everyone.

I rather have the move button there - that's important functionality for everyone.

Hieronymus: But having the flags on the top right is such a waste of screen real estate, and is only useful for a handful of people (the translators), and even then I doubt they switch between all of them.

I rather not have items on the top of the page that are either useful to only a very few number of people (the flags), or contain things I already know (for instance, the current date and the time).

Interestingly enough, while most fonts are larger if I choose the 'nofonts' style, the style switcher is significantly smaller. The 'nofonts' style makes it extra, extra small, which turns out to be quite a lot smaller than the 10pt. fixed setting for the simple style. Simple style ranges from 10 to 15pts, nofonts uses: xx-small, small, smaller, larger, and fixed sizes 10px and 11px (bug?).

I prefer the nofonts, although I wouldn't mind seeing 'xx-small' go.

Fencer: Yeah, that's what I wonder as well. I also have the gamelist page bookmarked. That's the page I most often use. As long as I don't restart the browser, it brings me directly to the page I need. But after a browser restart the same page is in guest mode yet it knows my username and password. (And I have configured my browser to not remember the password for brainking.com).

I agree with rabbitoid, what's the point of bookmarking http://brainking.com when that's most of the time not what you want, and the gamelist page is what you want?

Luke Skywalker: Ah, thanks, it appears that that trick works.

Fencer: I've a simple rule on all game sites I play: I never accept invitations. If I want to play a particular game with particular time settings, I join a tournament according that suits my tastes, or pick one from the waiting games page. I might even create my own tournament or post something on the waiting games page. I certainly don't want to explain to people why I reject their invitations, so currently whenever I get invited, I put the person inviting me on my blocked users list, then decline the invitation.

I don't invite random strangers to play - and I appreciate it not to be invited either.

Fencer: Play tournaments? Reply to ads on the Waiting games page? Post ads on the waiting games page?

I don't understand your reply. Are you saying it's OK to ignore invites for 101 out of 102 games, but not to ignore them for 102? If that's so, could you tell us in which games the least invites happen, so I can leave that game enabled?

How does one prevent oneself from getting invites? I can go to the game filter settings, and disable all games to receive invites for, but one. If I deselect them all, it just comes back with whatever was the previous setting. So the best I can do is disable all games, except for one. Is this a bug? Am I doing something wrong?

krybulon: How would you play Sudoku against an opponent on a turn based site? How do you determine a winner?

It's nice that paid members can turn off banner ads. But I find it very annoying that when I go to brainking.info I get a screen sized popup. :(

Fencer: Less games without scrolling downwards.

As for the amount of pixels, I don't have my browser set to full screen - that's way too annoying.

I've looked at the new page. All the information is there, at about the same place. I guess lots of people like the castle theme, but I'm not at all big on fluff. I do notice that NewGameList shows less games of the "games where it is my turn" list (which for me is by far the most important information on the page). And it requires horizontal scrolling where the current interface doesn't. That despite the new page using a smaller font (border line small for my taste).

I'd say that for looks, NewGameList wins. For usability, the current page wins.

Gordon Shumway: It's the number of draws.

If I go to the tournaments page, the first 9 tournaments are way past their sign-up deadline; the first tournament is even 300 days past the sign up deadline. They all seem to be tournaments that require a Brains entry fee. Is this a bug? Or do tournaments with entry fees never get deleted?

Jason: Three Men Morris

MadMonkey: In Nine Men's Morris you also lose if you cannot make a move.

BTW, I think that Nine Men's Morris would make a nice addition to BrainKing. It's an old game with proven playability, with simple rules (making it easier to program than say, chess), and it has several variants (with three, six and twelve men; Wikipedia even mentions variants with 5, 7 and 11 men).

MadMonkey: Hey, if you'd get a draw whenever you did hard work, I would never lose a game!

Beside Backgammon, you also have Ludo with passes. And Go where the player can decide himself whether he passes or not.

MadMonkey: Losing when you have no legal move available is quite normal for Checkers variants. In fact, you lose in Checkers itself as well if you cannot move. You also lose in Anti-Chess, Chinese Chess, Espionage, and Tablut if you have no legal move available. In the gammon variants, you pass. In Ataxx, a stalemate isn't always draw - a stalemate ends the game and the one with the most points wins. It's only a draw if both sides have the same number of points.

This is a good site. Lots of games, lots of development. I enjoyed playing here. But I can't stand moderators who delete posts they don't agree with. I've resigned all my games and deleted the tournaments I created.

I'll be playing elsewhere.

BIG BAD WOLF: And to be more specific, the ratings are hidden only from the ranking lists. The still count for the "best average BKR" and "highest BKR sum" lists. And you can still see someones "hidden" rating on their profile page.

Doerdich: Just hours before you posted it, two new chess games have been added to the site - bringing the total of chess variations to 25.

WhisperzQ: That depends on the results. In an ELO system, the true rating of someone how has won all games can't be determined - any rating will be an estimate that's too low. Ratings are not absolute, and they are certainly not points you collect over time by winning. Difference in rating gives an expectation of the outcome of a game (or series of games). A rating of 2600 means that it's expected someone wins 50% of the games against someone else of rating 2600 - and N% of the games against someone of rating 1200, of some value of N strictly less than 100. If someone has won all his games, even if there are only 4 games, he has exceeded all expectations of the rating system - and 2600 will even be too low.
<p>
Once again, there are reasons why there are provisional ratings, and why there are established ratings.

WhisperzQ: But to be there in 4 (and sometimes way beyond) is, I believe, ridiculus.

That's why there's Established BKR. Perhaps if 'BKR' was named 'provisional BKR' and 'Established BKR' just 'BKR', people would stop having sleepless nights of someones BKR after four games.

Chessmaster1000: I came to this site due to Gothic Chess. I will not leave after it leaves but it's a huge hole.......I wonder how it will be repaired........?!?

Fencer announced Capablanca Random Chess as a replacement for Gothic Chess. It's also played on a 10x8 board, it uses the same pieces a Gothic Chess, but the setup is random, with similar restrictions as in Fisher Random Chess. There will be an 1 in 48,000 probability you start off in the same position as Gothic Chess.

tycho: Your BKR for Janus Chess is not unknown - it's 1238. You are, however, no longer listed in the charts. I didn't get the impression that inactivity (or activity) is taken in account when calculating the ratings. Only the fact whether or you you're in the list matters. So, for paying members, one quick draws against someone with a similar rating twice a year is enough to keep you in the charts.

This is unlike say, the rating system on FICS, where they, beside keeping the rating, also keep a stat that measures activity - it's an indication how good established your rating is. The more you play, the less your rating will fluctuate (but the more it can fluctuate the rating of your opponent). If you play less, your rating fluctuates more after a win or loss. So, on FICS, having played 400 games way back means a new win or loss can change your rating a loss (just like you have only played a few games here), much more so than if you have only played 20, but all of the recently. And the same statistic is used to determine whether your rating is established or not. So if you have played 400 games the past month, you can be inactive for a lot longer before your drop of the charts than when you have played 20 games in the past month.

While I prefer to have a system like FICS, I think this new system (dropping of the charts if you haven't finished a game in the past 6 months) is better than the old one.

Your rating drops off the charts if you're not active in a game for 6 months (paying) or 1 month (non-paying). It isn't clear to mean what active means. Does it mean you should have finished a game in the past 6/1 month(s)? Or could I just start 10 win match with a 30 day move period, move once a month, and stay on the charts forever, without my rating changing? I hope it's the former.