Rose: It is explained on the .INFO site - http://brainking.info/

your DNS still points to old server, and the old server points back to web.brainking.com

Hrqls: No, the Global Moderators can take care of it also.

Why are they still a moderator? Because if no one lets us know about it, we won't know about it. (meaning we keep an eye out, but don't go looking for issues and such).

But now that we know - something will be done soon. Thanks.

Fencer - awhile back on the .info site, you mentioned about the possible site move in September. I was wondering what the current status of that is.

pauloaguia: Well you could take the list of what you are in - put it into an excel spreadsheet - then take a list of games and put it in the spreadsheet and compare - and find the 46 games the site offers which you are currently not on a team for (not sure if the fellowship offers it)

Alquerque
Amazon Chess
Anti Line4
Berolina Chess
Brazilian Checkers
Canadian Checkers
Capablanca Random Chess
Cheshire Cat Lines of Action
Chinese Chess
Corner Checkers
Corner Chess
Crazy Screen Chess
Crowded Backgammon
Cylinder Chess
Dameo
Embassy Chess
Espionage
Extinction Chess
Fast Espionage
Fortress Chess
Grand Chess
Horde Chess
International Checkers
Italian Checkers
Janus Chess
Japanese Chess
Knight Relay Chess
Knightmate Chess
Legan Chess
Line4
Lines of Action
Maharajah Chess
One Way Checkers
Open Keryo Pente
Parachute Checkers
Parachute Lines of Action
Reversi 10x10
Russian Checkers
Screen Chess
Small Fast Espionage
Small Keryo Pente
Small Pente
Swap Five in Line
Tablut
Thai Checkers
Three Checks Chess

Artful Dodger: I think those tournaments were made before they went down to pawn status maybe?

There are way too many tournaments sitting out there right now... one of the reasons I haven't created any myself lately.

To solve the current issue - deleting a lot of them would be helpful.

Long term solutions.

1. Limit on the number of open (public) tournaments a person can make - something like 20. (20 is a lot, but usually it's the extreme 100+ of the same tournament which is really the issue - so 20 still allows a lot, but not extreme)

2. Having tournament stay up to 30 days after the due date is WAY too long. 7 days should be the limit. If some some reason you want it to last longer, the tournament creator can change the tournament date to a later date to get around it. 7 days would give plenty of extra time past the start time for the tournament creator to change it if needed.

Adaptable Ali: Things to try:

Restart the browser
Restart the computer

Try do a "hard" refresh (hold down CTRL key & hit F5) or (hold down SHIFT key & hit F5) - this will make the browser refresh everything.

Clear out the browser cache (usually under Tools, option)

Charles Martel: like who? There are other countries who have similar flags to the US which some users might have chosen instead of the US. If you give me an example, I will be happy to look.

Charles Martel: Looking at my profile, the American flag on it looks normal.

Well since more and more keep adding to poll ideas, a good place to add suggestions is the Opinion Polls discussion board

Since they can easily get buried here - I know for public polls, when I'm ready to make a new poll I always do a quick search through that board to see what pop's out at me.

I'm very interested in this topic, but would love to see it continued over on the Computer Discussion Board.... in which it might help others also.

http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=52 - please check it out, would love to talk more about the topic over there.

Summertop: If there is another computer at your work, can you try that?

Why I say that is that it will narrow down if the problem is with your network (problem with all computers at work), or just your computer (if it works with other computers at work)

Other then that - I'm not sure. Sounds like it does what you want (like a post), but when the page then gives the browner the re-direct to another page - it stops there. My obvious question would be if there was any thing new loaded on the PC.

Mousetrap: I did not pay attention to the details, but time outs were off for awhile (not sure how long) after the site was down and came back up.

So yes, it was down - and it turned off the time-outs for awhile. (but I'm not sure of the time frame or how long it was down.)

paully: I believe the green dot means the message has been read by the other person.

No dot means it has not been read.

MadMonkey: I think the best solution is to have a "Don't want to vote" vote option default in every poll that anyone can pick. (this will allow you to "vote" and get it off your main page)

Fencer: I think you need to have 3 tabs in the Polls page. (1) Polls needing your vote (2) Polls you have voted in (but still open). (3) Closed polls

ScarletRose: Go over to the Opinion Polls discussion board and post your ideas for a poll you would like to see. http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=153

paully: Yes, I think that is the best option (since I don't really want to turn off the notification.)

I know things are still being worked on, but a couple of quick ideas & thoughts from me.

1. I love how it shows if there is a vote that you have not voted for in a fellowship - but there are some polls in which I may not want to answer (or in the current case, in a language that I can't read so voting would be just picking an option blindly) - would be nice to somehow click a "don't want to vote" button or something in which it will then turn off the notification that I have a poll I have not voted in - but does not force me to blindly vote just to remove it.

2. Maybe in the Polls page, maybe a separate tab to look at ALL the fellowship polls that you voted on so you can see the results after the polls are closed.

Bernice: Pretty quickly - since all the Global's can do the approving also, there is not as much wait time anymore.... unless for those rare times where there is not one online.

Vikings:

joshi tm: I did it once, but you can easily find out how many are active.

Go to Players List

Sort by last action

Then just start going back pages at a time and you can roughly figure out how many have been on in the last week - the last month - etc....

Fencer: I want BrainWar

Czuch: It is calculated at what the BKR's are at the end of the game.

I never liked this since if someone starts to time out on a lot of games, the first people who they start to time out with will get better BKR results... while those who time out in the later games once their opponent BKR is like 500 will get less.

But I understand why it is like this - since in most cases (not tons of time outs - but normal game playing), a persons BKR at the end of the game will more likely reflect their true rating. For example in the Knight Fight game, I started out really good with over 2000+ BKR after my first 4-15 games or so. But now my BKR is more reflective of my true talent in the game (1600 or something) so it makes more since to use the current rating to calculate the BKR change then my inflated 2000+ that I had by getting a lot of good early wins.)

1. Is there a place to see someone's public photo albums?

on the Photo albums link, it just shows the last 10 public albums.
on a persons profile, it just shows the last album.

It would be nice to have a link that shows ALL public albums in 1 place - so if someone is boards, they can go and view a lot of pictures without having to go to each profile and such.

2. Is there a way to know if there are comments for certain pictures. It would be nice to have a little (1) next to the preview of a photo if there is 1 comment (or 2, 3, ... etc...) That is it would be nice to know a photo has a comment without having to blow the picture up to full size. (since many of the photo's I can see OK with the small version, but if there is a comment - I might be more interested in seeing what others have said about certain photo's)

3. How about a way to know if someone comments on your photo. Of course if #2 is done, I can just look over my albums quickly to see which ones have comments - but maybe some sort of note like when someone writes on your wall.

4. Plus something I probable won't use, but others might - how about a fellowship photo album. An album that is open to any fellowship member to add photo's to. They BIG BOSS can delete any of them - and the person that uploaded a photo can delete their own.

Just some quick ideas and questions.

I don't want to change my page setup to see the chat box, nor do I want to enable Java stuff on all the other pages, nor do I think I want it on the top of my main page.

Is there any way to get a "Chat box" page - with a link in the left column that I people who don't use default BrainKing page setups can use to go to the Chat box? (that of course will show up on the chat page even if someone has the Java stuff disabled in their settings)

Bullets9mm: ... plus any time change you make will not affect your games.

That is if a game is to time out in 5 hours, it will still time out in 5 hours even if you change what your clock says.

(Myself personally, I live it on server/Fencer time.... and then just lift my head and look at the clock on the wall when I need to know what time it is.)

Roberto Silva: I just checked my Knight Fight game, and it looks the same for me (unless Fencer already changed it back)?

I tried about 10 times to enter something in the new guestbook using the Captcha feature, but always got the same error. (i figured I might mess it up 9 times in a row, but after 10, ???)

ERROR MESSAGE:


There are some errors:

* Message: An unknown error occured. Please try again or inform the webmaster of this site. Thank you!
The general CAPTCHA config settings may not be correctly configured!

Tuesday: If you have a questions about moderation - or something to do with the board itself, you might be better off sending a private PM to the moderator which will not risk being overlooked.

If you have a general question on a board open to anyone (not board or moderator specific), then anyone is free to answer or not answer.

nodnarbo: If you say you downloaded and installed the flash player update, you may need to restart the browser if you have not.

Czuch: Sorry, done playing this game with you. I could again repeat myself how only sometimes I don't have access to my keyboard... or repeat myself on how I normally send an opening game greeting..... So before you decide to reply, feel free to read what I've already posted. Honestly - it should not change.

Czuch: I've already said how I make a "Good Luck & Have Fun! ☺" - I go to my profile, copy and then paste. It's not a top priority for me to do during a game, but like I said - i try to do it since I have found it makes some people happy.

Czuch: How is it ironic? When I play games - I play games. When I discuss on the discussion boards, i discuss. I don't like to play games on the discussion board... and I don't like to chat too much during the games.

That is just how I feel. Others can do what they like.

I find it funny how some people just can't have a fun game without someone saying good game, or good luck, or even the short-cut versions of gg / gl. On another site, I even had someone quit our games because I did not say it. (one thing I like about IYT - it automatically puts good luck at the start of the game, and send good game with the finished game message.)

I often try to send a "Good Luck & Have Fun! ☺" message at the start of my games - which I have easily put in my profile so I can quickly find it to copy-paste it. But many times when I play, I stick my keyboard on the floor so I have desktop space for papers and other stuff I work on.... while playing games with my mouse, so typing is something I don't..... I mean this is a game site - a game site is a place to play games, not chat. Chatting is an extra and a lot of people like it - but to be upset with others who actually come to a game site to play games......????? Anyway, this is not directed towards anyone, but thought I would let you know how I feel about the situation.

nodnarbo: A lot of the options and extra things like that were removed from the "lightweight" version - so if you are using that, that could be why you don't see it.

beach: "all don't have the problem anywhere else on the internet except with this site"

Agree - but at the same time:

There are many users who have zero problem with this site while many others do have problems.

Again, I'm not trying to blame the user - not trying to say the site is fast (it is slow for me also), I'm just trying to say that it's hard to see it being a BK problem when many people don't have issues. One of the things that can cause some people to have problems, while others don't have problems is an issues somewhere between the user & BK - a slow connection somewhere that for some reason, many have starting going through causing the slowness. Not the users fault.... but not the site's fault either.

Who keeps on saying that the slowness of the site is the user fault? I thought it has been clear that what seems to be the main problem is the connection between the user and the site - which because each user / each area connect to the site with a different connection, speed differences will be different for each user.... but yet I keep reading how people keep saying that they were told it was the users fault. Other then checking settings, checking to make sure you don't have spyware - there is little for BK to do other then change server locations.... and little for users to do other then change settings to see what works best for them. [I'm not defending the site or slowness - I have the same slow connection that most others do - but I know it is not my fault - and it's not BK's fault - it is just a product of the internet - how international lines are ran - how computers find their way through all those wires to find the final destination.]

Jim Dandy: That does not sound like a good one to compare the site with. Something like "making the car more streamlined" is what the lightweight version does.

It's the same car (site), but with less drag (data) being driving (sent), it will speed up the car (site) some. It won't fix the issue of the car (site) being underpowered (slow), but should help some.

Summertop: A few tips which can help (not solve) the slowness.

1. Check out this post of mine: Computers (coan.net, 2007-03-12 20:16:01)

2. In settings, there is now an option called "Use the "lightweight" version of BrainKing (disables many extra features but could speed up loading of pages)"

The above 2 helps some.... that is instead of 20+ seconds per page load, more like 1-5 seconds per page load for me most of the time.

plus if you want more detail, you can take a look at Fencers blog entry about it: http://brainking.info/archives/414-About-the-complexity-part-1.html

trohat: What do you mean you can't see your ponds in light mode? On the main page, my ponds show up.

First I would like to say that I also experience very bad speed issues. Today has been very very slow, but then again last night it was moving at a pretty good speed.

Second - I don't think anyone has said the site speed issues are a fault of a persons computer. I think some have suggested looking at settings, browser, and "cleaning" to help speed things up - but I believe everyone knows that the speed issues are somewhere else.

The problem: The speed issue is somewhere between the user & BrainKing. To expect Fencer to be able to solve the issue is the same as expecting us the user to fix the problem.

The internet works by going from point to point (hops) to get to the final destination. This is basicly random. From my town in Illinois, if I try to connect to the local school, some days I can get there in 3 "hops" - other days, it will take 10 "hops" going over to Indy & up to Chicago before making it back into my town. Thing is most all of the hops are pretty fast, so I don't even notice the speed difference. The problem is not all "hops" are fast. And your connection speed will only be as fast as the slowest connection. So take this example. (using Miles Per Hour just to show the example)

Hop 1 - 100Mph
Hop 2 - 100Mph
Hop 3 - 100Mph
Hop 4 - 2 Mph
Hop 5 - 100Mph
Hop 6 - 100Mph

The first hop is you, the last is BrainKing. Both are fast, but with a slow "hop" in the middle - your connection speed will be 2 Mph because the data slows down there.

Unfortunately there is not much that can be done. Someone suggested multiple servers in different locations, but that would be a very big task - probable a lot more then what a simple game site like BK would be able to do.

The one thing I would love Fencer to do is work on a "minimal" version of BK - a version that strips all but the important information so when users are in the "slow" mode, they can switch to it to still play games. So for example, a 500KB page may take 20 seconds to load. Well if you strip all the extra and make it a 100KB page, then the user will have to wait for less data and in turn should load pages faster. I thought I read someplace once that he was interested in this, but I'm unsure if he is working on it or not.

Doing some of the things I mention here: Computers (coan.net, 2007-03-12 20:16:01) - will help out..... along with changing the message per page on the discussion boards to a lower number.... like turning off the Javascript extras.... roll over smileys.... since having those off means that the extra data on the webpage no longer has to be transmitted to you - and in turn there is less data for you to wait for and can help speed things up.

** edited to add: before some tech corrects my example above, I know that is not "exactly" how it works - but should be a pretty good example for others who don't know how it works to understand it... so please don't pick about the details of my example ***

srnity: There is currently no one at the board level that is hidden or banned on this board. There are some that have global bans, but the moderators of the boards have no control over that.

Bernice: The Brain Amazon status is not for sale (well offer enough money you might get one). It is similar to a King or Queen membership, for owners and management of the site and such

A. I can understand why Fencer does not want to let a BIG BOSS create fellowships since it might confuse the system - for example, MadMonkey - lets say you decided to join the Random Team in my fellowship since there are plenty on the team in your fellowship, and I made you captain. When you go to the Open team tournaments, and you hit "create" - does the system create one for your fellowship or the team you captain?

I think the good compramise would be to let both Captains & BIG BOSSes create & accept open challenges - BUT if that situation comes up where a person is both, CAPTAIN will always "win" against BIG BOSS - so if that situation came up, you would always be acting as a captain. Not sure how much extra that would take to program it, but if not much - that is what I would like to see.

B. I agree with letting everyone know what team challenges are open in the waiting room - even if they are not captain or BIG BOSS. Seeing what is available might (1) get a player to talk to their captain to accept the challenge, and (2) might get some on a team so they can play against the challenge.

I myself have speed issues from time to time, but I think it is fair to say that Fencer can't do much about it since the problem lies outside of the server that he maintains.... but at the same time the user can't do much since it lies outside of the house we live in. But I did write some tips awhile back which have helped me with some of my speed issues:

Computers (coan.net, 2007-03-12 20:16:01)

The only tip that I would add to that would be on the message boards, change the "Messages per page" to a lower number. (The less amount of data on the page - the less that has to flow past those "slow" points in between BrainKing & you.)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = == = = = = =

I would still like to suggest to Fencer about a "very basic" version of BrainKing - a version that will have just the basic information - just enough to play games and such. (with a link back to the full version when they need more information). Yea, normally when things are fast - those "extra" things will take about 1/2 of a second extra to load - but when users encounter that "slow" point - those extra things could easily take 5-10 seconds longer to load.... and if you could take that extra information out, then even though the site will still be as quick - it will look to the user to be extra fast since they will have less data to wait on through those slow points of the internet.

Andersp:

Block User - This just blocks the user from sending private messages and seeing what they are doing online. No discussion board messages are hidden.

Hide - is for each board, and will hide the post from that user on that board only.

MadMonkey: Probable has something to do with the archiving - archived the data and the tournament tables pointed to the wrong place now.

Bernice: Czech Rep is now part of the EU, which has adopted the VAT - so yes, they do that that now.

Little more info about VAT - since for myself in the US, don't know much about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax

Bernice: The BrainKing Blog is available to everyone ( http://brainking.info/ ), where it is mentioned in the most recent article that "...we plan to make important changes to our policy of membership fees..."

Even though he did not say raise prices, if I were to guess - that is how I take it - but again, that is just my guess. Guess we will find out more sometime in the next month.

redfrog: Well if it is a problem somewhere between BK and user, it makes sense that a page with less information will take less time to transmit then a larger page with more information. (yea, normally with good connection you are talking about fractions of a second worth of extra data - but when there is a slow connection, you could be talking seconds per page saved - which when you have to load many pages right after one another, that can add up to a lot of saved time... and in turn, will give the users even a better illusion that the site is running faster.)

Binabik: yea, that has been my request (along with many others) - that is just to have a very striped down version of the pages - with just the information needed (like game, game stats needed to play game, and that is about all. (along with a link to the "full" in case you want to know what your BKR change will be, what tournament it is in, etc.....) (I wrote in detail once what should and should not show up on the page somewhere.)

I'm not having issues right now, but that still does not mean I would not like to see this request. This is first a game site - so a page that has a way to play the game without all the extra "fluff" would be a great addition to this site.... not to mention hopefully speeding up site speed for players.

Hrqls: I have it added - added it before the first post.

Do you have the link near the top of board to add it?

http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=146

When you click it, what does it do? If you then see the "(remove from favourite boards)" - it might just be a few minutes before your favourite board list is updated to include that board.