Grim Reaper: Until <pre>, <font> and <table> are available for formatting, the best you can do is replace the spaces with &nbsp;. You'll still lose columnation because of the variable font, but at least you'll maintain some separation of the values.

nobleheart: Inventing a game is a very different challenge to "simply"
implementing a developed game with established rules. It probably takes an order of magnitude longer.

If you want different games then bring forward the name of the game and its rules and I'm sure Fencer would be interested. Just a desire for (maybe) hexagons isn't quite specific enough. ;-p

BIG BAD WOLF: Lol.
Ah yes, of course. Well spotted. :-)

BIG BAD WOLF: Hey, the message id and named anchor are already there. That's excellent! The only bit Fencer need do then is put that same link on the message itself, as suggested in the feature request.

For anyone who would like to know how to use BBW's method:
1) Do "Copy shortcut" on the Reply link of the target message.
2) Paste it into your new message (or Profile page or wherever).
3) Change the &brt= part to &bscx= ... and Bob's your uncle.
4) Optionally do the <a href="...">A better title</a> thing around the new link.

, that's super and just what I want.
Thanks


[ps. Just out of curiousity, how did you discover that it's bscx?]

In an number of discussion boards people have suggested reading "page 40" to find some information. That doesn't work except at the moment of posting and even then only for someone with the same number of messages per page as the poster. Another mistake of referral (and one that I've been making myself) is to use the timestamp of the message, but that's no good for anyone in a different timezone.

Hence, could there be a way to reference an earlier message or even better to be able to make a link to it?

One possible implementation is to display a Message Id (perhaps to the right of the Delete link) for textual references, eg "See message 9356". For the linking part of the request each message could be given a named anchor and the displayed Message Id could be a link to that anchor. This would have two benefits: firstly it could be 'Copy shortcut'ed for referencing elsewhere, and secondly, clicking on it would put that message at the top of the window.

And a feature request on behalf of the moderators here - the ability to transfer a block of posts to a more appropriate board while leaving a post here giving a redirection link. That would work best if the link actually went to the first message in the discussion, though. A link to the board itself would be useless once other messages pushed the topic down. A stop-gap approach would be to give a link to the board and the date of the first message in the sequence. (And a Go To Date box wuld be handy then, lol)

Edited to remove further moderation discussion

Fencer: In the time that I've been here there have been many long and at times detailed discussions. Only on a few occasions have you or a moderator brought one to a halt. That gives rise to the question, then, about when a discussion should be moved away from here. Or would we continue as we have been, and accept and follow redirections when given?

grenv: I agree. It depends on Fencer's wishes, of course, but I think redirecting a feature discussion to another board is more of a loss than a gain. If the discussion turns into a chat then sure, send it away, or better still, PM the people involved and ask them to delete it (or, if pawns, ask for permission/inform them). But if the talk is about the feature then surely it belongs here.

Fencer: As a side query, I've always wondered why the Features board is a board of this style when it could be like the Bug Tracker with each item in it's own box.

M132T003C: Hi, welcome to BrainKing. On the menu there's an item called Bug Tracker which is the best place, although for Japanese Chess and Chinese Chess, the discussion boards for those games is a good place too as they have only just been released and this is the bug hunting phase. Fencer is active in many boards but especially those two at the moment.

It would be nice if lightly shaded backgrounds were used in the Finished Games summary in the Members' profiles. This would be by game group rather than one for each game. A very light yellow for all the Backgammon games, for instance, and perhaps blue for Chess, green for the Line games, or whatever. It would be a help when looking for a particular game and would also give a see-at-a-glance indication of what flavour icecream that person plays, as it were. ;-)

Has anybody asked for a Message box search facility yet? It would be nice if the same control appeared on both the Inbox and Outbox pages and had a three radiobuttons: Inbox, Outbox and Both.

TC: If you mean number of started games then I vote for that too. It would be nice if it could show the Player-to-move and Opponent-to-move counts separately, perhaps in the X/Y form.

Fencer: Hey, that's great, and a big chunk of work, too. Is it in design or implementation or testing stage? If it's in design, is there any way that we can know more of the details and have a debate about the pros and cons?


Chessmaster1000: The babareza and amirh cheating was mentioned on the Backgammon board ages ago and was very obvious just by looking at the games and profiles (link supplied by grenv below). And in my long answer below I gave two full examples of how BK does the provisional rating. There is no flaw, serious or otherwise. ;-P (except of course, harp, harp, that it's not suitable for backgammon, ). Lol. You ought to do your research George. Tut, tut.

As for rights, well that's a big topic for the Philosophy board, but if molotov has the right to play 6 and stop (which right she has) then anybody else has the right to complain about it. Rights don't exist per se, they are granted by the society. In this case it's Fencer's and he's just declared his intention to alter the rights of inactive player's.

Why should people care about these ratings issues? It's not a question of shoulds. It's just that some do and that as reasonable as that some don't! It's another, optional, part of the fun. No problem for you, 'cos you don't care, although your profile hints otherwise, eh Mr 2700?. Hee hee [Stands aside while everyone charges for George's profile. Btw. while you're there, so checkout that illusion link, it's excellent.]

ScarletRose: Really? You get to mark messages after they've been read? And see them on the main page??

Awwww. Not fair!! Stomps around on his wittle hoofies and shows what makes a knight a knight! .

I see the red (1) next to Message box and go read it. I'd like to reply but know I don't have time right now, so I continue with whatever else. Then I forget that I wanted to reply and the communication breaks down.

Some might say, "Well just stick a note in your Notepad" but checking the Notepad is an easily forgotten thing too, lol.

It would be nice to be able to flag a message as For attention, or something like that, and have the count added next to Main page's Message box text too (perhaps in bright blue?). That way there's no forgetting these outstanding message replies.

Pedro, chessmec, Walter: "I am strictly against any resetting of the BKRs.", "ACK", "I'm with you on this. Why reset them?"

I'm surprised by such a black and white sentiments. Can you not see the usefulness in any of the instances given? Surely the Kingpin1 (at #21) (because molotov now resolving itself) and 515484 cases have some merit? And what about that cheat that grenv pointed out? You want all these guys to remain where they are? They will be stuck at the top of those lists forever.

Pedro: From the formula that you've given it's quite apparent that the rating is indeed the average from all matches played (although the formula page uses the term tournaments while BK actually counts matches). Do the maths with a win against 2100 and three losses against 2300 - you say it should be around 2500. The formula, as I calculate it, produces 1975.

ProvisionalRating = (RatingSoFar x NumGamesPlayedSoFar + OpponentsRating +/- 400) / NewNumberOfGamesPlayed.

The calculation is done after each individual match:
(0000 x 0 + 2100 + 400) / 1 = 2500
(2500 x 1 + 2200 - 400) / 2 = 4300 / 2 = 2150
(2150 x 2 + 2200 - 400) / 3 = 6100 / 3 = 2033
(2033 x 3 + 2200 - 400) / 4 = 7900 / 4 = 1975

The final result is the same as adding them up and taking the average at the end:
(0 + 2100 + 400 + (2200 - 400) x 3) / 4 = 1975

Those three losses matter. It's common sense, too. What use is a formula where the first match result is a major factor and the next 24 are trivial?

grenv: According to the formula the first 25 games are averaged in this way.

Rex Nihilo: molotov for playing. I think I'll invite her again. Lol, you've certainly got your work cut out (at move 4), but as you say, early days. ;-) Good luck to you both.

Reza: That's a tough break. As you say, you've got to take your lumps and learn the lesson until there's that other condition for protection. ;-) Feature request Perhaps the No Unrated players could have an accompanying No provisional players.


Edited to add
Here's the calculation for molotov's backgammon rating:

Date ended ..... Opponent....... Them --> Contribution to molotov
28th Sep 04 .... bobbobby62 .... 2045 --> 2445
29th Sep 04 .... HEATHER ....... 1914 --> 2314
15th Oct 04 .... sko ............... 2364 --> 2764
15th Oct 04 .... taikoki .......... 2208 --> 2608
17th Oct 04 .... Rex Nihilo ...... 2479 --> 2879
.2nd Feb 05 .... Rex Nihilo ...... 2592 --> 2992

Total = 16002
Average = 16002 / 6 = 2667

The opponent's ratings were taken from their rating graph for the day that the game ended (which is presumably the value used) but as it's not possible to pinpoint actual games one or more of my figures may be wrong. And indeed:

Molotov's actual rating is 2696, so the calculation's in the right area.

chessmec: As far as I know, that's what all backgammon sites do (some use 1500 and others 1600, but the same formula otherwise) and it works very well. And the biggest single jump you can make is to win about 135 points - but you have to do it by beating a top player in a 64-point match! Winning a single game will only gain about 12 points.

Pedro: If you think that molotov has achieved anything significant with that (6/0/0) #1 rating of 2696 then you are fooling yourself as much as molotov is (if he thinks it means anything; he may just not care for backgammon). All he has "achieved" so far is to clutter up the top of the provisional board with his starting rating. He did the same in hypergammon but there he has played further games and is heading to his natural level. This will be something high and it will be an achievement. Being top with a handful of games means nothing except that you've got points to share with others when you play further games (if you care/dare to). This is not a reset issue; it is a formula issue. Ditto with TopGun.

515484 was in the same category but he had the decency to want to reset his ratings. The lack of choice about resetting prevents him from doing so. He thus stops playing the games because he doesn't like them and is forced to leave clutter at the top of the board which he doesn't want to do.

(MidnightMcMedic) The feature request to allow resets is thus a good one, especially if resetting is made an outcome for provisional raters who fail to complete their 25 games within a reasonable time span.

Grenv: Yes, I remember him. . I believe that he's no longer an active player(s). It's a shame that his rating can't be reset, isn't it?

Pedro: I'm pretty sure that the first four figures are averaged. (See Chess Ratings, the Provisional ratings section). If not, what contribution do they make? Can you provide an example so that I can understand? The one given makes no sense to me as I see no effect of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th games in the first 92500+) case and an "I bet" effect in the second (<2000). That's both contradictory and vague.

But perhaps I'm considering the wrong formula and have an irrelevant web page. Have you the correct one?

ArtfulDodger: Here's a case for rating reset that you might agree with. The guy who started this debate, 515484, has provisional ratings in several games. He wants to concentrate on Atomic Chess and reset all the rest because he doesn't want to those games again. (I know this because I read his profile before he cleared it). That would actually be doing a service to the players in the games that he's leaving because they won't be stuck with a non-playing high rater at the top of those tables. This is more a delete issue rather than a reset one, though.

ArtfulDodger: Won't they just! Even if it's wierd, it'll make sense to someone somewhere.

Pedro, Rex Nihilo: So someone gets a huge rating with their first few games. That's great. I'd target them as ripe for plucking. A few games with them and I've either found a new opponent to play or I've earned a nice handful of points for myself and sent them on the way down to their natural level. If it's cheating it's certainly a most unsuccessful form. High rated players should welcome such people with open arms, lol.

Pedro: The other three opponent's rating don't matter? My understanding is that it's the average of those four games, so I rather think they'd matter as much as the first.

Purple: Sandbagging sounds like something painful but what about sockbagging, lol? How much damage can an unrated player gain - assuming they can find a high rated player willing to take the risk? (A sensible answer to an invitation is perhaps: "Yes, I'd love to play you .. come back in 4 games time and we'll play a 5-point match"). I played a game against someone rated over 700 below me and she beat me. I lost 16 points which is a sting rather than a knockout blow (I'll get it back with two wins against someone at my own level). Although if she was a peer in disguise and we had a multi-point match and only if we had proper backgammon ratings here, then it would be something painful.

ArtfulDodger: How many people want to throw in a 2100+ rating to play in a low ranking tourney? What do they gain from that maneuver? Pride at winning such a tourney is even more self-deluding that having the highest rating on only a handful of games. As Pedro says, you need to play decently high raters to get your own rating up high. That opportunity wuld be lost to anyone playing the low rated tourney.

BuilderQ: One way is to consistently play opponents who are weaker than you. But that's not necessarily a case of manipulation for it may be that you play more or less with the same bunch of people and happen to be the best within the group.

------------------
Resetting your rating is, I would say, a legitimate thing to do if you ought to be high rated but aren't, perhaps because you didn't understand the BKR rating system (How many newcomers do? How many established players do?!). So, you made poor choices of your first four partners (just 4 dammit!) or had a bad run of luck (just 4 dammit!) and start with a crappy rating. Now it's a long haul to get to where you belong. All that while you have a low rating which is not a reflection of your ability and you're inadvertantly sucker-punching everyone left right and centre - the very accusation that you make towards the guy who has reset his rating! Allowing him to reset and play appropriately to get his rating where it belongs is actually fairer all round in this case.

Another legitimate use that I've seen - at VogClub where you can reset at six month intervals - is a top rated guy who resets himself every now and then to enjoy the challenge of getting back up to the top again. Why shouldn't he? It adds spice for him and while it costs points to those he plays, the ripples settle after a while. I must say, though, that again it depends on the formula. The 4 plays to set the rating is completely ridiculous in my view. It must work for the chess community otherwise it wouldn't their choice after so many decades (or whatever, I don't care), but it's no good for plenty of other games and useless for luck-based games.

grenv: How is it cheating?

While perusing a discussion board I wanted to see all the posts by a single person. I thought the search box would give me all mentions of their name plus all their posts, which is fair enough, but it only gave the first set.

Could there be, then, a way to search by poster's name and/or message text? Some forums have a form on the player's profile page which gives all the posts of that person, optionally filtered by board name, date range and subject or body text. This saves cluttering the board itself with a plethora of useful but cumbersome search controls.

Pioneer54: ".. since just one slow player can really drag down an entire tournament."

Agreed. This is a major problem for a knight who finds themself in such a tourney.

ArtfulDodger: Rofl. 'Cos I'm lazy!! haven't you figured out how many of my requests are to save me effort? Lolol. ;-))

Seriously, though, you have to apply to the controller to join (Oh, how I don't like that title "Big Boss"!) so there's a delay in getting in. That's a put-off for someone who is window shopping now while their interest is high. It's also a bit like buying something just to find out that you don't like it, and have to bring it back; a waste of time for all involved.

Also, I bet you there are more than a few people who join fellowships but stay in them when it's not their cup of tea because they don't want to cause offence by leaving. That may strike folks as wierd but that's my understanding of people. Assertiveness is not something that everyone has in abundance and leaving a fellowship does require a certain amount because it's a rejecting action. Sensitive people, too, tend to find it very hard to reject. And that's certainly bad for the joiners and no good for the fellowship.

ArtfulDodger: But doesn't using a vacation day mean that they will eventually run out of that resource? (I admit I don't understand the holiday system yet; all my game invitations are fixed-weekend.)

ArtfulDodger: I quite agree; reading the posts gives the full information. But you can't read the posts to decide whether to join because joining is the only way to read them - they're private to the fellowship. Catch 22! (I may be wrong on that but it's been the case in all the ones that I've checked out.) Thus, posting activity would be informative for some (lol) people.

Fencer Can fellowships have publicly viewable boards? If so, are they for Knights and Rooks only?

ArtfulDodger: Lol 1. If we have the number of words posted for the week then I also want to know the typing rate. If we can get the average heart rate while they're doing it, that would be most informative! ;-)

Lol 2. I originally put "would be useful" but thought I'd weaken the assertion in case someone thought otherwise. Saw ya coming, me fine fella! ;-))

I agree that the other statistics you mentioned are pretty much meaningless, but knowing who the active posters are, especially if you know their posts from elsewhere, gives you part of the picture about what a fellowship is like.

Let's say you're invited to a fellowship (as all new paying members are ... a deluge of impersonal form-letters invitating them to join). They go to the page and read the fellowship's intro (which may be sparse). Being able to see that the fellowship has 100+ members but that only 3 people post a lot and maybe 5 post a sprinkle .. that tells a different story from the 50-member fellowship where 20-30 are active posters.

Given that "big bosses" don't tend to weed their garden and remove pawns who stopped playing a few months or years previously (lapsed subscriptions followed by leaving the site), the member tally is not a reliable figure for evaluating a fellowship. I think the posting activity would be.

When you join up for real**, perhaps find this request will make more sense.

(** Lol, you know you're going to, eh? ;-) - if only to see the smileys! )

It could be useful to have the number of posts next to the the fellowship members' names - that way a visitor can see who provides the "flavour" of the fellowship, whether it's a full one with just a handful of active members or a busy one with input all round.

nobleheart: And with a castle. That beats being a knight or a castle! ;-)

Heading too far off topic here, so I'm done. :-)

nobleheart: Oh yeah?! Then and !!

Lol, you'll have to come back when you're a Knight or Rook. ;-))

Fencer: Lol. If you gave Pawns the ability to search this discussion board, nobleheart could have typed chinese into that there Search box and found that the first mention of Chinese Chess was back in March 2003.

Maxxina: I'm not sure what you mean, but if you mean to use a larger font then it would affect all the characters on the page and other web pages too, from other sites. That's a big downside. Furthermore, I have a smaller monitor as well, so the text would be too big for that one, lol.

Could there be an extra &nbsp; between the first/prev and next/last links, please.
On a large monitor these links are pretty tiny and I keep finding myself clicking the wrong one if I don't slow right down and home in on the little chevron.
<< < becomes <<  <

or perhaps use images instead, or make them a wee bit wider, or ... but the extra space would be enough. ;-)

Fencer: Ah, I wasn't clear enough then. Could there be bright yellow for a win by one player and a different colour for a win by the other?

Rather than bright yellow for both players, could there be a separate colours?

grenv: It is a drinking vessel but it literally means stone.

Stones and pebbles from which to make an image, perhaps.

miuek: "I think pictures can be created in few minutes [...] If it were problem for webmaster to create images, I'd create it myself :-)"

It's not a problem for the webmaster. Nor are the other 100,000 things that will "only take a few minutes" ... except that silly 24-hours-in-the-day limitation. ;-)

Fencer: I'll second that search by poster's name.

Fencer II: Yeah, yeah, yeah!! I'm also much with the curiousimus about Pro Bg. Oh, tell us, do. It's my birthday today sooo you could ....... Make my day!

for Pawns, 26 is a smiley with hat ;-)

WhiteTower: Then you'd get the idiots (admittedly not as many) who refuse to let someone delete the game. :-( The best solution would be an override which the first person could use to force the deletion. Lolol. ;-)

Maxxina, Paulo: Thanks for that flag tip - I never knew about that; it's a handy shortcut to what Paulo suggested. :-)

The request arose when looking at the Backgammon Ratings list. What I wanted was to see all the UK players and also to browse through and see how big a block each country had, and whatever else occurred to me.

Unfortunately, although the click-a-flag-to-sort works in the Players List, if done in the Backgammon Ratings list it doesn't sort that table but jumps to the Players List.

Summertop: I'll second all of your proposals.
1) I don't want to have to know the order of the game types when I'm looking for a game, I want to go to it alphabetically (especially as it's most often backgammon and will be at the top, lol).
2) Sorting tables by any column (especially with careful choices of secondary and tertiary sort keys) could be very handy/interesting.
3) Sort everything in site. To misuse that old military phrase: "If it moves, send it a message; it it doesn't, sort it!" ;-))

Could lists of players have a link for sorting by country? Secondary sort key could be rating (for a ratings list) and name (for the Players List).

WhiteTower: Eh? The dropdown + button requires click-search-click-click - hence the request for a pair of buttons, which is a one-click solution.

On the Message Box page there's a two-value dropdown and a [Show] button for changing between the Inbox and the Outbox. It would be simper if there were two separate buttons.

Pedro Martínez: Lolol. It can get very mindboggling, especially if you have server-side generation of content plus client-side generation of content plus javascript bells and whistles. Testing of the pages has completely different challenges to plain old html, too.

I wish I had taken part in that discussion. Can we have it all over again in English? ;-)

MidnightMcMedic: Take the idea to the Chess discussion board? I think not, lol - I don't care two hoots about chess.

The clock may be named after a chess player but timed games are very much a feature of backgammon. i only use the name because that's what it's labelled here. I could have given it the title Timed Games in Backgammon with Minutes and Seconds - oh, I just did. ;-)

And besides, this feature suggestion is a totally new idea, incorporating client-side javascript as it does.

Just an idea ...

If the timing of the Fischer clock were done using client-side javascript then it might be possible to work out a decent way to have sub-hour times and bonuses. It may even be possible to create clock control suitable for real-time games, such as (in backgammon) 2 minutes for the game plus 10 seconds bonus per move (though that's not taking postback and reload into account).

The top files from my internet cache:

686KB .... "Vvvvv" Started Games (one of my current opponents - 1800 games!!)
312KB .... "Wwwww" Started Games (another opponent - 900 games!!)
251KB .... Finished Ponds
245KB .... "Xxxxx" Started Games
244KB .... "Yyyyy" Finished Games
167KB .... Tournaments list
129KB .... "Zzzzz" Started Games
108KB .... Fellowships list (I'd rather see the description than the lists of games)
107KB .... Backgammon discussion (but that's my choice of how many messages I want to see)

While it was interesting to go to these pages, there's no way that I've made use of even 1% of the information (except on a discussion board that's been busy).

Following on from the previous request.

It would be nice to ease the load on the server and making allowances for people on dialup, or those who simply don't appreciate having to download huge lists.

One example is the tournament list mentioned blow. Another is when looking at someone's Started Games. I do this to see how busy potential opponents are or, having moved, to see where in their list my games are. As a broadband user that's not too bad except for the people with hundreds of games - then it can be seconds to download. But for a dialup user those sorts of lists are painful and expensive.

A simple solution would be to have a User Setting which limits the length of these lists to a given number of entries. More complex would be allowing a date horizon to be specified. taking it further there could be different values for different lists.

Czuch Chuckers just noticed that there is a tournament created for October 2006. He saw it on the link on the main page and went for it but realised in time that it's pointless joining it now.

There are two people who have created a year's worth of tournaments in one go. It makes it easy for them but it creates problems for everybody else.

Firstly, as Czuch found, the distant tournaments, though practically irrelevant, get displayed on the main board. Presumably these tournaments are chosen at random from the entire list. As there is a high percentage of these far-futures's, that's going to have a potentially large number of people going to the tournament and backing out when they've realised that they've wasted their time. Or perhaps they don't realise, join up and a year hence find themselves in a tourney that they'd forgotten about.

The other problem is, I would guess, more serious. The entire tournament list gets downloaded every time that anyone visits that page. With so many pointless tournaments that's a huge waste of bandwidth for the server and a pain in the bum for anyone on a slow dialup, not to mention a leak in their purse if they are paying by the minute.

The feature request is thus to allow people to create tournaments in advance, decades if they so desire, but don't have them appear in the system until they are within a more reasonable period. I would be quite happy only knowing what's happening in the next week or so and I'm sure some would want longer, but who needs to plan their tournaments months ahead?