likewowman2cool: most likely has to do with auto vacation. This from Fencer in December, about new vacation time...

Fencer New vacation system announcement 10. December 2010, 10:50:35
Modified by Fencer (11. December 2010, 03:33:24)
I would like to announce a new system of vacations and weekend days for games. The purpose of this change is that current system seems to be too complicated and there are make many users confused, which leads to unexpected losses by timeouts.

This new feature is already completed and I have programmed BrainKing to activate it automatically on 1st January 2011, 00:00:01 GMT+01:00. The old system will be used for the rest of this year.

Vacation days will be turned to vacation hours. The reason is that BrainKing users live in different time zones and it is not always clear when a day actually starts, according to the server time. Total vacation hours a year will correspond to current numbers of days - for instance, a Brain Rook member would be given 840 hours (35 x 24).
All vacation will be automatic, which also means that the calendar would be removed from Settings page (it should disable all attempts of cheating by periodical setting/unsetting of scheduled vacation days, as we could see in the past). Users of all membership levels will be allowed to activate/deactivate automatic vacation anytime.
How it works: All started games are checked for timeouts every 10 minutes. If a timeout is detected in a game (and the game can use a vacation), 1 hour is added to all games of the particular player (where it's their turn to move) and it is also deducted from their total vacation hours. This system ensures that you don't spend more vacation time than it is really necessary - for instance, if you play a game 7 hours after it would normally timeout, you use only 7 hours of your vacation hours left, not the full day (24 hours) like before.
Weekend days should work without any changes. By default, they are set to Saturday and Sunday, and you can change them once in 30 days. The day start is determined by the server time - GMT+01:00 zone.
Vacation rebuy option will be altered accordingly - instead of 10 and 5 days for the first and second 1 year renewal of your membership, you would get 240 and 120 hours.

In order to make the new system work properly, the automatic vacation will be activated for all users as of 1st January 2011. Everybody can turn it off then if necessary.

Please move this over to the Computers Discussion board. Thanks!

http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=52

And further posts along the same lines as what has been hidden, will be deleted, and those people banned as well. NO warnings.

Taken care of

MadMonkey: It's been a bit "off" since Fencer did those changes a month or 2 ago. I notice it seems to be accurate when I'm on my Main page. If I'm on any other page, the red numbers vanish.

Edited to add : Though that doesn't always seem to be true either. SOMEtimes anyway, when I'm on the Main Page, the red numbers are there and correct.

Iamon lyme: One last time. There have been NO restrictions on the board since that day. You have NO restrictions.

This will NOT keep going round and round on this board. Thank you

Iamon lyme: You are doing something wrong then. The board has NO restrictions. You have NO restrictions. There hasn't been an issue SINCE THAT DAY. I don't know what else you need to be told.

Iamon lyme: As I believe has been explained. There was trouble going on, on the board. The moderator of the board chose to put ALL posts on approval status. So that meant ANYone who posted, would not be seen, until a moderator checked the post and approved it.

As has also been stated, it had NOTHING to do with you.

The status is now back to normal, and it is time to move on.

DeaD man WalkiN: This was talked about on the www.brainking.info site :

Sunday, April 17. 2011
Posted by Filip Rachunek in BrainKing News and Events at 11:57 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)
Recent changes of BrainKing features

As we have announced in the Server News, BrainKing is currently under a process of optimization and tuning, in order to improve the overall performance and response time, mostly by rewriting certain functions that cause too much CPU load. There is nothing to worry about - everything is working OK and many players will probably notice no important changes. Anyway, I would like to clarify what exactly has been modified and why:

Maximum number of games shown in one list has been reduced to 100. The reason is obvious - some people, who are quite reckless in joining more tournaments than they can handle, end up with thousands of started games and it is neither logical nor wise to display all of them at once. 10 years ago, when BrainKing had been launched, we didn't expect that someone would start more than a couple of hundreds games, but since the reality is far too different, time has come to do something about it.
It means that if a player has more than 100 games to play, only the first 100 would be displayed, along with links to other pages containing the rest.

Game lists are sorted by time left and it is no longer possible to change the column to sort by. After doing a lot of tests and optimizations, it turned out to be the most effective solution, regarding the site speed and fair user policy. I know that some people will probably miss the feature to sort games by, for instance, opponent names, but a similar result can be easily achieved by using the opponent and game type filter above the game list. The same filter has been added to user profiles where all started games of the particular player can be found.

DeaD man WalkiN: Well, it would have to be done through Fencer. I would send him a private message about it, and possibly he'd take care of it.

ChaseWinstead: It looks like that opportunity may not exist anymore.

Fencer: When can brains be purchased again?

MadMonkey: Correct, you can not edit time limits once the tourney is created.

(Which makes sense if people have already signed up, but I can't see the harm if no one is signed up yet)

MadMonkey: Decent idea, if the Move and Go To, aren't going to work again. (The ones that still aren't)
However, your idea would be even better, and a great compromise, IF the page would stay filtered until you tell it not to.
Right now, if you filter it to show all backgammon games, for example, if you make a move and come back to the main page, it is unfiltered, and you have to refilter it.

And even nicer if "Move and Go To Next game" took you to the next game from that filtered page. (Then no need to go back to main page)

Of course, the only one I'm really missing right now is Move and Go To Next game with non-paying member. Other than that I generally just go in order anyway.

Deb4858: General Chat and Members Only already exist

crosseyed: Just curious if you tried one of the suggestions that others have said worked?

(try using brainking.cz) Others have said it worked better for them.

Of course the site will show up in Czech, so you would then have to click on the English flag over on the right side of the screen, and then click the confirmation button that you want to change languages.

coan.net: Completely normal and fast for me as well.

*Bright Eyes*:It was taken care of days ago.

Bernice: Well, if you PM me the name here on BK, I can Since others have said they got it too, I will be happy to block it from sending PM's

Bernice: Well if you received that in a PM here on Brainking, why not just block them? Or if they are spamming many people on here, we can certainly block them from sending messages to anyone.

crosseyed: Regardless of reading them or not. They are in effect.

crosseyed: Those are YOUR motives with games. You can't expect everyone to have the same motives. "Just fun"

It's what the User Agreement says. It is what we all agreed to, when we signed up here.

crosseyed: That's not quite true. If I started a game with someone with a certain BKR, and a certain skill level at a certain game, I have the right to finish out that game with THAT person. Not someone whose skills may be twice that of the "real" person.

El Cid: You must log in to the blog site to leave a comment.
Plus, be sure you log in to the right place. The "self registration" area fools some people into thinking that's where you log in. It's actually way below that, under the past comments.

Perhaps a side effect of the change, is that you temporarily can't change the listing to LESS than the 100 max.

Bernice: Black Rooks are allowed 3. If it is a non black rook, perhaps they had 3 before the restriction came to pass.

jouer: This conversation would be better suited for our "Other Game Sites" discussion board : http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=54

This board is about brainking specifically. Thank you.

ellieoop: I was inaccurate, though. At the very top of the page that you go to from "Photo Albums" (from the link on the left), would be your own albums, if you had any. THEN under that are the latest albums from other users.

ellieoop: If you clicked from the side menu (left), yes indeed you see most recent albums of other people, and most recent comments. To see your OWN album, you need to do it through your own profile.

Bernice: And another way would be, go to the Player List link on the left side. Click on the "Level" column. It will then list by membership level. If it starts with pawns, simply click it again, and it will reverse the list for you.

Thom27: Yeah, it's a shame. The brain-entry tournaments are fun.

Thom27: We also used to be able to purchase them, but that stopped a while ago. Fencer said he had other ideas for the "Brain" program, at some point.

Atrotos: I took a quick look at your 2 games against that person.

Really, with the Fischer clock, you EACH have one hour of play. Your clock runs while the turn is on your page, and your opponent's clock runs when its on their turn. (Which you probably knew, except your post said "1 hour for the whole game")

The site checks for timeouts every few minutes (unless that has changed) so, perhaps he/she moved right before the site checked. I know I have seen plenty of games get to negative 5 minutes or more before timing out.

Bernice: This is part of what Fencer said on December 10th, about the new system:
http://brainking.com/en/News

All vacation will be automatic, which also means that the calendar would be removed from Settings page (it should disable all attempts of cheating by periodical setting/unsetting of scheduled vacation days, as we could see in the past). Users of all membership levels will be allowed to activate/deactivate automatic vacation anytime.

Pedro Martínez: Ah... always good to click on "show thread" I guess.

MadMonkey: Exactly what kind of answer are you looking for? It was advertised for almost a week that there would be down time. I'm not sure anyone but you can answer why your internet went down before that and you timed out on games. I'm sure that can't possibly be "staff's" fault. I see you have zero vacation days?

Actually, there was a message at the top of the main page, for close to a week at least, warning of the site being down for some sort of upgrade at their hosting facility or whatever.

I Am The Best: Very "weird" that you keep coming back to post, yet you have absolutely no games going, and haven't, in quite a long time. Little odd, eh?

Dragon71: This is a public board. If you wanted to ONLY talk to Fencer, then I guess PM would have been the better choice? If you will not stop, then I will have no choice but to Hide/Ban you. I'd rather not do that. Thank you.

Dragon71: Again. You have been provided with the solutions. There is no reason to keep going on and on.

Dragon71: Feel free to continue this in private message, but you've already been provided with solutions to most of your complaints.

I agree about Walls. They are public and should be treated as such, and people who can't behave themselves there should be banned from posting on all Walls. I have personally said that DOZENS of times since they appeared here. However, the owner of the wall definitely DOES have the ability to delete and ban, but that's not good enough.

Dragon71: There's solutions for that too

And both of us have been here since almost the beginning, I'm sure, so you are mistaken in that assumption.

Dragon71: If someone is bothering you, yes. It's pretty simple. Rather than whine about it on a public board.

Dragon71: And that is when you use the "Blocked User" list to take care of THAT. There are solutions available to you. If you choose not to use them, then that is your own fault.

Also a good lesson NOT to give out your personal information to someone on a game site. Some people do it over and over and over again, and continue to whine when it bite's them in the rear end.

Dragon71: No one is forced to belong to any Fellowship. The only people who see what is in these "flaming" fellowships are the people who CHOOSE to belong to them. It's VERY easy to not see their contents.

Frankly, if you had been at IYT for long, then you would know that their PUBLIC boards were as bad as any PRIVATE fellowship board here could be.

That's enough please. Personal messages between people should be just that, private. Thank you!

Bernice: Yeah, it must be. I just noticed my Event box only goes back to Nov 11. I couldn't remember when the Event box started, so I checked Brainking.info, and it was Oct 21 or so. So, yes, automatic deletion must be happening. I would guess it only keeps things for a month.

Bernice: Won't the archive box work?

Bernice: I believe Fencer contemplated having some sort of automatic deletion in that box, but I don't recall him saying he had programmed that. I see there is an "Archive" box there. I would recommend sending those you want to save to that Archive box. (If that's the one you meant they disappeared from, then I don't know what to say! lol)

happyjuggler0: Yup, it's been asked many times.

happyjuggler0: Go to your friends list. (From the link on the left, under Profile section) You will see a little padlock next to his/her name. Click that.