tonyh: Working fine for me...

All right. I've sent Vikings the questionnaire. No more questions for him, please.


I've also asked Vikings to suggest someone else. Viking's made his recommendation and since she already had some votes from other people too I contacted her. Since she aggreed... she's next.


And so, from now on, all questions should be about...





All questions for...





First, (and to add to the suspense ), a new rule: it's true that the voting and the recommendation systems help select people that are more or less known in the community and that people may have an interest in knowing more about. But that also means that the interviewees will always be "famous" people. And sometimes it's well worth to learn something about someone we hardly know as well. SO I had to figure out a way to choose not so famous people as well.
It's also not fair to just ask all these tough questions and never be selected for an interview.
So, from now on, for every 5 questions you ask, it counts as a vote on you. The 5 questions don't have to be all in the same interview (and though you can ask more than 5 questions per interview, I'll only consider you asked 5 for this count). Maybe this will also be an incentive for some more people to start sending questions.

Now, where was I?


Oh, right!
And the next interview will be about...





Bubbles Pbarb2


You have until 11th November (11/11) to make up some questions for her.

In the meantime, you can keep sending suggestions for the next person to be interviewed after Bubbles.

I'll be arranging the questions for Viking's interview this weekend.

So, if you want to ask him anything, just send your questions to me.

No question is too ridiculous, no question will go unused (well, some might but you'll have to send them to me first to know which ones )

Thank you.

I just read an article about how scientists say that time doesn't exist. And now I come to the site and find that time has stopped... just great... makes me wonder if I should be reading any scientific papers before playing my games

Rose: Does it happen in other browsers?
Maybe there's something in the page forcing it to a width over 1024... and when you say 1024, is it the outer size of the window or the size of the inside (that is, including the window frame width and scroll bars or not)

Kunoichi: I know some members alreay do that sort of thing, using test accounts. There is a simple thing to do to avoid the suspect of cheating - only play unrated games.

Ronin: Most players who do that have way to many games going for them to handle. So they play only a few every day, usually those that are closer to the deadline.
Seeing that you aggreed on the time limits when you started the game, you really should have no reason to complain.

Nowadays, whenever I create game invitations I set them to 2 or 3 days time per move, so that my opponent will move faster. Some "slower" players will avoid such games, while some others will prefer them to the slower games. Especially if you allow them to take vacation days, which is the default setting anyway. So you really have nothing to loose with trying different time settings.

P.S: try to stick to the board's language. You'll get more replies that way

"Snoopy": I think it should read - "if you buy a one year membership for someone else". But I'm not really sure...

Don't forget to send me all your questions for Vikings . I still need more 'personalized' questions for the interview...

Family Man: If the add is interfering with the rest of the page maybe that's a bug or simply an add that Fencer failed to check properly. Check to see how it shows up on other browsers and if turning on/off any addblocker does any difference.
Then PM Fencer about your conclusions - I'm sure he never intended for an add to interfere with the site... pawn or no pawn...

redfrog: especially considering you sent them to the wrong person - I didn't get any sugestions from you

Tuesday: I'm planning to have regular interviews and then some others at special situations. Some will be chosen by the previous interviewee and some by everybody. And on occasion I may just pick one at random.
I still haven't set it all in my mind yet, I'm just playing some things as I go along. I already have loads of ideas and I plan to have some surprises now and then

Bottom line is - if you think somebody could be a good candidate just drop me a line - all votes will count for something, either now or 5 months from now or 3 years, who knows. I have nothing against pawns unless someone tells me they can't be interviewed...
hint - first one who gets 100 votes will get an instant interview, no matter if another one is already running or not

Czuch Czuckers: No fair, I wanted to do the drum roll
I had forgotten the new rule about the last interviewee picking up the next in line. But since some other people had voted for Vikings as well, I went along and asked him if he accepts the challenge. Since he said yes, the question period is now open. The votes from other people will be accounted for in special occasions, I'll tell more about it when the time is right. In the meantime if anybody wants to nominate someone else to be interviewed, you can still do it, weather or not a selection process is in course.

So, as of now, send me your questions for Vikings . Ask anything. He says the site won't be the same after his interview, and that we're all doomed, so it's up to you to prove him right/wrong . If there are questions you feel you can ask anybody, tell me about it so you don't need to send them for every interview. If there is any question where you want to remain anonymous say it as well.
The clock is ticking and on the 14th October I'll create the questionaire to send to Vikings. So start writing

Ewe: But this is for later. For now start sending me your sugestions for the next vict... person to be interviewed
The part about the questions was a reply to coan's post. But that's for later, for now I'm accepting nominations. You can send more than one name if you wish, just try to send them all at once.

Ewe: which is why you must send me the names of the people you want to interview. So I can pick one.
I'll collect nominations until the end of this month. When I announce the "winner" in October you can send your questions then.

coan.net: I wouldn't have put it better myself. Change the above to link to this post of yours so that everyone knows of the rules

Just a little addon to your 3rd point: If you want your questions to be reused for future interviews or would like to keep it anonymous, let me know. I believe this is how it worked in the past and I can see some reasons for it being so, so I think I'm going to keep this rule. If nothing of the sort is requested the questions will be used only for the current interview and will be credited to their author.

But this is for later. For now start sending me your sugestions for the next vict... person to be interviewed
Send as many as you like (but try to send them all in one message, ok?).
You have until the end of the month. I'll announce the lucky winner in October.

MadMonkey: I think RSS doesn't have authentication. If private boards had an RSS feed then anybody could read its posts just by subscribing to the feed.

coan.net: and optionaly put the last point somewhere in the middle of the others so that the whole process can go faster and more people get to be interviewed

pauloaguia: I wasn't.
Which makes me a bad candidate for the job - I'll never get to be interviewed that way

Tuesday: I wasn't. I was talking about the questions I asked...

Tuesday: well, he never edited any of my questions
Don't worry, if some editing ever becomes necessary, it will be discussed with the author... assuming I get the job, that is

Rose: It doesn't seem an hard task... if nobody else wants it, I can take the job
Of course, provided harley doesn't want her old job back again, now that she's returned...

Pbarb2: You can find the BugTracker on the main menu, it's one of the last options, between Contacts and Links.
Or you can just use the link: http://brainking.com/pt/BugTracker

"Snoopy": If you click on Brains on your Profile it should go to the Brains history page... that might help you.

MadMonkey: Maybe the Manual processing option was selected.
More on this: http://brainking.info/archives/103-Automatic-membership-renewals.html , http://brainking.info/archives/112-Automatic-membership-upgradingdowngrading.html

Purple: There is an option for transferring the money directly to Fencer's account. I never understood exactly why that option says Czech Republic only... International money transfers are a perfectly valid and easy form of payment and I know of many people that prefer them to the hassle of using PayPal (and sometimes it's cheapper too, especially if within the Euro zone )

alanback: Perhaps it works only for translators... It really isn't important for anyone else, anyway...

alanback: It's a tool for translator to know the key for the texts they need to translate. You can emulate it by replacing the language part in the page URL (pt, en or whatever language) with xx

basplund: When you click "Key Mode" your default language is set to xx just like when you click on a flag. Since that setting is stored on the server, the next time you login you'll be in KeyMode.
The sure way to get out of it is by clicking on a flag, to change your default language again.

Because of that, whenever I need to go to key mode, I simply type in the xx at the address bar, so it doesn't get saved, since in Simple Mode the flags are invisible.

nodnarbo: yes, you can't see a graph before you have a ranking. It's the same reason why your ranking is hidden until after you have at least 5 games. If you could see the chart, then you'd know what it is...

AbigailII: About your last option: sometimes Fencer (and others) answers requests with just a smile, you may miss important information if you hide those posts...

Pbarb2: Post a bug in the bug tracker with links to specific games and move numbers. Then Fencer may take a closer look.

Do you usually click on it before the page is completely loaded? And do you usually check the page before submiting the move to make sure that it was played where you intended it to? Sometimes, elements in the page may shift position while the page is being loaded, and you can click on one place that suddenly becomes some place else, and you end up making a move you didn't intend to. That's why you should always check the move before actually submiting.
Not sure if this is your case, but it's a frequent situation forsome users...

If a team joins a tournament but one of its players' membership expires before the tournament starts what will happen? Will the team have to rejoin (with another member) or will it still be up for play?

Fencer: you actually selected some of the most popular games at my fellowship (even if my favourites are not amongst those), so thanks for that

Fencer: Unexperienced players should learn how to play the game as accurately as possible. Making a copmparison with chess, it's like being able to castle after having moved your king or by crossing a square that is atacked by an enemy piece - experienced players wouldn't do it, but unexperienced ones might,m because they still don't know the rules very well.

Anyway, and I'm sure it would settle it for everybody - since you just admited that taking advantage of the "unenforced rule" is not the correct move, while it is not fixed, and if someone plays such a move against me, what can I do? It seems to me all I can do is not play the game, which is a shame...

Also I aggree that it is your right to set the priorities as you see fit, but it's also our right to try and make you set them more according to our likings . Here's another example to make you think: Hasami Shogi is a lot less played than Turkish Checkers. Yet it's rules were changed some time ago to make it more playable. The change was also in the line of "enforcing a new rule". Yet, even with the change, the game is still far less popular than Turkish Checkers...

And since I'm not trying to stir anything, I've rest my case (for now) and let others do the speaking on this subject from now on...
You're still doing a great job on this site, no matter what, Fencer

pauloaguia: Seems like somebody removed or hidden the message I was replying to.
For those that didn't have time to read it it was a request to fix the bug in the Turkish rules implementation. Just clarifying it so that my message doesn't look so awakward, looking like it's coming out of nowhere.

Oh, and I forgot in my previous message:

Tutagil: For all it takes you have my support. The bug in the rules has been here for years, and for years Fencer has promised it would be corrected.
It is a weird thing, since the Turkish community is such a strong one on this site, that Fencer keeps making such promises and doesn't actually do anything.
I still remember when there were similar bugs on the Check Checkers implementation and the Czech community kept complaining about it. It was a community much stronger then than it is now (proportionally to the others) and it still took him a while to fix it. Sadly he missed the opportunity to fix it for other checkers games, even though it was already know and had been pointed out at the time.

I have decided to post my comment here and not at the Turkish forum as suggested for two reasons:
1) I don't know how to speak or write Turk. So it doesn't seem right for me to post in that board.
2) This is a "Board for everybody who is interested in BrainKing itself... and future" (like all the Brainking.xx boards), and I feel I must voice my reason on this, since the way Fencer sometimes prioritizes development affects all of us as players. "This is a game site, first of all", so we're told often, so I'd like to see game related bugs have a higher priority sometimes than messages or discussion boards related issues, for instance.

Fencer (and mods): Don't take me wrong, I'm not trying to start a flame war against you, but I'm on the side of the Turkish community in that this bug in the rules has been around for far too long... especially since the game is called Turkish Checkers (which is a name associated with a very well defined set of rules) and should therefore follow its rules more accurately - and the capturing rules are an important set of the gam rules in all checkers variants.

MadMonkey: I didn't have all chess variants active in my filter, not sure if it has anything to do with it.
Better yet would be an option to automatically add (or not) new games from the filter as they are created on the site... because some people may argue that they don't want to have to reset the filter every time a new game shows up...

Eriisa: With RSS I can subscribe to the feed with comments to the blog entries. I won't see any comments just by looking to the main page on BrainKing.com

redfrog: I'm inclined to aggree with Bwild. I already subscribe to the RSS feed of the blog, why should I have to read the same blog entry twice?
Also, it's not about important news. Fencer just proved that by submiting a News entry this week about the scheduled downtime - he didn't post it as a blog entry, clearly stating that both of them are for different things...

Funny thing: I've grown so used to of clicking the remove link without even reading the blog entry first (since I'll read about it eventually on my RSS client), that I almost removed the scheduled downtime news entry without reading it (and this is particularly important to read, since I usually send Fencer a translated version of the News). Point is: if you just remove or ignore the blog entries, you risk not paying enough attention to the really important news...

alanback: I know all that (even some CGI) but I'm just lazy to do it
Thanks for the briefing anyway.

coan.net: thank you.
(Now to figure out a way to process the information out of 103 pages in one shot...)

Is there anywhere on BK where we can see how many rated games we have finished of a certain game type?
On my profile there's a table with all the victories, losses and draws of the games I've finished, but that's for counted games. That is, it includes games that were counted but not rated, and games that have finished before 2 moves were made.

So, is there anywhere I can see how many rated games I finished for a certain game type?

SEAWOLF2: I don't know the first thing about webtv or anything. But if you say the pieces appeared larger before, maybe your browser is shrinking the board to fit on the screen? Try removing the left menu bar (at Settings page) and the notation column and see if that helps.

Again, I'm just guessing here, don't know if it has anything to do with it.

Fencer: good enough.
For future decisions like this one, if you want light colors, you can always pick the letters of the game name that are allowed in hex format and see what color comes from that.

Fencer: you read fast... I deleted my previous post after reading nabla's.
Will #eeeeff; do?

nabla: good idea

joshi tm: yes... I never understood why Amazon Chess has a coloured border and Extintion Chess doesn't. The first one has no special rules to play (except for a different piece, which is rather obvious) while the second is easilly confused with regular chess...
But it's probably an extremly hard thing for even Fencer to change because, though it may seem like a simple request, many have asked for it befor, but to no avail...

Family Man: but since most stairs are 2-game matches, you must wait for the second game to finish before you are declared the winner of that match.

Family Man: Games that finish before 2 moves don't affect your BKR