Fencer: What am I supposed to try? I've gone to my fellowship's torunament page (http://brainking.com/pt/Tournaments?trg=27216) to try and change anything. All I see different is twice the option to delete the tournament at the bottom. When I click the Edit link, at the top, I see no new options.
So... what am I supposed to be trying again?

In some rating charts the ratings fluctuate heavilly. The top player one week can become 10th or worst in the next... So, would there really be a point in forcing the top player to accept invitations? By the time that game was over, the results of forced games could have changed his rating drastically and the outcome be almost meaningless...

Finally a new game to play with Thanks Fencer.

Just a little request though - when editing a tournament, could we please have the option to change (or at least add) game types? I usually start some tournaments with all game types available, I'd like the possibility to include new games when they show up, not have to wait until the next tournament or delete it and start another one from scratch.

But thanks for the game

MadMonkey: Ah, but by constantly repeating the same requests over and over, Fencer sometimes reviews their priority

Loking at my Ponds list in my MainPage, I can see it makes up about 25-30% of the page's source code. I'm signed up for 57 ponds and over 200 games. Yet, I can restrict the space that the game lists occupy on that page, but I cannot do it for ponds.
There's a visual impact on the page, which makes me scroll down to see the top of my games list, but that I can more or less solve that problem with a stylesheet already...

But picking up on the work being done to lighten the site, maybe this list could finally be trimmed and see a "(more)" link added like it happens with the game lists on that same page?

TarantinoFan: Look for the colors, in the text

Fencer: Don't you mean "I like the green. It helps me to calm down " ?

mctrivia: I meant Fencer might be more pressured to improve the site's autoplayer in that case...
But yes, I understand what you mean. The AutoPlayer / AutoPass / AutoMover was never a project Fencer was much interested in...

mctrivia: if only you had said 3 to 4 months...

AbigailII: Actually, during a game, images can represent most of the abndwidth... and I know they should be cached but the fact is, many times they aren't (for instance, I have my browser set to display only cached images for BK, but sooner or later they go out of cache, either because I browse other pages or simply because some of them are very infrequent, like some positions in Backgammon or Chinese Chess, for instance). And some people simply disable cache altogether (I could really never understand why, maybe as a desperate measure to save disk space?)
So, a mirror image server might be easier to accomplish and definitely easier to manage... as it is, images are already served from a different server...

Anyway, Fencer will know if the images represent a reasonable percentage of the bandwidth to figure out if this could be worth exploring or not...

mctrivia: I think there would be a problem there - how to ensure synchronization between the database in Europe with the DB in America?

Eriisa: What do you mean by that? Any RSS feed will keep you informed of the most recent items posted to it.

MadMonkey: Also, on red numbers, could we have then on Bug tracker when a new one is posted
If you want to keep track of the Bug Tracker, you can subscribe to its RSS feed ;)

When searching for a player's name, can old names be searched as well? Some players like to change theirnicks on special occasions and, during that period, they become harderto find...

Could we please have a Preview button on messages like we have for discussion boards? I just sent a message and had to go and check on the SentMessages to see if it had been formatted properly...

pauloaguia: instead of a red number (which probably doesn't make much sense), maybe some mark (like a red asterisk) when the deadline is closing down (say 1 or 2 weeks before, for instance)

Fencer: ... and a red number when a new interview is open

MadMonkey: what you're asking is not the right solution for the problem you placed. If a couple of members are holding back a tournament, messaging the 100 members of a tournament will bother 98 that have long finished their games. Why not simply send messages directly to the "offending" ones (tough they're not doing anything wrong since they are obbeying the time limit the creator has set for the tournament)

El Cid: I second that request!

coan.net: such a "stripped down" mode could be automatically activated for everyone when one of the servers goes down for some reason and the other(s) get overloaded. That way, there'd be a lot less load for the remaining server(s) on desperate times when every single byte of bandwidth counts...

rednaz23: should be 30 days: http://brainking.info/archives/260-The-code-mania.html
If it's not, better post it on the BugTracker

Czuch: in the rules pages the statistics display drawn games... most everywhere else it displays drawn matches...
not sure if this helps you, thoug...

dicepro: As to smaller ponds, the only thing against it is the fact that Fencer doesn't want to allow it in the CreatePond form. The site handles this situation very well: Small Pond
I tried a few of these small ponds that Kunoichi created while looking for ponds and they weren't all that fun to play - much more random factor than strategy, takes most of the fun out of it in my opinion.

As to shorter time limits, I think the smallest unit so far is the hour, it would take some coding to add minute timeouts. More than that, the script that checks what ponds should move to the next turn runs hourly.

Jaak: You must wait for the tournament to start. The games that don't have enough players will clear themsleves out 11 days after the tournament starts if they don't gather 4 players until then.
If you delete the tournament you will delete all games in the tournament at once and then you'll have to start it all over again.
You can mark games to select which ones you want to enter, not the ones you want to delete.

Czuch:

One more thing - this algortihm would naturally be executed whenever a game in the torunament was finished and a winner was not already determined for that section.
By the way, all the elements required for the algorithm to work are already accessed when a game is over - when you get a message warning you of the game's outcome, those elements are all there - points per player; games still pending per player; section winner (if already determined).

(CORRECTION as of some hours ago, I have more active tournaments than active games)

rednaz23: most of the time SB doesn't even come into play. It's only a tie breaker, one can often find out the winner without calculating the SB.
A simple algorithm based only on the points (total wins) would be simple enough to implement (a sure winner is found when (s)he has more points than every other player in the section, even if they'd win all the games still pending). Like I said, it's simple enough to implement, I think, and still far better than not having one at all for many situations.

As it is now I have almost as many games going as I have tournaments. And trust me that not all those games are from tournaments, so I have many tournaments pending where I have finished all my games a long time ago (and in many of these it's obvious who the winner will be)

joshi tm: knights can kick it back inside again

AbigailII: this site already associates flags with languages... and though a few have complained about it, most just don't care...

joshi tm: Main Page shows you a link at the top to the tournaments you are signed in currently and haven't finished yet. Right after it says how many games you have going

Nirvana: They can ask the BigBoss to send it for them... Or they can post for everyone that uses the board to read.. Or the board description can be changed to convey some information (not really sure about this last one - maybe it's a BB thing too)

LionsLair: I like that idea too

MadMonkey: Well, I don't see them :)
that's because they're related to the same setting that allows you to remove similar lists from the main page (I don't like them on my main page, if I want to check the rating I can go to my own profile).
That's why I made my third request - that way I could have such lists hidden from my main page but showing on my fellowship. At least that way I'd be able to the my teams BKR somewhere. Though I still think they should be visible in other ways too...

MadMonkey: I think everyone can see the list at the Fellowship page top, not just BigBosses... at least I think my brother could see it on our fellowship...

- When a Team match is over, can the message stating the outcome also have the Team BKR change?
- Can the team BKR be visible on the fellowship page, by the team? If there is already a way, can someone please tell me what it is, since I can't find it?
- Can the setting to display the top BKR teams in the fellowship be independent from the setting to display my to BKR in my main page?

... preety please... ?

A few suggestions for fellowships I've been gathering for a while now:

1. Add more pages to fellowships Right now there's a Main Page and a Waiting Games page. I think the Main Page could well be split up into 4 or 5 different extra pages
   
2. Let BB know what players are blocking fellowhip messages. I know some users don't like to recive messages from the BB because they read the DBs. I know some don't read the DBs and just get the news from the fellowship from the messages the BB sends them. Thing is I keep having to repeat myself at both places because I'm not sure if I'm reaching everybody or not.
   
3. Small and large fellowhip description. Let us have a small and a large text for the fellowship. Large text could appear on main fellowship page only, and members could have the option to hide it they wish. Some fellowhips have huge descriptions that you need to scroll down every time to get to where the interesting information is...
   
4. Improve Team naviagtion. Right now, if I want to get out of 10 teams I have a hard task ahead of me: select team on combobox, click button, scroll down, click leave team, scroll down, select team on combobox, etc. If I want to get out of most of them, or need to remove someone from all, it's a nightmare. Can there be a page with all teams from the fellowship where a player can simply (un)check the teams (s)he belongs to?
   </ol>
   I think that's enough for now. I'll save the rest for later...
   
   I like having fellowhips on this site and the possibilities associated with them. I think it could be even better if they were more user friendly
   

coan.net: No, you're not special
It's a bug that's been around forever, I guess: http://brainking.com/pt/ReadBug?bgi=463

I'd like a button to retire from all Stairs, either on our profile page or on the myStairs list page.
Oh, and another to get out of Retire, for when I'm back

AbigailII: I'm not saying that features can't be discussed on the main BK site. I'm just saying that it makes much more sense if a comment is placed next to the post that originated it. If that post is on the BK.info site, then it makes much more sense to me, that those interested in the subject, will expect comments to that post at that site.

But I'm not making a fuss out of it... I was just expressing my personal opinion. As far as I'm concerned, you can comment BK.info's posts wherever you see fit (and the moderators allow )

Andersp: the blog already allows you to post comments, you can even read their RSS feed. Why create a board to post about a bunch of unrelatd topics where if you want to read the main thread you have to go to other site?

If only authentication was integrated between both sites maybe there would be more comments...

jryden: Well the notification mechanisms already exist (mail and RSS feed). All it takes is the hability to activate them only for certain games...

With 104 games to choose from it's getting harder and harder to find a particular game whenever you have to do it from a combobox. Like the option of quick inviting a user to a game, or to choose a team in fellowships that have teams for most of the games.

Currently the list is sorted by category (though not with an obvious separator) and inside each category I think it's sorted by date the game was added to BK (the few exception, I think are Japanese Chess and Chinese chess that show up very high on the chess list though many other chess variants were created before those). The later someone joined the site, the less apparent this will be and it's actually a nightmare to navigate through the list since people simply have to look carefully at each item because there is no apparent order.

My request:
- sort the games inside each category alphabetically.
- add a void option in the combobox as separator for game categories. Something like:

------ Chess games ------
Amazon Chess
Chess
...
------Checkers games ------
Czech Checkers
Gothic Checkers
...
------ Other Games ------
Dice Poker
Ludo
Mancala
...
...
...

Can these pieces be displayed somehwere, please? Maybe on the side of the board. Or on a separate row, by the captured pieces, like in Recycle Chess, where you also have two sets of pieces that haven been removed from the board...

Fencer: It seems to be, yes.
Thank you

(by the way, no preview in the inlined reply text box?)

... so that I can go through all but one or two without having to keep reminding myself to select a different pond on the "Play and goto" combobox each time I play.

nabla: Unfortunately it was nowhere public... he sent it to me in a PM when I asked him what exactly was intended by the feature to find the best way for me to translate it to portuguese... I just found that conversation in a PM, not a DB.

So, before I'm accused of violating the UserAggreement for bringing private conversations to public, I'll just shut up about it...

But I'll leave my feature request for AutoMove to be implemented too (or AutoPlay or whatever you want to call it)

nodnarbo: No, I believe there are two concepts: referred users and referals (I thinks those are the terms in the english version).
- Referred users are just users you invited to the site, and register, doesn't matter if they become paid members or not. You can see them on the profile of the user who referred them (like in this list, for instance, where you can see one of the user's last action was at the same time of the first login so didn't even do anything, never played here).
- Referrals are when paid members that were invited by you eventually registered. These count for Brains.

Jaak: The first ones are guessed based on the link they followed when (s)he first came to the site. If that link has any reference to your userid, and (s)he register on the site, then that user will become one of your referred users. Probably when you invite them to a game, that link doesn't have your userId? You'll have to wait on a reply from Fencer on this one...

nabla: good point.
But I remember Fencer saying once that he planned to implement both. Probably it's not a pshycological matter but a matter of Fencer's time

plaintiger: ... and ani-chess, and all the checkers variations too...

Any chance the tables with data can have an ID attribute Fencer? Like <table id="tournament_list">

It would make it so much easier to perform some data mining on BKs pages.

I'm thinking especially about fellowships and torunaments pages, since thoseare the ones I'm interested about right now, and also where we have less statistics on BK. But I guess it wouldn't hurt to extend it to the whole site...