It would be very nice if Brainkings allowed users to make their personal stylesheets, that is, on each page the stylesheet is included. In combination with 'class' and 'id' attributes, users can then for themselves decide what elements on a page can be highlighted, shown in a different font, not shown at all, etc.

pgt: I regularly attend a REAL bridge club, and I have never seen anybody with a cloak and mask on.

I've attended REAL bridge and chess clubs as well. Never have I seen players being equipped with RFID tags to keep track of what they are doing. I don't think such clubs would have many members. Or even be legal in a lot of countries.

I'm having a real problem with what "privacy" is being breached if I see you browsing a discussion board.

Apparently, if you see me browsing a discussion board, you draw the (possibly false) conclusion that I'm not actively playing games. You follow me, and draw conclusions about what I do. I do have a problem with that. I do have a problem with goverments forcing ISPs to keep tabs on customers email and web browsing activities as well, or with plane passenger lists being cross-checked against god knows what kind of databases.

I have an even bigger problem that you don't even identify your country in your profile. One of the really nice things about this site is that it is international, and it is NICE to know what country you opponent is from.

If it's international, what does it matter from which country someone is? If it makes you feel more happy if you think I'm from Kenya, by all means, assume I'm from Kenya. If you prefer Norway, assume Norway. I don't see what displaying a flag besides ones name adds (and what flag should that be? Country of residence? Country one is born in? Country/countries one holds passport(s) off? Country where one would like to live?) Perhaps the absence of a flag next to my name is a statement on its own. Perhaps my country uses a flag Brainking doesn't have an image off. Perhaps my preferred country hasn't be widely recognized. Perhaps I consider countries to be old fashioned. Perhaps I'm a Roma. Maybe I'm on the move. Or on the run. But whatever it is, it's not of your business. I'm here to play games - as an individual, and not as a representative of a piece of soil with arbitrary borders.

pgt: What an unnecessarily nasty word "peek" is in this context!

And "hide" isn't?

There are all sorts of reasons why it is nice to know whether somebody is actually playing games, or just browsing bulletin boards.

Just because I'm browsing bulleting boards, doesn't mean I'm not actively playing a game. In a REAL backgammon/chess/bridge club, just because I look out the window, go to the bathroom, or order a drink, it doesn't mean I've stopped playing. As I explained yesterday, you cannot draw any conclusions on which games I'm actively playing based on the which page I've visited last. If I'm actively playing, I'm usually actively playing many games - unlike a REAL backgammon/chess/bridge club. I also might visit a page of a game I'm playing, and then the phone rings, my compilation is finished, dinner is served, or what else, and it will be my last active page for a long time, while I'm not playing any game actively anymore.

If you want to know I'm playing games, I make moves. If I don't make moves, I'm not playing. It's simple as that.

I've said it before: if you go to a REAL backgammon/chess/bridge club, you don't wear a cloak, Everbody knows whether you are playing games, or reading the notice board in the lobby.

Go to a REAL backgammon/chess/bridge club, and keep tabs on the whereabouts of your opponents. Follow them to the lobby to see whether they read the notice boards, or visit the restrooms. When asked, say you're afraid they're getting their coats and leave. See how long you last.

Cloak mode is a totally unnecessary cop-out!

Privacy is never unnecessary.

pgt: Who on earth needs to hide on such a friendly site?

Who on earth needs to peek on such a friendly site?

txaggie: Can someone explain to me the great attraction of cloak mode? Are there really that many people who are concerned about other people knowing what page they are viewing?

I use cloak mode. It's not that I'm concerned about others knowing what page I last viewed, but it's people drawing conclusions from that.

txaggie: I find it particularly annoying when I am go to "Online opponents" and cannot tell if my opponents are actively playing me or not. Should I hang around while they make a move, or is it time to log off? I don't know!

Let me tell you something. If I am actively playing you, you're not likely to deduce that from whatever last page I was viewing either. If I'm here playing, I usually am making moves in 20 to 60 games, of which several, sometimes over a dozens, games my opponents are active as well, so there are a lot of games where I make a number of moves in a short time. So, just because I'm viewing game X (which isn't a game I'm playing with you) at a certain point in time, doesn't mean I won't make a move against you within a minute. And while I'm actively playing an opponent, I also may look at a new post on a board.

It's a fallacy you can determine who's actively playing you based on "last page viewed". If I'm actively playing you - you'll notice from your list of games where you have to make a move. You don't need cloak mode for that.

Proximity http://www.wimp.com/proximity/, a strategy game where the players try to dominate the board.

pauloaguia: Oh and while I'm at it, maybe the slovakian flag at the top right of the page could use with a grey border line like the chzeck one does.

The grey border isn't a feature of the Czeck flag. The grey border indicates the language you are currently using. Click on the Slovak flag, and it'll get a grey border.

ScarletRose: I have nothing to hide. Standard question for people who have nothing to hide: what's your social security number?

those who use the cloak mode.. shouldn't be able to see those of us not using cloak. Good idea, that would save me some screen estate. That is, if the line of the last page requested by the browser someone was using was replaced by nothing, and not by something indicating you're not going to see it.

Fencer: Oh, that's because you were born on the continent, in the 20th century. It's an old, archaic notation, with assymmetric notation for white and black moves. It's called descriptive notation, or English notation, as it remained popular in English speaking countries until 30, 40 years ago. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_chess_notation

Blackadder Mr K: That's just a battleboat variant with more boats. Except that you might be lucky and you win before you've sunk all.

A hard battleboats variant I used to play was that, just as in dark battelboats, you always get three shots. But if your salvo has any hits, all you are told are how many hits you have - not which shots were hits. But I wouldn't play such a variant here, just as I don't like playing dark chess or espionage on turn based sites.

Walter Montego: I'd like to be able to disable the Smiley Icons so I'd not have to see them at all.

There's a setting in your user preferences that disables the smileys. Unfortunally, it doesn't disable the *NUMBER* sequences, so notes full of smileys still look like moronic utterances of toddlers. Now, if only there was a setting, "hide notes that have smileys in them"....

EdTrice: Yeah, and it would even be better if you can make a "permanent conditional": do an automatic pass if I can't play in backgammon, or when I lose the initial roll.

The current multi-game tournaments are nothing more than a bit of syntactic sugar to create multiple tournaments with the same settings. For instance, if one were to create a "backgammon variations" tournament, it will give 6 different winners, not a "backgammon variations champion".

I think it would be nice to be able to create tournaments where people played their opponents in all of the selected games.

grenv: I wasn't proposing any fixed time setting. Considering the current system has configurable time settings, that wouldn't make any sense.

It would be nice to have time controls where you have a certain amount of time per game, plus some time per move. For instance "5days + 36hours", meaning you start the game with 5 days on your clock, and get another 36 hours for each move you make. This would allow you to take a break from a game for a couple of days, without having to resort to really long time controls that could drag a game to last months.

Littlegolem uses "10days + 36hours/move" which I find really nice. It allows you enough time to explore a hairy situation on a board, without having the risk in playing a game that lasts for years (some people make it a sport to wait time their clock always runs out to make a move. For every move they make).

txaggie: Are there other users out there who would find it helpful to have automatic refresh on other pages besides the games pages and the main page?

Since you ask, no. In fact, I don't find it helpful for the existing pages - and I turn it off. Automatic refresh gives the impression I'm active when I'm not.

pauloaguia: Now, what I'd really like to know would be the average BKR of the player that is ranked in ALL game types.

Ah, you mean the sum of a players BKRs of all the game types, divided by the number of game types? But we already have that. The statistics pages contains a list of players with their BKR sum. Just divide that by the number of games types available.

What I find strange about the average BKR is that it's possible to win five games, and then have your average BKR drop significantly: image the first 20 games you played of a particular game type, you played very bad. So your BKR is low, much lower than your average. But since you only played 20 games, the BKR doesn't count for the average. Now you win five games. Your BKR of that game type will somewhat rise, but it's still below your average. But now it will count in the average, so it will lower your average BKR.

I guess it's somewhat interesting to have a list of average BKRs of a players best N (for some value of N) BKRs. And it would also be interesting to see more than 50 people in the current lists, to see how far you're trailing. Then again, they are just numbers.

grenv: Yes, and no autovacation for games on which the timing out player hasn't moved yet. Or on which no 2 moves have been played yet.

nobleheart: maybe some thought could be given to the use of the doubling cube

That's number one on the development prioritylist, isn't it?

Bry: I'm referring to swaer words, sexual innuendo's, sexual references etc etc.

And that's where the trouble starts. You might consider something to be a "swear word", while I would find moderating such a word overprotecting. Or vica versa. The same with sexual references. Some people believe it's better if children don't even hear or read the words used for certain body parts. While others think that such restrictions is bad - because it gives the impression something is wrong with it.

I see your point re having a board for kids as asking for trouble

Actually, that's not what I said. I said that having a moderated board is asking for trouble. And then I don't mean moderated in the style current boards are moderated, which basically means trying to keep the discussion on topic and people to behave, but moderated as in "deciding what's 'good' or 'not good' for the children".

perhaps the very young should be accomodated accordingly and be responsibly looked after by trusted people

I think the (very) young should be looked after by trusted people: their parents/guardians. I don't think it's up to a game site to fill that role.

Bry: i have to admit that I've edited/deleted some things you really wouldnt want a child to see.

Well, that's very subjective. What you find "unsuitable" for a kid I might not. And I might find things "unsuitable" for a child that you find perfectly normal. I've lived on both sides of the pond and what's considered unsuitable for children is quite different. Nipplegate was a big scandal in the US -- exposure of a nipple, specially if a child could see it -- is considered shocking by large groups of USians. Half of Europe is still laughing about it. OTOH, Europe frowns upon violence much more than the US. In Europe, people generally don't own guns. In the US, people have different ideas of freedom.

If you were to moderate a board for teens, or younger kids, how would you moderate? American style? European style? Asian style?

I think having a moderated board for teens/kids is just asking for trouble. Nor do I think it's something that ought to be on a games site.

Luke Skywalker: No, please, no, no, no. I really don't want to get "take back requests" after people made a move that turned out to be less fortunate, and then get nasty messages when I ignore such a request. People sending draw requests while they are hopelessly lost are annoyingly enough already.

reza: Dark crazy gothic three-checks fortress Fisher random anti extinction cylinder loop marahadja screen chess? With a doubling cube. Supersized.

It would be nice if the tournament standing pages (the ones on
http: //brainking.com/game/Tournaments?trg={NUMBER}&
;tri={NUMBER} page)
mentioned the date the tournament started. I know that you can go to one of the games and see when the game started, but it would be nice to have it along the other tournament info.

I also would like to have the option to list the tournaments mentioned on the profile page to be listed by starting date/time. Listing them by ID means they are listed in the order the tournaments were created, which, IMO, is less useful.

pauloaguia:
Well, if the game isn't available at all, you wouldn't be able to play your friend from Japan in any language.

Mill borne rules

nobleheart:
Yes, I do. I wasn't quite sure about the name. I've played about a million games against the computer - either the curses version (mille is part of the standard BSD games), or the graphical version, xmille. (For X-Windows). I don't know any MS-Windows version - that's an OS I don't do.

But now that I think of it, I don't think this game will play well on BK. It's important to keep track of certain cards, and while this is rather easy to do in a game you play from begin to end, I would find it impossible to keep track of the cards if I have several games going on, each lasting for days. This would be a problem for most card games I think. At least for me.

Some games I'd certainly play if they were added: cribbage, mille, scrabble.

Walter Montego: Who cares what I browse? What are they going to do with the information?

Indeed. If noone cares, and noone is going to do something with that information, there's no need to display the information.