harley is not the moderator of Jokes.

What about it? Once a moderator is on-line, they will delete the bad post and bad the users.

Just found the new Top Player page in the Statistics area, cool.

i love stats. Shows how close I am to my goal of 66% (twice as many wins as loses - win 2 games for every 1 game lost.) :-)

Niki says the list in the upper left corner works, so it sounds like that option is already checked.

I find it strange that the list in the upper left corner would work, and the picture would not. Maybe Fencer will have some ideas.

Are you using a computer? If so, what type of browser? (Internet Explorer). Also do you use any type of spyware blocker/pop-up blocker?

In my profile only - not on the board, and not in games - just in the profile.

Should be able to just place your cursur over the picture, and a slightly bigger different picture should show up!

SR - Bobes is the 3rd person so far. (Well actually he was the 2nd, I was the 3rd....)

If the list in the upper right works, the picture in the profile should work also I would think.

I only had 5 anonymous questions, but 1 I know who asked it as a joke - so really only 4.

My question about the interview questions - do people have to keep asking the same questions for each person, or once you have a question - do you re-use it over and over.

Nice feature Fencer. Do you know if anyone's ratings changed very much with this calculation? I meant to make a copy of my own BKR ratings before the recalculation to compare, but I forgot. I can tell that on the Statistics page that I look like I'm in a different position on the charts then before, but not sure if I changes, or if others just complete more games.... wish I could go back and look... :-)

Anyway, graphs are great! Now I can see in Battleboats I was up to over 2000 but plunged to about 1600 in a matter of a month or so....

but more then just Czech Checkers - all checker variants, so I never even bothered to see if that rule change worked in other variants!

Plus it said that it was a bug that was fixed, not a major rule that was changed. I just figured there was some bug that I did not know about, not that it was a rule change. O'well - I'm beter now. :-)

Can I suggest that when rules are changed for any games, that they be announced somewhere other then in one game messageboard? Maybe like in Server news.

I just found out today while reading the Czech Checkers message board about an important rule change that effects most checker varent games which would alter the way I would play the game a lot, and the rule change was made on Sept 1st!

Anyway, Just a suggestion that any rule change for any game should be announced in System News - even if it effects a few users, I believe it is important enough to announce.

Thanks.

So Kevin, do you think Trax would make a good game for this game sites. (goes and looks at his profile to see if anything about Trax is in there!) <grin>

It could be between 7-9 depending on when the "weekend" days fall.

If it falls in between the 5 days, it will only be 7. if it falls at the start, or end - then there would be 2 weekend days for 9 days.

I think a limit is a good thing, but I think it should be 5 auto vacations at a time (so with 2 weekend days, it gives them a week)

I think a week is not too much to give to a person who is in an emergency.

If it's a paying member, they may have auto-vacations set.

The ratings question is something I asked months ago, but it got burried with some other subject, and I never really thought about it again until I seen the server news. I understand why you would not want to change it.

... but maybe it would be good for a turn based game site to come up with a rating system designed around this type of play, and not a rating system for a totaly different type of play - over the table/live play... again, nothing that needs to happen here right now - but something to think about.

Or intruduce those little smile face icons for paying members to use on the boards, and have a little smile face with a big thumbs down.

If you left of the " . " on the No., it could have been shorter! :-)

good point IMCK - there is probable no perfect way either way since it is currently flawed. If I had to pick between the "2" systems, I would pick the one with the flaw you pointed out since you know about that before you start the game.

But lets think about this a little more - maybe there would be a beter "middle ground". Possible calculate ratings with ratings when the game started, but with current game counts?

When a game start, P1 is player #1 rating. P2 is players #2's ratings.

After a month or whatever, the game ends. At that time I think the calculation of rating change should use the P1 & P2 value which was from the start of the game (not current).

So using the old P1 & old P2 ratings - a change for each player is calculated.

Then that change that was calculated should adjust the current rating.

Kevin - what I think should happen - have the ratings change be calculated using the ratings that the game started with. So for example, lets say player 1 gained 10 point, player 2 loses 10 points.

I then think those changes in points should then be applied to the current ratings.

bwildman - I'm bring it up now to see what others think, and if it is a good idea and Fencer agrees - it might be something to look at before he does a the major recalculations. I believe most rating systems are currently based on over the table, live games. This being an on-line site, I believe how ratings are calculated should be adjusted for this time of games.

Just to bring back up the conversation about what ratings is best to calculate the rating (the rating when the game first started, or ended)

As an example, I just got a rating in Anti-Froglet of 1337 - that is with 6 wins, no loses! Why so low? because by the time the games ended, the other players ratings were all under 800.

I played those games with good rated players (well unrated - probable around the default 1300 mark), but because of how the system is set up - my rating was calculated with their very low ratings.

Anyway, I was taking a vote:

Do you think ratings should be calculated with the rating that the game started with.

Or do you think it should stay how it is now, calculated with the rating that is there when the game ended.

So far I believe I read 3 people who liked the idea of it being calculated with the starting rating value.

Polls - I would love to see the Polls option used a lot more, even if it was for "fun" polls.

For example if Fencer could somehow put a user in charge of the Polls, i would take that job - try to put up a new "fun" poll a week, and also put up site polls when needed.

it's hard to foget the past sometimes. When you do crappy things to others, don't always expect everyone to forgive and forget. :-(

BUT - lets get back to the idea:

Should ratings be calculated by the rating when the game starts, or the game is over?

My vote: With the rating when the game started.

... and see, if the recalculations was done with the rating when the game started (not ended), then it would be like erasing that "bad" part of BrainKing hitory. :-)

Yea, it could go both ways - but my thinking is if I start a game with someone rated at 1700, I should get scored with a win or lose with that same person with the 1700 rated (no matter if it's now 1000, or 2200)

I also think back to the KM which used the current system to hurt other players - that is they would start a game with someone rated pretty high, they would purposly get that rating as low as possible, so when they win their game against a player, their rating will drop a lot. (example - both me & opponent are rated 2000 - they would hurry drop the other players rating to lets say 1000, then when they win - it hurt my rating a lot more then when it was at 2000)

Here is how I understand the upcomming BKR recalculations & graphs.

First is to go back to game #1, and go through all the game for all the players and recalculate the BKR for each and every game. So if at any time your BKR was messed up because of time outs, or other miscalculations - this should fix them.

How I understand the graph - it is more of a statistics type of thing, something like what LittleGolem.net has - if you seen their ratings. So if you go and look at my graph for Backgammon, you might see me start at 1300, maybe grow to around 1800 in Dec 2003, maybe a big drop back down to 1400 in a few month, etc..., etc... So you will also be able to hopefully quickly see what your "high" rating was in your past for a certain game, and "low" rating was.

Again, I have not seen it - so this is just how I understand this current project.

WHICH brings me to a question I asked awhile back, but never got an answer.

Why are ratings calculated with the rating at the time the game ends, and not the ratings when the game was first started?

before on-line turn based sites, ratings were almost always the same when a person started and completed a game, so there was never a question.

But with turn based sites, the ratings can be drasticly different from when you start a game and end a game. (I can not tell you how many Froglet games I have started with player rated 1300+, and by the time it ends - maybe they resigned many many games - my rating is calculated with their new 400 BKR, which I feel if really unfair.

Maybe I'm not thinking correctly, but wouldn't it be beter if ratings were calculated with the ratings that each player started with, rather then end it?

So for example, lets say I have a rating of 2000, and my opponent has a rating of 1000. We play a game, by the time the game is over, both our ratings are completly different.

I believe the ratings should be calculated with the original 2000, and 1000 ratings - and then add/subtract the results onto our current ratings.

The BKR almost always changes, but sometimes the change is so small you will not see anything.

So in might have first been 2076.2, then 2076.5, then 2076.9, then the last win might have moved it to 2077.1 - which is why sometimes you get +1, and sometimes a +0. :-)

THE HIT MAN - Have you went into setting to setup Auto vacations? Did they time out during a time you had setup for weekend or vacation? If neither of these, and your games run out of time - they will time out.

On a few fellowship boards that I post often (including my own), I find it really hand to have them listed on my Favourite's board - and not have to go searching through the many fellowships that I'm in to find the correct one, then scroll down to find the message board.

I find the red number next to the fellowship name a GREAT feature so I don't have to have so many boards on my favourites list, but I still never understood what it hurt to keep that option there for who liked to use it.

Now let me ask you, on the "Chess Club" fellowship board, does the button ask if you want to REMOVE the board, not add?

I know if you had a board on your favourites before the switch, you will have the option to remove it.

I'm surprised that there is a button for the Chess Club Fellowship - When BK2.0 came along, Fencer took the option to add any Fellowship boards to the favourites board. The only thing you can add to the favourites board list is regular discussion boards.

Next rounds will start and take you over your limit, but you just will not be able to start any new games until you lower back under your limit again.

On Fencer's profile, if you put your mouse over his "small" picture, it will then bring up a bigger picture of himself.

Question: Is this something you are just playing around with Fencer, or something that you plan on offering all paid users who would like to have a bigger picture in their profile?

I just noticed in Settings that the paid members actually have to turn on the automatic vacation feature. So just a note to all paid players, you may want to turn that on!! :-)

Even though I think you called me a pumpkin head... I'll help you with your original question IMCK

One of the reasons you possible lost more rating points is that the rating calculation also takes factors like how many games each person has completed - so a player with less games complete will move more then a person who has completed many games.

It will be up soon - I've still been updating/changing a few of my answers - hopefully I will make the interview entertaining! :-)

Yes LJ, there are ways to make a tournament bold, but luckly for us there are only a select few users who like to cause trouble for everyone else - so hopefully that will not come up too often. If it does, then I would suggest to fencer to take out the bold tag from tournament titles... but again, hopefully the troublemakers will not give Fencer yet more work to do.

In the Tournaments section, the tournaments which are in bold are prize tournaments.

They are ran by other users, so sometimes there are no prize tournaments, and sometimes there are many. Plus some are for 1/2 year, some are for a year depending on what the users whats to pay for.

Those were ones that were just filled, so I switched the time to a time that has already expired - so that is why they way they are about 8 hours behind.

At about 3 after every hour the script runs which starts the tournaments.

Tournaments starting have been working OK for me.

How many saved game boards is a person allowed for each game?

.. and for the people having trouble, since screen sizes can sometimes make pages not look correct - in Setting, the checkbox for "ascending" is to the LEFT of "ascending".

I don't know - it works great for me. :-)

Just set it as descending, and it went to a game which was just played with a player currently online.

Is there a bug that it won't work for Eriisa?

What I do is:

1. Go to Settings

2. Find that part that says: "Sort next games by:"

3. Change that box to: "last move time"

4. Check the "ascending" box right next to the box mentioned above.

5. Go down and click "Save and Finnish"

6. Then when in a game, when your move is over you have the option of 2 different submit buttons. (Move) and (Move and go to) buttons. The "Move and go to" button takes me to the game which has been sitting on my main page the longest!

It works for me, I use that all the time so I make sure to at least play all my games. In the game, it sorts the "Move and go to" box to the game which has been waiting the longest.

In settings, you can now sort by "last move time" (Ascending) - which will sort the order by when the game was last played - so the game you haven't played the longest will come up first.

There is currently a bug which was timing people out even though they should not have been.

Since Fencer is working on a new time-out system, he turned off the current system until the new one is in place.

I seen that when I loged on, 11111