RoastedParsnip: maybe english isn't his first language and he uses "sophisticated" to mean highly-rated.

pure conjecture on my part...

harley: oh. i see. i'm one of those people who's never managed to fully internalize the "it's just a game" sentiment...i agree with those who think the behavior we're discussing is rude, and while i wouldn't say it *hurts* me, i do find it very annoying. and i think it's interesting (in an annoyed kind of way) to try to figure out why someone would do that. but i can see Your point of view too...not everybody cares about such things.

and maybe that's our reason why right there.

Eriisa: oh-ho! good point! i did forget about that little aspect of it.

it's still downright rude to one's opponent though, at least when no attempt is made to explain the resignation.

still, the ratings hit is a consolation. thank You for reminding me about that.

harley: of people putting a lot of games in the waiting room and then resigning halfway through them, You say, Why try to make sense of it?! It takes all kinds, I'm sure they had their reasons even if we can't understand them.

You're advocating complacency. You're saying, "the hell with etiquette, polite behavior, principles...people should be allowed to do anything they please, and no-one should ever complain about it, because the perpetrators must have their reasons."

that's a blanket excuse for any behavior at all. Hitler, Qadaffi, Jeffrey Dahmer...they all had their reasons. i'm not equating the behavior of game-bailers with the behavior of those three, but the principle is the same. if certain codes of behavior are simply ignored, a civilization, be it that of a country or of a gaming site, falls apart.

it's possible to go too far in one's efforts to avoid conflict, Lady, and i think that's what You're doing here.

Marmite: i'd be interested to hear what explanation the person gives (if they give one at all).

Pythagoras: yes! and how about if we replace all the English words on the site with Urdu, but still call it English? that'll make everything even clearer!

Fencer: and as to the membership question, it does make sense to ask people first. but do ask! :)

Fencer: actually, i haven't complained either: i've simply pointed out a fact. calling tournaments "signed" because they're available for joining doesn't make any sense. at least not in English. "signed" means something has already been signed - past tense...plus in English, "signing" is not the same as "signing up", so - again, in English - "signed" doesn't even come close to meaning "available to be signed up for."

since "available to be signed up for" is way too unwieldy, i agree with Pedro that "available" would be a better choice. "available for signup" would be the clearest, but that's probably a bit long for the purpose too.

wait, i've got it: "joinable." it's kind of a weird word, but its meaning is unmistakable.

Pedro Martínez: huh. calling them "signed" doesn't make any sense then. but thank you for the clarification, Pedro.

i see in Fencer's news that redsales and catherineqq are responsible for translating the site into Chinese, but i looked at catherineqq's profile and saw that She's a pawn. shouldn't a contribution like that make a person a golden rook for life?

Vikings: no, that's not it, Vikings - that would make sense, but that's not what it means, because when i go to the tournaments page the default list it shows me is of "signed" tournaments, but i haven't signed up for any of the ones it shows.

got a question: what is a "signed" tournament? what does "signed" mean?

thanks...

i just got a message saying "the game is a draw" for game #1216857, part of a hyper backgammon match in which my opponent won both games.

first, the messages announcing results should refer to matches as "matches" rather than "games" (there's a difference), and second, why is this thing saying the game *or* the match is a draw? a drawn game is not possible in hyper backgammon, and the match was not a draw, but a rout.

thanks...

forgive me if this has been asked before, but why are ponds separate from all the other games, in terms of their listing on the main page and their little red numbers telling how many are waiting for you to move and stuff? that seems to me an unnecessary complication and a tiny bit of an inconvenience. from the player's point of view, ponds are games just like any other and (it seems to me) should be listed in the same list as all the other games.

i use tabbed browsing (IE users wouldn't know what this is, but it's a huge convenience that i think every other web browser offers) and i often have BK open in a background pane while i'm doing something on some other website in another pane, and when non-pond games are ready for me to move on them, the number of such games shows up in the tab of my BK pane, so i can see at a glance when games are waiting for me even when i'm at a completely different website - but ponds don't show up in BK's tab like that because they're somehow treated differently for some reason i don't understand.

and while i admit it's a very teeny-tiny point, it would also be nice for the "move and go to next game" button to be able to take me straight from the pond i just moved on to my next waiting game of backgammon or froglet or whatever rather than depositing me on the main page first, and i don't understand why it doesn't. does something in the structure of the site demand that ponds be kept separate, or does it offer the player some advantage that i'm overlooking, or could they maybe be rolled in with all the other games some day?

thanks...

there! it just happened again! down at 17:57 eastern US time (which is 22:57 GMT) and back up at 18:03!

heavenlyemma: interesting. my browser's been unable to connect to it a lot since the "upgrade," and it's been slower. i mention it, in fact, because the site was just inaccessible for five or ten minutes about ten minutes ago. that's the kind of thing that's been happening to me a lot lately. and i'm not having problems with any other websites...

brainking's been a lot less reliable since the last "upgrade," hasn't it?

it certainly has for me.

Eriisa: lol...works for me! thank You, Lady! :) (and speaking of pics, i like Yours.)

i'm sorry to keep asking this over and over, but if the information's posted in a static place on the site i don't know where to find it: what's the required point size for an image that's to appear at the top of a fellowship's page?

i found the sizes for profile images in the FAQ, but i didn't see the size for fellowship images.

thanks...

playBunny: that's good, pB - thanks.

i'd also like to suggest that the first sentence about the doubling cube be changed to, "Backgammon (and its variants) is the only game which can be defined as a match that employs a doubling cube."

as it is, it could be taken to mean that the doubling cube is somehow used to define the match. i'm a pretty smart guy, but it took me many readings of those rules and the playing of a match just to figure out that that wasn't what that first sentence meant.

Fencer: ohhhhhh, wait: i understand now. the number on the doubling cube is added to the player's previous score. i thought that passage was talking about adding the doubling cube value number of points to the winner's score for that game - i.e., in the case i describe, i would have gained three points: two for a gammon and one for the doubling cube.

i understand now. but those doubling cube rules could be a lot clearer - at least the English ones could. i'm not the only person on this site who's been bewildered by them.

Fencer: if point 1) answered my question i wouldn't have asked it; i've probably read those doubling cube rules fifteen times trying to figure them out. i thought i finally understood, until this happened.

i will pursue point 2), however.

i'm confused about a doubling cube rule. i just offered a double (in hyperbackgammon) when the cube read "1" and neither i nor my opponent had any pieces off the board yet. my opponent rejected the offer, so i won - but i only got one point out of the deal. shouldn't that have counted as a gammon and gotten me two points, since She didn't have any pieces off the board yet?

thanks.

Fencer: ah, so! i think that actually works! i could argue that i'd like to be able to see it before i signed up, but that's not that big a deal. thanks, F. :)

i'd like to be able to see my BKR in the game in question when i'm on the Stairs pages, so that when i'm choosing an opponent i can see how their BKR compares to mine.

i don't have all my BKRs memorized yet.

nobleheart: quite so. i should have thought of that, being a digital photographer. a lot of people call digital captures "images" instead of "photographs," and the activity "digital imaging" or "digital capture" instead of "photography." don't know why...Webster's dictionary defines photography as, "the art or process of producing images on a sensitized surface (as a film) by the action of radiant energy and especially light," and that applies to digital...

but i digress.

kithara: ahhhhhhhh. thank you. i searched for the words "profile" and "photo" and "picture". i didn't look for "icon"...i don't think that's the best term for such images. "picture" would be better (since not all of them are photos).

is there a FAQ i'm not seeing for how to add a photo to one's profile? if there's information posted in some regular place on how to add photos to profiles and fellowships, it needs to be more obvious, because i've done it several times and every time i do it i have to ask people what the required image sizes are and, as i need to know now, where to send the images once they're resized.

this information should be available in one easily- and logically-found location, shouldn't it?

is it?

thanks...

ScarletRose: i agree. great idea. :)

just as the requestor should receive notice if when their request to join a fellowship is denied, so the invitor should receive notice if their invitation to join a fellowship, play a game, or accept a draw is declined. if the invitor is not notified in these cases, it winds up appearing that their invitation has simply been ignored, which can cause tensions between people - because it can look like rudeness on the part of the person declining the invitation. thanks...

Walter Montego: i second that - though as far as i can tell, the messages do show up for the person you wrote them for - at least sometimes - because i'll say something when accepting a game, then go to the game to make my first move and find a message from my opponent saying, for example, "ain't that the truth?"...to which i, of course, have to reply with, "um...ain't what the truth?" and by the time my opponent makes their next move, they don't remember either...

it is really annoying. i agree that all messages pertaining to a game, from the sending of the invitation on, should appear in the chat history. thanks...

oooh - dig the new line in the "game over" messages for match games: "The game is a part of a multi game match which is not finished."

i like it! thanks, Filip!

does the person requesting membership in a fellowship not receive any notice back if the request is denied? i spent about fifteen minutes agonizing over the proper wording for a "request declined" notice and when i finally got it right, i chose "reject" (which should be "decline" or "deny") from the popup menu, clicked the "confirm" checkbox, and hit "send"...and then today i got a message from the person i thought i'd sent that message to saying, "why's the decision taking so long?"

furbster: oh. interesting. i don't think i've ever used the notepad. that may be a good temporary workaround. thank you. :)

i still think (and will never stop thinking) we need to be able to add notes to our blocked users list so we remember why we've blocked the people we've blocked. after a certain amount of time elapses, most of those names become meaningless strings of characters. i look at my blocked users list now and most of the names on there i read and think, "huh...okay. i must have had a reason..."

Fencer: ah, okay...but when posts are greyed out they're hidden from everyone else?

i'm a mod on a board and i want to hide a particular user from my own view without hiding Her from anyone else's. but i guess i can't do that for the reason You gave? *sigh*...

ScarletRose: You said:

If you are the moderator of a board.. and you put someone on hide.. it darkens their box.. and you still see them.. but, others don't see them.. anotherwards.. if you are trying to hide them on the board for just your benefit.. you won't be able to.. you would have to release moding the board to do so..

interesting - i was told (by BBW, if i'm not mistaken, but i may be) that that's not the case - that there's no way to hide someone from everyone in a fellowship board short of booting them out of the fellowship altogether.

when i try to hide someone in a discussion board, the post in which i clicked the "hide" link doesn't disappear (i.e., the person isn't hidden), but the post looks greyed-out and i see red text at the top of the page that says, "Error! Check log file."

what's up with that? and what and where is the log file?

thanks!

harley: indeed. thank You, Lady - i'll put it there.

ah, yes, i've figured it out: *names removed*.

harley: understood - so here's a technical question related thereto: is there any way to block PMs from everyone except those members you've approved? like a spam filter for your BK inbox?

who the hell is *name removed*? i've never heard of Her before, and She blocks me and then sends me a PM to insult me. what kind of psychotic behavior is this??

nobleheart: i don't know...a command-line interface is pretty 1980's. and it appears to rely on a software install. will that Java thingy run on a Mac?

Pythagoras: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. i like them - especially the crossed-swords one. that, to me, is a symbol just *begging* to be made into some funky auxiliary chess piece. :)

Kipling: that does indeed help *me*. thank you. :)

but it doesn't fix the problem to which i referred: that information needs to be presented in the rules for the game, so new players don't have to hunt it down elsewhere.

nobleheart: don't quote me on this, but i think you can put just about any old game online as long as you don't use any trademarked or copyrighted terms to refer to it. like battleboats: if Fencer called it "Battleship", he would have been served with a cease-and-desist order by now, and had to remove it from the site - if he didn't have to take the whole site down as a result. but because he didn't call it "Battleship," it is (as far as i know) fully legal. bugcafe.net refers to their word game that bears an uncanny resemblance to Scrabble as "bugwords" and they continue to chug along fine, while e-scrabble.com met with a rather different fate...and a damn shame, too, because e-scrabble.com was the best form of that game ever available online.

i think if you never refer to a game by its trademarked name or any other protected reference, and maybe if you change one minor rule or two just a little to be on the safe side, you should be alright. but i'm no lawyer...

i was just reading the rules for Capblanca Thingamajiggy Chess and they say the Archbishop and Chancellor have been added to the usual lineup of chess pieces, but they don't say which of the two new pieces is the Archbishop and which is the Chancellor.

they should say this. the rules for one game shouldn't presuppose knowledge of the rules of some other game (least of all a game that's no longer available on brainking).

thanks. :)

from a player who can't post here because he's been banned:

"I was looking at the Gothic Chess ratings today after the recalculation was done.

We have a player with 28 wins and 4 losses being rated higher than a player with 157 wins, 3 draws, and 0 losses.

I won 129 more games than Sumerian, without losing, yet I am rated 32 points below him.

How is this possible?"

Pythagoras: or, if you meant "1500" things, here in the US we use a comma. 1,500.

but that's here in the US, where we do all *kinds* of backwards things.

and one thing i'd like to see clarified in the Hasami Shogi rules: the rules as they are don't make it perfectly clear whether a piece can move more than one space after a jump.

there is a diagram that says it shows all possible moves of the white piece, including one jump, but that still leaves just a little bit of a question in my mind as to whether that piece could have moved further beyond the jumped piece than just one square.

i'd like to see the following note inserted just below that diagram:

note that a jumping piece must stop at the first square beyond the piece being jumped over.

(or something like that.)

thanks. :)