I have watched a couple of Dwyrin’s videos, and I don’t have much respect for what he does. Making a business off sandbagging and trashing, to me that sums it up.
If something was keeping him away from OGS, I’d be thankful for that and wouldn’t try to change anything 
Except he has a large following that he is influential over, and if he speaks badly of OGS they may also stay away. Not ideal.
I’m ok with Dwyrin playing here, just not making a whole new type of account to help him trick people.
@BHydden There are people who are much stronger, much nicer, and much better teachers than Dwyrin. If OGS is looking for recommendations, why not reach out to them?
btw if you think being of OGS will prevent him from trashing OGS…
I’m on the side of @trohde on this. Dwyrin does not teach the people he plays against. He just gives them an unsuspected experience of playing a sandbagger. Although his videos are watched by quite some people , I’m pretty sure there are many more people who play go and not watch his videos. Probably most of his opponents do not care that they play Dwyrin, and just feel annoyed they played a sandbagger.
I also think that is exactly how Dwyrin wants it, since he does not want to play against people who know he’s trying not to kill.
So my opinion, don’t give him special privileges or anything. No hidden teacher class accounts.
I hate sandbaggers, often go on rants about it on chat and believe OGS is too tolerant, letting them still operate through loopholes (like high kyu strength players stopping ranked at ddk and being able to lure newbies into unranked games since you can’t apparently sandbag at unranked).
However, what Dwyrin does is very valuable. If you can get past his snarky attitude and notice that his “disrespect” is more for entertainment value and never on the goban, it is clear that he spends an effort to teach, not just his audience but the people he plays with as well, more than most people who play teaching games. He plays instructive go as much as he can, plays in the areas they leave bad aji in to show them they have to play another move to save their group; he reviews the game extensively afterwards and I bet he answers if his opponent asks questions.
Some of Dwyrin’s best videos are the ones where he plays on ogs. I would appreciate it if he could be accomodated and encouraged to play more on OGS (although i suspect that’s his audience’s job more than OGS dev team’s).
That being said, I don’t think there is an actual problem (any need for extra accomodation), since you can get unranked games under 2 minutes at 1-15 kyu range. Him sandbagging in his games and his opponents noticing that, hurt the credibility of his game scenarios more than people playing slightly differently because it is unranked. Besides under OGS ranking system he is free to make ? accounts and play 5-6 games without sandbagging at all, which is something he cannot do at other servers. If he chooses to sandbag somewhere else instead of putting in the work to do it by the book here, that’s his choice.
Yes - before we get too excited, it’s worth noting that the current state of affairs is that Dwyrin is playing unranked to avoid the exact issues that are generating concern.
So I guess if we leave it that way everyone can be happy.
I do think it’s positively tragic that some people can’t see the lessons because of a bit of dry humour.
Dwyrin is the only teacher I have encountered so far with a systematic approach to DDK/SDK that he can clearly teach, and demonstrate by success with consistent application of it - and that I for one can feel that I understand and apply.
Those who can’t garner this from the videos are really missing out.
Maybe we’re the tragic ones because we don’t enjoy his teaching style… maybe you’re the tragic one because his style is the ONLY one you do enjoy?
I don’t recall saying his style is the only one I enjoy?
When I used to play Tekken their was a community member/streamer who regularly deleted the local files that save your rank, effectively setting him back to entry level.
He would then use the same moves over and over again on beginners to give them a “lesson” because they should figure out how to deal with a move eventually.
He did this for a single digits audience of veteran players. If the opponent would try to understand and ask questions he wouldn’t not answer, but much more often it was just making fun of people who “wouldn’t learn” the lesson he wasn’t describing.
Dwyrin has A LOT more legitimacy then this. I would say he is almost certainly a net positive for the go community… But I still feel uneasy with the concept.
I see no reason to make a big deal out of it… But I also see little reason to go to great lengths to support him being on OGS instead of one of the other readily avalible places.
Especially when he is not even trying to play here more? This feels like a solution in search of a problem. Perhaps a worthwhile discussion if HE had made this thread, bit this is not something he has asked for, needs or possibly will even use.
Asking in his place seems strange and unnessisary imo. The exception would be if OGS was attempting to essentially use him as advertising and was trying to sweeten the deal to lure him here… I am not sure that is the case, nor am I sure the exposure is worth the additional time coding many of the solutions being present or dealing with the potential for bugs or other issues added complexity could bring.
I don’t think it should be taken as accomodating one streamer in particular, but as a broader question. Some teaching accounts with special tools (or a special “teaching” game type) sound both very interesting to me and are something I would like to push a little
Streaming Go is a great entertainment for many and has a good teaching potential in my opinion. What can we do, to make OGS a better tool for streamers and teachers? Why is Micheal Redmond NOT using OGS for his revies? What more can we offer?
I think it is a bad idea to make an accommodation for anyone (regardless of status) to play ranked games while deliberately misrepresenting their rank.
I believe that most players, when they play a ranked game, aim to play to the best of their abilities and expect their opponents to do so as well. I think people generally want ranks to be reasonably accurate in order to be able to seek out opponents of a particular level of skill.
Further, I find the argument to make an exception for this case to be tenuous at best. It’s not impossible to find an unranked game on OGS. Maybe it’ll take slightly longer, but I don’t think providing a small convenience to one person is worth undermining the ranking system.
My takeaway from this thread so far is that there is enough opposition to making an accomodation for any purpose that a proposal to do so would not fly.
So it seems that Dwyrin read the mood correctly in his decision not to play ranked games, and that this will be the status-quo on that front.
While I’m against secret account types that have access to fake ranked games, I do like Adam’s idea of a suite of teaching tools that enhances their ability to hold various lessons here.
Which has nothing to do with the original proposal. 
But yes.
Tangents and inspiration can both be profitable
My favorite suggestion here was the “Boss Mode” suggestion - i.e. a way for players in the 5kyu - 10kyu range to volunteer and be part of a pool of participants who agree to play unranked games against higher level teachers, knowing that their games will be used/displayed online in that particular way.
I like the all-around transparency of this idea
It’s a good-sounding idea, but it has a catch.
If you know what Dywrin’s “rules of Basic Play” are, then you can take advantage of them. For example, you know he will never kill a group unless totally forced, so you can create weak groups and profit from them.
So somehow this arrangement would have to result in people who volunteered for it actually not knowing when it was happening - which brings all sorts of psychological gamery into it.
Your argument being he’s trying to teach everyone basic principles you can use to win games but they don’t work at all, even when being implemented by a high dan, if the opponent knows you’re using them? Sounds fishy
I don’t think dwyrin is suggesting that people play the same way he does in his basic games. When he plays basic games he tries to demonstrate basic principles, that, when combined with reading/fighting/etc allow you to play at a higher level (allow you to win more games). Dwyrin does not usually do a lot of reading during basic games, because it is easier for him to demonstrate basic principles when he does not read a lot.
I understand that you don’t like how Dwyrin does his teaching.
I find it unproductive to debate when it becomes a nitpicking argument, in which you repeatedly put words into my mouth. This would be the second time I am find myself saying “I don’t recall saying that”.
In order to avoid this, I am forced to simply say no more.