Calling all beta testers - help us get 4.1 ready!

We’re looking to fast track 4.1 in time for Learn Go Week, so help us find any major bugs before we release :smile:

The notable new feature that we really want for Learn Go Week is the Tsumego system, you can find it on the left hand side under ‘Puzzles’.

Still on the todo list:
Those familiar with other Tsumego systems will note we are still missing some good features, most notably automatic variations (rotate/transpose/flip/color swap), zooming in on only relevant parts of the board, and completion history / stats. These are all planned but not done yet - normally we’d hold off on releasing until we had those, but we’re hoping to give ya’ll a chance to prepare some fun Tsumego’s for Learn Go Week if you want, so we’re looking to release before those are implemented then get them released in another patch in the near future.

So go check it out and tell us what you think and what bugs you find! Thanks!!

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One bug [unless I’m doing something wrong] seems to be that when registering, [because I can’t log in with my existing ID] I can’t set my rank - The blue button for newbies does nothing and the manual rank setting stops at 20k and I’m way below that - Given that you want this running for learn Go week, it could be an issue.

P.S. I’m assuming replying the the thread is the appropriate bug reporting procedure…

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This feature is amazing! :heart_eyes:

Now for the bugs, I think I found one:

When placing marks on the board like the “X” and then switching back to Stone placement, the whole analysis switches back to move 0. It’s a little annoying, especially when doing big variations. :slight_smile:


On Learn to play Go page some of the examples have blue coordinate text and I think it would be nice if mouseovering that would highlight the coordinate on the board just like in normal OGS kibitz.



Also on http://beta.online-go.com/learn-to-play-go#staying-alive2 if black playes outside of the group then white doesn’t kill the group but just says “Oops! Without forming two eyes, white can capture black!” That is really difficulkt for a beginner to understand.

As a whole I think if you start to speak of eyes, ko rule or snapback then the complete beginners will get very disoriented. That stuff is truly complicated. I would force people to complete few games of Atari Go first. After few successful atarigo games the beginners could be ready for the next step.
Total beginners wont understand the scoring of a game because they can’t grasp the life & death stuff.
On page http://beta.online-go.com/learn-to-play-go#scoring1 the example is way too “nice” to be true. There is no marking of dead stones in this example. That is not going to happen in real life.

The last tutorial page http://beta.online-go.com/learn-to-play-go#done has a random bot button. After clicking that the board size should be LOCKED to 9x9. Anything else than 9x9 for total beginners is an overkill.

The tsumego section has no undo available. I did a misclick in huge ladder problem and I had to start from the beginning. Quite frustrating in the 21st century.

I like the improved Main menu :slight_smile:
“Game History” says page not found error when navigating into it. I have one game played.

When I was trying to save my tsumego I couldn’t see any collection so I made my own. After I made my own collection I could suddenly see other collections in the pulldown menu. When I tried to save my tsumego to another persons collection it said “You do not own that collection” I don’t see the point showing that info if there is nothing I can do with it.

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Just tried to make a Tsumego problem of my own, it said it saved but when I went back to the puzzle page nothing was there. Could be a minor error on my part but thought I’d let you guys know :smile:

Trying to create a Tsumego when not logged in gives this error:

Okay, my first ride out went well.

I made a puzzle from the Chinese classics: https://beta.online-go.com/puzzle/10

After today, I might have time to burn through all 347 problems to get them up on the site.

The question is: will they be retained when the new version goes live? Also, I’m using a different name on the beta. Should I use SunPin if I’m going to go ahead and make a full collection?

@LinuxGoo: if the developers are confident that they will be done in time, I think they have earned our confidence as well. We need the tsumego section to build a teaching culture that will out perform KGS.

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After re-creating my tsumego problem my “group” for my tsumego problem appeared. So it was an error on my part.

Upon further inspection of the new “side” tabs I haven’t noticed any visible bugs. That’s not saying there could be something hidden away just waiting for the right moment to pop up and cause havoc. When I get some sleep and return later I will do a more thorough inspection of the newly added sections :slight_smile: OVER ALL I love what you guys have done (even though I’m still new to the site) I can’t wait to see what you guys have planned for the future of OGS.

SIDE NOTE- I do not think you should change the puzzle section if you play a move wrong and it sends you back to the beginning based on the fact that if you made the wrong move in a real game you can’t re-do it (unless your opponent accepts your undo (which he shouldn’t) given the opportunity to escape from a life and death with life) Keep up the good work guys d(^_^)b

Some other things that just came in:

  1. On the Beta-Website, stone sound is not working.

  2. Wuhuu sent this screenshot via the german chat. Notice the big space to the side of the screen. This is under 7.0.6 Safari Browser.

To the guy who gave my puzzle 3 stars…

It is a Chinese classic. It was written in 1347.

Anyway, I fixed the “correct answer” part.

I personally would appreciate the option to “undo” a move in the tsumego. True, that might not be a (realistic) option in a real game, but tsumego are practice- they’re not a real game. And for the purpose of training life/death and reading skills, having to start all over again because of a misclick or one wrong move is extremely annoying.

Also, beginners playing random bot is not a good way to get a feel for the game. I tried playing random bot. True to the name, random bot plays randomly. Beginners who have no idea about go strategies, fuseki, etc, are going to get a very wrong impression of go playing random bot, and it won’t help them at all to play essentially random moves against an opponent who plays random moves. That’s not the point of go. This isn’t really a bug, but I thought I should mention it =) Somebody might want to rethink random bot’s ranking, too. 25k for playing randomly seems a bit much =P

The game history link in the menu doesn’t seem to be working. I think someone mentioned that. Clicking on it just stays on the same page, and refreshing after that gives a white OGS page that says “Page Not Found” in the middle.

There’s no way to clear a pattern search that I can see, except by refreshing, which can be annoying. An interactive pattern search that allows for removing stones as well as adding them would be nice.

Looking good guys! I’m excited :slight_smile:

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One of the Problems was rated 1 Star by 1 Person. When I clicked it 5 Stars, the overall rating changed to 1 1/2 stars.

Looks like a bug. :slight_smile:

Franzisa: I’m glad you liked my problem :wink: (ahem, I hope I’m not mistaken.)

I think there should still be a reset button, when one picks a correct variation, maybe the solver wants to try out other (correct) variations, for example in http://beta.online-go.com/puzzle/11.

The following seems like a bug to me: in http://beta.online-go.com/puzzle/13, when one picks a wrong variation, the problem description is shown.
And this problem description isn’t shown in the beginning, when I would expect it.
Furthermore, when one picks the g3 g2 h2 h3 j3 variation, a comment should be displayed when white moves 6.k10, but it’s not shown.

Features I know from goproblems.com, that I like, are:

  • user comments, like "Please add this missing variation"
  • empiric problem ratings (though, the goproblems.com ratings are not very reliable. It must be possible to improve it) (edit: I mean problem difficulty ratings, not problem coolness ratings)
  • "isomorphism"/unification of different move orders: when multiple move orders lead to the same position, it's annoying to add the same variations to every possible move order.
I can understand though if these features are not on top of the todo-list, or when the first two are not even desired.

Is it allowed to add problems from copyrighted books?

About copyright… We do amateur ranking in the West… They don’t do that in the East… We also don’t recognize copyright for math problems or patterns that occur in nature. And we sure as hell don’t recognize copyright for something over 4000 years old.

Have you looked at some of these books? Are they really claiming copyright on the solution to “kill the L in the corner”?

I hope the developers stand their ground here. This is like putting lyrics up on songs at YouTube.

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Thanks for all the feedback guys, we’re off work now so back to work on this, stay tuned for another beta patch in probably 6 hours or so :smile:

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I think the answer to that is it depends. So long as you’re not violating copyright law in the United States nor making undesirable waves in the Go community, we’re happy.

I am not a lawyer so don’t take this as legal advice, but my understanding is you can’t copyright the initial state of a puzzle, but you can of course copyright any text or explanations that someone has associated with those problems and puzzles. It is less clear to me whether the composition / collection / ordering of several puzzles constitutes something copyrightable or not; I might be inclined to believe it is, so in general I would dissuade folks copying other collections verbatim, but I believe if you pick and chose initial states from various places but form your own ordering and collection of those puzzles, and each is described with your own words, then that should be fine. Again though, I am not a lawyer, and so reality might differ :slight_smile:

That being said, we are not only looking to stay within the confines of the law, but we’re also looking to stay within the good graces of the go community at large. If someone puts a lot of thought and effort into crafting high quality Tsumego, it’s not cool to simply copy what they’ve done, change a few words, and repost it as your own creation, even if it’s re-ordered and re-packaged with some other random puzzles. If we were to get any complaints like this, we’d likely side with the original creator and facilitate any takedown requests without any fight. (Unless they’re complaining about someone “copying” their precious “Kill the L in the corner” puzzles ;))

So all that to say, use your best judgement, stay within the bounds of the law and be courteous to others who you might be deriving your works from, and I think everyone will be happy :smiley:

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From wikipedia

the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

I think fair use very clearly applies here.

Obviously you can’t go overboard and copy entire books, but specific problems should be okay. It’s the same thing with mathematics - both problems and answers are natural knowledge that should be available to all; the only thing copyrighted is the arrangement of those problems in a math textbook and some “artistic” way of explaining them (e.g. talking about the speed of trains to give context to mathematics).

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I haven’t been able to reproduce this, what browser / OS were you using? (And is it still happening?) Thanks!

Might should wait until it’s released on the real site for that, that’d be awesome though :slight_smile:

The beta system is separate, but persistent … so yes they’ll be retained, but they’ll still only be on the perpetual beta site so wouldn’t be available on the live site.