Hello fellow go players,
I am currently known here as testerq and I will be your host for this thread. : )
The goal of this thread is to identify three most needed improvements for upgrading ease of use and functionality of groups and chat on OGS.
Backstory: Go is game that benefits a lot from highly developed social aspect. Easy to use and highly functional interface:
gets out of the way of any studying effort,
encourages people to interact with each others and
helps newcomers swiftly find a place for themselves in the already present community.
Currently the chat and group page seems pretty flat and lacking in power that is demonstrated in other parts of the site.
Let us provide developers with highly focused high priority goals for improvements of chat and gropus for our mutual benefit!
My three suggestions:
Upgrade organization of groups and chat channels by either:
grouping them in parent more general groups such as: National, Teaching, General… or
by adding possibility of tagging groups and chat channels and filtering through tags
Add possibility of following more chat channels at once, for example by opening chat channels as tabs in chat space
Add more user moderation and user information directly from chat channel user list, namely:
add a possibility to send friend request directly from chat channel
distinguish and pop user friends to the top of chat channel user list at each chat channel
Tags is an interesting idea. I’d personally vote for this over providing fixed categories, I’d hate for it appear like we only want groups if they fit into some category we created.
This is already the case, the channels on the left that are ‘bright’ as opposed to dimmed out are the ones you have joined. If someone says something in that channel while you are actively looking at a different channel, the channel name will light up in red letting you know you should swap over to it and check it out. This is exactly the same way a tabs system would work, just organized a little differently.
These are both great, i’ll add them to the todo list
2 It sure is. I would seem I did not notice it before. I would add a few things about chat mechanics if you don’t mind:
Joining a channel does not persist between logins. Imho it should, ie I would like to be present in English, Help and Off-topic channel right of the bat.
Game starting notification seriously obscure the chat area making it unreadable when a lot of users are starting games… I found how to turn it off for game challenges, I did not find how to turn off game notifications in chat completely though. Source of additional confusion is that it game notification register on tab counter.
Question, is it possible to integrate a sort foldable mini chat that would follow user through the site. Sketch:
|----------|----------|----------|----------|
|…|…| >> mini lobby folds on right side similar to menu on osg beta
|…|…mini…|
|…rest of the site …|…lobby.|
|…|…area…|
|…|…|
…
…
just mini lobby (zoomed view):
|--------------------------------------------|
| - joined but not active channel 1 - | ^ while this and all things above slide to the top
|--------------------------------------------|
| - joined but not active channel 2 - | < on click this channel’s text area slides into view
|--------------------------------------------|
| - joined but not active channel 3 - | v while this and all things beneath slide to the bottom
|--------------------------------------------|
- currently active channel name -
…
…
. active channel text area …
…
…
--------------------------------------------
- currently active channel chat input -
--------------------------------------------
- joined but not active channel 4 -
--------------------------------------------
- joined but not active channel 5 -
--------------------------------------------
hopefully my ascii art is understandable : s
what do you think?
Anything is possible I too think something like this would be pretty cool. It’s been on the todo list to seriously revisit the chat system at somepooint, it just hasn’t been as high of a priority as some of the other things yet. It will evolve though
It does use IRC, however all of the messages and usernames are encoded to handle rank/country metadata, utf8 usernames, and multiple logins (every chat tab is a login), so unfortunately it’s not suitable for use by a normal IRC client
More on groups (I think this doesn’t deserve a new post )
I was thinking about adding more controls to group administrators like for example:
Disabling tournaments and/or ladders. There are some groups that are simply not intended for that use, like Nova Internal, for example.
Creating named “subgroups”. This would be great for organizing the group more freely when it becomes larger, giving each subgroup an associated chat channel as well. Clubs would love that, I think.
I too think something like this would be pretty cool. It’s been on the todo list to seriously revisit the chat system at somepooint, it just hasn’t been as high of a priority as some of the other things yet. It will evolve though 
)