Chat page revamp, per-group game lists, and game list filtering

[Fabrício]

If I am going to challenge a specific person, the whole group thing is already meaningless.

[MooToYouToo]

Are there plans to bring some of these new features to the ‘Home’ page sometime? Right now the first page I’m met with upon opening the site is pretty blank other than my correspondence games. I’m quite jealous of the lichess homepage, where you have a lot of great information that really gives the feeling of a thriving website: Top current games, upcoming tournaments and recent tournament winners, latest forum posts, and the automatch and custom game lobby right there the moment you open the site.

KGS also has some a leg up over OGS in this regard. The moment you open the client you get the main english chat and the list of active games with number of observers. I know observers numbers are in the works for the games list but it would be great to have this show on the home page so it grabs the attention of people who aren’t going to be browsing ‘chat’ or ‘games’.

I love this new feature where you can see games being played by group members if you go to the group page. It would be awesome to have this work for friends too, and to see their current live games on the homepage. I understand there is a ‘follow’ feature in the works which I hope works the same way.

Basically, I think a good homepage could really make OGS feel very alive the moment you open the site. I wish I could help with this but I’m not really a programmer. I’m sure some of these ideas are already in the works though.

Re: the current games list in chat, I think the live time updates are distracting visual clutter and not really important information. You could put the initial time settings at the end so people know if it’s blitz etc.

[Gia]

I wouldn’t like that at all.
It’s a personal preference, but I don’t like home pages that look like SNS, I largely prefer to focus on my games.
I respect KGS’s choices, but I don’t care about chats at all.
There’s an easily accessible menu for everything else.

[shinuito]

Maybe I missed your point. You want to be able to host challenges like on the play page except within a group?

On the one hand I suppose that would be useful, I imagine you need a reasonably active group for people to pick up on those challenges - it’s probably better for the ratings pool anyway to just play with everyone as opposed to playing very regularly with a subgroup of players (rated games that is).

I don’t think this update is pointless, it already has the potential to hugely up the interaction within groups, since even from the chat (or within the group page itself) you can watch multiple games or you can just join a game to kibitz (and I think it works far better here than kgs with being able to share variations).

[shinuito]

It’s on the cards.

See earlier in this topic

Chat page revamp, per-group game lists, and game list filtering

Thanks for the reminder, I was meaning to add that in That capability I’m saving for a broadcast / tv kinda page

And also

Observe Games page overhaul

For live games, my observation is we don’t need a bunch of filters, on KGS at least, people pretty much just pick one of the top few games on the server and hop on to kibitz about it. Because of that, it’s been our long time intention to do a sort of “OGS TV” system, borrowing from “Lichess TV” concept, which is basically a special page that always has a top rated live/blitz game for kibitzing on, when it concludes, it automatically loads up the next one. With this same system we also want to ad…

[MooToYouToo]

What’s SNS?
It’s not so much about chat though. I personally wouldn’t put chat on the homepage like KGS does. But I think a well made homepage with live information about the site would promote engagement with all elements of OGS, from tournaments to kibitz to forum discussion, which would ultimately have people using the site more, which means more players. Just being able to easily see my friends’ actives games when I open the site would encourage me to kibitz and review more.

[MooToYouToo]

Yep, I understand some of these things are in the works, but my main point is looking into how parts of them could be presented to the user on the currently (mostly) empty homepage.

[yebellz]

Regarding the homepage, maybe it would be nice if each user could customize their homepage and select what content to display. Some might prefer a very clean minimalist homepage, focusing on just their games, while others might want more information presented, like other games, chat, recent forums posts, etc.

[Gia]

Social sites.
One of the reasons of can’t play on KGS is I open it, everything looks cluttered, I close it.
I agree that tournaments should be more prominent.

Maybe the best solution is customizable homepage, like @yebellz says.

[Fabrício]

Just reiterating that I never said that the update was pointless. By the contrary, I started congrating it, exactly because I believe the group pages was a part of the site with potential for improvements. And everything that was made is very nice already.

What I said was meaningless was the idea of entering a group to challenge specific users individually, via private messages. This is simply not a group iteration.

[yebellz]

@Gia

Social sites

That made me imagine the horror if OGS had newsfeeds, hastags, walls, pokes, fake news, “it’s complicated”, etc.

Edit inspired by comment by Gia below.

[Gia]

If I see couples’ profiles I’m outta here.

[shinuito]

@Fabrício

What I said was meaningless was the idea of entering a group to challenge specific users individually, via private messages. This is simply not a group iteration.

I did misread, but I also still don’t know what you mean. Anyway we can leave it there, apologies for misinterpretations.

[李建澔2]

Is there something wrong with this?

[_KoBa]

Its beautiful, i would take that on a t-shirt <3

[shinuito]

So does it only display the number of games when the corresponding tab is clicked/active? That is, when you click ‘live games’ it counts the number of live games and displays it, or when you click ‘correspondence games’ then it tallies up that number and displays it but forgets about the number of live games?

Edit:
Oh no wait that only happen with the filter active - like when you uncheck bot games.

[meili_yinhua]

@S_Alexander

no big reason to split them into groups.

except that because there aren’t many offers, anybody can accept, even when you’re only wanting a handful of people to have the option, and also want to avoid setting up a direct challenge.

Ofc, an even better option would be either a game that either requires a password to join, or one of those links that lichess does where you set up a challenge, send a link to the people you would like to have the option to play (say, the chatroom in a stream) and whoever clicks the link first gets in.

[DVbS78rkR7NVe]

@mekliff

even when you’re only wanting a handful of people to have the option, and also want to avoid setting up a direct challenge

How often does that happen. In such a case it’s easier to figure out pairings in chat.

[meili_yinhua]

@S_Alexander

In such a case it’s easier to figure out pairings in chat.

not really, because the point is to minimize the amount of hassle, it would be much easier to pop into a group (especially with the new setup), put a challenge for these people only, and let it sit as long as you’d like so only someone from that group can accept. You don’t have to ask “who’s up for a game?” within that group, you don’t have to tell them when you’re not up for one anymore. Just set up the game and wait.

Ofc even in that case the link challenge (from the lichess model) is a better solution as it doesn’t require setting up a group if you only have a discord server, or a stream chat set up.

[DVbS78rkR7NVe]

Still, how often does that happen?