The title more or less says it all. I can not download SGF file of an active game anymore, since the button is greyed out. This was always possible. I could not find a setting that would disable this.
Just created unranked custom game with analysis enabled. And download sgf indeed didnât work. I guess its no longer possible to download sgf of your own ongoing game.
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Yes - downloading SGF of games in progress was recently disabled due to the cheating potential of that feature.
Of course, not every download of a game in progress is necessarily a cheat but we were seeing a strong correlation.
And of course, if someone is going to cheat in this sort of way, perhaps they will find another way, but weâre trying our hardest to minimize it.
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Does this apply to correspondence too or just live?
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In my most recent ongoing correspondence game, downloading is also disabled even though analysis and conditional moves are enabled.
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Yes - the same prohibition for analysis exists in correspondence as in live games, with the exception that Joseki dictionaries are allowed.
Notably, you are not allowed to download the SGF of your correspondence game and ask AI what to play next 
By âanalysisâ do you mean âanalysis with a go-playing computer programâ rather than its usual meaning (such as with the âdisable analysisâ checkbox) of âplaying out variations yourself on a side board, virtual or physicalâ?
Indeed, but you are supposed to be allowed to download the sgf to analyse the game yourself with possible variations, making notes and endgame calculations etc. My hard drive was full of such files when I played correspondence. But it sounds like to prevent the former, the latter is now also prevented. So users who wish to do that will instead need to keep an offline sgf copy of the game and replay the moves into it to keep it up-to-date with the game on OGS. If thatâs seen as a reasonable imposition on the non-cheating users to make life harder for the cheating users by the OGS product team so be it, but your prior comment suggests to me you might be unaware thatâs a normal and acceptable thing to do in correspondence games that some users will be sad to lose.
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You donât need to download SGF to analyze variations and make notes. You can store variations, calculations, etc. in your personal notes on OGS.
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Thatâs true there is both personal and malkovich chat channels as options for saving notes, variations and info.
Malkovich has the pro/con that your opponent can see it after the game and spectators can see it during the game.
Personal has the pro/con that nobody else can see the notes, variations etc.
The other things one might counter with are: some personal preference another editor has, I think sabaki has the off centre stones and you can draw clean arrows etc; that downloading after the game probably doesnât produce a clean sgf with all the variations it.
Those sorts of things.
Even on DGS, I would just delete the temporary files I made to analyse the game, rather than have one game will all the notes, so I wouldnât be in that second bracket. It was too much hassle to patch together sgf files and notes even with being able to download.
Some players might be though.
Makes sense to me, sites like Lichess have the option to download the PGN file blocked until the game is finished. Cheaters are going to cheat I guess but no need to make it easier.
I knew the personal notes feature added since I played correspondence lessens the need for an offline sgf for text notes, but I didnât realise personal notes could also have personal variations, I will have a play with it.
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Sorry, I meant âexternal assistanceâ.
Itâs true that SGF download could assist with a âvirtual board purely for variation analysisâ, but if analysis is enabled, then you already have one at OGS, and if it is not then you shouldnât be doing that either.
No, Iâm not unaware. Thatâs why I said:
TBH, though, itâs not on my radar that it would be a ânoteworthy lossâ, and hence this is true:
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So the personal variations are stored as a sequence of moves embedded in a private chat message, the game tree is not persisted, but that branch will be recreated when you click the variation msg. Notes exist in the chat stream by timestamp, not on move nodes in the game tree. This means it is useful for recording a few variations (and being stored on OGS rather than locally is handy for playing from phone then desktop), but not in-depth analysis of dozens of branches with comments on the nodes for e.g. endgame calculations. But I expect I was unusual in doing that deep a level of analysis.
Anyway: Kifubara: Go board scanner â take a photo of your board, get the score + SGF
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Nice move, promoting a cheating tool.
I trust youâre not one of the many people complaining about the amount of cheating on the site 
Sure, cheats will cheat, but it takes a strange mentality to cheerfully make it easier for everyoneâŚ
I have the same opinion of the tool announcement itself. Just because you can do something, doesnât mean you should.
I wonder if the time has arrived where we should just accept it 
⌠play your game, donât worry what your opponent is doing⌠certainly would free a lot of resources for other improvements, but will people still want any resources when they know that most play is not human. My bot vs yoursâŚ
Like most tools, such as a car, hammer or KataGo, it can be used for good and bad. I just saw it on the list of recent posts near this one, seemed ironic. I can remove it from my comment if you want it to not be referenced in perpetuity from this thread.
The point of my post wasnât to âget it removedâ.
It was to question where our collective heads are at.
Why is it that you would post a link to a thing, rather than objecting to the thing?
Is it time - are we there now - when we just say âits too easy to cheat, we just accept itâ?
Because it sure is tiring working on âcheat minimizationâ when the community isnât even behind that effort.
This thread is a classic example. The response to a query is not âyeah, yay these guys, theyâre locking down ways to cheatâ. Rather itâs âoh, well, if you must I suppose, by the way here is another way to achieve the same cheatâ.
I donât know if thatâs true: this thread isnât a broad poll, but likely to attract the people who liked to use the Download SGF feature for its non-cheating purposes. Maybe the hundreds and thousands of people who donât use it will like that the chance of their opponent cheating now reduced from 5% to 4.5% of whatever it does, but they wonât come here to comment and say thanks.
I do think removing it in live games is good (Iâve previously advocated for always disabling analysis in live), in correspondence Iâm less sure. I donât mind that itâs gone as I no longer play correspondence, but was giving my perspective as a former serious correspondence player, as I do feel sometime OGS design decisions come more from the live-player mindset. But if OGS is now 90% live players and only 10% correspondence (anyone know?) that trade-off can make sense.
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Good Job prohibiting the downloading of SGF files on active games. Removing convinces for cheating will certainly reduce it to some extent. Some people will go to great lengths to cheat, others not so much. For that I support the change
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I also wouldnât call it a cheating tool outright. I know a player in our club that uses a different but similar app with Katago to estimate the score on the board when they or their opponent has to leave early in say a close ish game just to see who was winning or how close it was. Or sometimes maybe Iâve resigned or something and theyâre also curious what the points difference is when I resigned before we clear off the board etc.
Yes - itâs about context.
Here in an online go context, in a thread about a cheat prevention measures, is that a great context to promote a tool that has obvious appeal for online go cheating?
Sure - in a FTF club, you see people using it for good, and thatâs great.
Just donât bring it here.
Or - as I have asked - is it time to put aside efforts to resist this?