If you have not seen the March prizes yet, here they are
Hopefully April has been nice and enjoyable for everyone! It is a break month for TNL, as August 2015 and December 2015 will also be. With that said, we will be revving up for the May 2015 league soon; if you wish to register as a new player, please go to our website http://www.peanutgo.org/tnl and sign up using the form.
But hereâs what I really want to learn from you guysâŚOver the past few months since TNLâs launch I have heard a lot of feedback from you, and in May I am determined to make those changes happen. Thatâs why in this forum thread, I would like to hear your voices. Please regard this as an opportunity for an open discussion, and please be kind and respectful whether you agree with othersâ opinions or not.
I will spend some time in June-August and see if I can renovate our TNL website a bit
Our leagueâs co-founder, Mikasa, will hopefully return in May!!! <3
Questions to consider:
What worked well for TNL in January-March? What did not?
What new features/prizes would you like to see in the future?
Did the 30-day scheduling window work out for everyone, despite potential time zone differences within classes?
Should we recalculate everyoneâs ratings and calibrate for Mayâs league? This is exactly what we did for January 2015âs TNL, with the classes divided by rank. There will be good competition, of course, yet some class winners in March 2015 might lose their advantage of promotion.
Last but not least, would you like to apply as a league volunteer? We are currently in great need of help with the Challonge management, as well as keeping track of the sign-ups/dropouts and scheduled game attendance. You will not get a huge monetary fortune from this job, but you will be able to declare yourself as a proud, influential part of a 120-player Go league. Plus, if we can utilize the small bits of time from several people instead of huge chunks of time from one or two, we will improve our efficiency by a lot.
its very difficult to schedule games. even if we message back and forth, keeping
track of the time zones and remembering and having enough time has been quite difficult.
last month a lot of people just wrote and said âcan you play our league game nowâ
i try to set aside enough time to review the game, and i think its important that we do a review
for league games otherwise we may as well just be playing ladder games. i think it also makes
me a more mindful player to understand that iâm going to go over the moves afterwards. so its
disappointing when the opponent isnât interested or has insufficient time to go over the game.
on a related note i was hoping there would be a lot more back end forth with the league community
both during the game and afterwards in review)
the first issue is so bad that iâve strongly considered writing a scheduling appâŚi was really going to, but april
just slid by :-/
in any case, iâd really love to be involved in games where there was a lot of discussion. thats what i miss
from going to an irl go club
Reviewing games with the opponent is great. Maybe a Nova League news post encouraging players to review their TNL games with their opponents would be sufficient to get most players to review games?
Absolutely. Is it mainly because of the 30-day limit or the time zone difference?
This actually is in my plan as well! However, there are two problems: 1) I have to wait until summer break, when I will have a lot more time to focus on coding; 2) I am a beginner in using APIs, so I actually donât know how to use the API to invoke events on OGS yetâŚWill be awesome if you guys can teach me how, though!
I think such an environment is undoubtedly beneficial for our league In the past we have been trying to appoint teachers/reviewers for the league (including myself); however, we are not superhumans, and itâs unlikely that we are going to go over every single league game given the free time we have. Therefore, I think we should take advantage of the abilities of not only the 120+ members in the league, but also other people on the server.
OGS Forum -> Teaching -> Review Requests is a great subcategory to look for.
In the future we might consider implementing GoKibitz (http://gokibitz.com/), a tool in Alpha developed by our OGS friend Nate Eagle which can allow multiple reviewers for one game.
We will hopefully come up with rewards for users who give reviews. Maybe bonus points like in other profile-based games When you claim a review, you get a number of bonus pointsâŚThe requesterâs rating will also be taken into account.
Looking back at what I wrote, maybe itâs time for a TNL app?
Use of a scheduling app. Iâve suggested one to try elsewhere.
[quote=âxhu98, post:1, topic:4225â] - Did the 30-day scheduling window work out for everyone, despite potential time zone differences within classes
[/quote]
It worked
for me.
[quote=âxhu98, post:1, topic:4225â] - Should we recalculate everyoneâs ratings and calibrate for Mayâs league? This is exactly what we did for January 2015âs TNL, with the classes divided by rank. There will be good competition, of course, yet some class winners in March 2015 might lose their advantage of promotion.
[/quote]
My first thought is no. I havenât had time to sink to my natural level yet.
[quote=âxhu98, post:1, topic:4225â] - Last but not least, would you like to apply as a league
volunteer? We are currently in great need of help with the Challonge management, as well as keeping track of the sign-ups/dropouts and scheduled game attendance. You will not get a huge monetary fortune from this job, but you will be able to declare yourself as a proud, influential part of a 120-player Go league. Plus, if we can utilize the small bits of time from several people instead of huge chunks of time from one or two, we will improve our efficiency by a lot. [/quote]
Hello!
First of all, thank you for your great job!
I think that on an institutional level, everything worked adequately. Players communicated, games were played out⌠Communication can be improved, but this is purely individual issue.
I do not know about prizes. Some video lectures/reviews of exciting (league) games would be great.
The 30 day scheduling window is sufficient. There will always be people who will try to schedule a game in that particular instant or on the last day of the scheduling window. However, earlier scheduling should be encouraged. Itâs better for both parties that they agree on some date in the future. I donât know how to ensure this (except in the January-way when it was a public mess of a forum threadâŚ). I tried to work with google calendar, but the super useful feature of âappointmentsâ is available only for google apps users.
I would wait with the calibration for some time. Letâs do this in next month or two. Or letâs institutionalize it. If someone jumps two or three rank rungs in a month, letâs get him an extra promotion. No prize (if the player does not earn his promotion in a classical way, of course), only promotion.
I would like to participate. I can do a little bit of administration work and some reviews of weaker players. Something like a tutor for lower classes. Observe games, do an instant review if time allows (it is super useful to have an immediate feedback, I heard), do a review of at least one class gameâŚ
Hit me up with any questions regarding help in the league or clarification of points in this post.
The thing that have felt like a problem for this far, have been great number of not played games. It seems that challonge gives a point for a draw, so itâs better to not play the game than lose.
Other thing that bothers me too, is not having some public schedule, in jan it was nice and easy for us, the players, to have that information available. I liked that âoh those guys playing in a hour, me wanna see!â
Nothing more negative to say for this far, iâve really enjoyed first three months, been thrilled about feeling of playing somewhat serious games, been trying my best and most of all, having lot of fun \o/
And big thanks to our hard working staff, letâs all hope for having mikasa back <3
I have really appreciated being in the league since its inception. It has been a lot of fun!
Overall I agree with baelofoax - institutionally everything was adequate.
I did not have a problem scheduling games, although I have been intensely proactive about getting days & times set up. I know that I have to do this because of my personal schedule, but I can see where it could be a problem for people who donât keep quite the hours or scheduling rigor that I do.
One thing I did enjoy the first month was having the communal calendar that showed when people were playing. It would have been great to know beforehand when some higher-ranked players were going to play so I could jump in and kibitz.
Regarding reviews or added features, perhaps we can create a way to help encourage reviewers. Letâs say that players who opt to review a game in the league get a certain number of points. Those who get points above a particular threshold can have their own games reviewed in a more public way (perhaps on @xhu98âs show?), or some kind of prize or special name color like those who are site supporters or moderators.
I think if we can encourage people to participate in the community and in return offer good incentives that help people grow their own skill at Go - that would be something that people would take advantage of.
Okay gang, sorry for not replying to your brilliant posts earlier School work got in the way!
A few of you (@BulletD0dger, @saxmaam, @Tyco, @baelofoax) have expressed interest in helping us out. Thanks so much, first of all! This is always what makes me feel warm and fuzzy when I think of TNL.
So hereâs what I (with some help from other admins) actually do for every monthâs league (transparency in the administration!!!). Hopefully this helps explain what league work is about. A lot of the tasks are not very hard to accomplish, even though they seem like a lot of work (then again, not a lot when we have multiple volunteers )
Collect a list of all new users who have signed up for league. The league website automatically sends form responses to my email address, which I will collect by the sign-up deadline (usually the penultimate day, 17:00 of every month.)
The new names are then added to the league participant list (a Google Sheet), with all the resigned users taken into account and removed.
Some website info updates.
On the last day of the month, I check all the scheduled games and disqualify players who have failed to complete 50% of their games. The unfinished games are then marked âtieâ on Challonge, and the ~20 class winners are then determined after the Challonge âtournamentsâ are ended.
Writing down the end-of-month overall rating for every user. I usually search all the usernames, go to the profiles and copy the ratings from there.
Then, the biggest part of the puzzle: pairings. Donât worry - it will be handled by me (and Mikasa when sheâs around.) Usually takes 60-90 minutes.
Announce the pairings in our OGS group.
Create ~20 new Challonge tournaments (classes) and manually add players in, in order of placement.
Start the Challonge tournaments and launch league for the new month! <woot woot>
As I mentioned, a lot of these tasks are actually pure bookkeeping. I imagine that they may be added into an automated workflow in the future (which can be implemented in a TNL app), but the list above is the status quo for now. That said, if you would like to share the workload, feel free to apply as a league admin and we will talk through the process together!
Haha, I will try my best to include league game reviews on my own show! Itâs been going for 39 weeks in a row and I hope it will stay as one of OGSâs most consistent programs.
Here are some thoughts:
I only have 100-120 minutes for each show, so maybe I can go over 2 games maximum?
I hope my program will be permanently free and open to everyone. And by âeveryone,â I wish to exclude any prerequisites in order to âjoinâ my show. You can be on Fridays with xhu98 as long as you want to!
One of my ideas is to create a teaching leaderboard in the league, in order to recognize the efforts of those who contribute positively to our community. Users earn points regardless or wins/losses in league games, and top users on the leaderboard will receive a unique prize every month.
Yes, we will consider bringing the communal calendar back. However, this will require the help of more new league adminsâŚwe will need to work together and put up the game times on the calendar!
Absolutely, absolutely. A huge part of the reason I and Mikasa started TNL.
I also enjoyed more the first month when there was a known to everybody schedule
Though it seemed reasonable in the beginning, later I didnât like how it actually worked with division into groups. People improve with different speed and after the first month the groups stopped being âopponents of the same strengthâ, for example members of my 2 groups have ranks from 10 to 17 k now. There were people improving quickly that found that to get to a group of their rank they have to win several months in a row (but in several month they would be even stronger, so they wonât get to an appropriate group for a long time). Iâd say that every month there can be winners and every month a new division into groups depending on actual ranks (if there are too many people of the same rank the division may be random). But maybe itâs too much work? I donât know.
I always got a review when asked for one and I think the first month in the league helped me a lot.
It would be good if people published the link on the reviews in the chat.
Hearing a lot of things about reviews, lots of valid points have been made, so Iâd only like to add one thing:
Iâd really like to see some way of organizing reviews or even submitting them (similarly to submitting match results) so that others could easily find them and look through them. If they were collected together and indexed in such a way as someone could search for reviews for a given class, or done by a given individual, I think it would be really helpful for those trying to find study material from TNL. Say you play against someone in a league match that offers you a review, and you really like the way they review, there ought to be an easier way of finding other TNL reviews theyâve done that you can look over.
Just my two cents. Seems like it would be fairly easy to implement, but my programming skills are not that robust or else Iâd offer. And of course, thanks for all your efforts with TNL.
Edit: Also, if a better review organization system does get set up, please include me on the list of people that would be happy to fulfill requests for review.
These are very brilliant ideas! I have this vision of a new TNL website which functions more like a web app - it takes time to develop, but will be the coolest thing ever if I complete all the construction work over the summer.
I am not sure how to collaborate on a project with other developers, maybe GitHub? If any of you are interested in joining the geek team, please let me know.
if you do wind up regrouping us every month according to rank, would you please use the live game rank rather than overall rank? I think that would be more fair.
Plus, if we can utilize the small bits of time from several people instead of huge chunks of time from one or two, we will improve our efficiency by a lot.
In the past we have been trying to appoint teachers/reviewers for the league (including myself); however, we are not superhumans, and itâs unlikely that we are going to go over every single league game given the free time we have. Therefore, I think we should take advantage of the abilities of not only the 120+ members in the league, but also other people on the server.
When you claim a review, you get a number of bonus pointsâŚThe requesterâs rating will also be taken into account.
School work got in the way!
This is always what makes me feel warm and fuzzy when I think of TNL.
)
