If I make personal comments during a game, will they be public once the game concludes?

Couldn’t find anything at Home · online-go/online-go.com Wiki · GitHub.

Short answer is no

To give you the long answer:
There are three types of “chats” during a game

  • Chat (these are visible to everyone - as long as you are one of the players)
  • Malkovich (these are visible to everyone APART from your opponent, and will be revealed after the game)
  • Personal (these are just for you, ale will not be revealed to anyone)

You can switch between those by clicking the button:
Your-move

And if you chat as an observer of a game (where you are NOT an active player) your comments are visible to other spectators, and will only be revealed to the actual players after the game is concluded


For the record and potential volunteers, the related portion of the wiki is here, but is outdated. If anyone feels like tweaking it would be great, I will probably get to it after holidays if noone picks it up :slight_smile:

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AFAIK for Rengo these are visible to everyone apart from other players.

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Thanks! I made some changes to the wiki: The game view and playing games · online-go/online-go.com Wiki · GitHub

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I think you made it a little more confusing than it was before.
Now there are things under some of the categories that really apply to all three categories (highlighted like this below):

1. Chat

To talk to your opponent simply enter the message in the area where it says “Say hi!” and hit enter.

Your message will appear in the chat area above. It can be seen by your opponent and any spectators who may be watching the game.

:exclamation: Note: In-game chat is permanently stored with the game. This means that you can leave and return to the game without losing comments but please give as much thought to your comments as you do to your moves (perhaps more).

2. Malkovich

If you click on the Chat button it will change color to green and read Malkovich. While in malkovich mode, your messages will be hidden from your opponent until the game ends. After the game ends you can read all malkovich messages your opponent has written and your opponent can read yours. Spectators can see your malkovich messages even in an ongoing game. This includes any logged out person visiting the site, and includes your opponent if they choose to log out and look at your game. This feature is intended for entertainment of spectators, not for really private notes.

If you are a spectator, your messages will be visible to other spectators but hidden from the players until the end of the game (at which point the players will be able to see your messages too).

3. Personal

These chats are just for you, and won’t be revealed to anyone.

Also, the initial paragraph is slightly redundant with the rest.

Also, personal doubts:

  • does the text entry area say “Say hi!” for other people? It says “Message…” for me. Maybe it says “Say hi!” only in certain circumstances?
  • is it actually true that only the writer can see Personal messages? I assume moderators and/or developers can access them if they want to, right? I think it would be in the interest o transparency to point it out.

I guess I would edit it like this (but I don’t have a github account :laughing: ):

To talk to the other player/players simply enter the message in the area where it says “Say hi!” [or “Message…”] and hit enter. Your message will appear in the chat area above. If you are a spectator, your messages will be visible to other spectators but hidden from the players until the end of the game (at which point the players will be able to see your messages too).

:exclamation: Note: In-game chat is permanently stored with the game. This means that you can leave and return to the game without losing comments, but please give as much thought to your comments as you do to your moves (perhaps more).

Tip: If you write goban coordinates in chat (for example C5 or d6), they are automatically linked to the corresponding position on the goban. If you hold your cursor over the coordinate in chat a triangle appears on that spot on the goban.

If you are one of the players, by clicking the Chat button to the left of the textbox, you can shuffle through 3 modes:

1. Chat

These messages can be seen by your opponent and any spectators who may be watching the game.

2. Malkovich

While in malkovich mode, your messages will be hidden from other players until the game ends. Essentially, malkovich messages behave like spectator messages: after the game ends you can read all malkovich messages your opponent has written and your opponent can read yours. Spectators can see your malkovich messages even in an ongoing game. This includes any logged out person visiting the site, and includes your opponent if they choose to log out and look at your game. This feature is intended for entertainment of spectators, not for really private notes.

3. Personal

Only you can see these messages, and they won’t be revealed to anyone*.

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Thanks, I can fix it tomorrow based on your suggestion (if someone doesn’t beat me to it).

Oh, I think I should ping @moderators to fact-check my previous message.

(In particular about what does the chat textbox say generally before you write, and whether they or the developers can see Personal messages)

You know, I’m starting to think that ping doesn’t work at all, it’s not the first time I’ve seen dead silence after someone used it. Although maybe I abused it in this case.

I’ll ping @AdamR since he was involved in this discussion then :laughing:

Funny enough, yes, AFAI can see the @moderators ping did nothing for me :smiley:

As far as I know, personal messages are not encrypted (given their intended use case it would make no sense to add such a layer of complexity and higher performace demand into the code - but I did not see the code myself, so it is only an educated guess). Considering they are stored on our servers, yes, if our developer wanted to, he could probably dig them up, or give moderators access to them.

Nevertheless, personally, I do not think it is worth it to confuse readers and prolong the text with the info, it seems very unlikely that someone would consider using private chat in a game with another player to store their banking info and passwords or something like that :smiley: but sure, if you want to be super thorough, I am reasonably convinced that the info is not encrypted and thus technically reachable by our dev. Not that he would go looking throuhg random private chats though of course…

And many thanks for taking the time to look into it.

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Fair enough :laughing:

I was more thinking that one might carelessly write something in personal chat that could be perceived as offensive by other people, if they’re convinced nobody else can see it. (I mean something like calling another player’s move dumb, maybe even inadvertently before they play it, which I think is technically a legitimate subjective opinion but you wouldn’t phrase it that way if you knew somebody else could hear you)

Oh no, now all my CC numbers are in the OGS database somewhere! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Updated: The game view and playing games · online-go/online-go.com Wiki · GitHub

A bit of the rationale behind this question: I use personal chat as notes-to-self to explore options before I make a move. This is so I can later refer back to them when I review the game.

That’s great. I did bit same years ago but honestly i very rarely used them as i wanted. Hope it works better for you.
I was enough satisfied by some review on the spot and then just move to the next game.

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