I wish I could invite someone who hasn’t yet registered to play… he would get an email with the invitation and he could see the board before registering… this could increase the adoption rate I think.
pathogenix said I should submit this suggestion here
“[5:44] pathogenix: Hey somekool - it’s a good suggestion, why don’t you post it at forums.online-go.com ?”
Seconded! This game is challenging enough just to get people to put their foot in the door. This would lower a basic barrier to entry. It would also act as an icebreaker.
I wouldn’t want to get any generic automated invitation. If a friend would email me with the OGS website address and maybe a wikipedia page about go then that would be enough and far more personal.
What @Pempu says.
Also, it is bad style to give away email addresses of other people to any third party without their explicit consent.
Cheers, Tom
I think it can be done without giving out an email address. It would be a lot more work for the devs, though. You’d make a game, and choose “unregistered user”. That puts the game page up, and then you’d be able to share the link to the person you’d be challenging through other means. That might mean that anyone that sees the page could join the game instead, though. 
A simpler solution would be to only use their email address temporarily to send the message, and while the person doesn’t register. If the person doesn’t register and the user that did the invite cancels the game, the email address can be purged.
You could also provide a “i’m not interested, remove my email” link in the invite to purge it.
I don’t think a game object should be created on invitation… too many pending games would be floating around…
about email privacy, it could be specified that OGS does not store emails, only sends your invitation.
it can be done without email as well, from OGS existing user ask for an invite link, you can set game settings in advance, you copy paste that link to anyone, anywhere, those links are also reusable, only contains game_settings and your username.
existing user who clicks the link could have the challenge auto created and accepted.
new users would be presented with the welcome info, upon sign up, the game starts
Do you realize you were replying to a post from 2014? 
To be fair, it’s his/her own post
I do, and I believe this is still relevant
Oops, thanks @Vsotvep … I’m sorry, @shigazaru, I didn’t realize that.
Anyway, I wonder whether that could perhaps lead to OGS be seen as a source of spam b/c people get unsolicited email from OGS?
If such a feature existed OGS would only provide the link, you send it via whatever service suits you - facebook/discord/e-mail… etc
the link probably should not be reusable to be honest, certainly not with interpretable username/usernumber that might open some unwanted door for abuse.
Could these accounts use chat? or be only limited to the linked game chat? (probably quite problematic to implement, but then again sending a friendly game where you cannot chat kinda sucks) Obviously only unranked games…
just send this link in the meantime: https://online-go.com/sign-in#/
takes like 10s to register 
why “obviously unranked games” ?
Also, sending the signup link is what I do, but after that, they need to find me. mouseover and hit challenge. and while its easy for all of us, its not straight forward UI for newcomers. I found. alternative is give me your login name after you signup, so I can challenge them myself. but often they signup and forget…
its just too many steps for many humans.
they need to accept the challenge as soon as they accept to signup.
that’s my understanding. having invited many users some didn’t sign up, some have but … obviously, they were new to the Game as well.
getting more traffic from the Strong Amateur and Pro scene is a different story.
Obviously unranked, because there is no way to know the strength of a player from annonymous link, thus the data would be meaningless (I assume), unless there was some way to then create an account and have those games counted, but that sounds quite complicated…
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea, the link was partially a joke 
but it may be a while before something like this gets implemented… 
and I wanted to start some brainstorming to be able to present a complete and thought-through idea how exactly it would/should work once a dev actually gets to trying to implement something like that.
i think ranked games are fine, because provisional players needs ranked games to get a ranked.
Back when OGS did not exist, I was playing on KGS, and it was a huge problems where ranked players refused to play ? players…
they had a long post on their doc explaining how it was important to promote player new players. but players were afraid to have their ranked affected.
anyway, I wanted to mention it.
Well yes, but since those are annonymous challenges, they are not linked to any actual account… I don’t think there is a practical way of having it both ways. Not having to register, yet still have “something” your ranking would be tied to… I do not understand how you imagine it would work then.
sorry for the confusion. I thought they would sign up and have the challenge waiting for them upon sign up.
I agree with you, playing users who don’t register is tough and messy.
About the link they would be reusable. I see the point you raised if the username was in the link it could pose problem, it would need to be something hard to guess. but making it reusable mean I could distribute it using a QR code at Go clubs
I guess that’s easy enough to write your OGS username, but I dont know, I’m just in brainstorming mode I guess
Ahhhhh, now I get you I must be slow today. That makes sense then.
I was thinking about an option to just send an unranked game invite via link. Which would not require registration at all, just click and play with a friend. If they like it they can register later. I would like something like that too.
I think inviting people to play without registration is a great idea because it massively lowers the barrier of entry.
You can play one or two games with somebody with zero overhead for them.
Afterwards, when they already know that OGS is a cool site, the willingness to set up an account will be way higher (from my personal experience).
The Dark Years
exactly my point, lowering the bar of entry.
simple link, game starts, like we can stack a video chat link with jitsi meet or zoom. then offer user to create an account for rank play, history and more