I wondered whether visibility of kibitzing should perhaps be limited to signed-in users, to make it not-accidentally-visible to players in a game.
Of course a player could create a second account, but that’s more like active cheating, and less like accidentally stumbling upon some analysis of a game-in-progress.
Update: These thoughts come from a correspondence tournament, not from live games. Thanks to replies for highlighting the use-cases I had not considered. Now I wonder if different behaviour for correspondence or live games would be confusing. Minimal suggestion is: adjust links in “your turn” emails to specifically hide the kibitzing?
I think there is some tradeoff in that new users may not immediately want to log in, but may want to view the kibitz.
These days, more sites are requiring you to log in for full commentary (I’m thinking Twitter specifically ) so maybe it’s not such a crazy thing to lock it down though.
I see many guest accounts visiting relays of important games, I think it’s too much to make them go through registering an account. And denying them access seems excessive.
I think Malkovich should stay visible for logged out users even if kibitz chat isn’t, as a huge point of it is to allow a player to one way communicate to spectators
I should have specified that I’m only thinking of correspondence games. It happened in two games in our recent tournament, which lead me to bring up the topic here.
I agree that visitors for live games benefit much from being able to observe kibitzing in realtime. So I could argue againt my own suggestion…
One idea to reduce risk in correspondence games: the link to the game in the email saying “it’s your turn” could include a query-parameter to hide kibitzing. I think in the second game where this complaint came up, it was the email link. For my own game, I once saw the kibitzing because of some sign-in glitches… I can’t remember the details, just that I’m generally always-signed-in, so that authenticated status just temporarily failed somehow, somewhere.
I disagree with this idea, because I imagine Malkovich usage would be more useful to an opponent than Kibitzing. As in my previous message though: if we’re talking about live games, I am not advocating for a change in policy. I can very much understand the use cases and imagine people have grown accustomed to them. (I don’t have data or direct experience though.)
Now back to the narrower topic I mean to raise: correspondence games?
I’m wondering if there are any correspondence games that gain any significant number of (signed-out) spectators?
That is not spam. It is an example where the entire game was one huge kibitz by all the participants. Similar endeavors would be problematic under the proposal.
How would an endeavor like that be affected? The kibitz occured in the forums right? And is there any evidence there were a lot of signed-out spectators?
For examples of signed-out viewing, I think official/professional games draw more guest spectators, but I can’t think of any correspondence examples.
Ok that is a kind of manual game (opposed to the standard format) but just to show that in a correspondance time setting you can have a lot of players taking interest (and sometimes participating or sometimes just watching).
And i know that more team games were played as this one.
Ah, you are right. I was thinking of the OGS versus Leela game, in which the move discussions did occur in the game chat. So my point still stands, but with a different reference.
I find myself zooming in on this suggestion. I could reach out to the player in our tournament who complained about the kibitzing, because he could see it, whether this approach would feel sufficient to him - or whether he’d be too tempted to “cheat”: to explicitly go look for kibitzing.
A log keeping memory of coming in/out (with time) in the malakovitch could be interesting? I mean for information, I’d be so pleased to notice some strong watching my moves. Back on topic it could deter a part of the cheating and eventually help some moderation.
I have trouble understanding you. I do think you’re talking about the Malkovich log, which I believe is still only visible to others once the game is over. My main focus with this thread is really just the accidental seeing of spectators discussing your correspondence tournament game, if you happened to be signed-out (timed-out?) at the time when you click on the email links to go make your move.
Incidentally, is there some way to make a more serious suggestion than creating a Feedback/Suggestions thread like this? (I’d want to highlight my previous message, for example, to emphasize what I think is the simplest and easiest solution to this problem.)
I think this has long been a difficult case where we need to weigh the competing concerns of preventing cheating by bad actors, but also lowering the barrier to entry to kibitz, which is hard enough to find opportunities for as it is
Spectators can see your Malkovich messages even in an ongoing game.
My suggestion is to keep track of who come to read the Malakovitch during the game (and when),:it seems clear to me
For private notes that none will read ever besides yourself, you can use personal chat.
I understand your suggestion which would modify the way it was implemented, more constrained but still open after end of the game. Not sure there are enough people to be interested to implement a fourth option.
I mean some do like and some used to comment an ongoing game with malakovitch annotation, so we would have to create a new kind of chat for your suggestion.
) so maybe it’s not such a crazy thing to lock it down though.