I should clarify, I am speaking specifically about OGS.
I am not by any means, saying that we should remove the analysis feature. I am simply saying we should design it in such a fashion as to not incline people towards using it over not using it.
I agree with being inclusive, I should think I made that evident. And if we are being as inclusive as possible, then shouldn’t we take steps to avoid assuming whether the player wants analysis enabled or not?
If analysis is disabled by default, so is conditional moves. Does anybody really enjoy logging in just to play the next move in a boring 3-3 invasion joseki? Or do you want to log in and actually advance the game, take sente for that reduction you have been planning?
Taking a week to play the 10 or so moves both players know will be played sucks the life out of a correspondence game.
For players who do not personally want to use analysis, it does not make any difference at all whether it’s enabled or disabled. They can always disable it entirely from their settings, create/join challenges and tournaments where it is disabled, or just simply not use it even if it’s available. I feel like this is personal choice, but should not be forced into everyone else.
It is lot easier to simply not use something that is enabled, than it is to try use something that is disabled.
For correspondence games, analysing games has been the norm ever since the invention of postal service. Trying to change that would ultimately just scare off many of the ogs’s well-established corr community.
This is actually what is and has been the way of how its handled currently. There is unchecked checkbox for disabling analysis, conditional moves and score estimator, it just requires one extra click to check that box.
The problem of something being a default isnt that it would be so hard to change it with one click when creating an open challenge, but the big issue is that those default settings are forced into every “automatically” created games, like for ladders and sitewide tournaments. I personally do not want other ppl just suddenly starting year-long ladder games with me if i can’t even analyse those games before they are over.
TBH, as a smoker i feel like arguments for disabling the analysis sound exactly the same what i hear from anti-smoking people.
Yes, i understand that many ppl disgust the smell of cigarettes, some ppl are very passionate about lecturing the negative health issues, someone might even be honestly concerned about my lungs, and pretty much everyone thinks that smoking is waste of money. But, for the sake of god, do no come to my house and demand that i stop smoking on my property. I can respect other ppl’s choice of not smoking, and i wish they could also respect my choices of smoking cigs and analysing go games.
Not everyone sees it as that. For some is just uncharted territory.
I like you, but that’s a reach. 
Okay? So? They get to play it out and learn, but i dont have to. If they play a move i wasnt anticipating, then when i log back I have something to consider. If they play the anticipated move, the game moves on
with Nike Vaporfly shoes athletes run 5% faster
Should this mean, that every athlete should start with naked foots by default? 
For a salutary lesson in what a vocal minority can do you only need to look at what is about to happen to the UK tonight at 11pm GMT time…
The strange thing about this discussion is that it sounds like people think that the proposal is to disallow analysis.
That is not the case (in this thread).
This thread is simply about making analysis disabled the default.
If this were implemented, you could still have games with analysis enabled, just like you can smoke with your friends in your house.
It’s just that it would be more normal to play without it enabled.
After-thought:
The argument of “why I do you care if I use analysis in our game together?” has got me wondering though.
It seems reasonable. Why do I care? I don’t actually quite know.
But then - why do I care if you use a bot during our game together? Is this any different?
I mentioned in an earlier post that we should draw further distinction between certain types of games. For general open challenges and custom games, it’s only a matter of what’s checked by default, and players would be free to change that.
However, there is also the question of the site-wide ladders and automatic tournaments (and I imagine group ladders would follow suit since they don’t have custom settings). In those, it would be a question of whether or not to actually disable analysis.
Yes - the existence of those is the main reason why I felt that changing the default for correspondence was not OK, because in the case of these the default is the only choice.
Perhaps different choices could be made for different situations. However, that does greatly complicate the discussion and decision making.
Exactly … I use the conditional move feature to speed up correspondence games, especially during the endgame. And since this is connected with the analysis feature I would never play a correspondence game without analysis enabled.
But we also have to consider those that are currently benefiting from analysis enabled as the default, like for accessibility reasons and other reasons mentioned by others. Supposing it was disabled by default, new players and those that need it may not know it exists for some time. I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people don’t read game titles and settings, so they may also not be aware of analysis mode while they’re new. In this case, it’s functionally equivalent to removing analysis mode.
Although I admit I don’t know any statistics on how often analysis mode is enabled/disabled and used when enabled in live games (would be good to get to help guide this discussion), it could change what solution appears best to me if we knew how much or little it helped players. I only know of personal stories and people that it helped, and they didn’t use it as a way to “cheat”, so my mind is currently set on “should be enabled” because the arguments to have it disabled have been moral arguments rather than showing the potential downsides to using it.
A neutral solution in the meantime might be to make “analysis mode ON / OFF” a more apparent thing when creating and selecting games in the “play” page. It would be good to get statistics before and after this happens.
Time to move on…
I don’t use analysis for live games and have decided that correspondence games aren’t really for me, although I do use the score estimator from time to time (but I’m trying to stop!).
I don’t care if an opponent uses it though. Why should I? Their use of analysis is already reflected in their rank. If someone who uses analysis regularly is the same rank as me it doesn’t change how the game is played on my end… If anything it probably gives me a slight advantage because I’m not wasting time clicking through possible variations.
I’ve had opponents time out and say that they didn’t realize they were running out of time bc you don’t get the countdown while in analysis mode.
This thread with todays lengthy conversion on chat has made me understand that there some players who do not join ogs ladders because they do not wish their opponent using the analysis tools, which are enabled on default. I don’t know how many of those players exists, but since the number seems to be higher than 2, i suppose it’s worth fixing for them.
I propose we allow group admins to change the settings of ladders for their groups.
This would not only solve the problem of having no ladders with analysis disabled, but many more groups might want to take advantage of this. I can see “fast correspondence” group wanting to have quicker time settings, many kyu groups wanting handicaps, chinese groups wanting chinese rules etc.
This would also give more meaning for all group ladders, because currently the only thing that differentiates those ladders from the sitewide ones is the smaller playerpool. Quick look at the random sample of group ladders reveals that those are indeed pretty quiet places, not many users of those groups even join the ladders at the first place, and even fewer of them challenges anyone else. If those ladders had something specific to them, maybe they would see more activity and serve more purpose for having group ladders at the first place.
Combined with showing group ladders in main ladder page this propose would/could increase activity of those ladders a lot.
Of course group admin changing the ladder settings shouldn’t affect the currently ongoing games, but take effect only for new games. And the settings for group ladders should be somewhere visible, so that everyone knows what they are getting into before joining those ladders (current users in those ladders just have to bear with it)
Does anyone come up with any negatives of this proposal, or does everyone think its a great idea?
Should i make a new topic or github request of this?
Bespoke group ladder rules is a great idea. And previously requested more than once as I recall.
I’m curious about this argument: why do you care if a person is using a bot to help them, then? That too is reflected in their rank…
He didn’t mention bots at all though. Bots are vastly different from analysis mode. One requires you to put effort in and the only advantage it gives is that you can read deeper (apparently it has also caused some games to be lost by its use as the coutndown timer doesn’t notify the player). The other does literally everything for you and requires zero effort.
Plus, OGS has score estimator, which is kind of a double-standard when it comes to bot-based aid in a game. The score estimator tells people what is “solid” and what can be invaded, even if they don’t know how to invade, they can try. Second, it tells people to resign when they really shouldn’t because it’s absolute garbage at its job. There have been many instances of peopel resigning won games because they rely on the score estimator. The score estimator is bot assistance, plain and simple.