So I figured I would take a shot at making a mock up of a landing/play page for OGS. Thoughts? You can play with it here.
@anoek I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Made a mobile mock up. If only coding the actual site was this easy 
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Are the stream links a restyling of the current announcement system, or were you thinking about integrating twitch in some way?
I like the buttons for the different time settings, though, but splitting up the automatch function into more categories may mean even longer waiting times.
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For twitch streams I was thinking people could add their stream to their profile or something and there could be an api check on a timer or the streamer could check that they are live in there profile and the timer could run to see when they are no longer live. So a new feature instead of announcements. Ofc the time should check if they are playing game Go.
The buttons I felt could just create a custom game with the given settings since I’m not sure how many people use auto match. Basically a 1 click custom game button.
Edit: Or just have stream announcements be here. Reaches less people though so maybe in addition to the normal announcement?
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Play page yes. Landing no. So much more variety we could have then (last forum posts, news, top game etc…)
Customization and a default setting is quite a usual way on OGS. Some start by checking themself (profile type landing), some just come to play quickly, some want to chat or check the forum…
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Am I the only one who thinks it looks like a lichess, or is there anyone else who thinks the same way? 
I think the automatch widget is directly from Lichess
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Thank you, otherwise I thought that it seemed to me, but if this is not so, then the question is: why should the OGS be like Lichess? 
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I don’t play chess and don’t know that site, but in this age it’s quite difficult being completely original and it’s very helpful taking solutions from others.
If something works, why not using it?
Definitely lichess. ligo?
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Maybe because sometimes such use is called plagiarism. Maybe because such borrowing can make people wonder why the project administration wants their brainchild to look like something that already exists, instead of having its own unique appearance.
I don’t think anyone would want their child to look like their neighbor because you have to wonder where your wife “borrowed” it from. Indeed, who did she “use” to have this child? And there is no problem with that, because if your neighbor made children for his wife, why shouldn’t he make them for your wife too? It may well be good, healthy kids, why not? Perhaps they will be better than the children that you can make your own wife, so what’s the matter? If something works, why not use it, right? 
In my opinion, if functionality interferes with uniqueness, then to hell with functionality. There are a lot of functional similar junk in the world and it is not capable of making the world a better place. All that faceless functional junk is capable of is to serve the needs of mediocrity.
Overall i like the general look of the redesign, although I think adding the automatch buttons would be better than your proposed custom game shortcuts. Generally though I think it’s an improvement. I wonder how hard it would be to kang the streamer watch code from lichess
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sounds like a lack of functionality to me 
But actually, I agree that we don’t need to copy everything from lichess, I think there are things OGS has done well.
Also, changing things too much would certainly be a turn-off for the established player base, even if it might succeed in making the site more likable to people coming from the chess world.
So, with all that in mind, I created my own version of the mock up – some things are slightly more like lichess, but most are closer to OGS.
I only focused on the automatch area, also I’m not familiar with web design so I just made it in vector graphics
So, I brought back ruleset preference, Canadian time (), the prefer/require distinction, and I compactified the time partition in a style more similar to the current OGS one, while still allowing a wide variety of Live games.
I calculated the time per move based on the lichess settings, but I might have gotten something wrong, or they might not be reasonable for Go.
By the way, another idea I’ve been considering, perhaps off-topic: should we prevent all custom challenges that don’t have settings compatible with automatches to be ranked? It would be in the spirit of “all ranked games should happen with similar premises”.
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Like inspiration, ok, cool. But what this person is proposing is basically a lichess clone, even down to having a “Bullet” time setting which does not really exist (nor is it very practical) in Go.
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You mean the “blitz” time setting exists instead? Like, what is the definition of “exists”?
While of course you could point to the player base not being interested in it, playing Go at “Bullet” speed might be even easier than playing chess at “Ultra-Bullet” speed.
But yes, we should try to make time categories that correspond to the interest of people.
What I know for sure is that some people wish Live/Normal games were generally slower (meaning the opponent makes the same time commitment and doesn’t leave when you take your time), some people wish they were slightly faster (meaning the opponent doesn’t keep them waiting and plays as fast as them), and some people do play at insane Blitz settings of less than 5 seconds per move, which usually causes them to have an inflated rank.
And I’m under the impression that some of these things are actually among the main reasons people resort to custom challenges.
Neat! I was hoping I would inspire more ideas.
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I think these are some neat looking ideas for a page to find a game to play.
However, I really like how the current home page is largely centered around my ongoing correspondence games.
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I have to say I can see how copying too much form lichess, down to the graphics, might be in bad taste though
Lichess certainly looks “slicker” than OGS, but that doesn’t mean we should just copy its look – I’m including my own mock up as a recipient of this critique, to be clear.
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Not sure about bad taste but isn’t lichess “open source” so reuse is fine just so long as you comply with the license conditions. There will not be any money but things like acknowledgment and permitting onwards use and such.
My usual caveat that I’m no expert and haven’t looked at lichess or anything.
I agree with this. I like a more simplified page, and especially one that works cleanly on mobile devices.
The problem with this is it makes a lot of combinations for automatch. To me automatch should be a simple default setting that is generally fine for most people with custom available for even slightly different preferences.
For example just make everything Chinese and fischer, a choice of 9x9 and 19x19 only and blitz, rapid and correspondence only. If people want to play anything else then go custom. (I’m not even sure you need correspondence automatch actually).
People who care and understand what the different settings and options mean and have thought about then enough to have a preference would certainly be capable of using the custom game system. People who are new, don’t know or care about these things have reasonable options that they don’t have to think about and can get games quickly since the pools can be bigger.
Just my personal view. I’d love to see a mock up for what the most minimal play page could be and build up from there.
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As you said, that’s your opinion, which you presented in a very harsh way.
I don’t agree at all.
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I’m trying to consider another idea: what if we removed the “require” option from automatch, but still allowed preferences?
That way, apart from the different time pools (blitz etc), there would be no forced partition of the automatch pool, but when possible, players would still find matches with their preferred settings.
I imagine it would still be very annoying to many regular users, though
(But less annoying, to them, than your idea )
I’d be on board for making Chinese and Fischer the default, by the way.