Private chat between opponents

Feedback Suggestions
1

In an effort to make something productive come out of an utterly unproductive unnamed other thread:

It would be nice to have the option to make private comments in a game that only you and your opponent can read (and none of the spectators, neither now nor in the future).

We currently have:

  • Normal chat; public for everyone any time, but can only be made by the players
  • Malkovich chat; public for everyone any time except for the opponent, who only will see the message after the game ends
  • Personal chat; only visible for you, any time
  • Spectator chat; public for everyone except for the players, who will only see the message after the game ends
  • Moderator chat; like normal chat, but can only be made by moderators

I suggest to add:

  • Private chat; only visible to you and your opponent (and perhaps moderators in order to deal with reports)

Why this would be a nice feature?

Currently private chat is only possible by PM, but such messages are not permanent and furthermore it’s a hassle to bring up the chat box.

On the other hand, private games have private chat, but cannot be ranked.

It would be nice to have more in-depth chat with some opponents without having to worry about third-parties reading along.

15 Likes
3

Honestly, this IS a good idea, but it’s shouldn’t be categorised as necessity at all. And I’m still conservatively think that when you are playing the game, you shouldn’t chat about nothing other than the game itself(but I do realise that’s not a mentality for 90% of pepole and it’s good in some way)
For me in some sense it’s just kinda ethics killing(Not directly ofc), I think it’s bad that people are unwilling to share because of fear of other people reading (I don’t know is it “right”, but I really hate the idea of people fearing something in this community)
I would suggest implementing usual chat-block updates, for example ability to “save” you conversations manually, I think that would be more useful for a lot of player, but honestly, idk🤷

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4

In correspondence games there’s plenty of time to chat about other things :slight_smile:

In any case, it seems that in practice many people are chatting about various unrelated topics in game chats.

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5

I think the current chat window is also in need of an update, I don’t know if there’s a way to combine these two, if it would mean less effort overall.

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6

Yeah, combing somehow would be the best
But about chat windows - it’s honestly frustrating that all of your old messages are gone inevitably after some time :person_shrugging:

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7

FIFY :slightly_smiling_face:

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8

Oh come on many things work fine :wink::+1:t2:

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9

We just got an update for automatch!

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10

We got changes to automatch. Isn’t whether or not it was an upgrade still out to the jury?

I really like the blue dots that show where people are currently waiting. But I would like to see some updated numbers on wait times across settings :heart:

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11

I think 1-1 chat would be completely orthogonal feature unless you’re saying the mode-switcher-thingy can be improved.

But yeah, I agree. Just to name a few specific features I see being useful:

  • multi-line messages (shift+enter or smth)
  • link previews (Open Graph, like we have in forum)
  • Read receipts & the “i’m typing” dots
  • Better handling of “special messages” (it’s an implementation detail, but leads bugs in how we display URLs and stuff)
  • @ ing players (and it notifies them)
  • translation?

There’s also the workaround of private games.

While I like the idea of 1-1 chat, I think OGS should choose simplicity and keep only the three options that are currently available. (But it’s not a strongly held opinion)

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12

All I hear is “go github yourself” :stuck_out_tongue:.

I don’t understand a thing, but I trust you have our best interests at heart. :+1:t2:

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13

The in game chat and the pm system are surely the most prehistoric features of OGS.
It would be difficult to find worse on the net.

Even an old nokia from 30 years ago will remember who sent you a message and its content.

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14

The in game chat is good, right? I agree the pm system has some shortcomings, though it serves, but if by in-game-chat you mean the box that you can cycle through the 3 types (chat, malko, personal), I find it quite good and easy to use

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15

I agree that the in-game chat has constraints that the pm doesn’t have. I think mostly of the fact that this chat somehow has to be included in the sgf later.

Anyway. I find @benjito suggestions already interesting.

If we have a better pm system this thread would be
less necessary.

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16

Honestly, there is a lot of discussion on github where people with no coding experience can contribute.

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17

I don’t see the point of chatting private in a live game. Why? For what? And in a correspondence game you can just use private messages to chat about your game. So I don’t see any benefit there.

Also I’m not a fan of a private chat between opponents: It opens the door for artificial rank inflations where a strong player allows his opponent to win a bunch of games to rank up… and then the strong player can just sandbag his way back up the ranks.
OGS should do everything they can to stop rank inflation and cheating imho. And every totally private chat makes such things a LOT easier. We will start to see games that are totally made up, once such features are in place.

Also when someone calls a moderator: Usually the moderator will want to comment on the game and thus communicate with the players. Why do you need an extra chat for mods? If you really need 2 mods to resolve a game, they can also use direct private messages, no?

So yeah… I think less chats are better than more. There is no reason to have them, it’s just feature creep.

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18

To communicate with an opponent, without the entire internet being able to read along.

With some opponents, I’d like to talk about how my life is going, but I don’t want to give away too much personal information in a public place. I’ve had bad actors stalk me through public messages I wrote that were accessible to everyone; it’s not a fun experience.

The private message box is tiny, you need two clicks to even open it each time you come back to the game, the messages are not permanent and not linked to a game, so you cannot post variations or move numbers in there. I think you don’t want to see any benefit there.

This is already possible, even if OGS did not have any chat at all. The idea that chat somehow significantly increases the number of people manipulating their rank, is a bit of a stretch, if you ask me.

Moreover, people who do this get banned when found out.

Also, note that I’m not suggesting to make the (ranked) game private for everyone; the game itself and all the moves are public. Just the chat is private.

We already have private games, but they can’t be ranked.

Because without it, the moderator can chat all they like in the game chat, but the players won’t be able to read it until the game is finished. It’s not a chat between moderators, it’s chat made by moderators that is visible to players during the game.

Why is not all moderator chat like this? Because then a moderator cannot kibitz: their chat “as a normal user of the site” would always be visible to the player.

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19

I never found the private message or chat box on OGS user-friendly… It goes missing when I want to find it and it appears when I’m not looking for it. If the chat is already open I don’t receive notifications for the chat also.

I don’t really require a private chat with my opponent unless it’s someone I know or someone I’m teaching, but even if I need it, an audio chat will probably be better than text. In the first place, I don’t really talk much during the game. But I can see that it could be useful for someone who just wants to chit-chat and play casual games just like in real life.

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