There’s a reason practically every other server has a single ‘home screen’ with a list of games sorted by rank/observers with broadcast special events at the top (avoid all those notification pop up problems we talk about lots), a chat room, and some buttons to start a game. I believe this also contributes to kibitz culture, which is something I miss about the KGS old days, and OGS doesn’t seem to have replaced.
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Fox, at least, is way worse with its bells and gongs and chat spam advertisements.
With respect to kibitz… back in the day, if you wanted to watch a live game between two strong(er than you) players, you kinda had to watch on IGS/KGS and even then, the strong-player-pool was fairly limited, which is why several regulars rose to fame/notoriety. It was a self-reinforcing loop. New players meant new kibitzers, a bigger crowd watching each game…
Nowadays, every Joe can watch superhuman bots duke it out (which no one does, because it’s boring) and every Jane can ask KataGo “But what about K10?” (which many people do).
I’m not convinced that kibitz culture is at all reproducible.
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There is some. Walking in the main chat you meet some calls for, or going to watch some events it happens and it will develop in my opinion. Note that the twitch are taking a part of the cake. (My guess as i can’t watch them.)
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I agree, but to start with I don’t even think OGS even needs the full KGS/Fox style homepage game list to get some of the benefits. It can just copy it’s main inspiration: Lichess
Thumbnail of the top game on the homepage.
We have the technology!
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I agree, it would be cool to show the highest (non-bot) ranked game going on in some place of the homepage (which would also be the play-game page).
Plenty of nice ideas, I’m getting excited for some OGS UI revamp but unfortunately I assume this is pretty slow moving 
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It’s only slow moving until someone who is good with UI comes along, then it might all change very suddenly. Sadly for all the people who contribute most on GitHub, UI design isn’t really our strong suit 
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Yes, the golden days may be gone. Western go community now is more fragmented with streaming on twitch/youtube, discord, westerners on asian servers now that they have english clients… To get kibitz going you need enough people hanging around as potential kibitzers, and enough strong players, plus that server design for visibility so you log in, and within a second see “Oh look, there’s unknownplr 9d vs rapyuta 9d with 400 observers, I’ll watch that and kibitz (knowing there will be other people there doing the same) instead of playing a game, or chit chatting in a chat room (or checking a forum!)”.
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Someone with at least some Photoshop skills could possibly help get things moving by posting a compelling mockup as a GitHub issue.
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Would a “show me a random goban to kibitz” on the lower right or sth make sense? Or a “currently kibitzing” with the most spectators?
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Indeed, it is quite common with some recent top European games on OGS like EGF pro league or Dutch championship that I kibitz on OGS before the EGF pros start on twitch, but then once that starts I watch and chat on twitch instead, and OGS chat goes quiet.
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Most players on other server just use automatch. There isn’t even an automatch option to turn analysis off. You have to create a custom game.
Higher ranked players simply don’t want to play with the analysis on. It inflates a person’s real strength and negates the need for detailed reading skills.
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That’s changing soon.
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Giving dan players upwards of a certain rank the ai evaluation for free might be a really good incentive for them to join ogs and be willing to accept downsides like waiting a little bit longer for a match. And possibly that investment might pay for itself if it leads to more people overall playing here
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Yes, it’s a weird mix between cooperation and competition.
Probably just goes to show that pro events aren’t a tool to increase our player or observer pool. Casual (or even competitive) games could be (pro league?), though, provided there was no Twitch cast.
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The interesting topic to consider is reasons for not-super-pro tournament organizers choosing KGS instead of OGS.
But still, the overall number of Go players is extremely low. Another solution to solve the dan problem is to simply get much more people into Go. And I think it’s impossible without adapting Go to typical “western” games, e.g., having parties of 20-30 minutes instead of 1hr+. Thats why I think 13x13 is the best solution to popularization of Go in the “west”.
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Y not 9x9? Better game and faster 
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13x13 has more strategic aspects, that are completely new to people who are familiar with chess. IMHO of course
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I concur with 13x13 as a more general market way to get people into Go. I’ve been playing some 13x13 lately, and it’s quite fun.
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13x13 has the considerable downside that of the 3 main board sizes it by far has the least English teaching content available.
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