- Can you show me the settings that you’re having trouble finding games with?
Is not about China or not. China has a greater proportion of Dan players and has a bigger playerbase, of course, but what @Clossius1 say is why there is not dan players playing in OGS, and instead they move to fox.
In the West there is enough top-level players but if they can’t find a match, then will move to Fox and this is a snowball where you reach some level where is difficult to find a game and have to move to other server. If all players do the same, then, above some rank, there is an exile.
On the other side, I’m not in that level situation, but sometimes find difficult to find a match when I’m able to play and have to move to Panda or Fox to play a match. Board size/time settings splits queues and doesn’t helps either at all.
In the same line there are players who plays correspondence games over live games for whathever respectable reason, there are players who wants to sit, play match, and play a game, with a Human sure, but if not available in some time, maybe is open to play against a bot, and if you don’t want to face bots, disable in your account settings. I think no one is harmed and all of us wins.
Not saying bots implementation like Fox is the solution, neither saying is OGS fault, but to have “shadow bots” to keep the server alive under some time treesholds is not a bad idea either if well implemented.
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Server itself should not be more important than humans who play humans.
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This argument makes no sense. All people wants to play against a human instead a bot but playerbase is playerbase. It’s better to offer a match after a 1min queue without finding opponent, than no match at all.
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Its possible to increase total number of happy people by decreasing happiness of people who play only people.
It will help server, it will not help people who play only people.
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its not true for people who only wish to play people
no match at all is better for them
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slow, no high dans is better than having to play bots sometimes
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Who can disable this option if they don’t want to face against bots, is not so hard to understand. Without an option like this, Happy people continúa being happy, and unhappy people continúe to being unhappy. With the option, happy people can disable it and continue being happy and unhappy people is now happy
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Putting bots in the Automatch queue is not a solution. Anyone who wants to play a bot can do that without delay.
Currently there are about 120 live games. Suppose that a game lasts 20 minutes on average, then a new game is created every 10 seconds. And suppose for simplicity that they are evenly distributed over 30 ranks, then a new game at a given rank is created every 5 minutes. In practice I get a game faster than that, but it may depend on the rank, time of the day and automatch settings.
Getting a game on KGS takes some time too, often a few minutes.
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Are they? Well, I do not think that we, simple users, can know that for a “fact”.
Be that as it may, that doesn’t mean much to us, as users, does it? 
Most people nowadays grow up with phones and are glued in front of a portable screen.
Should we do so as well, just because “most people” seem to like that?
Similarly a lot of people are infatuated with bots and AI.
Should the server fill its ranks with official bots, or even worse, deceive its users pretending that there is a “sea of players” waiting in line to fill the queue in 3-5 seconds?
Maybe it should… a lot of companies “follow the trend” and we are now flooded with “AI chatbots” and we will soon even have to talk to a “chatbot” when we need to call the fireservice while our house is on fire. 
It might be saving money, but is it really a good idea or a good service?
Yes, and fast food and delivery apps have a lot of clients, that does not make it a “better experience”, just a better business model.
You are a professional Go teacher so it makes sense that you are conflating “what makes more money” with “what makes a better experience”.
Most of us though, are not.
At the end of the day what you are proposing is a simple thing:
“McDonalds seems to be making money off selling fast food burgers, therefore you should close down your restaurant and buy into that franchise, as well.”
Sure, that will net you an influx of “burger eating people” and it might make you money.
The people that like restaurants will go elsewhere.
It is a choice to “become just like the competition” and it is not as easy as you make it out to be.
For example:
Would you revamp “Tsumego Dragon” and copy-paste (or even join) “Go magic” if that choice offered you slightly more money than the money you currently make? Would you really?
Why not though? By following your points, “Go Magic” is said to offer “a better learning experience” than Tsumego Dragon. 
And maybe it is a “fact” that people also leave your platform for theirs. Isn’t that your argument here?
Do you see now how “surface level” your points are and those are not easy decisions?
If you really believed your points, go ahead, try them out on your own service first.
That sounds like a good arrangement. I still play at DGS, as well, even though it has none of the features that OGS has.
Not really.
If you have such a setting “on by default” as initially proposed, then the bots are going to “suction off” the vast majority of the playerbase and the people that have ticked off the bots option will be left with an even smaller fraction of the playerbase, will take them 2-3 times more time to find a game compared to now and they might have to go to “Panda or Fox to play a match” against a human being.
Again, things are not that simple.
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That is a valid point. There are possible ways that I can game the system to get a better result. I tend to go for 20 min games with a 3 kyu gap either side and also disable handicap. I could conceivably go faster games which some people like and try and blitz through to where there is more players or I could enable handicap and then there is more chance of beating the higher kyus I might match against which means more chance of getting up to those higher ranks where apparently hordes of players exist.
Alternately switch playing times entirely i.e just play weekends where the standard seems lower or just play weekdays and avoid weekends and I will drop to (probably) 17 kyu but then will likely have more evenly matched games in the week (as long as I never play weekends when I would be under ranked for ability. Or just play weekends and never play during the week..
Seems a lot of hassle and fox for its sins just really does blitz (haven’t worked out a time setting longer) and also has the skill drop at weekends. So an alternate is to play fox when I get guaranteed games and level up there and when I hit 8 there (if) then I switch back to here where players allowing I should (at that point) be roughly equal to an OGS 11.
But I am unsure if there is any guarantee of more players around 11kyu tbh…
apparently on 11k its more easy to find even game than on 15k
and on 3 kyu its the most easiest
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Ah… I see that once again this topic of conversation has cropped up…rearing its head once more to engage the forum users in its thrall!
I think it is fair to say that on the two sides of this argument, there are valid points being made. Some people will never want to play against bots… and that is valid. But there are some who dont really mind as long as they arent getting smashed by someone botting, using katago or whatever other go program that exists, to cheat their way to an easy win.
I do, however, think that it is a point of contention that has been brought up many times before: that the community of stronger players typically migrates away from OGS.
We should, by now, at least have a cursory understanding of this topic and understand why this occurs.
There are, in my estimation, 3 primary reasons that take precedence.
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Wait times, which are caused by a lack of playerbase beyond a certain point.
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lack of strong Western players overall.
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And the final issue is a compounding effect of the first two issues.
It is fair to say that if you want strong players to stay on OGS, then Strong players should take the initiative to actually stay on OGS. The problem with that, however, is that there really isn’t much point in them doing so. Then we must ask the question… Why should we burden anyone with the responsibility of ensuring a playerbase beyond any level of the game?
There is no intrinsic value in demanding players do this. And there is no reward for them to do this either. Why bother putting in the effort of creating a community of players in one place when another server already meets the needs of that player?
Now, I’m aware that this is somewhat of a cynical stance to take. But, this does somewhat link back to a point I was making a while ago in another thread, around an altogether similar topic of conversation… at least in a sort of abstract sense.
Now…why do I link to a post I wrote that essentially advocates for the opposite?
It’s simple, really. The burden of creating a community shouldn’t fall on one person, or even on one group within a greater community. Indeed, I believe that the responsibility for this lies on the shoulders of every Western Go player.
But… the caveat here is a simple one… people should be allowed to play where they want to guilt-free. And the idea that OGS “Has” to have a strong community of players at the upper end of the skill table is kinda absurd to me. I myself am 5kyu. That already puts me in the top 20% of players (estimating here) on the website, and I don’t even consider myself a strong player. A dan level player, 1dan, would be something like the top 1% of people, or thereabouts.
It is unreasonable to expect so few people to carry the responsibility of something that they stand nothing to gain from, where their needs are met elsewhere. And until such a time as OGS has better global reach, where its able to be accessed by people in China, Japan, Korea, and other countries where the player to population density is significantly higher, it is unreasonable to even expect there to be a pool of players in the top ends of the ranks, to populate a site that routinly has far less traffic than nearly every other of the “large” go servers (not icluding KGS).
Further to this point… I dont actually think that OGS “Needs” to have a pool of strong dan level players for it to keep on doing what it has been doing for years. Be the home of western Go players, who use OGS to teach, and to introduce Go to any and all people they can.
OGS is a fantastic environment for new go players, and indeed mid level go players. And as a community, we should own that. Yes, we could always aim to be better, to get stronger, and to try and pull more stronger players in. But, casting doubt and aspersions at the server, or at people who choose to play in other servers because of any arbitrary reaons, does not help anything.
More self-awareness needs to be earned by all of us, as to the current state of what we call the Western go community. And so too, must we also be better at advocating for ourselves, and what we do well. There will always be things that we need to work on as a community, and there are many people out there that are seeking to grow the western Go community in any way they can… to draw in new players.
I have no doubt that at some point in the future there will be enough people around for OGS to have a community of strong dan-level players, but until then, I dont think its particually wise to suggest that the fault of that falls on any person or small groups of people. As such, throwing arbitrary ideas to increease the amount of games artificially, isnt going to help. If anything its going to drive people away from an authentic experience, which is one of the things that OGS does extremely well.
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Eloquently argued but seems at its heart a call for genteel decline?
Some of it is natural but i think the new matching form hurt considerably as well so some is potentially self inflicted?
Adaptability is a strong indicater of success in business and life but if the servers players feeling is that it doesnt see the need then, well, we shall see.
But I am unsure if there is any guarantee of more players around 11kyu tbh…
You’re close to the median (which is around 11 kyu)
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Median doesn’t indicate where are the most players. You could have a group around 8k another one around 18k but no group around 11k (as example).
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that official histogram is full of abandoned and inactive accounts
among active accounts there are more 6k than 12k users
https://forums.online-go.com/t/ranks-histogram-of-ongoing-live-ogs-games-2024/52525
and looks like 3k users play more often than 6k users
https://forums.online-go.com/t/opening-analysis-by-kyu-dan-rank/59199/2
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Have you checked recently? I would be interested to see an updated graph since my feeling is that ranks have generally dropped by about that much. I know mine has
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When player numbers decline elos will drop so ranks will drop i’d likely agree as my original account is an 11 and i had several others that all moved to 11 quite quickly after play gaps.
This one seems to have games i’m capable of winning around 16 (i can and have beaten 13s but am more likely to lose)
Other peoples mileage may differ and if true and not imagined (or a loss of mental capacity) then where u are and how many players are lost around your band is a factor in how far you drop.
That leads to potentially more wastage as suddenly the games got harder at levels you used to win at which is disheartening and equally players who keep playing tend to be dedicated so are learning as you learn so its harder to train or learn your way forward. So you feel like you arent impoving win less which makes a negative feedback loop far more likely.
Conversely lots of new players does the opposite and will increase ratings and wins even if skill levels dont change.