Buffer timing is a good idea, and creates more situations where players are able to play games. If I join a game, I may need to rush back to my computer and have reduced time. Buffer time prevents that.
OGS has buffer time, but it has two problems. First, the buffer timer is too long to be reasonable. It is 5 minutes for the first player, which is far more time than is necessary, and causes people to wait too long for the game to be cancelled. The buffer time should be reduced to something more like 30s - 1 minute. The second problem is that the buffer time only applies to the player who goes first. This is bad, because sometimes the player who makes the game (and is waiting for a long time) goes second. If I join a custom game and get the black pieces, I can play immediately, and start biting into my opponent’s real time. Both players should get a buffer.
Fox SGF komi.
I think this one is pretty obvious: somehow all fox sgfs get +375 for white. This is bad as it makes it tough to properly interpret the score estimate and to see that the game is working as intended. AI sensei solves this issue by saying something like, “the komi seems wrong, let me make it 7.5.” I imagine it would not be too difficult for OGS to do something similar.
On this one point - you are welcome to cancel the game whenever you get tired of waiting for your opponent to show up. There’s no need to wait for the clock to run out.
If you are not comfortable playing Burgas, no one is waiting for you to play on the site. I am comfortable waiting 5 minutes for an opponent to disconnect.
Putting aside the issue of buffer time duration, providing each player with the same buffer opportunity (while each player has a chance to get focused on the game) seems perfectly fair and symmetrical.
This is an OGS issue as well as a Fox issue. Sites like AI sensei have solved this issue, but OGS has not yet. If I was to hard code a solution, i might suggest that any komi that is 375 just gets changed in the OGS sgf library to 7.5, for example.
With regards to cancelling the game, that’s fine and true, but there’s no reason why we can’t just reduce the time as well. I think 5 minutes is an excessive amount of time to wait, and I don’t think the site should encourage people to cancel because the site has too long of a waiting period.
I agree this is Fox’s error, but that doesn’t mean it’s not OGS’s problem, especially if competing “pay us for cloud AI analysis and upload your SGF” services manually detect “oops, this SGF is nonsense, let’s manually nudge that to an assumed sensible default”.
You don’t have to be on site. It could be around 5 minutes or 10 minutes. Let a second person do the talking or he had to help with something at home.
You are totally allowed to “Cancel” within the first few moves while the Cancel button is available ( * ).
If you get a warning for doing that, it’s bug, please let me know.
What you are not allowed to do is just abandon a game that started without indicating to your opponent that you aren’t going to play. The reason for not being allowed to do that is that people hate waiting and only finding out when the clock runs out that you left.
In this case, you also do not get a warning though. You do get a popup saying “hey, please don’t do that”.
This is different to a warning because:
It is worded in a more friendly way ad
It does not have a “you have to click OK to make it go away”.
This was a compromise we reached because we recognise that it is in fact “too easy” to miss a game that started. If we could solve that we would, but it’s tricky.
Koba mentioned that it’s not OK to accept-and-immediately-cancel. That is a “different kind” of not-OK. The system won’t warning you automatically, but if your opponent complains (reports) and it turns out you are doing that a lot, then action might be taken. In the past a Moderator would assess if you’re doing that “obnoxiously” and decide what to do.
@Conrad_Melville (or anyone, actually!) could you do me a big favour and ping me in PM about whether we have this properly worked out for Community Moderators.?
A tip in the future: one topic per feedback is a lot more helpful.
We’re perfectly capable of going off topic and hard to follow on just one thing, we don’t need the conversation to start right at the beginnging on two topics at once
Conrad helped me get clear what should happen here: where a person is accepting someone’s challenge and immediately cancelling it (IE with no intention to play) that’d be harrasment. So a harrasment report is appropriate, and the good thing about that is that it will go to full moderation - where it needs to go.
