That’s why I mentioned the lack of task prioritization on OGS in general. Users will be looking at a list of features which 95% never gets implemented – or the opposite happens and user-voted features get prioritized too much and small quality-of-life improvements and bugfixes get delayed too much.
all understood. but let’s stop pretending you know how easy or difficult any given OGS feature is 
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I’m not pretending anything. I meant every single letter of every word I said here. What are you implying? Don’t tell me you think changing the title of webpages to reflect the pages’ content is difficult. It should be as easy as swatting a fly for someone who has worked with the tech stack before.
And it’s up to OGS to prove it’s worth my time to contribute to. Not the other way around.
Honestly you should tone it down. You act like you are a FAANG 10x superstar coder. Either prove it, or just chill out.
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We are all on the same team here. You seem a little agited and I don’t understand why.
People tend to be a little defensive when they feel criticized, that is simply human nature.
People are also a little skeptical when someone is very vocal online without having anything to show for it. I’m sure you will get more recognition and praise when your startpage redesign PR hits and is good.
And while we are on it. I personally also think that you should stop saying derogatory stuff about “Kyu Players”.
Only for a short while. I’ve been here for a few months at most, and only started open source work a few days ago. I could just as easily take my effort to a competitor or develop new features (such as SGF library with a new UI and tagging/filtering/review features) on my own web app instead of doing volunteer work for OGS. It’s not only about me – OGS needs to attract talented developers and designers to volunteer, or convince entry-level developers to do menial tasks as @Uberdude suggested above.
misunderstanding – I didn’t say kyu players are bad at anything other than Go. The person I said that to is a dan player himself anyways.
Not all of my suggestions were directly code-related, and I have made a couple of full-stack web apps before. I’m just not eager enough to monetize them until I have prepared workflows for project management (i.e. prioritization systems), design, testing, database admin, code documentation, etc. to a satisfactory degree. I’m slowly shaping my business ideas and designs while I finish each.
With that said, I don’t have to prove any of this to any of you. I’m mainly here to improve at Go and improve the UI a bit to attract more users so that I can find opponents faster. The only reason I’m suggesting ways to improve dev operations is because I’m going to be making my own Go-related app sometime this year and I’m still deciding whether I want to direct my students/users to play Go on OGS. I’m not sure if I even want my business to associate with OGS at this point.
There is no such a thing as menial work. All work is equal.
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I really like your enthusiasm but you should also try to understand your surroundings. I’m really only trying to help you here, I hope you don’t misinterpret this reply.
Could you though? To whom? The market of somewhat successful Go platforms isn’t that big.
Is this web app in the room with us right now?
Ok, but I think this is the point we should all think about. So OGS is maintained by afaik two full time dudes. Then maybe one or two dudes that get commissioned once in a while. All the other dudes are “volunteers” also more commonly referred to as open source contributors.
So now imagine you’re one of the other contributors here. And some new guy comes along who has never really done anything for the project and tells them what to do. What would you do? These guys are also simply contributors here, they don’t have to listen to anyone. Without a few big PRs or so under your belt your voice doesn’t carry that much weight. Of course you can still try to convince people of your ideas and methods (I’m doing the same thing) but you need to live with the fact that some people are hard to convince.
Is it though? I think the better way to think about the Go community is being proud of what you have accomplished instead of saying that everyone with a lower Elo than you is bad at the game and wasting their time playing it.
Right, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone but at the same time no one has to listen to you. I don’t mean this in a bad way at all. I understand your point. But it’s on you to convince others or make them follow you by putting in the work first.
I mean I already did that joke in this reply but… is this business in the room with us right now?
Also “OGS” has never even interacted with you. Pretty much everyone you talked to is an independent contributor. They have nothing to do with “OGS” as a company.
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I would consider whether what they’re saying has any merit instead of discrediting them because they’ve never contributed to open-source code. I listened to all your feedback and improved my design using parts of it, yet I have never seen your code contributions. Not so hard, is it?
The fact that OGS relies on these contributors to some degree makes them associated with the company in some way. You said yourself: “what we currently have is feature decisions by forum which is an even more vocal, even smaller minority.”
I never argued against that. In fact, I learned from mingling with OGS chat that DDKs and 25 kyu players are a lot smarter and more interesting people than I thought.
It’s not that hard to make a web app in 2026, let’s be honest. Even without AI, 12 months ago I made this web app for video game addicts to manage their time and strategies with interactive graphs, a custom-made calendar integrated with every feature on the site, drag-and-drop interfaces – more heavy UI work than most of OGS… with zero prior experience:
I burnt out of the workflow (making UIs responsive and work on all screen sizes, I didn’t have time to write proper tests, and I kept changing my database schemas) so I’ve been slowly developing tools and methods to ensure my development efforts this year and the next 5 years are pleasurable and that I’ve got everything figured out before I dive in. That’s why I have an opinion on things like task prioritization. I never said I’m a 10x FAANG developer. My main work isn’t even web development, it’s game design. Someday I’m going to hire a 10x developer to replace me so I can focus on game design, storytelling, directing, etc. but I want to be able to do the job of my employees at a 1x level at the bare minimum, if not 10x.
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I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. It seems that OGS is more of a feel good, beach vibe, go with the flow community and company. Which has its pros and cons, I guess.
Since most OGS regulars and contributors try to be understanding and friendly when communicating I also try to wrap my suggestions in a lot of sugar coating here. In the end I think that’s a good thing. There are many toxic gaming communities out there and I like the level of friendly and constructive communication that exists on OGS.
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Why would being skilled at a board game have any correlation to how smart or interesting a person might be?
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Go ask the people have been responding to dokbohm, a beginner stuck below 60 kyu, in the forums lately like he’s some sort of caveman. I similarly found it hard to understand how anyone can be stuck below 20 kyu. Just turn on your monitor / open your eyes? But of course, my opinion has changed over time.
Somewhat of a hasty generalisation to use an anecdotal reference to a 75 year old newbie with some evident personal struggles to classify everyone over 9k as unintelligent and uninteresting don’t you think?
Besides as mush as he frustrates some of us, he’s our “caveman” and we’d miss him if he left..
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I never said that. I think I need to be banned before I type more things that could be taken out of context or misinterpreted.
No no no, no banning. This forum loves a character.
Please stay
Show us more
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I believe one of the “full time dudes” is also a volunteer 
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Welcome to contributing to open source!
This is clear from your approach to it.
You tackle it like someone who has always worked alone, failing to appreciate that there are other actual people involved - people who are keen to help you, but who’s work it is that you are discussing, and who ultimately decide if your work is accepted.
You haven’t once reached out for help, that I’m aware of.
All you’ve done is slag off at the codebase which is the daily work of those people.
Not great for teamwork, eh?
Sadly, it doesn’t bode well for when your PR arrives and you have to face the review of it.
Not because you’ve offended anyone (we’re used to this, and we’re really focussed on “is this contribution appropriate?” not “is this person rude about our code”) but because it indicates you don’t have experience in this area, and you will find it confronting.
It’s not too late to prepare yourself for that.
First, you would do well to raise a github issue ticket describing the change you propose.
Mockups and screenshots are important.
This is not mandatory, but it is a great way of readying for review by people who you have yet to get to know.
Then you should join the developer chat and invite comment on that issue ticket.
I’d also recommend submitting a small PR ahead of any major proposal so you get used to things that block PRs, such as formatting issues and the AI review.
One question you likely will be asked is “what does the community think of your proposal?”, so being ready with a link to a thread where it’s been discussed is a big bonus. Put the link in the issue ticket.
A few of important points to make:
- We (the dev community) really want you to succeed.
- Be ready for “need to change”. It’s very rare for a PR to go through unchanged.
- Some of advice I’ve given above is done less routinely by the ongoing devs. Notably, you don’t see an issue ticket for every PR. That’s because we’re in daily conversation, and these extra “communication tools” and “learning” are handled in other ways. So don’t say “but you don’t do this”. Please take it in the spirit intended: the above are tips for making your PR successful and a constructive experience for you, and minimizing the chance that the amount of change needed is too much for you to face.
Bring it on!
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