@iMurk789

Non-one I think is actually criticizing this site, rather from what I have read each person is contributing to how they perceive the site could be IMPROVED.

@ Babak - Maybe it was rude of me, but I'm tired of every other thread on the forum being someone suggesting an "improvement" of questionable merit. And most of the time, the amount of time and energy expended making the changes would far outweigh the benefits. Furthermore, if you read between the lines of most of these ideas, they say something like "I have no idea how to do this, but someone else should start carrying out my brilliant plan immediately." I defer to Kestas saying that everyone should be able to suggest new features, but people really need to put their suggestions into perspective.

@ kaner406 - Yes, it would be a tiny bit easier to CC someone on a message. And it would be a nightmare for whoever had to implement the changes.

I agree, I've tried to 'muck around' with the coding for php - but I'm not a wiz as computers, and ended up throwing in the towel so-to-speak.

But this shouldn't stop people from making suggestions...

LJ - I understand your frusteration - but consider this... many of the features you use today and love started out in much the same way... as ideas put forth by someone, discussed by the community, improved upon, then finally coded and implemented after months... but all started as germs of an idea... many right here on the forum.

Private Messaging
anonymous games
variants
5 min / Live games

just to name a few... not to say these ideas were not at the back (or forefront) of Kestas' mind, but it is through discourse like this that we grow as a community.

I just want one promise from you... If in a year or two we have GM-moderated games... and you end up playing in one, I ask that you thank charles for THIS thread =) fair deal?

An interesting point from Babak there:
Could anon have helped increase the solo rate?
Once a game is anon players can stab without fear of building a reputation, something that would otherwise follow you round (back when Edi was here I'm pretty sure I remember him talking about his reputation for being trustworthy).

Also, the first 2000 or so games should be ignored since draws weren't at all implemented at that point and so the game *couldn't* be drawn!

somewhat unrelated but when was Edi Birsan here? Why did he leave? What did he think of the site?

Well here's his profile: userID=6710

Seems he was around here from around Fall 2008 to Summer 2009? I think he was making the rounds of the various internet diplomacy sites. I think he was scoping us out as well as trying to recruit for face to face play. I don't think he ever planned on staying here permanently, and I'm not really sure what he thought of the site in general. I think he had some suggestions as to how to improve the site, I don't really remember, and I don't think they were adopted. I know that Akroma impressed him as a player, but I don't know what he generally thought of the skill level here. You could always ask him yourself, he's left contact information in his profile.

thx chris... I actually emailed him to see if he had a list of playes for Central Flordia...

;)

so Kestas... did I really answer all your questions in such a way that you have no more questions... or did my long responses just scare you off =P

It'll take a while to digest and respond to your latest response babak. I'll sit down with a coffee this weekend or the next and take some time over it

is there a list of the projects that the devs are working on at this moment? just to know :)

@kaner- notice how i said @charlesf, not everybody else posting.

LJ TYLER DURDEN +1

Well, my mistake - Merry X-mas anyway.

It shouldn't be too hard to implement gray press... Just add the following:
-create a new read-only chat tab named "from anon" or similar
-on the "write message" section, near the send button, a checkbox "send as anonymous" (pretty obvious what it does, doesn't it?)
-If the message was sent to "global" tab, just label it "anonymous" and color it gray
-If the message was sent to a specific power, the message will be displayed on the "from anon" tab of the destination player

Not to hard to code, seems to me.

Just a brief note on the greatest player (FTF, Mail, or electronic) I ever met in 40 years, Edi Birsan is so great a negotiator he can make you do anything he wants, so great a tactician that he knows the position of every piece for every country for every year, and so great a player that Alan Calhmar named an English center after him. He left the site because it didn't meet his needs but not until after he took over a 3 unit France with Germany in Bur while I was happily building a 5 or 6 unit Turkey and won the game while having Rus and Aus turn on me for no reason I could ever understand. He lives in San Francisco and has many house games. Write him! To use a line from a commercial, his mother has a tatoo the says "Son".

he really used to play here???

Yes, played for a brief time, kicked my ass in the game described. It is the most amazaing thing about him, even more evident in ftf games, the way he negotiates so that you actually thank him for selling you to the other inmates. May be the greatest player ever! I think he was really young when he started playing by mail which was about the same time I started in the early 70s.

^^ I don't think he was ever going to stay, no matter how good the place could have been. As I understood it, he was (/is?) touring round hobbyists trying to spread the word of face-to-face and get some of the young blood from the internet into the tournements.

> --- This is a good solution. Originally I was thinking along these lines as well because
> then it will really be a GM run game and he/she can choose who joins for
> accountability purposes. The idea is for the GM to bring value-added to the game not
> to just be a casual observer.
Okay, that takes away some concerns about abuse

> --- sure. Grey press means 'anonymous press'.
Ah right, couldn't it be implemented as a variant rather than as a universal game option? Universal game options are tricky to make coexist with a lot of pre-existing variants, but anonymous press as a variant for a specific map could exist on the current variant layer

> --- well, to an old hand at Dip like me, this statement makes almost no sense. PPSC
> is NOT Diplomacy as it has been played over the past 50 years on every platform
> that precedes php-based online diplomacy
I didn't really say that, I said people didn't like PPSC because it had too many draws / joint-victories. Since people seem to be agreeing now that the solo rate shouldn't be an objective by itself it's not really worth following this line of argument though

As an aside here is a related article by Calhamer:
http://www.diplom.org/~diparch/resources/calhamer/objectives.htm
I would say he leans towards WTA, but he doesn't come down very hard either way and it does show that objectives other than winning aren't a webDiplomacy invention

> These things... ie the "culture" of our community... are all things WE and you as an
> admin, do have significant control over.
I don't think anyone personally can have great influence over the culture of a community, at least not directly. CDs and NMRs were certainly much more prevalent and harder to avoid before the rating systems, tournaments and moderators came along, but those are the sorts of things that influence people, and a change in attitudes comes afterwards. That is the experience we've had, anyway

> The good thing is, I think our community is both diverse enough AND open-minded
> enough to do just that
I agree, my main concern is how much of PBEM's benefits are consequences of its drawbacks, and how to balance those sorts of tradeoffs. That's probably the minority of things, but it's the stuff that will always be contentious since the ideas that are all good are easy to accept (like human GMs)

> Not to hard to code, seems to me.
I appreciate the thought but those sorts of posts aren't very helpful. Either it's already clear how it'd be done, or there are other complications.
e.g. Messages are specified as being to or from someone using a country ID. From ID 0 means it's from a gamemaster/moderator, anything above that refers to a country; there's no existing flag for anonymous messages. There are ways around that make tradeoffs between ease/flexibility/variant-compatibility/efficiency/etc, and that's where the difficulty starts to come in

> Universal game options are tricky to make coexist with a lot of pre-existing variants, but anonymous press as a variant for a specific map could exist on the current variant layer
I think you shouldn't bother for all the possible variants out there if you consider new features. I made so many variants, that mess with the code in really strange ways, that a new version might always break a few variants. But because the changes are soo small and easy to spot it should be very easy to adjust to the new code. In the worst case a variant has to be disabled for a few weeks.

i see, kestas. thanks for your answer :D

Thanks for being accommodating sleepcap, I'll take that into account, but I feel like expecting variant devs to make changes on each new version isn't sustainable. Hopefully we can hit on a set of hooks that provide the flexibility needed, and from then on it can be maintained from version to version

IMHO variants should never limit the improvements of the main-distribution.
A good changelog would help to see if changes could affect some variants, but after all disabling some variants for some time is not the same as stopping the development of a whole website.
As example: the current 'Grey press' might break 4-5 variants that mess with the chatbox-class, but that's all. And most of the changes are just 5 lines of code not hidden deep in the sourcode, but easy to spot in the variant-directory.
If you ever consider changing the javascript-code it will break quite a lot of variants, but the site will work without the variants for some time and they can brought back one by one.
It's not the same as changing many little things in the webdip-sourcecode for a custom site and after an update recreate every change before you can bring the whole site back online.

Comments along the lines of "this site is great as it is" and "don't suggest anything if you're not going to do it" and "put suggestions into perspective" are blinkered and close-minded. REASONS why something can't be implemented easily; fine. Saying it's fine the way it is, or saying don't suggest something unless you can do it, are great reasons why ideas fail. Lack of vision. There is a wide ideas base potentially on this site that THIS attitude will continue to kick in the balls, simply because it stops people without the technical know-how having any input whatsoever, rather than simply gushing over how great the site is.

up

thanks Kestas for the responses... a few short points...

1) implementing a GM option would be an AWESOME addition. What would it take, what would be the process and time line for this idea to be operational on webdip? IF you decided to adopt it?

2) gray press would ADD to the original game... I suspect it would join 'anon' and 'WTA' as the "Standard" game for tournaments and for the high-level players... but its not crucial nor, I think, as useful/needed as the GM idea.

3) PPSC. I have long since given up trying to convince you on this. it is a cost/benefit analysis where our definitions of cost and benefit differ greatly. I've learned to live with it, and to learn to live with the idea that many players who are introduced to the game through this site will have to be 're-trained' on WTA down the road... but personally, I think that the WTA option is such a stronger game that in time, the cream will rise to the WTA game while the rest will stay in PPSC land. =P sorry to be so elitist on this item, but on this point, I really do see it as black and white.

4) As always, thank you for your hard work, your dedication, and for making all this possible.