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William Shubert. Re:What is the ideal Go server?
Hi Alexander.
I'm happy to give you my thoughts, but first there is one very important
point: These days I have a full time job and young children, so I have
very little time to work on KGS, only a few hours a week. Any big
programming project simply is not possible. People occasionally ask why
I don't let other people help program, but the reason is that
programming on KGS is what I enjoy, and I hate managing other
programmers. Since KGS is my hobby, it would make no sense for me to
start doing work I hate for my hobby, and it would make no sense for me
to give up any of the programming that is what I enjoy. So the end
result is, as I said, it will be a long time before any big feature can
be added.
Now on to your list:
1. Video Lessons: Yes, it would be great! But this lands pretty
squarely in the "no time" issue. Researching a video codec is
not an easy task. It may also be too expensive; if I have to buy
a java-based video codec, then I can't afford it, KGS makes very
little money, definitely not enough to pay for codecs.
2. Virtual Currency: I haven't ever seen this used to it's hard to
see how it would really work. Do people pay real money for the
virtual money? I'm always reluctant to add things that aren't
directly related to playing or studying go. I guess as it is
this just isn't very appealing to me, but maybe I don't
understand it, or maybe I would have to try it myself to see how
fun it is.
3. Live translations: The clone system makes this possible on KGS
already. It's just a matter of lining up the translators. If
anybody wants to try this, talk to jyem (the KGS manager). It
sounds like it could be a great idea in some cases.
4. Total score of games by a single opponent: There are outside
tools that do this already. Lots of statistics could be added to
player's records. Some day I will add more. I'm always
overwhelmed though, there are about 20 or 30 sets of stats that
have been requested, and picking the most pertinent ones is
tricky.
5. Avatars from a list: I like that people only get avatars if they
make the effort. It sets apart those who care about their KGS
personality. I've been on places with choosable avatars, and I
always have issues where I don't like any of the avatars, or
else it's annoying when a bunch of people have the same avatar
as me, or whatever.
6. A list of recent games by strong players: This goes into the
"collect more stats" issue. Again, I'd like to add more, but
between the time I have and the difficulty in choosing the
proper ones to collect, I haven't done any!
7. Kibbitz-free SGF records: I think better would be to add a
"remove all comments" option to the SGF editor side of KGS. :-)
Then people could easily strip out the comments themselves!
Thanks for your interest in KGS, Alexander (and your help over the years
as a teacher and a member)! I tried to answer as best as I could. I am
still slowly working on improving KGS even though I have very limited
hours. In the upcoming release 3.3.16, look for a big change in a
feature that most people probably would not expect!
William M. Shubert
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2007-03-05
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