New server

[burper]

The topic of a new server comes up from time to time, so I thought a thread should exist to capture everyone's thoughts on features etc...

I should also say that the new server in question would be an open source, community driven project, so that is the first feature

Features discussed in the past:

-droppers solution: variations on match resolution by bot etc...

-password retrieval

-various ideas on supplementing the ratings system, or even changing it wholesale

-game variations: nackgammon, hypergammon

-chouette support

-support tournaments built-in

-preferred match lengths in profile, sophisticated match brokering

-website integration

-all sorts of ideas on chatting features

-a virtual economy

Please add your thoughts on these and other features, and what you would like to see happen.

[diane]

I would be happy to just see it happen  

(but i am still interested in other ideas floating about)

[webrunner]

What would really be nice is:

1. Jabber-like chat client and server with same features (smilies, rich text, avatars, images, collaborate websurfing, etc)
2. Tourney features, even several at the same time.
4. Virtual economy
5. Completely integrated and connected webportal with forum, wiki, etc.
6. One userdatabase for all! This way we can use the user management features of the portal or forum script and people can register through a website in stead of telnet.
7. Game variations (don't forget trictrac and backtrack

and of course....

Unlimited double sixes on demand for me only  

[MadMatt]

Right, so that everyone knows what this "virtual economy" stuff is, here's a copy of the post from a forum known only to those familiar with the secret handshake:

Now, I realize this suggestion was more of a joke than a serious thing, but if we tweak it a bit, we might end up with a cool system.

First, lets call the currency "points" for now (anyone have a better suggestion?) so as to deempahsize (is that even a word?) its relation to real money. The idea is that a person could accumulate these "points" by doing stuff that makes the server a better place, while at the same time lose points for serious misbehaviour. Let me explore the options a bit further...

What could one gain points for?

• Every successfully finished match gives you a (very small) amount of points. People with more experience are able to accumulate more points, that makes sense to me - if you spend more time online, put more effort into it, you're able to get more points. In turn, people would lose points for every old saved game that needs to be deleted because they didn't move in it. That has an additional benefit of punishing droppers.
• Admins, moderators and/or Power Users (whatever they're called, assuming we have such a thing at all) are able to dish out larger amounts of points for community contributions, such as helping newbies, contributing code and ideas, making webpages and  hosting community sites, organizing events etc. This promotes positive contribution to the community and is the preferred to give out points by the administration.
• Donations: when you donate, you get an amount of points proportional to your donation. In order to prevent people abusing this (making large donations to get huge amounts of points) and to prevent our work from becoming a commercial server, there should be a limit on how many points you can get by donating. Obviously, this would promote donating to help pay for the costs.
• Holding backgammon lessons, analysing other people's matches etc. should also give you points. This increases the value of what the server has to offer significantly.
• People who don't contribute specifically to our community, but the backgammon community in general (such as the GNUBG team, Kit Woolsey who pays for FIBS etc.) could also occasionaly be awarded a bit more points as a thank-you.
• Winning a tourney gets you a moderate amount. Perhaps even participating gets you a small amount. Increases tourney participation (and probably cheating as well, but oh well, there is no such thing as a win-win situation). Obviously, better players would be able to get more points, that makes sense to me, too.
• I'm sure we could come up with more stuff on how to award points.

Now, what are points used for, what do people get to spend them on?

• Shouting. Every shout costs you a very small amount. This would prevent total newbies from shouting, as well as discourage the excessive use of the feature and encourage the use of channels to communicate.
• Forming teams. A team would be a group of members with their own channel and the ability to enter team events, perhaps even a team web page. More on that later. "Purchasing" a team costs you a huge amount of points, but you're then the "captain" of said team.
• Web space on our web server. The more points you're prepared to spend, the more space you get.
• Channels. Purchase your own channel and act as the operator of it (like IRC, you get to boot people off, restrict who can enter it etc.)
• Tourneys. Want to host your own tourney? No problem, 60 points. Want to host the tourney page on our server and have our script generate you the HTML bracket? No problem, 400 points. (Or should holding tourneys actually get you points, since it's  difficult and sometimes annoying?). In addition, certain exquisite tourneys cost you a moderate amount of points as an entrance fee.
• Becoming a Power User. Now I'm not sure what exactly this means, but once you accumulate a huge amount of points, you could trade them for a Power User status, which gets you unlimited shouting, Tourney Director privileges, an autographed picture of diane (kidding), participation in PU-only tourneys and other small perks like that.
• Once in a life-time you can trade an insanely huge amount of points for a T-shirt or a mug with our logo, assuming we get enough donations to cover the cost.
• Points could be taken away for misbehaviour, such as dropping, disrupting tourneys, racism etc.

Well, the posibilites are essentially infinite here, I'm sure you can come up with more stuff if you think about it (and please do).

Of course, such system would require further pondering and discussions, this is not a  concrete blueprint, just a general outline. It fails to address several important issues (such as what to do with people who gain negative points, how to prevent anomalies like karma-whoring, should a player be able to transfer points to another player etc.)

[diane]

In the spirit of sharing - and demonstrating that we dont spend all day discussing you know who... - here is my reply to the above...

One of the things i came up with - as to why i prefer to stay at fibs, was - and i know this seems a bit shallow - but the rating. Much as we know it is flawed and all - it does give me something to aim for - especially since i have been building mine up from being a poor player at 1100 ish - and getting better (give or take the current mean streak). Although i even had a paid for account at playmaker for two months - i didnt get any rating there - and somehow that seemed all a bit pointless, and consequently i didnt visit anywhere near as often as FIBS.

So, within this points/karma system - can there be a number which just reflects your ability to play bg - since that is what we are about. The rest of the points could be independant - but as you said - useful for other stuff.

Also, decaying ratings for lack of play are interesting.

And the karma thing i do see as persuading people towards more sociable behaviour (which is always a better way to go about it) - you could also set access to the bots as requiring a minimum of karma points as well as all that other stuff - though i must emphatically state there is no existing number large enough to cover the amount of points you would need to achieve

an autographed picture of diane

Keep thinking folks - this is all good stuff  

And just to emphasise the point - the curent system of rating and reputation being separate seems ideal to me - it says two things about you to a potential opponent - wether they can wipe the floor with me - and wether i will hang around long enough to let it happen  

So whilst i see the need to move away from the reputation being separate from the server as the repbot system is now - i think it does need to be in a separate account in the server (does that make any sense   )

And doing this i get two for the price of one - almost 250 now    

[diane]

Although - as an afterthought - it might be nice - if the 'ability to play bg' was calculated by the server - based on some anaysis of the match played - rather than by taking points from each other???

[burper]

Kill them with kindness.
I was thinking that people love numbers, so give them lots of different stats, rather than just one overall rating. We know the fibs rating can be "manipulated". It's neither right nor wrong, just the way it is.

If, for instance, you had a rating for 1 pointers, 3's, 5;s, 7;s.... money play, tournament rating, rating against beginners, rating against intermediate....

the more numbers the better.

I believe the intent of the fibs rating system was to provide users with a sense of how they were doing, and *not* as a competition against the other users per se. So isn't more better?

[diane]

erm - i am not so sure about lots of numbers - that could get confusing - but a rating based on a match analysis would tell you if you are improving.  If it moved away from taking points from one another - there would be less of the problem of better players avoiding weaker players - both or fear of losing a lot of points as it is now - or for fear of being seen to be manipluating their rating (thus denying those weaker players the benefit of the experience).  

The match points would then contribute to the 'currency' system - so you would still have a competitive side to the match.

[lewscannon]

one improvement that i'd love to see on fibs is the ability to toggle sound off. if i'm playing late at night, i don't want to have to unplug my speakers.

i'm sorry for making a serious suggestion here, and promise to go on making snide remarks and non-sequiturs in the future

[burper]

one improvement that i'd love to see on fibs is the ability to toggle sound off. if i'm playing late at night, i don't want to have to unplug my speakers.

i'm sorry for making a serious suggestion here, and promise to go on making snide remarks and non-sequiturs in the future

There is a serious side!  Wow...

On FIBS, sound is a function of your client, not the fibs server, which means that the client program you are using (macfibs, javafibs...?) is generating sounds and should probably have a way to turn the sound off. Hunt around in the menus. If all else fails, read the documentation, if there is any.

On "the new server", this would probably be the same situation. It's really had for me to imagine anything else.

Thank you, both for your serious remark and for your snide ones lews

[alef]

Most of my the additional features I was thinking of have been mentioned, just to add:
- volunteers empowered to support newbies, perhaps organized into languages, clients, teaching backgammon

I think the standard traditional FIBS single rating system should be there (for comparison with FIBS and a zillion other sites/clubs), but also listing a breakdown to show the mode, mean and range of match lengths and opponent's ratings would be excellent to also have included somewhere.

[purol]

Hi,

just some thoughts for ''FIBS NT'':

1) Mark tourney matches in the WHO command / mark current tourney players in the WHO command.
2) Alternative reputation metric: instead of the current metric

              R = SUM( exp( each voucher))) - SUM( exp( each complainer))),

I opt for

              R' = SUM( SQRT( exp( each voucher))) - SUM( SQRT( exp( each complainer))).

Rationale: imho one complaint by a 40000 exp. player, just does not cancel out 40(!) vouches by 1000 exp. players.  Vice versa, one vouch by me (560 exp) does not outweigh 5 complaints by 100 exp. players. Let fibsters choose which metric they use (should not be too difficult to implement).
3) Players who cannot (or just don't want to) play on a regular basis don't get less skilled, so why should their rating decay in time?


-- purol


PS: please Webrunner, tell mgnu_expert to vouch me    ;-)