No, I don't think it would. I am giving purely anecdotal evidence. You may very well accuse me of lying, but presuming you're not, it doesn't matter whether I'm 10 years old or a retired IT professional, does it?

Allow me to repeat myself. I am telling you that I tried to play a game a couple of days ago and several times had a full byo-yomi period elapse between clicking and my stone appearing on the board. Sometimes my client and the server would notice the time discrepancy and correct for this anomaly, sometimes not. Eventually, I lost on time (even though, on my computer, there were still 6-7 seconds on the clock). I am telling you additionally that I have had this issue intermittently for the two years I've been on KGS, on several different computers, under several internet connections of varying quality, and I hear and see a lot of people on KGS talking about it. The lag extends further than just in games - sometimes opening or closing a room tab takes 30 seconds. (As a relevant example, at the start of my last game - which I lost on time - my opponent apologised for the lag he was experiencing.) Yes, it's anecdotal (much like this thread from April, and this thread from January, and this thread from August, and the first three entries on this SL page), but it makes statements like the following

completely ridiculous. Lag is very common on KGS and has been talked about a lot, both on L19 and on KGS. If you're not aware of it, you're just not listening.


What kind of comparisons are these? KGS transfers nowhere near as much data as Netflix and has nowhere near the userload spikes of your football ticket website during high-demand periods. KGS has a very stable and small userload and should be transferring relatively little data. For these reasons, my (unprofessional) opinion is that the 'lag' is not server-side - rather, I suspect the client is poorly coded.


Then why did anyone go to the trouble of hacking the client to include features like timestamps, chat logging, and a connection to the server that doesn't bombard you with dialog boxes threatening to cut you off every fifteen minutes? Because people wanted it. Why do I know about this hacked client? Because it's in fairly widespread use and I've had it recommended to me many times. No, I think you are confusing what the KGS community wants with what wms wants.

It's a false dilemma, that's the fallacy.

See, this is the attitude I can't understand. When I pay unfair, extortionate amounts of money to get good at something, the first thing I want to do is make sure that nobody else ever has to. Education should never be cripplingly expensive. (I also paid a lot of money - and a lot more was paid on my behalf - to learn programming, or rather I'm still paying off my student debts and will be for many years to come, but when I've delivered courses and tutored in programming in the past, I've happily done it for free, because it's important. Large, prestigious universities are now even putting entire courses online, completely for free, because education should never divide the rich from the poor.)

No it's not.

sigh...



Everything you cite is about isolated instances, Big Doug said that widespread lag is rare.



Never the less, lag of 10 seconds delays or more do exist, what you said was false. By the way, the assertion you make about client versus server lag doesn't actually make any sense at all.


Because a couple of people wanted it? You seem to be forgetting that KGS has a huge number of users. Just because some bored programmer threw something together doesn't mean there is widespread demand for it.


Boidhre: uhh what? It really isn't.

All non-IT professionals are non-techies?

That's not the point, just because I switched which word I was using doesn't mean that I am asserting that they are identical.

Usually it does actually in the argument structure you used. Regardless, you'd accept that someone outside the IT industry could understand the issues here no? Not everyone outside of the IT industry definitely but there are people who do a lot of coding in their job who aren't working in IT.

Of course it is. That is the nature of anecdotes. Importantly, BigDoug is now "aware" of the issues that he claimed to be unaware of, and it is now up to him to go and do the statistics properly or report the fault to someone who will, if he cares.


Are you unhappy with me using the word "lag" for something that's not data transfer? I don't really care. It's clear what I mean: I think the client is clunky for some reason (rather than, or perhaps in addition to, the server being under a lot of strain from a lot of data transfer). I don't claim to know why. (I also might be wrong. It's not my job to be knowledgeable.)


Let's not confuse things with vague terms - KGS has on the order of tens of thousands of users, rather than, say, millions. If even a couple of hundred of them use this client, that's a relatively very large number. But given that neither of us has anything more than anecdotes, it's not useful for me and you to argue the toss over something we know nothing about. I have reported my anecdotal evidence, and it's over to the admins now.

I hear what you say, and I do not mind teaching programming - for cheap or even free. And I do with people I run across. But this is not what we are talking about here. I feel the wires on this conversation got crossed somewhere.

We are talking about writing code. Its my profession, my craft. Its what I do and how I feed my family. Of course I want to get paid for that, I mean - don't you want to earn a living, get paid for what you do? I might, under circumstances, agree to work on a good project for free, but I see it as a gift I am giving to somebody or something, not as my responsibility. I am willing to give such gifts, especially to things that are important to me (like Go) - but its still a gift and not obligation. And trying to force such obligation on me is just not fair, from where I stand.

I think this is why I resent when somebody tries to tell me its somehow my 'duty' or 'obligation' to keep giving and giving. Especially if at the same time they cannot be bothered to even say "thank you". And when if what I write is not completely to their liking, they will fee free to bash me, call me names, and turn generally nasty like it's my role in life to make them happy and cater to their every demand.

So I hope we have it straight now:

1. Teaching Go, helping learn programming, etc - sure, I can do that for free, no problem. I do that a lot, as a matter of fact. I still have no obligation, and its still a gift I give, but no need to thank, just enjoy. Sure, a 'thank you' is very nice, and certainly makes me try harder, but its not really needed all that much.

2. Exercising my profession, working hard so you can play, for free, day after day, being sensitive to your every whim and request - not so sure about that. I would need at least some degree of gratitude for it, if not outright payment. And the attitude I see displayed by some people here I just find not acceptable. So I am probably not going to write code for you only so you can bash it.

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- Bantari
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I think this is partly where the wires got crossed - I have never implied that it was anyone's duty to keep giving, simply that once a gift has been given, it should not be taken away. I'm not asking wms even to maintain it or manage it: he could give it away to the community, as the gift it was intended to be, if he's bored with it. But instead, he keeps a tight grip on it and allows it to degrade through negligence, to the point where I can't use it any more. I don't want him to keep giving so much as give back. And of course he has every right not to, but I equally well think it's reasonable for me to feel rather like his negligence has taken something away.

Apart from this, we seem to agree entirely.

But wms never 'gave' us KGS. Its not 'ours' now.

KGS is for us to 'use' as long as wms feels like letting us 'use' it. It was never implied to be anything else, and I think you are reading into this. Its like I said in my previous post - you taking KGS for granted and then extrapolate it to some kind of entitlement or even ownership. You don't *own* KGS, you are just allowed to *use* it for a while.

Most services are like that... you can 'use' them as long as their are available for your 'use'. Often they stop being available, or start charging (i.e. stop being available for free to you) or whatever. Examples on internet abound.

I really fail to see how anybody can think KGS is now somehow *theirs* just because they were allowed to play on it for a while or even got used to it. KGS is *not* yours. It belongs to wms. And if wms wants to pull the plug, he has the right to do so, moral and otherwise. If he open-source the code - its nice, but not a requirement. For all these years, the use of KGS (but not KGS itself) was a *gift* we have been given, and wms working hard to make it run was another *gift*. But the gift was his work and the use of the service, not the ownership of the service and his slavery.

And when the next server comes along, Kaya, Nova, whatever - the case will be exactly the same! Look at Kaya - we actually *paid* to have those dudes working on the server full time, and now they fold... sure I am disappointed, but I would never say they have no right to fold - they gave it a good try, and who knows, maybe its not over yet. Still, with Kaya you would have more reasons to take the stance you have - they accepted your money so this creates some kind of obligation.

PS>
I also think that we are zeroing in on the core of the problem here.
But maybe we just have to agree to disagree.

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- Bantari
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Now I finally feel like I understand what you are getting at.

I think we can all agree that if WMS were completely finished with KGS then the decent thing for him to do would be to offer to hand it over (or sell it) to someone else, but I think it should be entirely up to him to decide that. There can be no minimum amount of work he has to do to justify his ownership of the thing he created.

I guess the difference is that I don't think KGS was ever given, but is something that belongs to WMS that he kindly allows us to use.

So this whole thread is about what you want. Isn't that special?

KGS is wms's baby. He can and should do with it what he likes. He owes you nothing, not even an audience. He doesn't owe you updates, opportunities to code, or a revision to his business model.

The naivety in this thread is astounding. wms offers us a free service, yet he has a full time job, a family, and a life. He probably just hasn't had time to improve KGS. (That said, I am delighted to see he is taking a sabbatical to make a whole new client.)

I am confident that there are thousands of KGS users (even non-admins, like myself) who would leap to wms's defense if they knew this ridiculous thread existed. You know why? Gratitude.

What other completely free things can we moan about today?

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

I don't think it is a good idea to keep reinforcing our opinions to the extreme, nor reading others to the extreme. Life isn't black and white, nor is gratitude. We can be grateful for somethings that someone has done and simultaneously resentful or even angry for others.

I would like to give a different example so that you don't feel as connected to the instance at hand.
Imagine someone decided to build a kids park in your neighborhood. In their free time, that person decided to build everything, paint everything, attach safety instructions and he enjoyed watching his own kids play there. He is not a selfish guy, so he also let other kids play on his park too. The community is grateful for the park. For the next few years, he not only does maintenance jobs but he also keeps doing improvements to the park.
However, his kids grew up and he doesn't have as much free time to keep maintaining and improving the park. One of the new parents would like to repaint the swings (they are a little bit rusty after 10 years), to its original color, but the creator refuses. He was the one who created the park, he won't let anyone but him fix it. A different parent created a new slide and would like to add it to the park, but the "owner" also refuses it given that it was not his creation. Can't the neighborhood feel both grateful for the park and somehow resentful that they are not able make the park a better place?

Honestly, I see things as the sound problem like repainting the swing: it is not changing anything, it's just a "please let us fix it". Adding an option to enable timestamps is just like adding a new slide, even less intrusive than that.

You're the one who called KGS a gift, not me! Yes, I agree that it's more as if the use of KGS is a gift. But I don't understand the motivation behind giving a gift and then retracting it a few years later. I'm not asking him to have anything more to do with KGS ever again - I'm just asking him not to take it away from us. Yes, he can say no. But why would he? I can't think of a reason.


No, I think you're just twisting my words now. (To be honest, you're not even twisting my words. "Obligation" is something that everyone else has been talking about and I've been trying to stop talking about, and it has nothing to do with money. It has everything to do with the role of KGS inside the community.)


Yes, this is all I've been meaning to say all along.

Ok, so bad choice of words on my part. He gave us a gif of using KGS for a while. And this gift will never be taken back - you will always have the years you have been using KGS. But eventually, like with all good things this will end.

Imagine your car broke down, you go to Avis and rent another car. You drive the car for a while. You like the car very much. Does Avis have an obligation now to give/sell you this car? I don't think so, and I don't think any sane person would argue this way. Because of the payment you make on the rental, there is really no gratitude involved, its just a transaction, but still...

Or better yet:
You watch your favorite series on TV for two seasons, then they cancel it. Do they have the right to do so? Sure they do. Does that suck big time? Sure it does. Do they have a responsibility to ensure the series continues, maybe outsource it to another channel, just so you are happy? Not at all.

I could go on with examples like that if you need them. Just let me know.
In this world you take your pleasures where you can get them and when they're done, you go look for new ones. Nobody owes you anything, dude. Really.

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- Bantari
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The stone sounds work for me, but sometimes Iturn them off because they get on my nerves. I'd turn timestamps off too if they were there and I could. Sometimes I have a frustrating experience because of lag. That accounts for a tiny minority of my frustrating experiences while playing go.

WMS hasn't taken anything away from anybody. And he's working on a new client. I'm glad he hasn't given it up to some mob who might have escapers and admins shot on sight or other such improvements.

Where is KGS going? I hope it's not going anywhere.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I don't really think this is about Billywoods' sense of entitlement, but rather annoyance at what he sees as petty wastefulness. I still disagree with him, but if this is worth arguing about then I would think it's worth considering what he's actually saying instead of just dismissing it as selfishness.

I'm going to use a few examples to try and see where we agree and where we disagree. I'll use a car instead of a go server because I think it has many similarites but is less abstract.

1) Your neighbour gives you a car as a gift, but when it breaks down refuses to let you fix it.

I think all of us would be a bit miffed at this. We'd wonder why he even gave us the car in the first place.

2) Your neighbour lets you use the car he bought without even paying for petrol. It breaks down and you offer to fix it for him, but he refuses and it ends up being left to rust on the side of the road.

I wouldn't stop being grateful for the earlier kindness, but I'd be annoyed at the wastefulness and wonder what happened to his earlier goodwill. (Perhaps this is how Billywoods sees the KGS situation?)

3) Your neighbour makes a car and lets you use it. It breaks down and you offer to fix it for him, but he says he wants to be the one to do it and it ends up being left to rust on the side of the road.

In this instance I would think my neighbour was being reasonable. If the act of fixing the car is something that's valuable to him then it would be selfish to expect him to give it up. (I wonder if this is where me and Billywoods disagree?)

Edit: I didn't mean to imply that KGS was like a broken down car. I use it almost exclusively because not only is it the most reliable server for me, but I also like a lot of its features.

Yes, I agree with the point you are trying to make.

And I myself multiple times stated that it would be nice of wms to open-source KGS once he's done with it, or accept other programmer's help. Or that it would totally suck when KGS goes away, if it does. If this is all Billy is saying, I have no problem with that. Would it be wasteful if KGS goes way? Sure...

If that's the only think Billy says, that he will be sad when KGS disappears, then we have no argument.
If he says that there is any obligation on wms to do stuff he does not want to do, then we don't.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!