A vote *against* new games.

It's not that I don't want new games. I can think of some I'd like to play here. And I can also think of lots of little ways the site could be made more friendly. But, in my opinion, none of those things would provide the most enjoyment to the community here for the amount of work that Richard would have to do to implement them.

Instead, I think Richard could bring more joy to more people by figuring out why the site (and the daemon) keeps crashing and what to do about it.

Look, I know from experience that debugging isn't nearly as much fun as writing new code. And in an environment like this, where the programmer doesn't even get to see the smiles on the faces of people whose difficulties are solved, it's even harder to get into the customer-service headspace that can make fixing things that are broke fun.

But I also know that I have learned not to get to excited when I figure out a move in a difficult position. Because I know that when I try to go to the site, I might not be able to make that move. And in the morning, when I'm eager to see what puzzles my opponents have presented me, there might not be any or I might not be able to see them because the site is or has been down. So the sporadic nature of the site affects my (and, I'm sure many other people's) enjoyment of the site even when it is up.

That being said, if Richard is all creativity without any perfectionism, what I'm asking for won't happen. And though I can ask for it, I'm not being cheated out of anything. I'm not paying for the bandwidth. I'm not writing the code. I'm not maintaining the relationship with the hosting service. And though I'd be willing to help witht he code, maintaining a multi-person project can be a big headache and I understand why Richard doesn't want to go down that road.

So, Richard, pelase understand what I'm saying. Thank you for providing this service to the level that you do. I understand that you want to make it even better. I strongly believe the most effective way to do that is to improve what you have, rather than adding new things. And I hope that you will consider what I'm saying.

Well put. I agree.

I understand. Writing new games is only about 10% of work on this site. 90% is other - but this not visible, and I am not writing about it - maintain database, implement proper cache system, optimize properties for web server and database server, etc.

I too agree with Dvd Avins. At this stage may be more effort should be put to make the site more stable (as it was before Richard's vacations).

As for the type of new games for the site, my personal opinion is that it would be be better to implement no-luck games.

I needed to think about it, but I too agree with dvd. New games or not, the most important thing is that the site is up and running. And: You're doing a wonderful job, Richard!

Marius

I agree with dvd and others who thouroughly enjoy the games we have here, and appreciate all the time and effort that Richard must put into keeping it going. Not many people are willing to do so much work at their own personal expense for no monetary compensation. Thank you, Richard! There is plenty of variety in the games here already...

Perhaps the problem is with the server Richard is using and not his software? Richard uses a ton of technologies: JSP, MySQL, XML, XSLT, JDOM. Would a different host do a better job handling all that?

I disagree!!!!

I think Richard does a great job, indeed.

Viewing the fact that nobody of the native English speakers ever does the trouble to correct and update the FAQ, or write rules for some of the games, I agree on the fact that not much people would even spend a few hours freely to have people some enjoyment.

It would be great for Richard if someone would take the time to correct and create some text to make the interface yet more friendly (I think Richard does it great, but it could be done better by an English speaker), I think that is much more helpful then writing a long big forum entry basically telling Richard how he should spend his own time. If this 10% new code makes him happy let him have it.

Bottomline is I don't see the point of the vote (allthough I think it was good to post the idea here to let people think about it).

Hjalti, the point of posting it was so that Richard could see that the outages, while possibly only a relatively minor annoyance to him, are a major impediment to my (and others') enjoyment of the site. As for editing the text, I'd be happy to do it, but have never seen any indication that it's desired. In most cases, I think Richard does remarkably well getting his meaning across despite any grammatical incorrectness. However, there have been a few exceptions that have caused misunderstandings.

I see your point, but I don't think that the new games should be involved. As you know Richard has not a new game every month (I believe that is indicated somewhere). I don't believe that if he doesn't put his time in new programming he would have more time for debugging --- of course we don't know and Richard should think about himself ---

I do believe that his enjoyment would be less (as you indicated I believe), and that is all together the danger, because I want Richard to keep maintaining this site as long as possible and as good as possible without these nasty crashes, and so on...

I will be happy to revise the English on the site, if Richard asks me to. (I am a native English speaker, have worked for the Oxford English Dictionary, and have worked as a technical author.)

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