The Waiting Room... be careful

For those of you who aren't aware of it (and I can see that some of you aren't) your waiting room game request might never get answered... if you're requesting a rating range that doesn't exist.

For example, there is currently a request in the waiting room for a "Four in a row" game, for a player rated between 89 and 149. There is no one here within that range, so no one can answer that game request. The lowest Four in a row rating here is currently 1193. All other ratings are higher than that -- there is no one between 89 and 149.

Another example: There is a game request from the same individual for an Amazons game against anyone rated between 100 and 130. No one will ever be able to answer it... the lowest Amazon rating here is currently 1208. (And it's probably not possible for anyone to get a rating that low, even intentionally.)

So, if you were ever wondering why no one is responding to your game requests, it's possible that they can't! The system won't let them. You may be requesting games against players with ratings that don't exist.

Ideally, of course, the program code here shouldn't allow you to select ANY rating... only ratings within valid ranges. However, that would certainly be harder to program and I can understand why it isn't.

I believe this has been asked before, but I'll ask it again: Any idea when we might see a way for the person requesting a game to DELETE a game request from the waiting room?

Yes, this person seems to be putting arbitrary numbers for rating range. But then how has (s)he come to be playing every single game on littlegolem (except go 13x13), without entering tournaments? It looks like (s)he does get matches from the waiting room. Have you tried to start games there and been rejected by the system because your rating was outside the range?

Yes. Try it. If you attempt to answer any ad that is not within your rating range, the system will give you a polite message saying that you're not able to answer this ad.

It's possible the games she is playing are ones where she accepted the ads of others. Or, she posted other ads with no rating range at all and thus these were ads that people were able to accept.

There does seem to be a danger of the Waiting Room filling up with things that are not real game offers. This makes it slightly harder to find the real offers, and may be puzzling for newbies.

Maybe a game offer should expire automatically after, say, three months, and be deleted from the Waiting Room?

Excellent idea! Initially, I was thinking that each person who posted the ad should be able to go in and delete their own ad. But I like your idea better - it sounds much easier to code. However, three months to me is way too long. If it were up to me, I'd have the system automatically delete waiting room ads that were just ONE month old.

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