<< Shouldn't a submit reset the block? >>

No, but there was a bug... fixed.

<< Word Wizard >>

I'm not sure there is anything that can be done to stop someone from looking up something in word wizard. They could be playing with a big paper dictionary next to them for all we know.

Or they could be on a Mac. If you type any word into the search bar on a Mac it comes up with the definition.

Testing again...

logged out - did not work yet.
logged back in - did (obviously you had just fixed it).

started hourly mix - blocked as it should be (although there's a variable #session.login# instead of the name)

submitted for 0 - still blocked.
logged out and back in - still blocked.

9 minutes after game - still blocked.

Edit: 16 minutes, still blocked.

Edit again: 29 mins, hourly has ended and scored, block still there.

Wesley: I don't see how Word Wizard can be "helped" by increased penalties or trying to block people from accessing the hundreds of dictionary websites out there. I also don't think it's a big problem in that game. If you take the time to google, you're not going to get a very good score - certainly not good enough to win the monthly badge at any rate.

Word Wizard has been "helped" immensely (as far as play quantity goes) by the "side games". Why mess with a good thing?

Terry: your new program is working fine re: the encyclopaedia

Flopsy/SpanishLiz: I agree with most of your posts. I would argue that googling is NOT a big issue ever since time penalties were initiated (take, for instance, Gold Member Madness - I think putting in SOME sort of penalty was a "good thing" but perhaps it went a tad far). Just because certain "elite" players on this site want everything THEIR way, doesn't necessarily mean it's "right" or, more importantly "ENJOYABLE". I applaud their expertise, but if the only way you can win MOST badges around here is by being the FASTEST, then you WILL lose the interest of most of the general public on many games. Not that the elitists would care of course lol.

Kyle: perzactly

To nobody in particular: I realise most people in this world don't have alot of expendable income, and while I sympathise, I also think if they can afford internet access (and please don't try to tell me that the non GM folks who are on here 12-24 hours per day are doing it from a public library), then they should be able to afford a membership. It's under $40 for a WHOLE YEAR. That's less than it would cost to take your family out for dinner ONCE. That's less than it would cost to take your family to a movie, with snacks, ONCE. It's nearly impossible to run a site like this with no income at all, unless the owner is a millionaire with a heart of gold lol.

And while I'm on this subject, are there any plans to allow folks to sign up for MORE than one year at a time? I for one, would appreciate it.

Wesley: I agree about the sticky thread. It is difficult to wade through many seemingly non-related pages. "Gems" can be missed easily without a specific vault to put them in.

I agree with Flopsy and Liz. People who google tend to get slower times, and it doesn't usually pay off. And seriously, how many people haven't googled at least one question to make sure that last question is correct so you can get 100% on an hourly?

Jakeroo, I never suggested WW to have a higher penalty. This is a game where googling would need to prevented by different means if it is to be done (a fast googler can get the result in 3-4 seconds on a simple definition). I suggested it possibly for knockout (because it's the last 20-question daily running on 1/sec where all others use 2) and to make the existing penalty more effective in the GC (where currently 50 secs and 136 secs yield the same advancement - having a step around 100 would be better than the current one at 50 that only benefits the very few fastest games).

Wesley: that's fine. It's being very conservative right now. If it knows you are playing hourly/daily games, it will be unavailable pretty much all the time.

Someone kindly gave me some gift certificates recently... if you add them to your account one at a time then it extends your membership period. So if you want to get more than a year's membership, maybe buy yourself a certificate?

In general I have been reluctant to do more than 1 year, because frankly I don't like being obligated to people for X years from now. I have no idea what things will be like in 2013!

Let's not forget questions 18-20 in KO are QQ . Also, Mixed and New Questions are ALL QQ. They can't be found anyway. On the new ideas thread, I think it's a good idea. Also, I'm with flopsy. My opinion is this is a case of overcorrection. I don't a whole lot of benefit in changing something only a small few have an issue with.

Wouldn't simply blocking for 5 to 10 minutes after your last "start game" click do the job just as well? The only situation I see where this would not work is Expert where the pages for any particular topic (and only that topic) essentially would need to be blocked from 6 hours before the game so you can't call them up beforehand?

Edit: Besides, anyone who truly wants to cheat by preloading encyclopedia pages will simply download the whole thing using some web spider (most likely from a different IP too) and then have them once and for all. Not that THAT is a likely scenario...

I can not imagine why more time penalties would be needed in Knockout. It is already a crazy fast game where I can consistently get a 20/20 with no googling and still lose based on speed. For me, it feels almost like the easy game, with more questions, in terms of speed. It is already such a race, at least in the higher levels, that I don't see where time penalties would be necessary. I have to sympathize with some earlier posters in that not every game needs to be a pure speed game. It is not about googling, it is just the fact that not everyone is creepy fast. At that point, you are simply giving a pure advantage to those that play the same games over and over, with no chance for anyone else.

Ok, so we've got looking up via the encyclopedia. Clearly something that can be prevented.

I notice that many question queries in google lead to the source quiz.

Is it ever time-efficient to click through to one of those quizzes, click submit, and try to find the answer in the answer page? Is this something that needs to be blocked too, or does that sequence take too long to pose a problem?

Anything can be done, but statistically speaking, zero FunTrivia players use the encyclopedia (it is for google guest benefit, which is a little ironic since we're trying to stop googlers... haha). It's far easier to place broad blocks.

I takes long, besides you could easily detect it if someone does it a lot. I would not go as far as blocking that.

I'll probably tweak knockout a bit to make questions in the higher tournaments more difficult than those in the lower tournaments, and crank up penalties a tad.

I think it's a bad idea. Once again, it just benefits those have been playing KO forever. I'd like to restate questions 18-20 are QQ. I have found that has made KO much more difficult now. Again, I think googling is something only a very few have an issue with.

Actually, I just checked... when I originally built knockout I designed it so that different tournaments could use different difficulty questions, so I can easily turn that feature on. I'll do that this week.

I think going to 2 sec / question is reasonable too.

If people are saying that it is just like the "easiest game", and it does appear to be that way in the top few tournaments, then we're getting away from the point of this game -- to award the player who has more knowledge than the others, not who can scroll and click the best.

I'm curious -- what do you want access to the encyclopedia for?

In fact, my wife (Lwaxy) is using it occasionally to read up about things because it nicely puts information in one place.

I personally don't use it.

My "I would not go as far" also referred to quizzes only - you could detect quickly if someone regularly submits low scores (0s) on quizzes shortly after starting a timed game.

I am working on a far more air-tight approach, where it will allow access to anyone, but will simply not display any questions that are active in any game.

I don't think the KO game is like the easy game at all! I find it extremely difficult, and I hardly ever advance, let alone with the week.

Terry, what about the questions in the Obscure game? They are so obscure that it would be really difficult to win those badges without the Encyclopedia for help.

Sorry to disagree, boss, but I don't, if what you mean is 2 pts/sec (as suggested by someone earlier). This only encourages the quick "scroll and click" players, and lets us slow old codgers out again. Like I said, I frequently lose with 20/20 even now, why make it even harder?

I went up to the higher divisions in KO some months ago, since when I've rarely won and barely scraped a point or two each month because the speed merchants rule. So now it's going to be even harder? I can't win against the speed merchants because they're too fast and now there will be bigger penalties for the slow players. Pretty soon there will be a long list of games I simply won't want to play, even for the sake of my team.

That's perfect - keeps people as honest as we can unless we want to censor the internet

No -- the entire point is to make it HARDER for the speed merchants.

To do this we need to increase difficulty a bit (move difficulty a step or two away from the "easiest" game, more towards the "mixed" game), and at the same time penalize googling a bit, since increased difficulty encourages googling.

So what we need is a balance of +difficulty, +time penalty. The net effect, in theory, is that the game becomes more balanced to knowledge vs speed.

We want the game to be:

- easy enough that it doesn't put players off.

- difficult enough that every single question isn't identifiable by a single keyword, like the easy game.

- penalized enough that it is not time effective to attempt to look up answers.

flopsy, remember that 1, 2 or 5 points per second does not make any difference if you both play 20s! It could be 0.01 and you'd still lose.

It only matters if you have more correct than your opponent but are much slower. Now even at 2 points per second, this still means you will win with one question more unless you're more than 50 seconds slower - a pretty long time on a game where the average times are in the low 100s. Also, higher difficulties for top levels will also mean that correctness will be more important again.

Again, very few have an issue with it, and it punishes the members at large. Why implement $50,000 worth of corrections for a $5 issue? I think the common will of the people is being thwarted here.

"Vox populi, vox Dei"

"The voice of the people [is] the voice of God"