Merging Vint.ee and mindoku.

This topic is important and large enough to be discussed publicly. What do we want to achieve by merging vint.ee and mindoku? First, that mindoku's game rooms would come to life (When you visit mindoku, you will also see users who are in the vint.ee game room and you can play with vint.ee users). Second, today's "games in mindoku" menu item does not work - people will not enter these game rooms - "let's bring these games back to vint". At first glance it seems simple - we will merge the game rooms (user database and that's it). In fact, this will create the following problems for us: 1) The game rooms will no longer only be in Estonian - hieroglyphics or the like that we do not understand may appear there. 2) The same goes for game comments - comments will appear in different languages 3) Leaderboards - foreigners will start to manage the vint.ee leaderboards - is that really what we wanted :)? 4) Forums - Vint.ee and mindoku forums will remain separate, both when merging the game rooms and as of today. Vint has its own identity - we are an Estonian mind sports portal, all our users are Estonians and communication is in the same language, only compatriots are in the leaderboard - we can measure our abilities against each other. This is a value that we should keep. But how can the wolves be fed and the sheep remain healthy? One option would be to distinguish between vint.ee users and mindoku users: we assume that users who have registered on vint.ee are Estonians and they would only like to see an Estonian-language environment. 1) The thing with chat rooms is simple: We only show vint.ee users text messages sent by other vint.ee users. The problem arises when a vint.ee user and a mindoku user start playing - they cannot communicate with each other (automatically deny these users the ability to communicate during the game to avoid embarrassing situations)? 2) The same thing with game comments: Vint.ee users will only see comments from other vint.ee users, Mindoku users will only see comments from other mindoku users. 3) The leaderboards in Vint and mindoku would be different - Vint's leaderboards would only show Estonians, mindoku would show users from both portals. Another option is not to differentiate between vint.ee and mindoku users, chat rooms and game comments would be multilingual and the leaderboards would be mixed up. A third option would be to give Vint.ee users a choice - whether they want to see only Estonian content (chat room, comments) or if they also understand English and want to participate in the discussion - The same thing would happen with the leaderboards - by default the leaderboards are separate, if you want to see your place in the "world leaderboard", click the checkmark and you will see the leaderboard, which also includes mindoku users. From here the idea arose - perhaps one day we will set up a "mental sports portal for that country" in another country, with content only in the official language of that country - this model could then be used in the future. Mindoku would then remain a unifying environment - everyone plays in their own country's environment, and the rest of the nation in mindoku. You wrote down your first thoughts, you can comment.

I prefer the "all or nothing" approach to this matter. 1) The "all" option: both Mindoku and Vindi have the same user base and the games, leaderboards, game comments, tournaments, etc. are common. The forum, event calendar, and so on are left out. 2) The "nothing" option: the systems remain separate. The reasons why I don't like the vague connections mentioned by Marten are as follows: 1) The system is confusing for users. For example, if a Mindoku and Vindi user are playing a game but can't talk to each other, but can they talk to another user? Or if someone wants to add a comment to a game so that everyone can see it, they have to do it twice, both in Mindoku and Vindi. The more you think about it, the more different situations come to mind that may be incomprehensible to users. 2) The technical solution is much, much, much more complicated, which means more potential bugs in the system and more time spent creating and maintaining the system. Of course, there is another option where there is no such connection of systems, but Mindoku users would see Vint users in the game room and vice versa. This could be done if users of the other system were visible in the game room as observers, meaning they could play but the game would not be saved and the rating would not change.

No, this one option doesn't seem good and users of both portals should also be able to communicate with each other when they can play. Both users should also see the comments, otherwise it would still be very strange. And the leaderboards should also include users of both portals, because the ranking is also one of the so-called motivators for playing. But maybe it could really be possible to show only Vindi or only Mindoku, as well as users of both. And one idea to make things clearer: there could be a flag next to the username that would show the player's origin (unless there is a cuckoo's nest, of course). The language issue is of course complicated, because it wouldn't be very pleasant if a large hall and game rooms were full of, for example, Polish talk that no one but Poles understand (I've experienced it elsewhere) :D So there could be either one official language in public spaces, i.e. English, or two languages (English and Estonian). Of course, everyone could speak their own language as much as they want in private. So there could be something in between the second and third options, but in general everything should be integrated and checkable by everyone.

The fact that the official language is English does not prevent users from speaking in other languages there. It is quite difficult to constantly detect whether the entered text is in English or not and then decide whether to show it. Users speak to each other in the language that is most comfortable for them, and the official language rule would probably not interest anyone (if there are 1000 Poles in the game room, you can be sure that they will speak Polish :)).

To be honest, I think we are very far from being "threatened" by the influx of foreigners. I believe that some number of Central European, Swedish and Russian players would come to gomoku, but we need to work hard for the masses. As I understand it, there are still many more places to play chess and checkers, so it is assumed that a significant proportion of foreigners is not expected for these games either. Perhaps Sudoku and Othello could be more successful. In any case, I am in favor of maximum unification, common rankings, forums, etc., e.g. gomoku and rendžus would only be beneficial if strong foreigners took the first places in the rankings, then the best Estonians would have more reason to come to the fort :)

I agree with Ants. You can also sort the rankings if possible to find out who the best Estonians are, etc. Everything could still be common. If at some point an area becomes extremely popular, then you could, for example, make 2 gomoku rooms. But the number of people still has to be large.

Ok, we can start with full integration. Technically, however, we should separate vint.ee and mindoku users just in case - just in case - maybe someday we still want to separate vint.ee from the rest of the group.

It doesn't directly prevent it, but if they know what language the environment is in, then assuming that most of them are normal people, they won't start speaking other languages in public spaces (of course there would be some exceptions). And there would always be an opportunity to report the user... Not everyone is so stupid or ignorant that they speak in the language they are most comfortable with. For example, in English games I only use English, except when there are only Estonians in the room/game.