Why do we repeat topics?

I think this taking a lot of fun out of the game. I don't want to play a game were winning is accomplished by searching through the history list of previous games.

What is the difference between cheating in GWG by using wordlists, and using the winning word lists from previous Empathy games?

Searching through old Empathy games for matches and copying the results is in my eyes no different, so it classifies as the same 'cheating'.

So I propose that we do not reuse topics.

To throw the glove out there: If you (knowingly) vote for a topic that was played before, it's enabling cheating. To copy previous games results, is cheating.

Commments?

The repeated topics are a test of the player's ability to be systematic. Whathisname the Olympic swimmer got to be champion only by sticking to a disciplined schedule of practice. If you want to just play GoE for fun, then it won't bother you that other players are in first place for repeated topics. But those who aspire to be champions (or those of us who aspire to make sure the champions have some worthy competition to defeat) must stick to a rigorous agenda of checking every topic for repeats.

Just my two cents here:

I played Empathy for seven or eight consecutive times; I liked it and I was pretty good at it too. I did research on the topics I knew the least, used intuition whenever I wasn't sure what strategy to use, and even enjoyed learning something new. Then finally there was a game in which ten people got the same highest score with the same answers and I realized they had used the answers from a repeated topic. I stopped playing immediately. To me it just wasn't fun anymore. Not because I wasn't in the top places anymore, but because what's the use of trying to guess what other people are thinking when they are just doing copy and paste. To me it's like playing GWG using wordlists or letters scramblers or playing reversi or chess or four in a row copying the moves made by a computer program.

An Olympic swimmer can win the gold medal training hard every day or can take steroids every day. The final result may be the same, but I wouldn't call them both champions.

Once again, this is just my opinion.

I never used that, my best place is twice six, 11th in the last game, but it's fun :-)

The pupose of the games is to guess other peoples entry's. My guess is, that if a topic is played before (and sorry I posted 'my.... hurts' for the second time) other people will use the best answers used in the earlier game. It's not creative, but it's not cheating either - imho.

GoE is, I think, the LG game least susceptible to cheating. Even games like Hex where the best-playing programs are no match for the good humans can have Man-In-the-Middle attacks. The one program that did try to play GoE was (I'm sure Phil won't take this personally.) awful. GoE would seem to be vulnerable to a multiple-personality attack, but AFAIK, that has never happened.

so if in a Go or chess or whatever game, I look up previous games, and repeat the moves that were done at that time, it's not cheating? So you are saying it's ok to look up all Go or Chess or whatever databases for previous games in the same position?

Replace 'Go' by 'Empathy', and you declared it's ok to do that...

Yes I see the difference, as Empathy is about predicting other people's answers,

But wouldn't that lookup technique kill the game? Imagine the next ten games are repeats, and everybody looks up the previous answers? we have 39 first places, all tied. Ten times in a row.

Man, what an interesting game to play... [sarcasm here]

Remember, my proposal was only to not vote for previously used topics again. That could avoid the issue.

We already had several repeats in a row. Many players left the game partly because of this. This has already been discussed, no obvious solution was found.

Many players accept the repeat as part of the game and don't want to do something about it.

:(

Just for the record, I find OK if you look up a Go database to see if our game has been played before and repeat the moves.

Games on LG are like playing postal chess. Looking in books is fine. The education therefrom is an added bonus compared to over-the-board play. For GoE, consulting Wikipedia, google, and, AFAIK, GoE records is also fine. Consulting with other GoE players would not be fine.

Not taken personally. I'm shifting the blame onto the search engines for either being crap search engines, or not being able to return parseable results. (For example, google doesn't tell you the character encoding it's using, and worse, which makes its strings completely impossible to run a string search over reliably.)

"Games on LG are like playing postal chess. Looking in books is fine."

As I mentioned already I don't agree with this statement. I don't know too much about chess, but standard openings in reversi give a huge advantage to one player. If a player keeps referring to books or databases for long openings and the other one doesn't, the game is pretty much decided right away. The game is no fun and frankly I don't see what kind of learning takes place there.

And using books or dictionaries to "create" words in GWG or WYPS makes even less sense to me.

There was a discussion in GWG about using word lists ...

Sure, knowing standard openings ( by heart or by looking them up in a book or by help of a computer ) gives you a big advantage and playing against a more "skilled" player is little fun, probably for both?

But same is true for any deeper knowledge beyond the opening as well.

Luckily there's a rating system and championships with multiple leagues to maximise fun by trying to pair appropriate opponents.

Let's keep this thread related to GoE, where we don't have a rating system, and where a legitimate approach is to guess if others will use google and past games info.

I'd prefer if Repeats would not show up at all ...

BTW: The current topic looks very nice, doesn't it:

No repeat, google gives lots of useless answers ( oops, shut down ;)

The most recent duplicate topic was my fault. I suggested the "New York" topic without realizing at the time that it was a duplicate. I only noticed its duplicity 3 hours before the game ended. :(

wow! Seven people with the top ten results tied for first place.

Must have been another repeat. This could be such a great game.

RoRoRo's first place finish proves that there is a software algorithm for recognizing repeated topics. The GoE voting software could recognize repeats and disqualify them.

I hate repeats. I never recognise them, yet again I came 12th...

rather 11th, 12th in general :)

Can someone just post the repeat answers? That way we can all win together?

According to prevailing opinion, this would make the game much better (or why would a majority vote for a repeat?)

It's easy to vote for a repeat without realizing it's a repeat. It's also easy to propose a topic that is a repeat without realizing it's a repeat.

I fear, selecting vote candidates from proposals is done manually -at least partially-, also without realizing it's a repeat.

Sure, Marley's right, the "GoE voting software could recognize repeats". The GoE software could even refuse to accept repeat proposals when entered.

Unfortunately, such small enhancements are against the spirit of LittleGolem. We'd rather humbly learn to live with human and software flaws, and enjoy a sudden brand new game instead.

did I smell some sarcasm in that last sentence?

I didn't :)

I'm not that bothered by repeats, searching for them is part of the game imhoe. But doublerepeats (musical instruments) do suggests our shared memory needs a energydrink...

@ Aganju: No sarcasm intended. (Not what I'd call sarcasm, at least ;)

I really love what I call "the spirit of LittleGolem" .

If at all, I'm annoyed of discussions about small enhancements.

(I fear, last time I pissed some people off by a suggestion to donate money when elaborating enhancement proposals)

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Well, repeats ARE annoying. But as long as there is a "past games" page, it's not a solution to declare looking at it as cheating.

Not sure if a warning like:

Don't vote for "colors", it's a repeat

would help, usaually. (Last time it didn't) If it would help, we could ask RoRoRo to do this job and post this message to a dedicated thread here.

Shoud he post the "correct" answer as well? "Past Games" is an expensive page and he might help keeping LittleGolem's load low ... (Aganju, feel free to smell some sarcasm ;)