To The Game Master: Avoid Accidental Repeat Topics

Hello Richard,

I understand that a machine struggles to avoid repeat topics in GoE, as humans find always ways to reword things; but it should be relatively easy to string-filter the proposals against the list of historic topics?

That way, accidental repeat would be avoided, which - I think - would be considered great for most players.

For example, if I type in 'Polish Cities' next week, it would find that this was used before and not accept it in the pool. Of course if I type 'Cities in Poland' it would not match, but anyway, it would be a big improvement.

Hi Aganju,

very good idea!

My suggestion: Every entry has a second button/checkbox: 'Mark as a repetition' You can select it when you think it's an already played topic. So if for example 10 or more people select this new button/checkbox then this topic isn't selectable anymore.

So all players can decide if a topic is a repeat and it is not up to a machine to figure out ...

quite clever idea, lehmanns

Nice idea. but may I add some problems?

I never vote for repeated items (when I recognise them), but

- I only search at the 'past games' list when the topic is beiing played (not al repeats are easily recognised)

- Because I do search, i dont think i'd mark one when I recognise one: I usually get nice points when they're beiing played (i repeat: i don't vote them).

- How to prevent any misuse? For example, I might want to block a suggestion when it's beiing talked about at the forum.

- who is allowed to vote? All LG-players? ANyone ever played GOE?

So i think i prefer the 'let the computer block only exact copies of former games'-option.

RoRoRo recognizes repeated topics. You could ask Phil what algorithm it uses. It may just be Exact Match, but it might be more sophisticated and it's demonstrably practical to program.

slaapgraag: What I meant: You can vote for any topic but additionally mark any other topic as a repeat. I think everybody who plays GoE can vote.

As it needs more than one player (ie 10, has to be defined very well :o) to block a suggestion I don't think it can be misused.

It's not exact match, and has had both false positives and false negatives, so shouldn't be relied on.

@FatPhil - was "favorite fruit" a false negative? Additionally, is RoRoRo programmed to repeat answers in case of a positive repeat search result? And finally, what is his criteria for submitting less than 10 guesses (only got 2 points in favorite fruit point)?

(For Sheldon Cooper's sake: sarcasm on) - Unless of course, RoRoRo only have two favorite fruits, disliking each and every one of the rest (sarcasm off).

He's unable to interface with any search engines currently (either they don't send valid UTF, or the LWP library's unable to decode their UTF), so will often enter seemingly random numbre of random things. Were I to leak too much about what he might submit, I might change players' tactics, so I'd rather not say too much. (But, for example, he used to always submit 'sex' while that was allowed.)

Even if you could 'talk' with the search engines it wouldn't help much, not? I mean type 'fruit' in google and you won't see: apple, orange, plum,... maybe some day with the OWL you can get this information...

It would help a lot. RoRoRo used to do quite reasonably when he was talking to the search engines. (