From: nick@sunburn.uwaterloo.ca (Nick Fitzpatrick)
Subject: Rest in Peace, Judge.  We love you!
Originator: nick@sunburn.uwaterloo.ca
Reply-To: loeb@geocub.greco-prog.fr
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 14:55:42 GMT

I have fowarded the following from Danny Loeb, it has
been expanded from what was orignally posted on DIPL-L

Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 10:17:59 +0100
From: loeb@geocub.greco-prog.fr (Daniel LOEB)

Ken Lowe has probably contributed more to diplomacy that any other
person except Mr. Calhammer himself! He has investing an enormous part
of his time programming and administrating to allow hundreds of games
to be played over the course of several years on his machines. I
remember back in the beginning when he calculated what the load might
be if this really got popular, and he was hesitant to publicize on
that basis; I never took these figures seriously, and tried to
interest people in the Judge. Perhaps, this was an error on my part.

Ken never got the appreciation he deserved, and in fact was unjustly
criticized last month. This may have been a contributing factor to his
departure, but the load was getting too high in any case... 

However, now the load on Ken's machine is so high that people don't
get an immediate response to their messages, and some try repeating
their messages as a result.... Can you say "Visicous circle"!?

My suggestion of adding the BROADCAST command to the judge may be
greatly responsible to increasing the load. Although needed for the
so-called press variants, and terribly handy for public broadcasts, it
is not needed in all-white press games. Should press be by default
forbidden....? 

Joan Artes blames the problem on people signing up for too many games.
I agree this is a major contributing factor not only in increasing the
load on Judge, but taking away the interest from games.
I feel that games should be allowed to restrict players on the
following criteria:
        - manually by the GM    
        - lower dedication
        - same-site as another player
        - shared prior victory with another player
        - number of games currently entered
        - number of games currently entered with other players from this game
        - number of victory points
        - self-declared expertise

I also think that it would not be unreasonable for Ken (or other
Diplomacy Adjudicator Managers) to demand a small entry fee for
participating. Even $10 per entry would add up to over $10,000 given
the current load on the Judge. Is such a fee warranted? Yes, since we
our monopolizing a computer, Ken's time and net resources.
Such fees could be waived in consideration for services (programming,
GMing, ..) that Ken might determine.
Of course, such a system might not be appreciated by U. of Washington.
Can Ken get back to us on this point? With his address if possible!

Obviously for the moment game creation must be stopped in Washington.
But I hope it will resume (taking into account some of the above
suggestions) when the number of ongoing games falls down to 75.

Currently there are 150 games in Washington, and about 11 elsewhere.
This must clearly reverse itself now. To do this, we must start up
even more new JUDGE's. At least one per continent is needed, and 2 in
North America. 

Are there any volunteers to make changes to the JUDGE? New variants
are to be desired to keep the system fresh. 
Other changes must be made as described above to keep the load down.
With the decentralization, some communication should be allowed
between the JUDGE's and some central program which could record a
global "dedication" for all players, along with a global record of
their victory points. The short (2-line) game listings should be
available for a common point.
Now we just need a new programmer with lots of time on his hands....  

People creating new JUDGE's on their systems should decide in advance
a limit to how many games can be created. Once it reaches that limit
the CREATE command should be disabled.
Furthermore, I think that in order to slow down the turrent of games
being formed, I suggest that all games be required to have a GM. This
will have the side effect of taking some work away from the JUDGE's
manager since he is in effect the GM of all non-GMed games.
By creating a game, you should be obliged to become its GM.

In addition, certain of the requirements listed above (such as maximum
of 3 games per player at a time, and maximum of 1 game in common per
pair of players on a given JUDGE).

Anyone who objects to being limitted to 3 games should think about
getting a life! :)

Thanks again Ken, we'll miss you.
        
Yours, Daniel Loeb                              loeb@geocub.greco-prog.fr
HOME    150, cours Victor-Hugo; Appt D45; 33000 Bordeaux France
WORK    LABRI; Universite de Bordeaux I; 33405 Talence Cedex France
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