"That having been said:
If there are features here that are clearly standing the test of time that users here appreciate and that would be just as good at webDip would it make sense to select the functionalities and variants here at vDip that the community here appreciate and migrate them back over to webDip?

Essentially rather than risking things (again, over the long term) evaporating away here and having some valuable changes potentially lost we could merge vDip back into webDip, taking all the now tried and tested and approved functionalities here and porting them back into the official branch.

I don't know the community or team here very well so again this may well be a total lead balloon, and again this is an thought for the long term over the next 12 months say, but I'm interested if the community here would see that as potentially disrupting something you're all happy with and want to continue on, or if there is any sense behind taking what people like about this fork and merging it back into webDip?"

PPSC comes to mind.

You may want to look at the ModForum too.

First off, I appreciate the effort to come out and ask us here! It seems to me that you come from good, friendly intentions, as it seems you're worried about that bad perception. And I'm looking forward to this conversation we as a group will have.

I was introduced to Diplomacy on vDip, back in 2019. No idea how old the site is, and never played on any other sites. I have heard of webDip, but didn't realize that vDip was once a part of webDip (at least, that's my understanding based on what you say). When did the split happen, and why? Was it always meant to be a place for experimental variants, or is that just what defined it after the split?

How long would the merge take? Would this site have to be shut down during the merge? Would we become part of webDip, or would something new like webDipV come out? I know almost nothing about coding websites and such, so sorry if this is silly!

I do enjoy the community here; while I am not often on the forums, most of the time, games are reasonably easy to fill, and folks have a good time win or lose. We are very...casual. That being said, again I've never been to another site. For those of you who have seen WebDip, how do our two communities compare?

I have also noticed that new stuff is slow to come by on this site, which for me personally is not that big of a deal. But I do agree that I am not necessarily like everyone, and this could cause the site to (slowly) wither away. We fill 36-player and even 50-player games reasonably easily, which is a good sign that we're still relatively healthy (for now).

I'll probably have more disorganized thoughts, comments, and questions later, but I'd like to see what other peoples' initial reactions are, and I certainly don't speak for everybody here!

-erikip107

Well here I am back in less than 10 minutes...

I just took a (very) brief look at webdiplomacy, and... whoa 10 variants is not a lot! If a merge is to happen, I'd definitely be in the boat that all the variants from here should be shipped.

How would the current ladder be merged, if at all?

I will have my thoughts tomorrow hopefully, but some background from what I remember for those who don't know :

vDip (or variant dip) was created by Oli (I believe sleepcap is the username on webdip for Oli?) In 2010 after his previous site (OliDip) went offline.

My memory is that OliDip was always meant to be an experimental website with new variants and features that ran parallel to webdip.

Obviously vDip has evolved since then into a more full service Dip site, but still retains the numerous variants that made it popular since it's inception.

I imagine that in any theoretical merge, the vast majority of people would want the majority of these variants ported, which makes me wonder if it would be a bit too much of a change at once for webdip?

"PPSC comes to mind."
Heheh that's convenient because we were actually wanting to back to PPSC on webDip.. Makes me feel a bit vindicated because PPSC was the first points system added in '07, and it really made an instant difference you could see in the analytics so I have a soft spot for it.

"You may want to look at the ModForum too. "
Yep I only noticed that just now; I'm not sure when it happened but I'm actually set as a mod here now apparently which I didn't realise, looks pretty nice.

We've also been improving our mod systems bit by bit, adding features to improve multi-detection, we've got SMS message validation to validate mobiles, login to Facebook and Google etc to increase validation, and browser fingerprinting. (Though it's not all integrated into the multi detector yet)

There's also something that lets people register suspicions against other people and respond to those suspicions. (It's also used to register relationships outsite the site, or to link accounts as multis/metas)
It's nice because (recently added) a mod can click to force a user to respond, and they will get directed to the page until they enter the requested info.
Once they enter that info the mod that made the request will be redirected to the page
when they next go to webDip, which I'm hoping will streamline some mod interactions. I definitely think the mod forum and the new suspicion page are a lot better than using e-mail.
https://webdiplomacy.net/contrib/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=17&p=317241

(Though posting about a feature I'm proud of here I feel like someone is going to say that you've had it for years..)

"First off, I appreciate the effort to come out and ask us here! It seems to me that you come from good, friendly intentions, as it seems you're worried about that bad perception. And I'm looking forward to this conversation we as a group will have."
Yep same, already going better than expected I more than half expected to get told to "merge off".. But we'll see.. and Sleepcap may be against it anyway in the end. I think it's worth having in the back of our minds at the very least.

"I was introduced to Diplomacy on vDip, back in 2019. No idea how old the site is, and never played on any other sites. I have heard of webDip, but didn't realize that vDip was once a part of webDip (at least, that's my understanding based on what you say). When did the split happen, and why? Was it always meant to be a place for experimental variants, or is that just what defined it after the split?"
Ah neat; I didn't think people would find this site directly without going through some other Diplomacy site.
I started webDip (then phpDip) back in 2005, it started getting traction around 2008, and I can't remember when people starting wanting to add variants and were adding them by modifying the webDip core (adjudictor, etc; adding a bunch of if( $Variant == 1 ) { then this } else { that })
The problem is when you modify the core that means if I make a change your variant mods will need to be reapplied if you want the change I made, and as you add hundreds of variants it becomes a mess with the core code full of if ($Variant == 101) { then } etc. It also meant that if someone made a good variant you couldn't copy it without carefully reapplying it to your own code.

I added a variant layer that allowed all the logic, maps, territories, etc for a variant to be put in a folder separate to the core code. This kept the core clean, let variants be migrated between webDip/vDip forks, let variants be disabled, etc.
On the official site we added a few variants, but I didn't want to have too many at the time because we wanted to keep it a bit simpler, and I knew variant makers could use the changes to do their own thing.
Sleepcap took the change and ran with it, making all the variants here and some that went back to webDip, and kept adding his own features and improvements etc, and here's vDip.

While we're having a history lesson playdiplomacy is also a fork of webDip from way back in 2007, but that's not such a pleasant story .. It took me a while to realize it was a fork let's put it that way..

"How long would the merge take? Would this site have to be shut down during the merge? "
It would happen over a year or so roughly I'd imagine, I'm not sure exactly how big a merge it would be, and I'm not in any rush.
The site wouldn't need to be shut down during the transition; there would be a period of adding features and variants from here to webDip, then when everything is ready and we've done a test transfer we would take this site offline and do the final data transfer.

"We fill 36-player and even 50-player games reasonably easily, which is a good sign that we're still relatively healthy (for now)."
Yep definitely; I think this place could continue to run and maybe even grow for a long time, there's no emergency, this is a proposal for the longer term. If I got the thumbs up I would start the process of merging code, and that could take months until we have everything merged.

"If a merge is to happen, I'd definitely be in the boat that all the variants from here should be shipped."
Yep that'd be the plan; I'm sure our users would enjoy the variants.

"How would the current ladder be merged, if at all?"
Not sure exactly, but my guess is we would try and calibrate the ladders based on players who are on both sites, account for the relative sizes of the player base.
It's premature to think about it now, but there'd be some merge and it'd need some careful thought on how to do it fairly and get agreement.

Another feature worth checking out is our new point and click UI and our AI bots, which you can play against no login needed at https://play.webdiplomacy.net

"I imagine that in any theoretical merge, the vast majority of people would want the majority of these variants ported, which makes me wonder if it would be a bit too much of a change at once for webdip?"
It depends how much the core has changed, the adjudicator etc. I would guess there are a few changes to support some fancier variants, but variants should be fairly portable. I'm less worried about the variants than changes to the core, which are more likely to need careful patching in, but that would be fine.


Just glad there are no pitchforks coming out so it isn't totally out of consideration; if this thread just gives people something to mull over that's all I was hoping for

I probably don't get much of a say but I used to be on Web Dip. Been on Vdip since early 2020. The community here is healthy enough as of now. Although it has died down a little bit. I don't really see a reason to merge the two sites. Perhaps make each site advertise the other in return for porting over new mods and variants to Web dip in return for publicity which in return would get the best web dip players over onto Vdip? In return, new variants would bring more attention to Web dip

I need to stop using 'in return' lol

That's fine, I posted this to get peoples' say. To me the vDip branch is about new variants and changes, and if that's winding down people here might want to take what they like about vDip, merge with webDip and get the best of both worlds.
If that isn't how people see it / that doesn't appeal then you're right there is no reason, that's great.

Re: 'in return'; we are sibling sites and code has always flowed freely between webDip and vDip. This isn't about trading this for that it's just an option to protect what you've built here if things wind down, you want new features, maintenance issues, etc.

And trust me the only person here who doesn't have/want a say is me. :P Besides you could all say "great sounds like a plan" and Sleepcap could turn it down anyway

I started out playing here in 2017, this is my online Dip home. As emotional as it might be to see this site go, I think a merger with webDip would be a good thing, assuming some conditions are met. Oli hasn't been around for over a year now, so no new variants have been ported in. The variants, and the ability to test new ones, is one of the great strengths of this site imo. I believe that if a merger were to happen we should port all the existing variants (yes even the silly ones) and immediately make it possible for authors to add new variants, as they used to do.

Other features you might want to add are the extend vote button and PPSC (adjudicated correctly though).

I also want my points.

I'd like to raise a number of concerns.

What of people with id's on both sites? I have noticed some people are represented with same user name on both sites. However I have a different user name on webdip to vdip. A merge would necessarily mean abandoning one of them I think.

What of game drop-outs. Last I was at webdip, during an extended outage here, I found that the players had less concern about dropping out of games when they started loosing. I feel the calibre of player on vDip is more reliable and would fear a that diminishing.

I personally am so much more used to the format of vDip that I wouldn't want to change. As a surface player vDip was the first website I used and so, knowing nothing about the code or any other problems, I would not want to abandon the vDip website.

I'm a relatively new player (since March of this year) and I started on webDip and now am entirely on vDip because of the variants. I did like the AI option on webDip.

I like the fact that the two sites have a shared history and have a lot of similarity now in the platform and functions. Yes to diversity and innovations across different sites. But what you say about "larger community, better infrastructure, no duplicated effort on maintenance, more active development and some new features, unified mod team" makes a lot of sense.

My thoughts as a long time vDipper (2010 - and OliDip before that) as well as a Webdipper back in the day:


From a community perspective:

Pros to merging:

1) Oli (sleepcap) has been on a long hiatus from vDip. As the only one with the access to update maps or add new ones, Oli being gone has somewhat stagnated vDip in that regard. Merging with WebDip would allow for changes to existing maps and addition of new maps once again, refreshing the game for us all.

a) That said, if Oli were to return, or give access to someone from the Mod/Admin team in addition to himself, this issue would disappear.

2) Fresh players is always a good thing for the hobby. Having more people exposed to the great variants we have here could bring in a whole new wave of excitement for maps that perhaps have gotten a bit stale over the years to us here.

3) "better infrastructure, no duplicated effort on maintenance" - Definitely a good thing.


Cons:

1) As Strider noted: The possibility of more casual people who float in and out and don't worry about dropping games and ruining them in that way is definitely a possibility with a larger player base. I haven't played on webdip in years, so I can't say if webdip or vDip has a larger problem with this. It's something to think about though.

1a) As a member of the Mod team, I can say that vDip doesn't have a huge issue with people cheating (we have some, just not a ton). Perhaps this is linked to a smaller player base, but if webdip has a bigger cheating issue, it might be detrimental to vDip players to merge over to webdip.

2) Loss of identity: Not a guaranteed "con" so to speak, but it seems possible the vDip community would essentially be absorbed into the webdip community and lose the connections that people have made to each other in this smaller community over the years.


From a personal perspective:

1) vDip has become my home over the years. I personally appreciate the simplicity of our site and it's focus on straightforward Diplomacy. While the changes made at webdip are liked by many I am sure, I personally do not care for some of them. For example:

1a) Simple things like the User Interface (which I admit I do not know if it applies to all maps, or just Classic). I am a huge fan of the interface we have on our maps here on vDip and the effort map designers put into making the maps and units. If the (I think it's) beta format that you can use on webdip were implemented as standard and/or mandatory to use, I would very likely reduce my game play to near zero.

1b) Changes to the ranking system. I know this is a controversial topic, but I am not a fan at all of rankings and points in draws not being equal. WTA (DSS) scoring has this. PPSC, for all it's flaws, has/had this. Sum of Squares does not, and I am adamantly against a scoring system that basically punishes a player who managed to make themselves a vital 1-2 SC survivor with a smaller pot. It might work well for tournaments with limited time and games to play, but on the whole, I feel it is not good for the hobby and disincentivizes people from putting a lot of effort into trying to survive when small as their reward is less than larger players.

2) My personal favorite part of Diplomacy is getting to know other players. We definitely have that ability on vDip with it's smaller player base. I feel like I might get "lost" at webdip if the player base is significantly larger, and that would reduce my enjoyment of the hobby immensely.

3) Oli, despite him being on hiatus, put a lot of time and effort into building OliDip/vDip and giving us a place to explore variants. I wouldn't want him to feel abandoned, so I'd take my cue from him on this as he's given me over a decade of enjoyment without asking for a single penny.


A couple responses to quotes:

1) "Another feature worth checking out is our new point and click UI" - Is this the "beta" format? Or just an interactive map similar to what we have here?

2) "To me the vDip branch is about new variants and changes, and if that's winding down people..." - I'm don't believe this is the case. I seem to recall a few times over the past couple years that people wanted to try to add new variants and couldn't because of Oli being on hiatus. I believe Flame's webdiplomacy.ru site migt have some of these variants on it?

I think that's it for now. Probably a long enough essay anyways!

"Heheh that's convenient because we were actually wanting to back to PPSC on webDip.. Makes me feel a bit vindicated because PPSC was the first points system added in '07, and it really made an instant difference you could see in the analytics so I have a soft spot for it."

Sweet! That's awesome! You're actually bringing PPSC back as you designed it (not the strange proposals that have recently been floated around on the webDiplomacy Forum)? I've been defending your creation since before it was stripped of its status as the default scoring system of webDip. I would definitely feel vindicated too if you brought PPSC back!

PPSC is great as long as solos are counted properly.

Perhaps if Oli never comes back a third site administrated by webDip but still flavored like vDip would be a good compromise?

"Perhaps if Oli never comes back a third site administrated by webDip but still flavored like vDip would be a good compromise?"
We could host vDip as it is now on our infrastructure, which would give more stability as we can control the platform on our dedicated server, but that doesn't really solve the issue of vDip not being developed and potentially stagnating over the long term. It might be a good first step as it would be pretty easy to do and would make the merge/data-migration process a bit easier technically, but I think the question of a codebase and userbase merge is the more consequential one.

"Sweet! That's awesome! You're actually bringing PPSC back as you designed it (not the strange proposals that have recently been floated around on the webDiplomacy Forum)? I've been defending your creation since before it was stripped of its status as the default scoring system of webDip. I would definitely feel vindicated too if you brought PPSC back!"
Hahah great! I'm happy with whatever the community wants, same as here (which can be hard to know from a forum thread on the topic of scoring systems, which isn't necessarily going to reflect what's actually best for the site as whole).
I think the consensus is PPSC with a couple of tweaks, e.g. to the solo counting.

" Is this the "beta" format? Or just an interactive map similar to what we have here?" It's the full-screen one with live-chat etc. Check out play.webdiplomacy.net , feel free to start a game account-free to have a play then leave, it's just bots. (Note we aren't going to remove the legacy map, so if people prefer that that's fine, but many do like the new UI)

"Sum of Squares does not, and I am adamantly against a scoring system that basically punishes a player who managed to make themselves a vital 1-2 SC survivor with a smaller pot."
Yep it's actually a planned change to go back from sum of squares to PPSC.

"Simple things like the User Interface (which I admit I do not know if it applies to all maps, or just Classic)."
Yep it's an option, only available for classic, and the legacy UI will always be an option. We may change the default for new players at some point, but the current board UI isn't going anywhere.

"it seems possible the vDip community would essentially be absorbed into the webdip community and lose the connections that people have made to each other in this smaller community over the years."
Yep I get that; I'd mitigate that by having a sub-forum for vDip players only, and a player group for vDip players allowing vDip only games. We could migrate the message etc. It could evolve into some kind of .. invite only sub-community within webDip over time.. But I'm not going to say it will all be rainbows and sunshine and zero change, and no-one likes change.. The trap is if not changing and doing the comfortable thing in the long-term is unsustainable, sometimes you need to make a change to preserve things in the long term. (That may or may not be the case here)

"What of people with id's on both sites?"
We can merge accounts, whether they're the same username or different usernames. The scoring system merge will be tricky and need careful thought, but a merge where we abandon accounts on either side would defeat the purpose.

"What of game drop-outs. Last I was at webdip, during an extended outage here, I found that the players had less concern about dropping out of games when they started loosing."
I think that's true, especially at lower levels in the general game pool. vDip would be able to still have a vDip sub forum and vDip only games, but yes diluting the community in some sense is inevitable and this is something to consider.

"I believe that if a merger were to happen we should port all the existing variants (yes even the silly ones) and immediately make it possible for authors to add new variants, as they used to do. "
All variants will come across, and there will be the ability to add new variants, we'd become more lax about adding new variants, and we could allow authors to add new variants on a testing site. (We have subdomains for testing, e.g. test.webdiplomacy.net)
Allowing authors to directly upload variants to the site though isn't something we could restore, without those authors being given access to our github repo.
If this merger happened there would be a lot of changes to webDip, but one thing that absolutely won't change is webDip's stability. We have a larger user-base, more new players visit, I think we probably have more live-games that are ruined by intermittent downtime, and I think it's fair to say vDip while more dynamic is less stable.

"Other features you might want to add are the extend vote button and PPSC (adjudicated correctly though).

I also want my points. "
Yep, yep, definitely. Your points will probably get scaled to account for the relative user-base size to try and keep things fair, so that the #1 here with say 5000 isn't now #300 on webDip where the top score is 50000, even though the skill level for that point level is different. There'll be no way to make that completely, totally, mathematically fair but we will definitely factor in that vDip has a more skilled player base on average.

what will happen to the Winning thread??

"We could host vDip as it is now on our infrastructure, which would give more stability as we can control the platform on our dedicated server, but that doesn't really solve the issue of vDip not being developed and potentially stagnating over the long term...."


Good to know that vDip could be ported intact basically if Oli were to say that he no longer is able to support the site from this end. Although I would push back against the idea that vDip is stagnating really. While we're certainly not as dynamic as webdip with player base, I woudln't characterize us as stagnating, and a simple change of Oli returning, or a different Mod/Admin having Oli's access would alleviate the issue of changes to the site like new maps.


"It's the full-screen one with live-chat etc. Check out play.webdiplomacy.net"
"Yep it's an option, only available for classic, and the legacy UI will always be an option."

That is excellent news. I can't exactly pinpoint why, but I cannot stand the new UI. Maybe it's the change of colors, the tiny change of ordering a support (you click the unit you're supporting first, then the destination second, which is the opposite of the way vDip has it and I think how the legacy UI has it at webdip), the way the chat can be toggled on and off, the lack of colors for moves (red for move, yellow for support, green for support hold, blue for convoy). Each are small things, so I'm not sure what it is, but it just doesn't sit right with me. And from what it sounds like, a good number of webdip players don't particularly like it either?


"Yep it's actually a planned change to go back from sum of squares to PPSC."

Thumbs up for that change from me. Although I'm curious, what was wrong with the implementation of PPSC previously? I can't seem to find the forum posts that were referenced about how it was previously and how it will be in the future.


"Yep I get that; I'd mitigate that by having a sub-forum for vDip players only, and a player group for vDip players allowing vDip only games. We could migrate the message etc. It could evolve into some kind of .. invite only sub-community within webDip over time....."

I feel like if this did go through, having it change as little as possible to start would be a good way to go about it. Starting it off as basically a website hosting change where vDip as it is now is hosted on webdip while retaining it's current mod/admin team, user interface, forum, separate games, etc would be the way to go. Give the vDip community the choice on how to proceed and when to do that.

The hardest thing would probably be if an inundation of new players caused a severe increase in NMRs/CDs and abandoned positions that were detrimental to the games as a whole. Especially on bigger maps, that's already a big issue, and if we start seeing a major increase in it, it could make a lot of variants somewhat unplayable over time.

"Although I'm curious, what was wrong with the implementation of PPSC previously?"

From people with our perspective, nothing. However there is a lot of hate for PPSC in certain corners of webDip. I think that this thread houses the most recent discussion where this is debated (but the threads where this has been debated go back more than a decade if I recall correctly):
https://webdiplomacy.net/contrib/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4274

kestasjk: I'm curious what you mean by "solo counting". PPSC wins were always counted as wins in the statistics.

Don't forget that I think we lost a lot of the old forum threads when the new forum was made over on webdip.

But the Pro-PPSC faction over there at the time was smaller than the anti-PPSC faction for sure.

"what will happen to the Winning thread?? "
Indeed an important consideration. As with everything there are different options for the forum; if things did get merged I would expect we would take all forum messages and migrate them into our phpBB3 forum which has subforums, there would be a subforum for the vDip community and the Winning thread would end up in that subforum.

"While we're certainly not as dynamic as webdip with player base, I woudln't characterize us as stagnating"
That's definitely something I'm hearing that I probably overestimated as an issue; I saw the thread about reviving the forum and thought that indicated an overall decline, but I'm hearing that it's not really a concern here.

If vDip is healthy and developing I would be opposed to a merge: Historically vDip and webDip having their own appeal made the two more successful independently than the sum of their parts.

But sites that don't develop and are just maintained are always going to decline over the long term. It would be tragic if over a decade vDip goes the way of e.g. Stabberfou, DipJudge, nJudge, etc.

"That is excellent news. I can't exactly pinpoint why, but I cannot stand the new UI. [...] And from what it sounds like, a good number of webdip players don't particularly like it either?"
Yep definitely. Part of it is that it is newly developed; lots of feedback has been incorporated in already like the arrow colors etc. You should give it another go and see if you notice any improvement: https://play.webdiplomacy.net/
Part of it is just familiarity; people don't like different/new UIs, even if they're objectively better.
People were angry when we changed the map colors from this: https://webdiplomacy.net/doc/0.72-screenshot.png
But no the legacy map isn't going anywhere.

"I can't seem to find the forum posts that were referenced about how it was previously and how it will be in the future."
Some of was on the old dev forum at forum.webdiplomacy.net , where TheGhostMaker would claim to mathematically prove PPSC was inferior.. I think the main criticism of PPSC was that it rewarded 2nd place too much.

"The hardest thing would probably be if an inundation of new players caused a severe increase in NMRs/CDs and abandoned positions that were detrimental to the games as a whole."
Yep this is why I would be in favor of a vDip invite-only sub-community so the community doesn't get diluted. The point of a merge is to preserve and revitalize what makes vDip vDip, so just pooling the two user-bases and losing that wouldn't help anything.

"kestasjk: I'm curious what you mean by "solo counting". PPSC wins were always counted as wins in the statistics. "
I was just referring to what someone else said about solo counts, saying that it wouldn't be PPSC exactly as it was necessarily, more like what's here I think. I'm actually not familiar with exactly what is proposed for PPSC on webDip as the main focus right now is reducing the burden on the mod team.

The whole Oli leaving vDip is a huge point IMHO

goldfinger0303:
"Don't forget that I think we lost a lot of the old forum threads when the new forum was made over on webdip."

Kestas brought everything back! See here:
https://webdiplomacy.net/contrib/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=259159#p259159

kestasjk:
"I was just referring to what someone else said about solo counts, saying that it wouldn't be PPSC exactly as it was necessarily, more like what's here I think."


Well what's here is what used to be on webDip. I'm not aware of any changes. Are you just referring to how soloists are limited to nine seventeenths of the pot so that they don't try to prolong games? That was a good and helpful change.

Soloists should get the whole pot, why is this a discussion.

Um, then what do you count as PPSC? Draws are shared equally under PPSC, as they should be per the game rules.