Porphyry wrote: ↑Wed May 16, 2018 12:24 amI am grateful to the mods for trying to improve the site, but I preferred the older arrangement regarding anonymous games. I see the case for more thorough anonymity in tournaments, but I never play in those. I use the site mostly for anonymous non-tournament games. As people have noted upthread, NMRs are a fact of life in online games. I would never email a moderator about that, and just accept it as something that means I may have to change my orders at the last minute. Indeed, it can sometimes add a touch a drama as the clock counts down, wondering if someone will submit orders and whether I should change mine or not.
People upthread have already mentioned other advantages of the old arrangement. Like them, I also like being able to see at a glance who had to retreat; being able to name and shame someone who is dallying putting in their orders; and being able to ask someone to press "Ready" in order to hasten along the next turn.
I get that not everyone feels the same way about managing NMRs and other preferences I have mentioned here. I am wondering though, rather than require people who preferred the old arrangement to always play in non-anon games, whether it would be possible to make anonymity a customizable feature. So someone could chose how anonymous they wanted the game to be when they set it up. That would accommodate the widest range of user preferences, perhaps especially if strict anonymity were enforced for tournaments.
I strongly dislike the argument that people like seeing a country about to CD so they can change their orders last second. This obviously directly punishes players not on at the deadline which is unfair as they’ve done nothing wrong. It directly makes the game less balanced. Being on the receiving end of “oh I changed my orders because I saw they were about to NMR” is the worst