Board Game Arena

+1 agreed, good you raised this quiestion

+1 agreed

Caninski_Jen wrote: ↑28 April 2020, 14:35

polettix wrote: ↑28 April 2020, 13:34 As I was saying in my previous post, I think that the most straightforward "fix" at this point would be to change the label from "private" to something less misleading.

for now yes .. but the question you should be asking is , why in the first place exist a "private" group here on BGA. So BGA gave the people the chance for creating private groups, but in reality those private groups are more closed group instead of private..

I read "private" not necessarily in connection to "privacy". In particular, in many contexts private means that is not owned and/or managed by public entities, as in private property. This is not necessarily associated with confidentiality, e.g. a "private collection or piece of art" might be put on public display while still remaining property of a private citizen.

In this case, it was an unfortunate choice of an adjective in English, probabily because Devs (as I understand) are French mother tongue, where the term privé has many meanings.

Here in BGA, I use transparent closed groups to restrict tables to a few people (wife, nephews) and me, so that we can enjoy some play at the same "table" on the phone. Hence I think that they have indeed a great use case to exist as they are, even more so in these days of lock-down.

I don't think that it is language issue, to be honest. If it was, private group wall would be visible to all - and it is not, only the action of commenting a post on it is. So it looks like a bug to me, something not thought of when writing the code.

I'd appreciate if it was fixed. Voted for all reports mentioned.

J-M wrote: ↑28 April 2020, 23:53 https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=8264
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=5791
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=8317

Re using it as a restriction for tables only: if this bug was fixed (making private groups really private), these groups can still be used in the same way.

polettix wrote: ↑30 April 2020, 15:46

Caninski_Jen wrote: ↑28 April 2020, 14:35

polettix wrote: ↑28 April 2020, 13:34 As I was saying in my previous post, I think that the most straightforward "fix" at this point would be to change the label from "private" to something less misleading.

for now yes .. but the question you should be asking is , why in the first place exist a "private" group here on BGA. So BGA gave the people the chance for creating private groups, but in reality those private groups are more closed group instead of private..

I read "private" not necessarily in connection to "privacy". In particular, in many contexts private means that is not owned and/or managed by public entities, as in private property. This is not necessarily associated with confidentiality, e.g. a "private collection or piece of art" might be put on public display while still remaining property of a private citizen.

In this case, it was an unfortunate choice of an adjective in English, probabily because Devs (as I understand) are French mother tongue, where the term privé has many meanings.

Here in BGA, I use transparent closed groups to restrict tables to a few people (wife, nephews) and me, so that we can enjoy some play at the same "table" on the phone. Hence I think that they have indeed a great use case to exist as they are, even more so in these days of lock-down.

I don't think to be honest that it has to do with "mother" language, so far as I know BGA exist for quiet long time .. And I am pretty sure if that was the case , someone should have mentioned it long time ago

Caninski_Jen wrote: ↑30 April 2020, 20:06 I don't think to be honest that it has to do with "mother" language, so far as I know BGA exist for quiet long time .. And I am pretty sure if that was the case , someone should have mentioned it long time ago

(Answering out of curiosity, I'll stop here unless someone makes a direct question) If I understand what you mean, this would mean that the privacy behaviour was different some time ago, and it changed at some time. Is this the case?

polettix wrote: ↑01 May 2020, 05:08 (Answering out of curiosity, I'll stop here unless someone makes a direct question) If I understand what you mean, this would mean that the privacy behaviour was different some time ago, and it changed at some time. Is this the case?

I can't remember a time in which it wasn't this way. This like many other things on this site are just things that haven't been fixed or made more practical because other things took priority.
Also, many games on here don't have a developer anymore.

polettix wrote: ↑01 May 2020, 05:08

Caninski_Jen wrote: ↑30 April 2020, 20:06 I don't think to be honest that it has to do with "mother" language, so far as I know BGA exist for quiet long time .. And I am pretty sure if that was the case , someone should have mentioned it long time ago

(Answering out of curiosity, I'll stop here unless someone makes a direct question) If I understand what you mean, this would mean that the privacy behaviour was different some time ago, and it changed at some time. Is this the case?

Not sure what you mean about Privacy behaviour,

for your question the answer is very short:
The declaration of group privacy:
Group admins can choose to make their groups public or private. Public: anyone can see who's in the group and what they post. Private: only members can see who's in the group and what they post.

it has nothing to do with "poor word choosing", it has to do with the fact that BGA gave 2 options: a public group and a private group

but the currency of the private group is more a closed group instead of a private group

again, if it was about "translations" it should have been mentioned it ages ago, so I hardly have my doubts about this

N_Faker wrote: ↑01 May 2020, 05:30

polettix wrote: ↑01 May 2020, 05:08 (Answering out of curiosity, I'll stop here unless someone makes a direct question) If I understand what you mean, this would mean that the privacy behaviour was different some time ago, and it changed at some time. Is this the case?

I can't remember a time in which it wasn't this way. This like many other things on this site are just things that haven't been fixed or made more practical because other things took priority.

hmm again, they have changed the whole layout of the website, so I don't think that it had anything to do with the language. But for sure they took other things priority

Caninski_Jen wrote: ↑01 May 2020, 06:04 The declaration of group privacy:
Group admins can choose to make their groups public or private. Public: anyone can see who's in the group and what they post. Private: only members can see who's in the group and what they post.

I was not aware that the group functions were stated this way. If so, then from that alone, yes I would agree that it is not a translation issue. However, I did not find such a declaration or description (please direct me to it if you can!), but don't worry - I still get to the same place. When I checked the group options, here is what I found, with some added doodling:


Regarding visibility of groups and their activities, I only see an option to hide the group itself - which I take to mean the group won't show up in lists of groups. I don't see anything specifying the visibility of a group's membership or activities, such as member posts. Was there previously another setting specific to visibility of posts? I'm sure that is going to feel like playing semantics, and it is basically a moot point anyway. So while I have to disagree that it actually specifies that "only members can see … what they post" as you said, I completely agree with the intent of what you are saying because it is impractical/illogical to hide only the listing of a group or its membership while publicizing their posts.

I agree that having this "Who can see this group?" option in the settings makes it clear that the problem is not a language issue (as I myself suggested earlier) and shows that the intention was for what most people commenting here expected with the term 'private'. This of course means that it is not working as intended and is therefore a bug (or series of bugs).
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=8264

It can of course still be temporarily fixed by changing the wording/labeling of the settings to match what they actually do (effectively removing the sense of privacy for now), rather than fixing the effects of the settings, since that would probably be a much bigger project.

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On a semi-related and perhaps kooky side thought, this made me wonder about 'modular' privacy and publicity settings for groups, just a stray train of thought...
So, I figure the basic components of a group's visibility flow from general to specific.
First, there is the question of whether [the existence of] the group is visible at all to non-mod/admin nonmembers. If not, then a nonmember should not be able to see anything related to the group, even when doing specific searches.
Whether the group's membership is publicly visible is of course at the next level, pretty straightforward. However the visibility of the group's activities does not need to be a subset of publicly visible membership. Activities could be listed simply without specifying the involved members; a game could be shown anonymized as being played by 'Player 1', 'Player 2', etc. And different activities, such as showing what was played vs. what was posted, could have separate privacy/publicity options.

For an off-the-cuff example, imagine a group where anyone could see that the group existed and could see posts and other activities, but the group's membership was private so a nonmember would not know who was doing or posting anything. A silly but understandable parallel would be comic book superheroes doing whatever they do without revealing who they are in everyday life. There's an obvious risk of abuse in the particular example (much like comic book villains and their disguises), so of course mods and admins would need access, but that can happen with any degree of privacy. Such a group might do things like offer a bunch of training tables for games that are hard to find opportunities to learn. More generally, I imagine such modularity in the settings would create opportunities for interesting game-related uses. Another example could be a league of players that likes to anonymously play games with various goals in mind, such as a BGA version of a flash mob (nonmembers only see their activities, not their planning posts or who they were or anything else, and it's only fun when they do it for the good of others). I realize the details would need to be worked out and there are certainly bigger priorities right now, but it's a fun thought...