#17208: "Better Privacy: Hide Game History, Online Status, and only Mutual Friends"
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| # | Status | Votes | Game | Type | Title | Last update |
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Detailed description
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• Please copy/paste the error message you see on your screen, if applicable.
Please make a feature to hide game history to others. Also please make a feature to hide online status to appear as offline. Also please make friend invites, do not allow someone to be a one-sided friend.
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• Please explain what you wanted to do, what you did and what happened
• Which browser are you using?
Chrome
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• Please copy/paste the text displayed in English instead of your language. If you have a screenshot of this bug (good practice), you can use Imgur.com to upload it and copy/paste the link here.
Please make a feature to hide game history to others. Also please make a feature to hide online status to appear as offline. Also please make friend invites, do not allow someone to be a one-sided friend.
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• Is this text available in the translation system? If yes, has it been translated for more than 24 hours?
• Which browser are you using?
Chrome
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• Please explain your suggestion precisely and concisely so that it's as easy as possible to understand what you mean.
Please make a feature to hide game history to others. Also please make a feature to hide online status to appear as offline. Also please make friend invites, do not allow someone to be a one-sided friend.
• Which browser are you using?
Chrome
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• What was displayed on the screen when you were blocked (Blank screen? Part of the game interface? Error message?)
Please make a feature to hide game history to others. Also please make a feature to hide online status to appear as offline. Also please make friend invites, do not allow someone to be a one-sided friend.
• Which browser are you using?
Chrome
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• Which part of the rules was not followed by the BGA adaptation?
Please make a feature to hide game history to others. Also please make a feature to hide online status to appear as offline. Also please make friend invites, do not allow someone to be a one-sided friend.
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• Is the rules violation visible on game replay? If yes, at which move number?
• Which browser are you using?
Chrome
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• What was the game action you wanted to do?
Please make a feature to hide game history to others. Also please make a feature to hide online status to appear as offline. Also please make friend invites, do not allow someone to be a one-sided friend.
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• What did you try to do to trigger this game action?
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• What happened when you tried to do this (error message, game status bar message, ...)?
• Which browser are you using?
Chrome
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• At which step of the game did the problem occur? What was the current game instruction?
Please make a feature to hide game history to others. Also please make a feature to hide online status to appear as offline. Also please make friend invites, do not allow someone to be a one-sided friend.
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• What happened when you tried to do this game action (error message, game status bar message, ...)?
• Which browser are you using?
Chrome
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• Please describe the display issue. If you have a screenshot of this bug (good practice), you can use Imgur.com to upload it and copy/paste the link here.
Please make a feature to hide game history to others. Also please make a feature to hide online status to appear as offline. Also please make friend invites, do not allow someone to be a one-sided friend.
• Which browser are you using?
Chrome
-
• Please copy/paste the text displayed in English instead of your language. If you have a screenshot of this bug (good practice), you can use Imgur.com to upload it and copy/paste the link here.
Please make a feature to hide game history to others. Also please make a feature to hide online status to appear as offline. Also please make friend invites, do not allow someone to be a one-sided friend.
-
• Is this text available in the translation system? If yes, has it been translated for more than 24 hours?
• Which browser are you using?
Chrome
-
• Please explain your suggestion precisely and concisely so that it's as easy as possible to understand what you mean.
Please make a feature to hide game history to others. Also please make a feature to hide online status to appear as offline. Also please make friend invites, do not allow someone to be a one-sided friend.
• Which browser are you using?
Chrome
Report history
This is also one of the key ways for middle ranked players to advance. You study the games of the masters.
Online status, friends: nobody cares. If game history goes, I'll probably quit this place.
The replay system is excellent for learning from better players and losing this feature would be a big loss to the site.
Mutual friends only was implemented long before 2025-05-27 (earliest comment currently visible). See boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23290
Hiding online status has other single-topic bug reports, including boardgamearena.com/bug?id=81191. I suggest using that report for online status setting and/or visibility.
Hiding completed games seems of limited use. Completed games do give some past timing history, but they don't allow direct interaction with the players, which appears to be the overall focus of this request. Hiding completed games makes a lot of useful information including game play & strategy learning opportunities, game popularity, and examples for recognizing patterns, diagnosing problems, & supporting bug reports.
Not asked for in this request, but IMO more useful in preventing harassment, would be allowing an individual to hide their list of current active games and/or open tables.
-- Letting people hide their playertables page (boardgamearena.com/playertables?player=[ID]) might be useful, but (especially with the reputation history missing) also means a current or prospective opponent can't gauge whether their opponent is playing more games than they can keep up, or hasn't made any moves at all in an extended period. Being able to look at someone's current tables is also useful when someone has a question about an active game, be it game play, UI, metagame, or bugs.
-- Letting people hide all their open tables seems counter-productive for game matching. Making friends-only or group-only tables visible only to people who can join them would be reasonable, IMO. But there are currently bugs with group tables not always respecting that requirement (possibly related to other issues respecting game options & restrictions), and there are requests (ex: boardgamearena.com/bug?id=23285) for better finding group-restricted games that might combine well with limiting visibility of restricted tables.
Cordialement
I think the simple ask of privacy makes for a very complex solution especially in a space that is looking to be open and connect players. Personally I like the openness of data because I've thought about making a bot that can notify me on other platforms like discord when I have an available move (I'm just not that big at e-mails especially how much spam I get) and the openness of data would allow for others to discover and utilize that bot without having to go through more steps, like friending the bot.
On the other hand I haven't experienced harassment or felt attacked in anyway on BGA, perhaps because I mostly place exclusively with friends. But just wanted to state a form of opposition that others might not have considered.
- you may not be able to watch replays of some top-ranked players for a given game
- you may have issues reporting a bug, if you have that option on
So, it is not only about not being interested into using that feature yourself, it also has some consequences. Having information when exactly the game took place helps other to recognize what replay the have already watched, or may help to find a specific game. Why would you even want to hide it in a first place? Because you feel ashamed about yourself how long you stayed last night? Or you promised someone else you will do something, but eventually you spend that time on BGA? Well, conduct yourself better, then you won't have to hide anything ;)
Better privacy for your status (online/offline), friends, etc. its fine. But game history should remain public.
@KSpooky This is not about how people conduct themselves but a basic privacy concern.
The game history definitely should be hidden and not accessible by players who did not participate at that table.
Example 1: When first starting to play Catan C&K the trades between the two other players at the table were strange. They didn't once trade with me and then one party would immediately offer like 4 cards and only receive 1 in return. A quick check of their game history and sure enough those two players always seem to play at 3 player tables and always together so were clearly colluding. (and no the same IP address alert didn't appear at the start). It didn't really help since they continued to do it but I reported them at the end for king making.
Example 2: Recently about 5 mins into a game of Catan C&K one player loses their city immediately and asks to abandon the game claiming they didn't realise they were playing C&K and didn't know how to play that version and was only familiar with he base version. A quick check of their game history showed that the player was clearly lying as within the last week they had played C&K multiple times (even winning one). Needless to say the request to abandon was rejected.
game history has to stay, but if privacy settings are relevant one could hide, when games are played/game durations if people want that.
Leave it be, it works well enough.
Like many mentioned already, having a massive database of the highest level play of all games is incredible, it would be a HUGE loss if that was removed. Anytime I wanna get into a new game I watch replays of the top players to learn. Removing that sounds like a complete non-starter.
Of course giving players the option to hide the specific time of playing (or other personal statistics that dont involve making the replays unavailable) is totally fine though.
Thank you
Add to this report
- Another table ID / move ID
- Did F5 solve the problem?
- Did the problem appear several times? Every time? Randomly?
- If you have a screenshot of this bug (good practice), you can use Imgur.com to upload it and copy/paste the link here.
