Interview with jmo from webDiplomacy

Aug 3, 2019

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Episode notes

The guys interview jmo from webDip about all the great recent - and future - developments over there and how it relates to vDip. Chat also about Minecraft Diplomacy, playing Diplomacy in the navy and much more.

Intro

Show introduction and discussion about Kaner and Amby’s drinks (0 mins 5 secs)
They are getting together before their first face to face game of Diplomacy in Brisbane. Amby suggests if trying to grow the game locally, perhaps reaching out to university board game clubs to facilitate a game (2 mins 40 secs)
Kaner talks about his father’s Diplomacy experience in the Australian navy (4 mins 20 secs)
The guys introduce their interview with jmo1121109 from webDip (7 mins 20 secs)

Interview with jmo from webDip

The guys welcome jmo from webDip to the show and asks about his role there (8 mins 5 secs)
Jmo talks about some of the recent changes at webDip and why these were made. He also discusses how the webDip code improvements can then be used by other sites like vDip, the Russian site etc (9 mins 20 secs)
Amby asks about the new forum functionality at webDip (12 mins 30 secs)
Kaner asks what else has been happening over at webDip. Jmo acknowledges the great coding work being done by squiggs44 to help (16 mins 50 secs)
Amby gives his thumbs up to the new rating systems for active players (18 mins 40 secs)
Amby asks about other work at webDip. Jmo talks about tobi’s reliability/excused ratings and bringing that to webDip and then discusses the new tournament functionality now at webDip (21 mins 30 secs)
Kaner explains the noise in the background, Amby flags with jmo whether the tournament functionality allows for a particular country allocation process (32 mins)
Amby asks about the webDip Discord community and how its used. (34 mins)
Amby asks jmo if people wanted to help webDip, what skill sets are needed right now. Jmo talks about the role of mentors and people with a technical interest. He touches in the positive impact doing technical work at webDip to help professionally when growing your career (39 mins)
Amby asks about how the process works currently at webDip and what’s proposed in the future for supporting mentoring (45 mins 20 secs)
Jmo talks about webDip’s School of War (48 mins)
Kaner discusses how vDip incentivize people with little icons next to their names. Jmo likes what’s suggested and says he’s going to steal it (49 mins)
Amby asks Jmo to give a quick overview about what ghost ratings are and what Squiggs44’ is doing to bring ghost ratings to webDip (50 mins 30 secs)
Jmo discusses other future work planned on webDip like “dark mode”, how to see more live games, extended phase changes and bringing over vDip’s point and click interactive orders. He then mentions his final big change: a sandbox mode (54 mins 45 secs)
Amby asks about what communication is happening across the different Diplomacy site admins (59 mins 45 secs)
Amby asks Jmo how can we grow the hobby more (1 hr 2 mins 30 secs)
Jmo is asked about whether he gets to play much (1 hr 4 mins 30 secs)
Kaner asks what the numbers after jmo’s handle mean (1 hr 6 min 30 secs)
Jmo finishes up with a longer term project to improve the way misturn delays are handled (1 hr 7 mins 15 secs)

The guys return from the interview

Kaner and Amby talk about a post-interview discussion about possible future developments at webDip (1 hr 8 mins)
They discuss their thoughts about the interview itself (1 hr 9 mins)

Diplomacy Minecraft

They move onto a forum post at webDip about playing Diplomacy on Minecraft (1 hr 9 mins 30 secs)
The way the discussions are planned for the Minecraft game (using Discord), Amby feels doesn’t resemble the nature of real Diplomacy which could be achieved inside the Minecraft interface (1 hr 12 mins 30 secs)