on a proper forum thread.

For example... here ?

Bump
Or maybe advertise by PM to every active user?

I didn’t hear feedback:
Good idea? Bad idea?
I see a bunch of pros while I cannot see cons, except perhaps feasibility.

Major expected benefits:
- Just-in-time advertisement: time is a crucial factor for finding players to takeover. The more time elapses, the more the position loses appeal.
- Much more visibility of any new open position.


Minor expected benefits:
- Anonymous advertisement: anonymity preserved.
- Automatic advertisement: all games with CD events are given the same chance to find a substitute.

There should be a page ( i know this already exists, but better) where you can just see a list of open positions and click to join. This should be accessible in 1 click from the home page

This seems like a good idea, but I don't think it's worth the time it takes to put into place.

We already have an open games page, which people can go to whenever and take a look through games. I know most people do not, but even discounting that whenever a game has a CD it is extended, so people have time to find a replacement. There is always time for someone to post on the forum advertising manually. Also, anonymity is preserved anyway because of the anon-posting feature.

Plus, if you had a CD thread most of the time it would be full of game adverts with CD'd countries with 1 or 2 SCs being advertised. I think the fact that most games would not look particularly good would put people off looking through it regularly.

That said, it would bring the advantage of advertising for games in which none of the players can be bothered to advertise for a replacement. That's the only major advantage I can see to this though, so I'm not certain it's worth the effort Oli will have to put in.

@Synapse - I can guarantee making the open-games 1 click away from the homepage would not increase the number of games being taken over. If people can't be bothered making two clicks to get to it, they most likely won't be bothered making one either.

"Plus, if you had a CD thread most of the time it would be full of game adverts with CD'd countries with 1 or 2 SCs being advertised. I think the fact that most games would not look particularly good would put people off looking through it regularly."

Maybe this is the same reason why the existing "Open games" page is not popular?

Very possibly. Not sure how that would be solved though...

Consider that currently the Open games page consists of a 20-30 games list.
Every time I watch that page I have to scroll through the majority of games I did already consider unrecoverable (unworthy to take-over) the previous time.

A forum CD thread wouldn’t work this way: Open games are advertised once for each CD event through 1 appended message. If the position is not considered interesting by the potential substitute, the closed envelope disappears and it won’t be in the showcase anymore. Its visibility, together with its appeal, will shrink with time.

Consider also that manual advertisement can’t be fast as the automatic, because you cannot be always around at the moment of your opponent’s CD. The human arrives a few hours later in average.
Manual advertisement can also fail with anonymity with respect to the automatic one. This is of course a minor issue.