Here is a brief explanation of the items in the table on top of the user info page. Some of these items are managed by Dragon, some can be changed on your user profile page.

• Name: User's real name, or similar. Free text, that can be changed at any time.
  
• Userid: Whatever Login-ID the user created. Not editable.
  
• Country: Country, the user chosen to live in. That information can also be shown to other players on the users page and on the waiting room page.
  
• Open for matches: A free text field a user can use to tell if available for playing.
  
• Activity: A users activity
  
• Rating: The current rating of the user linked to the rating graph. Managed by Dragon.
  
• Rank info: A free text field, where a user can give more info about his rank, e.g. 2d AGA or 4d EGF.
  
• Registration date: Date when the user has created the account.
  
• Last access: Date of the users last access viewing a page or making a move.
  
• Last quick access: Date of the users last access using the quick-suite most likely from a mobile device.
  
• Last move: Date when the user made the last move in one of the games
  
• Vacation days left: How many days the user has left for going on vacation.
  
• On vacation: This field is only showed, when the user is on vacation and is showing how long his vacation will last.
   
  
• Time zone: Time zone of the user
  
• User local time: The time local to the user
  
• Night time: user-setting for night or sleeping time
  
• Running games: Number of running games
  
• Finished games: Number of finished games (rated and unrated). A special link is added opening the finished games that ended in timeouts.
  
• Rated games: Number of finished rated games (= Won games + Lost games + Jigo)
  
• Won games: Number of won rated games
  
• Lost games: Number of lost rated games
  
• Percent: Percentage of "Won games" / "Rated games" giving winning-percentage on rated games. Also taking Jigo into account.
   
  
• MP-games: Number of own multi-player-games in setup-mode and playing-mode. The field name is linked to a list of your running MP-games.
  
• Reject win by timeout: User-profile setting, see: Can I reject a win of a game?
  

The fields showing numbers of games have links to the corresponding games list. Click on the field name.
 
Below the info table, the user can show an optional user-picture and biographical entries with information about himself or herself or other information that he or she wants to share.

Here is a brief explanation of the profile settings on the user profile page, that can be changed by the user.
 
There are the Personal settings to be shown on the user-info page and to influence some behavior of game-ending and bulletins:

• Fields shown on the user-info page: Name, Open for matches?, Country, Time zone, Night time, Reject Win by Timeout
  
• Language of site texts
  
• Bulletin Categories: Subcribe or unsubscribe from certain bulletin categories
  

The next section is about preferences for site Appearance:

• Table max rows: Sets the default number of rows for all table listings (users, game listings, etc). The default can be overridden on the respective pages by storing a search profile.
  
• Enable JavaScript: The site provide some convenience functions if JavaScript is enabled: marking rows in table listings, showing game-thumbnails on the and icons, auto-selection for bookmarks or viewing a move on the game-page
  
• Menu direction: The main-menu can be positioned on the left (vertically) or on the top (horizontally).
  
• ID button: The button-graphics used for some identifier-columns in the table-listings of some pages. You can also choose "No button".
  

The next section configures Board graphics:

• Stone size: The size of the stones on a game-board.
  
• Wood color: The color or textures of the game-board.
  
• Smooth board edge: Controls if the game-board has smooth edges.
  
• Move numbering: This includes a whole group of settings to number game-moves.
  

The last section contains settings for the Private game notes:

• Position: The position of the game-notes input-box on the game-page relative to the game-board (right or left of it). Enabling the Hidden flag defines the default state of the game notes for all games.
  
• Size: The text width and height of the game-notes input-box.
   
  
• The position and size can be configured differently for games of different board-size. The difference between Large and Small boards can be selected right to the "Large boards from" text.
  

The settings of the last three sections (Appearance, Board graphics, Private game notes) can be saved only for your current browser (using a browser-cookie). To do this enable the checkbox right above the "Change profile" submit-button.

To send a new password. (If requested.) Sending a new password to the email address stored in the user profile is an easy method to ensure user authentification.
 
Dragon can send you an email informing you about received messages and games, when it is your turn to move. These Email notifications can be activated in your user profile.
 
Dragon respects privacy: DGS does not send unwanted mails. Mail addresses are not visible to anyone, neither will they be sold to anyone.
 
Dragon allows users not to store their mail addresses. In this case please make sure not to forget the password!

You can revert most DGS pages to English by adding "?language=en" as an argument to the end of its URL.
This can be used:

• To display the edit page for your user profile in English.
  This page can be used to recover from an erroneous language selection.
  
• To verify whether the DGS translators have made an accurate translation of a page. For instance this link
  will take you to the DGS introduction in English.
  
• To temporarily select another language, but remember that you must also have the appropriate character set installed. This feature is more useful to DGS translators. For instance, adding “?language=de” to the end of a DGS URL displays that page in German.
  

Because editing your sleeping time three times a day would enable you to stop your game clocks. You can only edit it if you have not changed it recently.

Go to your user profile and change the Table max rows to control how many rows are shown in table lists per default for the waiting room, message search, users, opponents and games pages. It's located in the user profile section that can locally be set browser dependent. The number of rows is temporarily changeable on the mentioned pages with table lists.
 
Please Note:
The higher the number, the more load is put on the server. Therefore it's recommended to use a low number per default and only switch to a higher number on the according page.

The Email notification process starts when an event (a message, a move or both) of the type you have selected in your profile settings occurs.
If you have not visited the site before 30 minutes elapses, an email is sent to the address entered in your profile's Email field.
Only one email will be sent to notify you that messages or moves are waiting for you since your last visit. Events occurring after this email is sent but before re-visiting the site, will not trigger another email.
 
Note: If you use a program (e.g. robot) to scan some types of DGS pages, you may not receive the notifications you expect, because DGS will interpret each page call by the program as a visit to the site.
The pages that influence your "visit" status are those that adjust your "Last access" time (rule of thumb: typically, most of the pages where "Logged in as: userid" appears will affect the userid's account).
Naturally, this also applies to humans.

It indicates how often the player visited Dragon pages and how many moves the player submitted recently.
 
2 green stars : many moves (more than 70 per month)
1 orange star : some moves (5 - 70 per month)
0 stars : very few moves (less than 5 per month)

It is the player's win-loss-ratio on the rated finished games, which can provide some additional information about the players current rating. Also jigo is taken into account.
 
When a player has some finished rated games, a value of around 50 % indicates that it is probably an established rating. A value greater than 75 % indicates, that this rating is probably too low, while below 25 % means, that it is probably too high.

Players tend to learn by playing those who are stronger. In addition, by playing such players they have the opportunity to increase their ratings (in rated games). Conversely, stronger players are unlikely to learn from such games and they have the possibility of dropping their ratings (in rated games).
 
In view of the above, DGS recognizes those stronger players who help the community by playing those who are weaker. This recognition is known as 'Hero %' and is shown in the User info and user lists after 20 games have been finished.
 
The metric is calculated by dividing the number of games played against weaker players by the number of finished games.
 
A game against weaker players must match the following criteria to count for your Hero %:

• you must have a DGS rating at the start of the game
  
• at the start of the game your opponent must be weaker by at least 1kyu (>=100 Elo points) or your opponent has no rating.
  

Games may be rated or unrated.
 
Multi-player games are excluded.
 
If the hero-percentage is over 62% the user is also awarded with a golden badge (), over 50% with a silver badge () and over 38% with a bronze badge (). If a user has such a badge, the percentage is shown as well.
 
It is possible to filter the Waiting room list using Hero %. In the Waiting room the hero-badge is shown in the Userid column.
 
Alongside the Hero % in the User info is the number of games against weaker players needed to get to the the next level: gold , silver bronze . Hovering the cursor over the number will reveal a brief explanation. Keep in kind that this number is given 'other things being equal'. That is, if you have 10 games to go to the next level and you next play five stronger players the number is likely to change. It is a snapshot of the position at the time of looking.

In your user profile page you can use the Move numbering option to accomplish that goal.
 
Some notes around this feature:

• It can make it easier for you to visualize how the game developed recently and to see what your strategy might have been. This goal can also be achieved using private game notes.
  
• It could help to avoid silly mistakes during ko fights.
  
• Numbers might make the display too confusing, so it's possible to deactivate this feature.
  
• Numbers for moves on DGS always start with "1". The placing of handicap stones is also numbered.
  

With an activated option, the last "N" moves are marked with their corresponding move number. However, the last move is always marked with a circle, with or without using the option.
 
You can deactivate the option in your user profile by specifying "0" moves in the input element to the right of the option.
 
To activate choose the number of last moves "N" you want to see with a move number. Additionally, you can activate the checkbox "Don't use numbers above 100": then move numbers greater than 100 are truncated to the two rightmost digits (move number modulo 100).
 
The checkbox "Show numbers only on Hover" controls if the move numbering is replaced with a hover text giving the move number when you move the mouse cursor over a stone. This hovering option is most useful for users with really small screens (e.g. handheld devices like Palm, etc.) for which stone sizes of 5 or 7 have been chosen: at this size, the numbers on the stones are very hard to read, and more, they make all the stones gray :(
 
The checkbox "Relative numbering" controls if the shown move-numbers always start with "1".
 
The checkbox "Reverse numbering" controls if the move-numbers are shown in reverse order.
 
Examples for move-numbering options with "N = 3" for move numbering. Assume you have a game with 51 moves played so far and you view the black move #40 of that game, then the numbers on the stones are ...

• with Relative OFF, Reverse OFF => 37, 38, 39, (move #40) - this is a good choice if you want to print the game and use move-numbering
  
• with Relative OFF, Reverse ON => 14, 13, 12, (move #40)
  
• with Relative ON, Reverse OFF => 1, 2, 3, (move #40) - this seems to be the most intuitive choice
  
• with Relative ON, Reverse ON => 3, 2, 1, (move #40)
  

The checkbox "Mark Last Move Capture" if enabled additionally marks the empty board points with a cross-icon () if the last move captured some stones. The coordinates of the captured stones of the last move are also shown to the left of the board in a table with title "Last Move Capture".
This option may be of help to remind you of an ongoing ko-fight, but still it is probably easier and more reliable to use the private game notes to make yourself aware of an ongoing ko (because a ko can be non-immediate not necessarily happening just on the last move).

Accounts cannot be deleted. There are lots of reasons for this.
 
If someone has played ranked games it would involve deleting the records of every game that other DGS members had against that player. Their ranks would then have to be adjusted accordingly, as would the ranks of anyone they had played subsequent to playing the deleted account player.
 
If that person had made entries in the Forum every entry by that person would have to be deleted, then someone would have to adjust all related posts for
 
User profiles are not removed (for the same kinds of reasons). They become marked as inactive, and disappear from the normal user list, but they are still there and can be displayed in the full user list.