![]() StartingPoints Referenced by
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Meta Discussion
Keywords: SL description
What do you like / don't like about Sensei's Library?Write down your thoughts below. Related pages:
Arno: it seems like playing games on SL becomes popular. How do other deshis feel about this? (We don't want to point fingers at the guy who started it all). Personally I don't care too much, but if the trend continues we will have to find a solution for RecentChanges, because reading changes about 20 different game pages is not entertaining. Dieter: You're right and the one I started last was accidentally. I thought ChessWhiz wanted to play on a server but once the game was created on SL I didn't object. I suggest that people playing games check the FullRecentChanges instead. I thought OngoingGame was a good idea, because it was a communioty game. Private games are not of real interest to the community. But then again, Arno, I have to admire your Wiki attitude with which you watch your baby grow. ChessWhiz: Well, I enjoy watching the TeachingGames in SL, but I can see how they clutter up the RecentChanges page. Maybe there could be another page, maybe called RecentGameChanges?, that contained only game page updates. The "Edit Page" link would then have a checkbox that put the update in RecentGameChanges? instead of RecentChanges. It would be pretty similar to the current MinorEdit checkbox. Sounds like a lot of work for Arno, but it could be worth it, enabling more games on SL without cluttering up the RecentChanges. Any other ideas? Rmsp: I'll be the voice of the faceless masses (?) who lurk here learning without yet having much to share. I LOVE the teaching games; it's hard to find games so thoughtfully and thoroughly commented, and they're a great source of links into the rest of the library. I second the suggestions of ChessWhiz regarding RecentChanges. A separate page would be great, and wouldn't be "too" much of a hack organizationally :-) DaveSigaty: Arno, how hard would it be to add a Page Type = game and base the separate treatement on that? BenShoemaker: I would like to voice my support for the teaching games as well. I think they are a valuable format for capturing game-focused advice, as well as being illustrative of people's thought patterns throughout a game. Perhaps some thought could be put into a "Teaching Game" area, which would focus on ease of commenting and ease of reading. (for ease of gameplay we have go servers!) Not cluttering up RecentChanges is a great idea. Arno: I have thought about the game PageType as well. I think I will will give it a shot over the weekend. The real problem (technical wise) is of course, that SL was never really meant to handle games, which have untypical characteristics (such as >300 versions per page, etc.) Let's see how it turns out ... ChessWhiz: Great job, Arno! The new RecentChangesGames page is wonderful. Excellent work! Terrific! :-) 15 May 2002 dnerra: I am probably mostly asking this because I am just learning html a bit myself :-) It seems to me that the rendering in browsers would go much smoother if the diagrams had their sizes written in the html code? I.e. one could add 'width="437" height="437"' in the IMG element for a fullboard diagram? I'd assume that e.g. in the many Ongoing games, this would make a noticable difference. Arno: well, it's not as easy as that. Not every diagram on SL has a width of 437 :o) But I agree, specifying width & height is best practice. I guess we need some modification to the GoWiki engine, because currently it doesn't store the size of the generated image in the database. I'll put it on my todo list. dnerra: Wow, that is an ingenious insight :-) As said in HumourAlmostProverbs: Don't overlook the rest of the board (when deeply analyzing a local fight in a small SL diagram...)! Anyway, if it is a hassle for you, you probably shouldn't bother -- it would be a little more convenient, nothing more. 19 March, 2002
Gorobei: As some RecentChangesJunkies may have noticed, I'm trying to write a Go Program. Initially, (i.e. last night,) I made an external link to my current code, but now I'm finding that it is already out of date with respect to my SL notes. I'd like to keep a page in SL with my code so that my notes and code can be compared easily without cluttering up text pages with big blobs of code, (SL's versioning system works well here,) but at the same time I don't want to turn SL into a CVS respository. So, my question is: is a page like this acceptable for SL, or should I move it to Arno: I don't know what others think, but it is acceptable for me (actually nothing comparable has been tried on the web before, so we could see where this leads to). Maybe I could provide special markup, so that it's easier to insert code (without the need to indent it or creating unwanted [links] with square brackets. (Something like %%RAWTEXT-MODE-START%% and %%RAWTEXT-MODE-END%%). Gorobei: %%RAWTEXT-MODE*%% would be nice, tho it only costs me sixteen keystrokes to indent a block of text one character. Spurious links are a sign my coding style has gone awry. That is of course, assuming that you don't take over RecentChanges with your updates. I.e. if too many of your changes start cluttering RecentChanges, then I'd suggest that you use MinorEdit on most changes and "publish" the crucial ones only. People following your progress could still use FullRecentChanges. Maybe you should create a GorobeiChangeLog?? (wandering off: hmmm, personal RecentChanges for people that change many pages .... And only that main page linked from RecentChanges .... good idea? I'm not aware that any other wiki has something like this. Interesting, I think.) --Stefan: You could make it switchable, e.g. let people choose through UserPreferences whether they want to publish to their personal or to the master RecentChanges. May add a layer of complexity to the library though, which I understand is a concern for you guys. And as someone in between the admin and the casual visitor: I don't see any issues with Gorobei's idea either. Arno: I was thinking about having an extra box on the edit page where one could add to which page the RecentChanges entry should be logged. As we now have the distinction between casual visitors and deshis I think this would be a deshi feature only. Dieter: go ahead with your page and make sure you don't overload or monopolize RecentChanges. I don't think that even deshis should get too many additional features. Besides, I never really liked the idea of multiple levels of access. Deshis become casual visitors and casual visitors become deshis. The only ones who never change - I dearly hope - are the administrators. Arno: I share your concern about different classes, but for me the idea of this 4 level access is simple:
So e.g. allowing saving a RecentChanges entry to another file than RecentChanges is a feature that could confuse the casual visitors, but deshis have access to it. Note that from the access right perspective there are only three levels, as anyone can switch from visitor to deshi and back again. For me the difference between deshi and visitor is actually a GUI issue. Gorobei: Thanks. I shall do minor edits unless I have anything significant to say or ask. 12 March 2002
I'm still a newbie here, so it's with some trepidation that I make the following suggestion. Does anyone else think we might could use a snazzier banner, for use on the GTL and Goproblems? I like the stone drawing, but the simple red lines looks kinda drab. I've put some modest suggestions up at January 4, 2002 Do we need a spoiler policy here? I for one would be happier if spoilers for a certain popular Manga were restricted to the pages discussing it. --Matthew Woodcraft 2 January 2002: Scartol: I'd just like to take this opportunity to say that this is one of the best websites I've ever visited in 6 years of surfing the net. The anarchic format not only makes it easy and profitable for users to contribute, but makes navigation much easier (a la the axiom of: the best way to learn something is to teach it). I have scanned all over the web, looking for intriguing and helpful text about how to sharpen my neophyte Go skills. No wonder I couldn't find it -- it's all here. Kudos to all. December 26, 2001 Dieter: I have turned the FrontPageDraft into the FrontPage. There were no comments on the draft for 10 days, so .... The main purpose was to present the essentials in an essential way, remaining close to the former frontpage. A.o. I removed the hot topics for no one takes the effort to keep track of them: that's only logical since we RecentChangesJunkies ourselves use RecentChanges. December 26, 2001 DaveSigaty: We are rapidly approaching the 1-year anniversery of SL going public. I think this is a nice opportunity to:
Various points have been raised. Most recently in the December 17th discussion just below on this page but also elsewhere thoughtout SL at various times during the last year. It might be good to try to consciously try to pull the ideas together. What do you think? And BTW, thanks very much to Arno and Morten for a great idea that has been one of the big events of 2001 for me. Looking forward to 2002 with no end in sight! :-) Dave December 17, 2001 Dieter: Yesterday the Belgian Federation held its annual meeting. Several people seemed to know of the existence of this site and named it in one breath with rgg, namely when the links on our federation's website were discussed. Those people were vaguely aware that I am a regular contributor but that didn't seem to be the motor behind their visiting this site (which is good). Now the general comment was that it contains a vast supply of interesting information but that it is very hard to get to it. That has to do with the entry pages. We have had this discussion before and I know I'm free to alter those pages, but I'm reluctant to do so as long as I don't feel there is a consenus about what they should look like. Moreover, my suggestion to include the ReferenceSection in the threefold RecentChanges-StartingPoints-About remained without follow-up. Frankly, I think 90% of our visitors couldn't care less what this is all about but just want to know what thickness is. In my opinion, the entry points such as StartingPoints still contain too much "wiki"-related stuff, compared to "go"-related stuff. I have no idea about the ratio viewers/contributors but most likely the latter are a minority. It is however this minority which is most served with "wiki"-related stuff (how to actively use) whereas the viewers should naturally glide towards the page they are looking for. Some opinions on this please, before I make changes that upset the rest of the librarians. HolIgor: I agree that looking for interesting and useful information in SL is not an easy thing. At the same time I don't see any way to improve on it. Basically, the Library has all necessary look-up mechanisms, it is difficult to improve on that. Moreover, visitor's level and therefore his interests could be quite different. The library's content is good in tsume-go part. The pages about the L-group and notchers are excellent. There is a lot of material on connections but it suffers, in my opinion, from the obvious lack of the opponent's stones. Too little about shape, some joseki pages are good but the topic is too vast and hardly 5% covered, so much more is needed. Much more is needed about tesuji, fuseki, yose. All that will be contributed with time, we need a lot more people sharing their grains of wisdom. The library has little to offer to the dan level players, it won't teach beginners to win games, it could be useful for single digit players, but mainly it is useful to the contributors. TakeNGive: One thing that might help is to give the FindPage searching tool more prominence/advertising on the main entry pages. But if Dieter wants to reorganize things so the Go material stands out more and is more "user-friendly", then that's fine with me. I would just ask that each page, probably somewhere near the bottom and maybe in the column on the left, have obvious links to information on how to start participating (for those motivated to read it). ArnoHollosi: I agree that we (as regular visitors) find our way around SL. Casual visitors on the other hand might find it harder. I think that we can find a way to accomodate both sides. I don't mind if someone changes StartingPoints, FrontPage, or any of the similar pages. If you guys think it's beneficial then I will add the ReferenceSection to the prominent links on the left-hand side. I could remove the About link there as well. Btw, it's easy to add those search-boxes found on FindPage to other pages as well. I've added one to the ReferenceSection (Fulltext goes like %Fullsearch%). Maybe we should add it to FrontPage as well? Basically, I'm confident that any change you guys make is ok. Otherwise, I'm free to hit EditPage? myself, no? ;o) unkx80: I think it's a good idea to put the search box in FrontPage. :-) Dieter tries it out at FrontPageDraft. I won't use draft pages normally but simply alter the existing page. For the front page I make an exception. November 3, 2001 I want to complain about the recent massive revision of the pages relating to scoring and counting. My complaint is not about the new material, but about the deletion of the old. Just because you think that what other people have done is not correct is not sufficient reason to go about deleting it. Make your own page or pages, and link to them if you do not want to discuss your disagreement on the current page, but don't delete the existing material. I wanted to make some links to the ButtonGo page. The relevant text on those pages has been replaced by other than the original authors, so that the links are now meaningless. Other potential links are difficult to find. ArnoHollosi: Which pages are you talking about Bill? I remember two major changes: one done by Robert Jasiek, and one by MtnViewMark. But pages as such are not deleted, so they should still exist. If you feel that the pages no longer contain something which you consider important than I think we can find a way to restore the stuff. If you click on the title of a page you can have a look at the previous versions of the page. Let me know what is missing. Refactoring or MasterEditing as it is called in wiki slang is a process which is quite normal. However, refactoring should take all relevant opinions pro&contra into account. This wiki is relatively young, so let's attribute the change to a misunderstanding and not to malice. Overall I think MtnViewMark did a good job, but I haven't followed the scoring pages to closely. Let's try to find a way to integrate what is missing without destroying the current pages. Dear Arno,
I do not think that there was any malice by anyone, nor do I think that the contributions of Robert and Mark are anything but good. The distinction between scoring and counting was not drawn in the original pages, and it is a useful distinction. OTOH, there is a history of referring to scoring methods as counting methods, with some justice. You count different things. --Bill Actually, the distinction between scoring and counting was indeed made before I edited the pages. In fact, several pages had been renamed prior to my edits to enforce that distinction. Taking those as cues, I felt it was a good distinction to make. After ready many sources on rules, almost all souces talk of two kinds of Scoring, Territory and Area. Then rule sets are discussed as using one or the other scoring system. Hence, it didn't seem to make sense to talk of "Japanese Scoring", but rather that "Japanese Rules" use "Territory Scoring". As for "Korean Scoring", from what I could tell, the entire discussion on that page refered only to scoring in SunjangBaduk and so was moved to SunjangBadukCounting. I don't believe that any information was deleted at all with one exception: Robert Jasiek's original, "math formula" style descriptions of Japanese and Chinese counting methods (not scoring) was replaced with a longer, more wordy version. My goal was to enable non-mathematical, non-technical types to learn and understand how these mechanical counting methods are done. There is a page, TerritoryAndAreaScoring, which has the information you propose to be split. It well could be. However, there was deep discussion that I didn't feel was ready to be condensed. Splitting the page would require a WikiMasterEdit, which I hope someone will do. I believe that there is a need for information of both practical and technical nature when it comes to rules, scoring, and counting. I tried to factor the information so that the practical could be found easily, leading then to the detailed techincal information. I also realized that people often use these terms loosly so it is hard to know when a person comes looking for "counting" what they're really after. Hence, I put explanitory text at the top of each page with lots of links. Lastly, as I noted in my announcement when I did it, yes, I knew that many links would need adjustment throughout the library. I'm sorry if you and Robert Jasiek didn't like my edits. I welcome continued evolution of the library. Hi MtnViewMark, I personally think that you have done a good job in reorganizing the counting pages, and I have no complaints about that. After all, performing a WikiMasterEdit is bound to delete some unnecessary information, at the judgement of the WikiMasterEditor. However, what you should have done is to at least rename the orginal pages with the prefix Old. For example, some time ago when I edited the ChineseGoTerms pages, I have the original copy stored in OldChineseGoterms. Maybe if you have done that, then Bill will have less complaints? :-) --unkx80 Right after the WikiMasterEdit by MtnViewMark, I became aware of the inconsistency with the linkage, so I started to relink where appropriate. However, I left SL during several days without completing the job and it never came back to my attention. Bill's criticism seems to be twofold. The one on content is inherent to the job of MasterEditing, can be anticipated by the Old... suggestion by unkx80, but Arno already pointed out that such Old... pages are sometimes more of a burden (IIRC Arno). The complaint about linkage is more pertinent to me and points to an intrinsic weakness of the Wiki philosophy. Especially when MasterEditing includes shifting content to other pages, the editor must apply caution. The other librarians however, and in particular the ones whose contributions get affected by the masteredit, have the duty to vey on (waken over, Dutch speakers) the continued consistency of the linkage. Dear Mark, IIRC, most of what I am complaining about was done by my friend, Robert. I do not think that people used the term "counting" loosely. I think it is broad enough to encompass both scoring and counting methods. It may have been a good idea to make a clean distinction between counting and scoring. But I think that discussion was necessary before making any changes to the then current material. "Stone counting" seems to truly ambiguous, but, pace cher Robert, I doubt if "Japanese counting" is. I think it is used to refer to Japanese scoring. My suggestion would have been to use something like "Japanese counting method" to refer to the mechanics of Japanese scoring at game's end. But that is water under the bridge. Dear Dieter, As for links, I think that the Wiki Master Editor should preserve their integrity, at least for the references listed for the page. (That list is not necessarily exhaustive, right?) Sometimes that means making them refer to the old page, which is archived. Best regards, Bill ArnoHollosi: as for Old... pages. I don't like them. After all SL keeps old versions. So ChineseCounting could be ChineseCounting before Robert. A masteredit should not change the content of the page (under normal circumstances). Thus the references should still be valid. It is right that the list is not exhaustive - "referenced by" is limited to 10 entries. Currently only homepages and maybe some selected pages (sente? etc.) have more than 10 references. If, how Dieter points out, content is moved to other pages (i.e. a page is split into parts), then the minimum to do is have links to those pages (e.g. "Information about counting can now be found at counting"). A responsible mastereditor corrects at least the most important links. If not, wiki plays its key strength: everyone is an editor. I.e. if you find a link that points to the wrong page correct it. Just like some people correct spelling mistakes from time to time. Looking over the pages before/after I agree that Robert made some major changes, which may have not been in everyone's interest. MtnViewMark did a good job as far as I'm concerned. Dear Arno, About "Old" pages: SL may keep old versions, but that material becomes unavailable, right? Isn't there a need (as here, I believe) to keep it available? If not via "Old" pages, how? Many thanks, Bill Arno: I don't understand, what do you mean by unavailable? The pages can still be viewed and they can be linked to (although not as easy as current pages) - see my ChineseCounting example above. They can no longer be edited. I agree that older versions of pages are somewhat less visible - which is in our interest, no? If the material really is valuable you wouldn't have removed it in the first place (at least I hope so). So I don't understand the need for Old... Pages. For historical purposes just link to them. It's like now where you say: "Former discussion at OldPage?". OldPages? are rarely edited, are they? Am I missing something?
Bill: Par'n my iggerance. It is not clear to me how to view previous versions, how to find what I'm looking for, or how to link to them. Please explain. (In fact, a page on the topic might be a good idea, if one does not already exist.) Arno: view: either by going to the pageinfo page (click on the title) - not really for everyday use, I agree. If it is important, then link to it, e.g. phpwiki:?ChineseCounting:v21 as in here not handy, but you do this rarely. As for search functions: you can't search in the archive. So overall, you are right: archived pages cannot be compared to "live" pages. Maybe I should be more precise: don't create Old...pages just for archiving purposes - SL does that for you. If you think that it may sparc some new discussion, then keep it live. If you think there's valuable information there, then you should keep it in the live "masteredited" page. I reckon that some features of SL are not well described, archive pages being one of them. If someone likes to create the description, this is fine, otherwise I will do it myself, when I find the time. unkx80: I understand why you don't want "Old" pages. :-) But I shall give one feedback: It's almost impossible for us to know just from the outset which version is the one that is before Master Edited. As in, if the current version number of ChineseCounting is 30, how to tell that version 21 is the archive before Master Editing? :-) (I changed "ChineseScoring" in Arno's text above to "ChineseCounting") Arno: Well, it's easy, but it should be described better (maybe at WikiMasterEdit): at any time click on the title of the page. You are then taken to the pageinfo-page. All previous versions are listed there, you can view them or see the diff. (thx for correcting my errornous link)
Bill: Thanks, Arno. :-) 6 October 2001 - 09:38 GMT+1__ I second the request for a recompilation of Pages by Distance. With over a 1000 pages, some parts of the library must be pretty far from the entrance by now. --Stefan 2001-10-03, 12:20 GMT+1 DieterVerhofstadt: I think the most important areas for improvement are still the number of contributors, the regularity of contributions and the number of high-level contributors. An increase in volume will then force some of us to restrict ourselves to the heavy task of master editing. Maybe some time in the future a user can choose between viewing the latest archived version (some kind of generally accepted master edit of the whole SL) and viewing and contributing to the latest version (which is the current practice). My wildest ideas include the master master team (Arno & Morten), the joseki master team, the life and death master team, etc, etc I know this is way off the original spirit of SL, but I think (as some of you probably do too) that the current practice suits only the RecentChangesJunkies. It would be interesting, for that matter, if Arno had the engine recompute PagesByDistance and MostPopular.
2001-10-03 We do indeed have a general problem (opportunity for improvement ;^) which is that the information within SL covers a very wide range, but is not always easily findable or browsable. For knowledgeable Go players there is more of an incentive to look more around, and they also often know what they're looking for, but for beginners, this is not often the case. Something like the beginners study section is a good idea, which will probably develop into something very useful to beginners over time. Morten has already come up with the idea of dynamically created HotTopics?, etc. I will implement them (maybe this weekend, but don't hold your breath). About the issue of not finding information in SL: well, create an index page of the topic you like, populate it with links to the relevant pages, and add your page to either StartingPoints, GuidedTours, ReferenceSection, or whichever other page seems suitable for it. I think wikis live from links, so the more index pages we have, the better. Maybe I'm trying to come up with a heuristic function to find "related pages". I don't know yet. Other wikis have some neat ideas for navigation. Or if you find a better format for the FrontPage, then go ahead and change it. --ArnoHollosi 2001-10-03 Stefan: Replying to HolIgor: You're right, it isn't complete. Probably never will be. Nor suitable for beginners. That's exactly my point! It should be, so let's make it more suitable for beginners. They are the visitors most likely to benefit from SL. They'll often not be a member of a club or federation, they won't have a lot of books or magazines, or indeed access to bookshops. And even if they see a list of books, they won't have a teacher or a clue what book to read first. And yet another argument: we currently have a wave of new talent in our club, and quite a few seem to have picked up go on the internet. So SL has a Responsibility towards the Global Go Community to "Hook" these Novices while there Wandering around, Thirsty for Information and Knowledge. (I love writing pompous sentences like that every once in a while...) Oh, and on the joseki thing: won't matter at all for beginners! :-) 2001-10-02 HolIgor: Replying to Stefan. While there is a bounty of interesting material in the library, it is not very suitable for beginners or a serious study. Material is scattered, sporadic and spontaneous. It is in the spirit of the library, though. Perhaps we need a guide to the library. Perhaps we need to look back at what has been done and then make a simple page for the beginners advising them what to look at.
But we have almost nothing on joseki, fuseki and yose. At least the material is not systemized in any way. Presentation of shapes and connections has only begun. We have a good section of questions and answers and a series of problems with solutions. Arno: on josekis we have AndreEngels's excellent study of the LargeAvalanche, NadareJoseki and others. I wouldn't call that almost nothing. HolIgor: I did not want to play down Andre's contribution. The quality of those pages is very high. But the coverage of the topic is not sufficient at the moment. 2001-10-02 (copied from Messages...) I've spoken to some beginners who know this site, and they seemed too confused by the layout and organisation of SL to easily get to what they want. In general I think the average go player who comes here to look for something specific like, say, shape, will quickly find his way through ReferenceSection and the likes. But beginners typically "don't know what they don't know" and don't know where to start. To help meeting their needs I've added a direct shortcut to TeachingPaths very, very early, i.e. high on the FrontPage. I intend to link TeachingPaths to a lot of sections in the Library. Working through these pages, the beginners should then quickly be sufficiently familiar with SL to wander around more freely. Thoughts? Comments? Especially from beginners: do you comfortably find what you need here? --Stefan
August 25, 2001 BTW, I like the format of MessagesToPeopleCurrentlyPresentInTheLibrary the best with date stamps and newer items pushed onto the stack. Is that the better way to handle all these general discussion pages?
--DaveSigaty Big Trouble :-)I have done a WikiMasterEdit of this page and created OldMetadiscussion. The kind remarks are in MentioningGradesOrNot. So I hope I am only in a little trouble Not everything is worth archiving, so it's not mandatory (but sometimes good) to move stuff to "OldXXX". OTOH you can always access older versions of the page by clicking on the page title. I guess I will add "VIEW" links to the diff links soon. --ArnoHollosi SingingPraiseToTheLibrary. --HolIgor i like this idea a lot. well implemented, too. --adum I think the anarchic quality of SL is a wonderful strength since I know of so few web sites (much less Go related web sites) that allow so much freedom. Cheers and thanks for this great site! A lot of names of contributors are spread through the article, whereas originally it was customary to put the list of authors at the back. I am not criticizing anyone, I am just curious to know the opinion of the people who took the initiative, and other contributors, about how we are evolving. Arno and I have spent much discussions on this :-) We have not wanted to impose any structure and hence left the wiki as it is at the moment, letting any page belong to any 'type' and changing 'type' several times in its lifetime. I am very interested in all points of view on this issue, so please add your thoughts on this. (cf Dave's comments a while back on Future Use Of SL) (Here used to be some comments, now fixed by the aliases. See WikiNews.) It would be nice if there was an "intermediate" difficulty added to the list of page keywords... people are really hesitant to jump to "advanced" yet some things are clearly not beginner subjects. (unknown) JanDeWit writes: Out of curiosity, when did SL start? I figure it must be the beginning of November 2000 (digging around for the page which changed the longest time ago). Do you know what (kind & amount of) people lurk here? It would be nice to lure them into contributing (both for theirs and the site's sake!)
MortenPahle: Hmm :-) For the records, I will try to put some things up on SLHistory.
How about Sensei's Tavern? ;-) Discussions on the following topics have now a separate page: I have done a WikiMasterEdit of this page and stored the old page in OldMetadiscussion. Unsolved issues and recent postings remained here. Technical stuff moved back to GuineaPigsFeedback. Created some new discussion pages on a clearly defined topic. --DieterVerhofstadt This is a copy of the living page "Meta Discussion" at Sensei's Library. (C) the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0. |