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Future Use Of SL
   

Senseis Library hopes to become a central place of Go knowledge and discussion on the web - in true internet spirit; open to anyone and made by everyone.

To this end, the open approach where anyone can edit and create everything is central in attracting contributions.

Discussions can be on any topic and with contributions from anyone.
Maybe SL can even be used similarly to a newsgroup:

It is easy to imagine the 'question' type discussion
someone starts a new discussion by starting a new page and with a question. Later users read the initial question and comment or answer it. Subsequent users will see all the previous text and can ofcourse comment/correct/add information as they please. This way hopefully the original question will be answered in a comprehensive and complete way. Ofcourse the originator can add more detailed questions ask for explanations on the way.
Discussion on current events
('Bill Gates plays Go!', 'Michael Redmond is 9 dan!') are again simply started by adding a new page and airing one's views.
Announcements
'Pair Go tournament in Antarctica' again, can easily be made. However, this type of typical newsgroup post would not benefit from the interactivity of the SL architecture.

Often, discussions of the first two types will after a while 'converge' and end. In that case, it is possible, and we hope it will be done, to reedit the discussion (called a WikiMasterEdit) to make it more informative and move it or copy it to the reference section. All this takes in theory is to edit the relevant page and add a link to it from the ReferenceSection page.
Ofcourse, this doesn't mean that it is closed for good - just that it has been made easier to read and find for someone looking for just this information. Pieces in the ReferenceSection can be added/edited and corrected as well, remember.

Others may feel that there are clear holes in the ReferenceSection, and some pages may be created specifically for the ReferenceSection. (E.g. the SecretArtOfWar was inserted 'directly').

Hopefully, the combination of these two processes will mean that the ReferenceSection will fill up and stay updated.

Please add your thoughts here or comment on my thoughts above - use the 'Edit' link!


I am wondering what is the right way to think about and develop SL for future users. In particular I am interested in the collaborative nature of the Wiki Wiki approach. It is clear how we can use this in the initial stages of developing the content in SL. However, as stated above, there seems to be the idea that the contents will become 'mature' and be re-edited into a more-or-less final form. This does not seem necessary or necessarily desirable to me.

Perhaps we are partly trapping ourselves with the name Sensei's Library. A library has books. To use an ordinary library to study you go there, take down the books from the shelves, and read them. But SL is different. Here each and every user should not only study the books but also correct mistakes in them, modify and extend the contents, start whole new ones, ask other authors to clarify what they have said, etc.

Should SL become something like a collaborative set of notebooks on Go? One of the hardest things for me in studying Go on my own is to clearly identify my opinion/assessment of a position or concept. Normally it is more like, "OK, if Cho says black is slightly ahead, who am I to disagree..." Even when I make some special effort I virtually never get a second opinion to verify my assessment. I see the greatest potential in SL to provide a more or less permanent (right Arno, Morten? :-) record of work on problems, games, concepts, etc. Each person participating in SL would have the ability to build up a written record of her thinking on Go over a long period of time together with written criticism of that thinking from others. The use of user names together with SL's search capability will make the site much better for this than rec.games.go which is also collaborative but is more transitory in nature despite the existence of archives.

If this is a reasonable approach, then a question arises of how to structure the materials so that they do not mature, rather the opposite of the thread mode/document mode approach. I think that one of the fundamentals is separating the analysis/answers from the problems. If they are together and a significant amount of analysis has accumulated, then new readers will probably read the old materials before working on the original problem, etc. on their own. I have been thinking that a reasonable basic structure for a problem would be:

  • The problem statement
  • A list of analyses on separate pages (newcomers would add to the list, creating a new page with their own analysis and then read others' analysis and add comments where they feel like they have something to contribute)
  • A page with hints if any (separate so that newcomers can choose when to look at it - hopefully after working through the materials and writing a new assessment)
  • A page with a full solution for people to check with as a last step.

What do you think? DaveSigaty


Your comments about reediting (WikiMasterEdit) pages is valid. In many cases, it is not only the 'result' or 'conclusion' of the discussion which is interesting, but also the discussion itself. But the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. If I were to WME a page, I would, if the discussion warrants it, keep the old page and put it in a ThisPageBeforeEditing place. This has the benefit that users can both read the abridged version and the discussion. Like you say, the benefit of SL over rec.games.go is that the information here is permanent - others can (and should) be able to retrace old arguments, and this is often more valuable than just being presented with 'the answer (TM)'.

Then again, with the current SL, there is only one page I can think of which has been WikiMasterEdited (Dame - and a DameBeforeMasterEdit page was made) - with the current level of contributions, I do not think that this is (yet) a problem in practice.

Your suggestion on how to present and discuss problems is sound. It will be up to posters, when they set a new problem, to also create some dummy 'solution', 'hints' and 'analyses' pages to incite subsequent posters to use these. There could be an automatism in the Wiki to do this, but I am not sure whether we want to 'impose' restrictions on the use of the wiki :-)

You could make a 'PostingProblems?' page which gives these guidelines, and make the page part of the UsingAndContributingToSenseisLibrary path :-?

On a more general note: does anyone have any suggestions for how to attract more posters/contributors to SL?

-- MortenPahle


Dave, I agree with you on most accounts. We don't know how SL will turn out, and it's up to the visitors and contributers to make it a place they like to visit again. As SL is rather young, we all are still experimenting with different styles. My hopes are that eventually a set of informal rules and styles will emerge. People are quite happy to copy good ideas. Kind of servival of the fittest :o)

The idea of how to structure problem pages is nice.

--ArnoHollosi


On the issue of attracting more posters/contributors, I think there are two basic philosophies:

  • The 'build it and they will come approach' which says don't worry about the short run, people will naturally be attracted to SL as it fills up and has been around for a while. (On the other hand as John Maynard Keynes famously observed, 'In the long run we are all dead').
  • Go out and convince people that it is interesting and fun to participate.
    • I think the most likely starting point is RGG. It is interesting to compare the use of RGG for GTL and SL. There is a regular posting of the GTL FAQ. The FAQ starts with a short sales pitch, describes briefly how GTL can be used, and then gets into the details. In the case of SL there was the original announcement in January 2001 and a couple of brief mentions in other posts in the meantime. I think that it is time for a regular posting. It should include a sales pitch, how SL can be used, an update on number of contributors/pages, and whatever else we think is interesting. We might even go so far as to create an official SL FAQ already :-) Naturally in order to create the posting we can simply start a page (Sensei's Library Announcement for RGG?) and develop/maintain it collaboratively.
    • Improve the linking from other sites. A Google search shows that there are not many yet. The [ext] British Go Association link is so far quite uninformative. We might ask them to include us on [ext] The Teaching Page as well, right after the description of GTL. SL is not listed on Yahoo! in the Go page, Jan van der Steen's pages, Ken Warkentyne's go links page (no longer being updated), etc.

What do you think?

--DaveSigaty


I haven't contributed much yet, but I have some experience in web site promotion, so I'll chip in anyway...

As a veteran usenet contributor, I'm somewhat critical about regular announcements about specific web sites. It's usually considered bad style (though active services like IGS and the GTL are a somewhat different story). In fact, casual mentions in other posts can be much more effective, especially if many different people do it.

Yahoo is important, but not as important as it used to be. It also will take lots of time time until it really gets in.

I just submitted SL to the [ext] Open Directory Project, which is much more important. The resident editor "ywteh" appears to be fairly active, so that we can expect it to be listed within days (add: listed as of April. 17. 2001). Remember that the ODP data is used by most large internet portals (AOL, Netscape, Lycos, Google, etc.), and literally hundreds of small ones.

Apart from that, I think that the "build it and they will come" approach should work fairly well here. The SL already has enough critical mass to attract players from almost any level. It may also be good to remember that anchoring a web site in the public perception without a huge PR budget doesn't happen over night or even within weeks. Expect something around 6 months from the official launch until it really catches on.

-- GeorgMischler



This is a copy of the living page "Future Use Of SL" at Sensei's Library.
(C) the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.