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What do you like / don't like about Sensei's Library?

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A truly fantastic idea ---- but. Although accepting contributions from any who wish to add to the sum of knowledge is a noble objective, when the contributor is sufficiently weak IMHO that contribution is suspect, to say the least!!

Especially when dealing with a truly difficult subject like play in the Fuseki, I think it important that the information dispensed be at least nominally accurate, and in my opinion no player below perhaps 5 Dan AGA (say, 1d* IGS) is qualified - and that excludes me as well as many, many others. So if you wish to allow such contributions I suggest that you create separate sections - one for "knowledge" or a reasonable facsimile thereof by strong players, and another for the baffled contributions of ordinary players like you and me!

Please - this is NOT a criticism! You guys are making an enormous contribution, and are to be highly commended for it!

The very best. -- Milton Bradley (3k* on IGS, officially 1 Dan AGA)


Actually, we don't claim to have "correct" content in Sensei's Library (SL). Usually contributors sign with their name - if they have a page in SL you can find out their rank as well.

It's the same concept as on rec.games.go or the GoTeachingLadder: stronger players are explaining/helping weaker players. That doesn't make it wrong. Everyone knows that we amateurs actually have no clue about the game. But that doesn't stop us from playing and discussing it, does it?

If you see something on SL you think is obviously wrong, then just press the editpage link and add your thoughts to the page, or correct variations. That way, later visitors can read your opinion (that of a stronger player than the original author) as well. And if ever a 4d* IGS cares to add his thoughts to SL, well, good for us.

I suggest that you create separate sections - one for "knowledge" or a reasonable facsimile thereof by strong players, and another for the baffled contributions of ordinary players like you and me!

In that case I can reasonably assume that the "knowledge" section will remain empty or very small for years to come. Maybe the name "Sensei's Library" sounds to authorative. Basically, it is a discussion site, which preserves the content therein, and which may be accessed in differnt ways.

I added a warning to the 'about' page (SenseisLibrary) about this being amateur content.

--ArnoHollosi


IMHO it would clearly help if each contributor's rating was prominently displayed so that the viewer (and especially those not strong enough to not be able to distinguish the validity of the comments unaided) at least understands the limitations of what is being said!

But even with that it seems to me that weaker player's contributions would be better presented as questions to be answered rather than as statements which give the appearance of "definitive" wisdom. That would in a very real sense follow the example of the GTL especially if the respondents to the questions followed the same sort of protocol of being at least several ranks stronger than the questioner.

-- Milt


it would clearly help if each contributor's rating was prominently displayed

A good suggestions. I will add that to WikiEtiquette.

weaker player's contributions would be better presented as questions to be answered rather than as statements which give the appearance of "definitive" wisdom.

There are areas where weaker players can contribute very well, and there are areas (like the ones you mentioned) where weaker players don't have an authorative answer. I'd like to "manage" the SL as little as possible. It is a community site and users should find their own set of rules. If it turns out the way you suggest, ok by me. If it goes the other way, ok by me too.

--Arno


I respectfully disagree with Milt. I believe that it is very important to think for yourself, in go and in life. Go ranks are good for setting a handicap if you do not know each other, but not worth much else, otherwise.

Besides, even pro opinions have fads, like any opinions. In a magazine article in the 70s MaedaNobuaki 9-dan commented on the popular "next play" problems. While tesuji and life and death problems demonstrably had correct answers, he thought that you could not say that about judgement problems unless at least 25% of the amateur solvers agreed with the "right" answer.

You do not need to know the ranks of, say, AndreEngels, unkx80, or DaveSigaty, to appreciate the thoughtfulness of their contributions. :-) One should not be awed by anyone's superior rank nor discount what a nominally weaker player has to say.

-- BillSpight


Since BillSpight mentioned me, I might as well add my 2 cents here.

Quoting from BillSpight:

I believe that it is very important to think for yourself, in go and in life.
You do not need to know the ranks of, say, AndreEngels, unkx80, or DaveSigaty, to appreciate the thoughtfulness of their contributions. :-) One should not be awed by anyone's superior rank nor discount what a nominally weaker player has to say.

This I totally agree. And that almost every contributor, whatever the strength, makes mistakes now and then in their contributions. You don't just accept whatever the stronger players say in their entirety. You are always free to criticize/correct/add on/clarify to the existing contributions, and don't be afraid to do so. The same happens over at goproblems.com, where people finds mistakes and ask for clarifications on why a particular variation is "wrong". Even if a particular contribution is incorrect, it might open up interesting discussions. :-)

All said, if you really MUST know their strength, then go to their homepages. But it is really up to them to decide whether they want to state their strength.

--unkx80


This is discussion which Arno and I have had several times over :-)

It sort of, IMHO, boils down to finding a compromise between an easy to edit and contribute interface which will attract people, and verifying/validating the actual contents.

Accepting contributions is more than a noble objevtive :-) It is a necessity for SL to grow. Our hope was that, with all barriers to contribution removed, the site would 'belong' to everyone and be for everyone.

As Arno says, it is a good idea to mark comments/pages with the authors rank. However, it is difficult to implement this consistently and constantly. (I know that I would often forget to metnion my rank.) Having the UserPreferences set and setting your rank on your HomePage helps, but it is maybe not as visible as it should be.

I am glad that you talk to us about this - and we are aware of how 'anarchic' a WikiWikiweb is. I hope that we will not have to sacrifice the benefits of it in order avoid its drawbacks.

--MortenPahle (10k)


Like in rec.games.go, folks who visit SL will learn to value information according to who is saying it. When John Fairbairn (sp?) speaks on the topic of Chinese history I trust him. When Sam Sloan posts something I ignore it.

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.

I would hope that you have some mechanisms for dealing with potential vandalism (e.g. if someone erases the content on a bunch of pages or messes up the diagrams). For example, some sort of back up mechanism that would allow you to restore any vandalized pages.

Cheers and thanks for this great site!

Jonathan Cano


Several contributors seem to worry about how to make this community grow. I don't think that will be a problem, really. I am not too afraid either of people editing existing articles in a bad way, or destroying them on purpose. I believe in contributor's good faith. What might become a problem is the library becoming overflowed with articles, all of them discussing basically the same thing, providing the same information but in different ways. I realized that I already sinned in my article on shape, where I go about all the basic moves like keima and kosumi once again, although they where already described in a dedicated chapter. So not only we'll have to contribute, but also we'll have to maintain a line of thought about the presentation and the mainitenance of the material.

All of this said, what a marvelous library initiative. Have some of you been subscribed to [ext] Kogo's joseki dictionary ? It's an SGF version of Ishida, but less detailed in the rare joseki's and updated with a lot of recent joseki. Subscribers can also contribute, but Kogo retains the final editorship.

--Dieter


Another suggestion for the WikiEtiquette and more particularly on WikiNames. I would avoid the prefixes 'The' and 'A' in front of Wiki names. I found myself searching for a description of the empty triangle under 'empty' and 'triangle' only to find it under 'TheEmptyTriangleIsBad'.

-- DieterVerhofstadt

A title search on "empty" immediatly turns up to the page, no? --ArnoHollosi


All right, I've run into an issue here! Having added Six die Eight live through and to the Life and Death page, I discovered Six die But Eight live through Proverbs. I then redirected the link on Life and Death, but what do we do with Six die Eight live? If we agree that we'd rather have more links and less pages, how do we erase stuff?

--Stefan

See DeletingPages --MortenPahle


Thanks, Morten. And here's another one: I can't make the 'Life and Death' path work for the last 3 added items (CombFormation and the likes). I have looked at HowPathsWork, but didn't find the answer.

Pardon my ignorance, but I want to properly learn Wiki with a minimum of 'learning by thrashing around and messing the place up'.

--Stefan

Hmm. Normal links recognise the [often a long title|!pagename] syntax, but for 'pathlinks' the added '>' seems to make the parser confused. If you look at the other links on that page, you will see that we have sort of 'given in' and just used the normal [!>pagename with many words] syntax. I will have to have a closer look to see if this problem can easily be overcome. (As you can see, there's a similar 'bug' with the way the '!' is used to ignore links.)

--MortenPahle


We have had a lot of activity the last few days, with several contributors. We have probably not been adhering to the way this site was meant to develop. For instance, I notice that technical pages start with a statement, unfolding into a discussion. I thought there had been made a clear distinction between discussion pages - starting from the Library Lobby - and knowledge pages - starting from the Reference Section. Of course these knowledge pages are subject to discussion, and when the discussion has cooled down, they are meant to be WikiMasterEdit-ed.

Now, 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.

Another thing. I have been replacing a lot of keywords with their WikiPage?. I cleared those minor updates from RecentChanges . I hope that's OK ?

--DieterVerhofstadt

Your first question is a very good one and one which Arno and I have spent much discussions on :-) 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)

As for adding links, I think that is very good. Although links are inserted pages are written, but noone remembers all of the existing pages, and often pages are created afterwards which didn't exist before etc. Adding links like this is part of what makes a wiki so wonderful - information can be linked in many ways, thus hopefully making it more accessible.

--MortenPahle


Is it just my browser, or does the SqueezeTesuji page really run too far to the right to be completely readable? For info I am using Micro$oft Explorer under Window$ 95 here.

--$tefan

It doesn't wordwrap for me with either Internet Explorer or Netscape.

-- Bill Spight

The text which is not wrapping is (for those who know HTML) <PRE> formatted text. By default it does not wrap since it is preformatted. It was my intention to make this text stand out, since it is a note outside the actual text on the page, so I used the preformat method (which on SL is invoked by starting a line with a space). Knowing it wouldn't wrap, I inserted a hard line break, but on narrow windows (800 pixels or less) the lines are still too long - hence the effect as we see it. One way out of this is to use the ';:' as described at the bottom of TextFormattingrules for comments like these instead. I have changed the SqueezeTesuji page to reflect this.

--MortenPahle

AOK now. Thanks, Morten. :-)

-- Bill Spight


I have replaced a couple of occurrences of "empty triangle" as a new page to be added by "empty triangle|TheEmptyTriangleIsBad", because any discussion of that pesky shape is always going to boil down to it being bad anyway. Unless somebody had a fundamentally different page in mind?

--Stefan


What if a page was added where Go clubs around the world could be listed? Obviously everyone would not be listed, but if anyone knows any then they can add them in.

--Andrew B


You might want to see the page LinkCollection :)

--unkx80


...or GoPlaces, because that's the one you're looking for, methinks.

--Stefan

Oh ok thanks, never saw it

--Andrew B


(moved from WikiEtiquette)

Suggestion for page structure

If you look at the article on shape, you'll notice that it has been structured the following way:

  • Recent changes to this article: this allows someone who notices on the "recent changes" page that this article has changed, to verify whether it has been updated in a major way, or whether a minor correction has been made
  • Introduction: describes the purpose of the page
  • Body
  • Original author
  • General remarks: here anyone can add their opinion on the article, useful references and things like that, without him having changed the body of the article.

I don't know if this is sound enough a way of working to include it in the WikiEtiquette, I'll leave this suggestion here until Arno, Morten or someone else (re)moves it.

Dieter

I don't like the RecentChanges at the top. This information can be found on the pageinfo page anyway. Furthermore, RecentChangesJunkies have a diff link so that they can see what has changed (I myself just hit diff instead of browsing the page for changes).

The general structure of introduction, body, discussion is suitable for a wide range of pages here, but not for all. I don't want to impose too much formal rules - although Morten and I manage this place, we view ourselves like e.g. mayors in a city: we keep the infrastructure in order, but the people themselves shape the city.

If there really is much interest for a more comprehensive Recent changes to a page feature, I could a input field (say limited to 80 chars) where one could describe what has changed on the page and this is then also shown on RecentChanges and on the pageinfo page. I doubt that it would be used much though.

(I will move this discussion to MetaDiscussion once it has settled down.)

--ArnoHollosi

After some months of Wiki experience, I fully agree. We can keep the discussion here in case someone gets comparable (bad) ideas.

--DieterVerhofstadt


Often, a benevolent Wiki-editor, after having rearranged a page, changes the link to for instance HowToCookSalmon? to "For a nice recipe, check here?."
Later on, someone else adds "Another interesting recipe here?." You only know what's behind it when you move over it with the mouse and check the bottom of the screen.

I think the "here" edit works well for references to web-pages that are NOT included within this Wiki. I would encourage wiki-names to be fully marked, while http references can be abbreviated.

-- Dieter

I personally agree with this. Half the point of a wiki is gone if we only use links like this :-) I will try to remember to do so in the future and I will add a note like this on the some of the SLDesciption pages.

--Me :-))


I know not what course others might take; but as for me, i think i'll use a phrase like "out at" when i'm linking to a page outside SL. As in, "Russ Williams has some pretty funny cartoons out at [ext] www.kofightclub.com, including [ext] several cartoons about go (though not all of them are quite as funny as Get Strong at Gote)."
Good?

- TakeNGive


I guess I will give outside-links another color, so that it becomes easier to distinguish between links inside SL and outside ones. Next SL update is some weeks away, though. --Arno


As a frequent user, the page StartingPoints does not really reflect the way I use SL. I approach SL in two ways, one being the ReferenceSection, the other being RecentChanges. The first one guides you to a subject, the second one reflects the ongoing discussions and hot subjects. I think either those two have to stand out at the starting points, or at least ReferenceSection should be added to the top left three which show up at any page.

Now, if a new user wants to learn about Go, but he doesn't know exactly what, he has to guess his way from the homepage, through the starting points to the reference section.

Another "criticism", well, "advice" maybe, is one I already gave:

Often I refer to the empty triangle, saying, "White 1 makes an EmptyTriangle." As you can see, this doesn't give any existing link, because I have to type [an empty triangle | TheEmptyTriangleIsBad]]. That's not really useful, so I discourage pagenames such as AnOakTreeInTheDark? or TheRockyMountainsAreWonderful? when referring to oak trees or the Rocky's.

--DieterVerhofstadt

I have applied a quick fix. Isn't hypertext wonderful? ;-)
You make an excellent point, though, Dieter.

( Remaining Ugly Ducks:

--Dieter)

Along the same lines, I would like to see ability to edit the page title. (I realize that there are programming problems to allowing that, to preserve the links. Can Wiki incorporate redirection? Is it even advisable?)

--BillSpight

The way pagenames are dealt with currently do not allow renaming pages without breaking all links to them. I guess that is not really desirable. Changing this would be too much a hassle. What I have been thinking about is incorporating "aliases" i.e. additional pagenames that redirect to the main-pagename. That should be easier to do and proove useful as well (e.g. plural 's'). I might not get around it too soon, but I have it on my todo list. --ArnoHollosi


One wish: an option on the edit pages to mark a change as 'minor', so it doesn't appear on RecentChanges - makes life easier for RecentChangesJunkies. --MatthewWoodcraft?

Done -- see WikiNews. --Arno

Arno, there is still a bug (maybe intentional) in the process. I changed something which had just been changed by unkx80, and checked the minor-edit-box. Indeed, RecentChanges didn't log the time nor my name, but, when clicking on the diff, you can only see what I have changed, so that it seems as if my changes are made by unkx80 !

--Dieter

I see. Actually, it is quite clear why this happens. You see, MinorEdit only disables logging to RecentChanges, but does not interfere with the way pages are stored in the archive. And pages get archived when there's a different author, in order to preserve all changes (see pageinfo of the page you mentioned and you will see unkx80's version and yours). I don't want people to accidentaly destroy pages while doing a MinorEdit with no way back. I think the solution is to specify the version number of which diff should be made in RecentChanges (currently RecentChanges always does the latest diff). This may need some changes so I'll do it on the weekend. --ArnoHollosi


Hmmm. DaveSigaty and I seem to have the same IP address. Most peculiar. Worm activity?
--BillSpight

134.214.204.161 is tr-virtuel.univ-lyon1.fr. Looks like our web server is now hidden behind some kind of firewall or proxy (SL is located at univ-lyon1.fr). So SL now just logs the IP of the proxy/firewall for every user. Not exactly to my liking. Let's see if I can find a solution for that. I'd like to know who's who. --ArnoHollosi

Looks like you got your Webserver disproxied. --Dieter


How about cleaning up the MetaDiscussion ? Idem for the CoffeeMachine, the GuineaPigsFeedback and the MessagesToPeopleCurrentlyPresentInTheLibrary ? I mean, verba volant scripta manent, but if the blabber at the coffee machine in our company would stay in the air like it does here, I take my coffee and run away. --DieterVerhofstadt

August 25, 2001
It seems to me that Messages... has taken over the main role for chatting that I think was the original idea for CoffeeMachine. This page and Guineapigs... seem to overlap a fair amount. There is old material that can certainly be edited out, e.g. technical suggestions that Arno and Morten have built into SL in the mean time. However, there is a lot of material on longer term issues. Should some of that be put on separate pages and made easier to find?

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
P.S. Anyone who thinks that BillSpight's very kind remarks about some of us (higher up on this page) are ready to be "cleaned up" is going to be in

Big Trouble :-)


OK, I'll do some cleaning up

  • All forms of appraisal will remain where they are #:-7
  • Remarks that are implemented now will be removed, after checking whether they are announced in WikiNews or other pages.
  • Questions that remain unanswered or in process will remain
  • I'll move the bulk to some OldMetaDiscussion

I think the pages can still serve a different purpose

  • MetaDiscussion: about syntax, lines of thought, contributions to SL - rather "serious stuff"
  • CoffeeMachine: a loose idea, on no specific subject - rather smalltalk
  • MessagesTo?...: only useful to people currently present, meaning the info provided/question asked, is only valid at that particular moment (Stefan intended it that way when he created it)
  • GuineaPigsFeedback: made sense in the very beginning, as did

FutureUseOfSL. Both discussions can be regrouped in the MetaDiscussion, I think.

I agree with Dave that we should pile later contributions onto older ones.

You have 2 hours to stop me #:-7

August 24 17:04 GMT +1

--DieterVerhofstadt

Go ahead :o) Btw, 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



This is a copy of the living page "Old Meta Discussion" at Sensei's Library.
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