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Messages to People Currently Present in the Library
   

2003-02-26: IronMan: I'll be in Japan in March/April, and would like to know some JapanCoolPlaces to go, related to the game... Would you help me? Thanks!

2003-02-26: Matt Noonan: First of all, I want to say thanks to Charles for all the work he has done adding pages for pros. I think a good resource to add now would be a page listing the names of pros in Chinese/kanji. Yutopian sends out a nice page of names for some top pros when you order a Chinese book, but I think SL would be a good home for a more comprehensive list.

That said, is there a reasonable way to enter characters in the wiki? I looked at the ChineseGoTerms page, and it looks like the characters have to be entered by unicode number or something? I tried to type them in directly to an edit box, but the wiki didn't like that.

2003-02-25: Bill: I have run across a couple of links to Counting which apparently intend to refer to estimating or calculating the count. There is some ambiguity here. I do not like the idea that the Counting page simply refers to the mechanics of getting the score at the end of the game. OTOH, that's one meaning of the term, even if it's not the usual one.
How about making Counting more general, and moving its current contents to Counting the Score at the End of the Game?? Counting could link to it, to Miai Counting and Deiri Counting, and to the pages about Estimating the Score?
Does that make sense? Any objections?

Charles Matthews I suggest Bill first creates a section on the page for endgame counting, linking to miai counting etc.; and then we consider all the senses of counting there, before moving any of that material away.

Bill: Done, Charles. :-) Take a look.

2003-02-22: Scartol: I just got done with a major Flash project about Go. I think it's a great introduction for newcomers to the rules, basic strategy and common patterns of the game. I've added a link to HowToTeachGo, and I'm wondering what other pages might be good for advertising this program.

If you have some time, please take a look: It's called [ext] The Wonderful World of Go and it's up at my Flash website, [ext] http://www.garrisonmedia.com. Thanks in advance for any feedback!

SkyCrashesDown: Cute. One thing I noticed is that your definition of heavy doesn't agree with the one given on SL.

Dansc: Very nice, though I found a mistake.

Jan: I liked it as well. I saw you used the term ngiri? instead of nigiri...

2003-02-21: Jan: Vandal alert! I'm reviving the pages... Will block the IP (64.168.21.1) if this goes on. I see HolIgor has beat me to it :-)

2003-02-20: Jan: I'm reading The Endgame now, and I'm confused. My head is full of questions like 'But what if that play is ignored?', 'When is the appropriate time?', 'How do I determine the order of moves in the endgame, given different plays of about equal size?', 'Why don't they talk in excruciating detail about mutual damage?' and so on... It's probably because I've read too much here on CGT (hi, Bill!) but: Help!

2003-02-18 Fhayashi: Is it me, or is the current version of IshidaSJosekiDictionary totally garbled?

Bill: I have revived it, now. :-)

2003-02-17 BenAxelrod: I am relativly new to this site and i noticed that when talking about a game, white is reffered to as she and black as he. Why is that?

Stefan: It is just a convention. It does however make for easier discussions of diagrams. More about this kind of stuff at SL Conventions and Player Gender.

Hu: I wish this archaic, confusing, and unnecessary pseudo-convention would not be resurrected. Please see my rant on the Player Gender page.

2003-02-17 Charles: We seem to have some minor vandalism: keyword changes to A Good Move two days ago, and to Ando Toyoji today. Common factor: not the IP number, but the fact that someone coming to FindPage and listing the keywords Problem, respectively People, would find these pages without needing to scroll, about halfway down the first screen.

Arno: is this an evil plot to resurrect the KeywordsPage?? ;o) Jokes aside: I think that maybe just some childs are playing outside the SandBox. If the problem gets overhand we will find meassures against it. Thanks for keeping an eye on activities.

2003-02-09 Juha: Not sure if there would be a more proper page for asking this, but why does the diagram in Open in the Corner appear as OTF? Is there some way readers could fix this when it happens?

Arno: strange. Actually that should not happen. To fix this bug all you need to do is edit/save the page. That should create the diagram.

2003-02-05 jesusin Hi all. I have recently purchased an IPAQ from Compaq. Do you know of any go-editor I could use with it? Thanks.

Nico Please have a look at Handheld Software. So far, the only referenced Pocket PC go software is Pocket Go. Feel free to share your experience of it, and add some more softwares if you try some.

2003-02-01 unkx80: Happy Chinese New Year to all! =)

2003-01-31 Bill: Many thanks, Chuck! :-)

2003-01-30 AvatarDJFlux: Dear Chuck, could you please tick the "minor edit" little box in the "Edit Page" when changing little details of pages?
In this way you would avoid clogging the RecentChanges page...

2003-01-28 Dieter thanks Charles for the very interesting articles about pushing battles in joseki.

AvatarDJFlux: I think we all (especially we weaklings) should thank Charles and all the other strong players for their contributions, suggestions encouragements, hints, and whatever. Just for being here! Thanks, on behalf of everybody!
unkx80: A big thank you to Charles! =)

2003-01-28 Saesneg I have been posting go problems for beginners. Help would also be appreciated! See my home page.

2003-01-15 IronMan asks what are the JapanCoolPlaces to visit in Japan related to the game of Go? clubs, shopping, bookstores, famous places related to events or games, historical sites, etc? Thanks!

2003-01-10 ~ian~ : Charles Matthews you appear to have mispelt kiwikiwi on your page

2003-01-10 Confused: TimBrent, if you're fixing typos on lots of pages and don't want to fill the recent changes pages with them, you can make them a minor edit.

2003-01-09 exswoo:Brian, I fixed up your typo in your message at HnK Q&A.

2003-01-07 Frs asks players, who do not only play on the DGS Go Server to add their rank equivalence to the new DGS column of RankWorldwideComparison. Thanks.

DaveSigaty: I did as you asked but you then erased my modest contribution and substituted some clearly incorrect values (at least at the dan levels). I think the rank equivalence is available somewhere in the DGS code since the server will automatically assign you a rank if register and give your rating from another server (that is how I got mine) :-)
TimBrent: Another problem is that the rating changes very fluidly on Dragon (i.e. game-to-game).

2003-01-05 DaveSigaty: HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY SENSEI'S LIBRARY!!! (remember SL going public?) A continued Well Done! to Arno and Morten and a hearty "Thanks for all the fish" to all contributors and deshi! :-)

2003-01-03

Dieter]: Dear "158.143.169.9", [ Could you please identify yourself when writing something. From your ip-address I reckon you are JasonRed but I'm not sure and anyway when the page is edited later that address is only available in the page history. From the same address lately have come some personal comments about SL deshis including me. I guess they are meant ironically or with good humour but without knowing who's talking it is difficult to interpret comments.

unkx80: I noticed that page number 5000 has been created by newcomer yjlim. Page number 5000 is Kyu Exercise 4 Attempts. Congratulations to yjlim!

2003-01-02 Moved some info related to BGA and EGF to new pages. -- Frs

2003-10-10: Bill: Happy Dyslexic New Year!

Last New Year's Eve we accidentally ran across a Japanese New Year's show on the local international TV channel. Hours of schmaltz! Fun! This year the channel went out along with some others. But it was back on by 11:30. This year the entertainment show was over, but there was a show that visited several Buddhist temples around Japan. It produced a contemplative mood to bring in the new year. Quite nice for a change. :-)

2003-01-01: Andrew Walkingshaw: It's 5:15am, I just got in after carelessly leaving my computer on while I was at a party, so I'm taking the opportunity to wish a happy new year to all deshi and librarians!

2002-12-31: Jan: I just noticed that the [ext] Go Problems site now has an offline version available for download as well! Oh, and by the way, a happy new year to all; may you all gain five stones in strength, and SL 5K in pages!

unkx80: Well now it reads 1955 pages... so it's barely 45 to go. =)

Stefan: He means 4955... Is Singapore on the champagne already, 80? As for 2003 - make it all a year that counts. My personal good intention (well, relevant to this site anyway) is to play every SL deshi at least once in 2003.

Jan: I meant I hoped SL gained 5000 pages, not reached :-)

unkx80: Oops the first digit is wrong. =P
The time zone of Singapore is GMT +0800, so the time I am posting this message is about 1930. That is to say, it's not 2003 yet in Singapore.
A Happy New Year to all! =)

TimBrent: "Happy 2003 To All!!"

2002-12-30: exswoo: I removed the online shop for the Borders bookstore and replaced it with Amazon since Amazon has taken over Borders' on-line operations anyway.

2002-12-30: SAS: I reverted much of Frs's changes to Rules of Go because many of the short rule descriptions he added were inaccurate. -- Frs: Well, then many of [ext] http://kgs.kiseido.com/de_DE/help/ruleSets.html is inaccurate, too. Note to GoServers added.

2002-12-26: Following the example of earth's great people, Christmas time is just about right to do some major WikiMasterEditing. Please read what happened to wikimasteredit of nakade and stuff.

KarlKnechtel: Is GNUGo not in fact open source? I had thought it was. The term "free" implies something rather different. Oops, that wasn't Frs' edit, but rather that of some anonymous user after him.

Hello, KarlKnechtel. The terms "[ext] free software" and "[ext] open-source software" mean approximately the same thing; see [ext] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html. The important thing to remember is that the "free" in "free software" means freedom, not price (free software is not necessarily non-commercial software; see [ext] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html).

Because GNU Go is part of the [ext] GNU Project, which always uses "free" to describe its software, I suggest that the GNU Go page should too. If the authors of that page (Frs mainly, I guess) insist on calling it "open-source", please at least hyphenate the term when it's used as an adjective (see the note about usage at the bottom of [ext] http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/open-source.html). -- David

2002-12-25(GMT, anyway...):

Dieter: WikiMasterEdit of NakadeLiberties (1), BigEyeLiberties(2) and FourIsFiveAndFiveIsEightAndSixIsTwelve(3). (1) is now an alias for EyeLiberties. Its content has been split into SmallEyeLiberties and (2). (3) is now an alias for (2). Its content is split over several examples of (2).

Oops! I didn't mean to tread all over a WikiMasterEdit like that; just contributing some stuff that seemed missing. I seem not to have understood the change to FourIsFiveAndFiveIsEightAndSixIsTwelve when I did that either. :/ -- KarlKnechtel

Dieter: Peace, love and understanding. A good health and a nice tesuji once in a while.

Compliments of the season to one and all! May everyone have a peaceful and relaxing holiday.

- Andrew

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year greetings to all! =)

--unkx80

May we all gave a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! -- TimBrent

2002-12-24:
HAPPY CHRISTMAS Go friends! Have a wonderful holiday and a great 2003. Tristan Jones

Dearest Deshi's,
Another Christmas is coming, another year is leaving.
I am sure we did our best to make our dreams come true, and if some of them have been left behind, let's think this happened to fill the 2003 with new visions!
Here's one very small: I hope we all get two stones stronger by the same time next year...
My best personal wishes to you all and to those you love.
AvatarDJFlux

2002-12-23: Confused: Frs, I restored the paragraph from the Go servers page you deleted, because I feel that it gives an important information on how to treat the rest of the information on this page. Please leave it there. -- Dieter: Not all the blame goes to one guy. I deleted the "preferences" part" (of Go servers). -- Frs: Thanks Dieter :-) Compare GoPlayingPrograms and GNUGo, pages deserving re-edits, IMHO.

2002-12-22 Frs: No prob. Restore whatever previous version you like. I will not create new pages (to promote my view). Btw, this discussion is about which additional information is helpful in GoServerDiscussion.

SAS: No, it's not. It's about whether we should allow you to mangle the discussion on that page. As an example, you changed Andrew Walkingshaw's remark 'It's not SL's place, I feel, to have some kind of "official opinion" on what Go servers people should play on' into 'I feel to have some kind of "official opinion" on what Go servers people should play on', which, to the extent that it makes any sense at all, has just about the opposite meaning. And twice you have clipped the last sentence off of one of your remarks so that my reply to it no longer makes sense, even though I asked you not to do so after you did it the first time.
inserted by Andrew Walkingshaw on 25-12-02: If I'd seen this change, I'd have changed it right back and got annoyed; the Wiki, to me, depends on being able to rely on other users not to twist what one says. This is a trivial example, naturally, but there's a large degree of implied trust placed by users in other users here, and respecting this is, I think, critical to being a good Wiki citizen. This basically recapitulates what Dieter says below (and said before me), but I thought it important to say it on my own behalf.
Basically, if someone's written something, I tend to assume it's been written that way for a reason and, excepting where it's obviously not someone's opinion, leave it alone.
Dieter: "Frs tries to create / keep pages readable (discussion pages included) for less experienced readers." We all try to keep it readable. A policy on WikiMasterEditing has often been discussed. In particular, fiddling with other people's opinions in a discussion page is considered not done. As a non native speaker, it is the least of my intentions to reformulate native speakers' statements in order to make them more readable.
Charles Matthews Can I make a general point about SL? There is plenty of 'thread mode' discussion here, that tends to be left as such for quite long periods. On other wiki sites, there is an assumption that discussions are edited quickly into a more connected form ('document mode'). Here, however, we have few real experts (pros) and many topics which are exploratory (e.g. computer go) or a matter of taste or opinion (e.g. servers, books). It isn't the same climate as, for example, programming professionals discussing programming. There is no one level of expertise that can be assumed (25 is a better estimate).
unkx80: To Frs, I am also not comfortable with the way you change pages in SL. Many of the topics on SL aren't as simple as Beginner Exercises and hence aren't definitive. Most of the pages are discussions and everyone is entitled to his or her opinions. I suggest that you can reorder or reformat the postings, but please do not change the wording. A number of times I found that the changes to the wording you made cause the original meaning to be lost.

2002-12-21 exswoo: Then I hope you tolerate people changing them back if they don't agree with what you're doing. :) That said, perhaps you should consider making new pages to get your point across instead of editing what other people wrote?

2002-12-20 Frs: Do you want to trace any opinon once mentioned? Or do you want a label: "Wiki? master? edited? on any? minor? change of a page" ? Frs tries to create / keep pages readable (discussion pages included) for less experienced readers. Thus I ask to tolerate cuts on a thread triggered by myself.

2002-12-21: Please restore version 6 of Go Server Discussion. It is a discussion page, not distilled knowledge. Add to it at the end! Frs has made substantial changes to other people's wordings, deleted whole sentences of theirs, and made their meanings murky. Restore version 6.

SAS: Restored.

15 December : Does anyone have any advice how to go about playing a 9 stone handicap game? Would it be reasonable to attack a corner like a psycho, then try to expand, or does that sacrifice too many moves for the opponent to build defences? Or, should white try to make shape somewhere on the sides? Just curious, as I've wondered HOW a 9 Dan would beat a 5 kyu with 9 stones on the board. Lemme set up a page for it. How to win against 9 stone handicap

15 December : Jasonred Hey, anyone go to goproblems.com regularly? (Anyhow, I was doing endgame problem 327, and I was wondering about the recommended solution. They suggest Q1, but wouldn't white reply with O1 instead of P1? I think it comes to the same result though. (in terms of points)

Bill: W P1 forces B R1 (or B Q1 comes to naught). W O1 does not force a Black reply. Instead, it lets B Q1 pick up about 1 2/3 points in sente.

Jasonred Doesn't it force B Q2? I mean, if B tenuki, then, W Q2, it's still worth a few points in gote, right?

Bill: Does W O1 force B Q2? No. B Q2 is smaller then than B R1 after W P1.

13 December: Bill: I corrected the text of Two stage rogue ko and moved it to Rogue Ko. While the ko is doubly unusual, it is not as unusual as I thought. It's a good example of a rogue ko. The original page can be deleted.

12 december : Jasonred Hey, could someone help me with question BQM56? I'm insatiably curious about this one, and was wondering, thanks!

11 december: Bill and Andre Engels, would it be possible to merge the pages TwoStepKo and TwoStageKo? They look awfully similar and I have the impression, that the definitions are very closely related. Wouldn't it make sense to define TwoStageKo as an alias to TwoStepKo and add the difference to that page? It also would help, if you could add an example of the type "This is a two step ko but not a two stage ko" (or the other way round) for weaker players like me who have trouble grasping the difference.

Another possibility would be to move the whole content to a page Nidan Ko and have both TwoStepKo and TwoStageKo refer to it as aliases.

--Confused

10 december: I wonder if a two stage ko (one player needs to win 2 ko depending on each other) just a variant of an approach ko or a beast of its own kind. Should two stage ko get their own page or should they just be referred to the ApproachKo page? --Confused

It's a different notion. Charles Matthews

See TwoStepKo. -- Bill

That page is awfully incorrect. What is shown there is a two stage ko. A two step ko 'is' the same as an approach move ko (with one approach move). -- Andre Engels

Bill: Cut it out, Andre. Nidan ko = 2-step ko. Ni = 2. Dan = step. It is *not* the same as a 1 move approach ko (itte yose ko). In fact, there is such a thing as a 2-step 1-move approach ko. :-)

Apparently there is a bad translation somewhere, but that is no reason to pereptuate the error. In a recent note in rec.games.go, Simon Goss recommends saying two-step iterated ko, three-step iterated ko, etc. There was some discussion about whether to talk about 2-stage kos. That seems ambiguous to me, since there are 2 stages to a 1-move approach ko. Equitable ko threats are larger in the second stage.

Charles Matthews My favoured approach now to cyclic positions taxonomy doesn't solve problems of nomenclature (yet).

I don't care what the translation of "dan" is. The English go term means what the go term is used for in English, not what the translated go term means in Japanese. -- Andre Engels

9 december: Our DNS provider mydomain.com seems to have serious trouble. It may be that you will not be able to access senseis.xmp.net any longer, because the domain doesn't resolve. I don't know how long the problem will last. I created a temporary alias [ext] http://senseis.hexdust.net/ for SL. Use this if you can't access SL via xmp.net. Please do not link to the hexdust address. It will be removed once mydomain.com (and thus xmp.net) works again. Meanwhile I can be reached at [email] arno@hexdust.net

Dieter: It seems like very few deshis read RGG. I for one thought, heck, Arno will say something on RGG ? He did more than that. Thanks Arno.

MichaelEisenberg: Thanks, Arno, for thinking of this!

8 december: MikeTerry: To Skelley, thanks for the feedback on 501 Opening Problems. I'm about 4k and the opening is my weakest area I think, and I enjoyed 1001 L&D Problems so it sounds like the book will be perfect for me! :)

6 december: Frs, I deleted the "Alias" part of rank. Aliases are displayed at the left of a page. If you create aliases, mark "alias" in the page type field to the right of the editing field. --Dieter

5 December Charles After several people have contributed to the rank page editing, sorting out the threads of discussion there - can we pause a moment to allow for some thinking time?

Sometimes I would like a pause to think about the myriads of new pages that have been posted over the last couple of months. What are they about, to what page can they be linked, is the content duplicated with what exists already, do I like the page title, the presentation ... --Dieter

Charles So Stefan (yesterday on Meta Discussion) is determined to give you a hard time, by suggesting we have 100000 pages. That will need some sort of WikiSlaveEditing just to correct typos. Anyway, I did think for at least 60 seconds, and saw that the relation between ranks and handicaps had strayed (now fixed).

Yes, we were fixing it simultaneously #:-7 but you won. Stefan has been giving me a hard time ever since I have known him, regardless SL. My comment may have sounded aggressive. I just wanted to make the point that pace isn't a constant, neither in one's own timeline, neither in the contributor space. Acting at a different pace is reciprocal, by definition. --Dieter

5 December : Anyone here play Hikaru no GBA? I don't quite understand the "rank" system in the game and how exactly to rise in ranks. Oh, BTW, how many people have tried playing Hikaru vs IgoWin? It's actually a reasonably close game, I think. Like two amatuers facing each other, lots of moves that seem pointless. Note I gave Hikaru a 2 stone handicap, cause, well, IGoWin is pretty strong (for a computer). Anyhow, Hikaru got freaking massacred on even Touya Meijin level. It looked ok for a minute, but then turned into a capture race for Touya's entire group. Every single stone...

4 december: Jan: Does anyone know why Go is called Go? A colleague just asked and I couldn't for the life of me remember the Etymology of Go... I know it has something to do with the word igo but what does that mean??

Jan, there's a story behind it. Long ago, there was a boy named Yo Ni. He was very mischevious and always being bad. So, his parents came up with this game to occupy his idle hands. It worked! So, whenever he looked naughty, his parents would say, "Go! Go! Yo Ni, Go! Go! Go! Go, Yo Ni! Go! Go! Go!" ... So Yo Ni be good.

Hopefully, even those who missed living in the sixties will understand the above joke...

For a more likely explanation, I think I have been told that "Igo" is the Japanese pronouncation of the characters for "weiqi", which also means that it's its literal translation. "Weiqi" in turn seems to be "game of surrounding" or something similar. -- Andre Engels

Yes, the Wei (围) refers to surrounding while Qi (棋) refers to chess. --unkx80

2 december: Skelley: Hi, MikeTerry, you were wondering about '501 opening problems'. I just bought it and I think it is a very good study book for players of about 8k-2d. Make sure you study it in the recommended way; not reading the comments before solving the problem, I think that works very well.

2 december: Frs, I agree that informative pages should not contain personal statements unless at the bottom of the page under some "Comments" header. However, you wiped out some information too on the rank page. Therefore I may be inclined to restore the earlier version. Best regards. --Dieter

Dieter, please restore the Rank page, when you're at it. I think, the paragraph about amateur instability was a very good point that deals well with a very common question about rank for beginners. The same applies to IgoWin ranks. -- Confused

Charles I suggest someone splits the rank page into several topic pages.

Hu: The tables of rank equivalences on the Rank page and the Rank System? page disagree, yet again.


Messages from July to November 2002 inclusive have been cut and pasted un-edited into Messages to People 200207 to 200211.

Messages from January to June 2002 have been cut and pasted un-edited into Messages to People 200201 to 200206, to make this page size more managable for editing in some browsers.



This is a copy of the living page "Messages to People Currently Present in the Library" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.