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Messages to People Currently Present in the Library
    Keywords: SL description

2003 November 13

goantti: I did not like the Dashn page format and modified it quite a bit. Even restored some info tidbits from Alexandre's text because I found them interesting. Just sue me and re-edit if you like :-)

phenomene: I am just back home and I see there are a lot of reactions to my first message. I agree that Dashn can have a better page here, with informations about how the server works. I just do not want the page to be a commercial advertising, and this is not a new issue here (see Advertising on SL Discussion). I never asked the page to be purely deleted. This should be the same about any server. I do not feel KGS has this kind of advertising here, even if a lot of pages are devoted to this server because it is very popular amongst SL deshis. If someone finds something in the KGS pages that sounds commercial, he should correct it. Finally let me add that I may be a regular user of KGS but I do not promote it here. In fact, I almost never write about KGS stuff here.

Charles I think, for the particular point about ranking systems, that we have a forum for that, namely rank - worldwide comparison. If anyone knows dashn well enough to add their Elo?-style numbers to that, I don't see how anyone could object

Tristan: Just for clarification: dashn does use traditional kyu and dan rankings. Each rank is represented by a band of Elo ratings, e.g., 1800-2000 might be 1 kyu (not sure exactly how it's calibrated but I will check next time I'm on dashn, but hopefully you get the idea).


Bill: My apologies to Recent Changes Junkies for all the edits pertaining to ko terminology. I am trying to reduce the confusion. I did not want to call these minor edits, in case anyone disagrees. If anyone feels that a change I made is not a good idea, please go ahead and undo it or change it to something else. I am not pushing a point of view, just trying to alleviate the problem. :-)

Arno: your apologies don't count. I nominated you for the RecentChangesJunkiesNightmare award anyway :o)

Bill: I am honored. ;-)

2003 November 12

TJ: I wrote a quick page on InternetCulture as I think it might affect people playing on Go servers. Not sure it's good to have on a Go wiki, really, or that it's even good at all, or even factually correct.:) But I'd be interested in thoughts. If it's too gruesome/irrelevant for words, I of course have no qualms about it being totally rewritten or deleted entire. Linked only from CommunicatingWithIdioticAbbreviations as of this writting, if anyone feels the need to clean it up or even add other links.


phenomene: I dislike the new text added on the Dashn page. This looks like a commercial advertising, not the kind of text I expect to read here. The same text was posted today to rgg. Any other opinions?

Charles I agree: I've edited the new material down to links, only. The rest could be on a welcome page, if they want to tell people the advantages.

Tristan: I suspect that Alexandre was behind this - he has been working for dash again recently. He may only just have found out about Sensei's and not yet be aware that commercial pages are frowned upon.

A.Dinerchtein?: Dear, phenomene and Charles please don't change the Dashn page only because you are playing on the other server. There are lot of information about KGS/IGS features here. If you wish, you can only delete "welcome" and "enjoy" words. Best wishes!

jk: Despite the fact that the content was an obvious plug, I actually found it informative. Short of going through registration and downloading yourself, it's hard to know what to expect from the server (their website is a bit lacking). Perhaps the language could just be made more neutral, as on the KGS page.

Bill: Dear Alexandre, the local custom is to link to promotional material, rather than posting it here. There is no favoritism in Charles's edit.

I have to admit, though, that you have a point. For instance, what is Welcome to KGS doing here?

HelcioAlexandre I think that Dashn needs a better page. As it is, it isn't very informative. May I try to improve it?

A.Dinerchtein? Alexandre, If you can make a good Dashn introduction, please help us.

Tristan: I'd say, go for it HelcioAlexandre. Also, I agree that Alexandre Dinterchtein has a point: reading through SL, one gets the very strong feeling that KGS is being promoted somewhat, even if not deliberately. Put it another way, a casual SL reader could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that KGS were the only place to play go online, as there is rather a lot of pro-KGS stuff here.

Bill: I think the solution is to pare down the KGS material rather than to open the floodgates to promotional material for other servers.

Charles I should make it clear that I don't play on any server. Those who do play on servers can make their comments on home pages. I don't think that Sasha, as an employee of a server, has a case here. The text was I think just the same as a rec.games.go posting of today, and not adapted to SL.

HelcioAlexandre I wrote some stuff there based on my personal experience playing in this server. Can someone review and format it better? English is not my primary language so there must be some mistakes in my text. Thanks in advance. BTW, I think that both Sasha and Charles are wrong and at the sametime right. It's not fair to have an uninformative page about Dashn, but it's not fair either to have promotional material here.

wms Well, as far as I'm concerned, go servers are part of go and thus belong here. Obviously I'm biased, but I think that having a page for advertising a go server is fine, and if dashn wants to put one up, great. If people want me to take down the KGS pages, I'd feel really bad. I've gotten a lot of feedback from KGS users telling me that they like seeing more openness in the KGS design. If you don't want to see KGS or dashn (or IGS or whatever server) information, then don't go to the KGS or dashn pages. The only thing that would be wrong I think (and I've tried to avoid this) is taking pages that have some other purpose and editing them to become ads for KGS (or dashn or whatever).

Bill: Well, Bill, I thought that keeping SL non-commercial was a long-standing policy. Am I mistaken about that? Anybody?

wms: If that is a long-standing policy, it's also a secret one. I couldn't find anywhere in the "About" page, the "etiquette" page, or the "starting" page. If this is the policy, then it should be clearly stated, not just assumed that everybody here knows it. I didn't!

Bill: Good point, Bill. I guess policy is not the right word. My first choice, custom, is more like it. SL is a community. There is a pretty strong anti-commercial sentiment, here, I think. It's a nose under the tent, slippery slope argument, but, as our experience with spam, telemarketing, etc., shows, that's how things are in the modern age. <sigh>

See Advertising on SL Discussion.

Stefan: I like jk's suggestion as a good compromise. Pages like KGS or Dashn, or all general pages for that matter, are kept informative but objective (read: no personal opinion expressed). The exception would be "XYZDiscussion" pages, but those should contain word and counterword (if that is proper English). Satisfied users can rave all they want and express personal preferences on their homepage.

wms: (this replaces my prior comment) Thanks Bill for the Advertising on SL Discussion link. I see that this has all been discussed before. I'm happy with the conclusions that page took - that is, people directly involved with a go server/publisher/book/whatever should keep their comments as objective as possible, which fans of the server/publisher/book/whatever can state their opinions all they want. Seems good, I'll try to make sure I follow that on the KGS pages.

Bill: Thank you, Bill, for your responsiveness. :-)

Fhayashi: Bill, you keep saying "Bill" just to be confusing, aren't you? :)

2003 November 9

unkx80: I have written the page Recognizing an Eye, with the intention of superceding the page General Eye Definition which uses mathematical terms incorrectly. Please feedback.

Bill: I heartily agree with the purpose of Recognizing an Eye. Giving novices a way to distinguish real eyes from false that works with rare exceptions is an excellent idea. Con permiso, I changed the difficulty level to Introductory.

There is an condition for false eyes that might be worth mentioning, as the exceptions are not so rare. And that is that the stones preventing the real eye have to be alive, in most cases.

unkx80: Thanks, I have added that in. =)

2003 November 8

Charles Shortage of liberties has been edited down, and is now entitled beware of shortage of liberties. The extended discussion there is now at damezumari discussion. If people read beware of shortage of liberties before any of the damezumari discussions, they'll have a better idea, and perhaps some of the thread discussions will be less like chasing a blob of mercury around.

Bill, this may not be to your taste, but the edited down discussion has to take priority here. That at least, I hope, reflects what emerged. And is concise, as is better for a Beginner page.

Bill: Charles, I am much more concerned about the loss of context for the newly created pages via editing. That loss of context made work for me. Please have a care for that. Thanks.

Charles Bill, any time you want page names changed, you'll get service with a smile.

Bill: How about changing the title of Enclosure Opening to something like, Parallel Opening - Black Enclosure?? I think that describes it, and there are other enclosure openings. Thanks. :-)

2003 November 7

Gedh it's 19:20 GMT now. KGS query: I have been unable to connect to kgs all day (first tried to look in 8 hours ago), nor can i access [ext] http://kgs.kiseido.com. I can ping and tracert kgs.kiseido.com however. Is it just me? I would like to know before I 'phone my marvellous new (as of one week ago) ISP. Thanks for any feedback.

SnotNose: I don't use the game server but I can access kgs.kiseido.com with ease.
phenomene: Poor Gedh, I confirm the server was up all day.
Gedh: Thanks for the confirmation. I have spoken to my ISP, they confirm no problems at their end, and are unable to offer any advice. They have logged it as a fault, and "will get an engineer to look into it", (sometime this year I hope). Typical.
Thing?: I'm having the same problem, I've been onto my ISP (demon) and they're looking into it.
Gedh: Yes, i'm with Demon too.Thanks Thing. It is somewhat reassuring to know it's not just me.

Charles A flurry of edits today on liberty and related pages. Rather than try to justify all that has happened, let me invite deshis for the moment to post here, or on Metadiscussion, any reactions. I mean, better to do that than scattered over pages that have been edited in accordance with some fresh ideas.

SnotNose: I am not confident that you want my reaction but I'll provide it :). The attempted degree of precision about definitions of Go terms is laudable. I haven't seen such an effort anywhere else. However, I wonder if it is really worth trying to come to agreement on the definitions. Perhaps a dictionary approach, which allows multiple definitions, is good enough.
How much precision is needed for a relative beginner to learn? I think not much. It probably doesn't matter if there is a fair amount of fuzziness around the edges of things. That "shortage of liberties" roughly means "you will lose some stones in a few moves" is probably good enough. (Consider how vague we are about these things when teaching beginners in a club setting. We give the sense of the idea, show an example, and move on.)
I'm not convinced the arguing over precision, agreement, and the like does anyone any good. It may not benefit those that are confused by such things and it cannot benefit those that know enough not to bother with such things.
mAsterdam: The Liberty page still starts with Liberty has two different, but related meanings in English. It is not true. The explanation starts from there and never converges. Surprised? I am not.
Bill: I am sorry, mAsterdam. Even after my WME I did not give sufficient weight or expression to your point of view. My apologies.
mAsterdam: No need to apologise. I should, for not studying go enough lately and learn from you (and Charles) :-).

Bill: The title Empty Point is too general for its contents. Territory consists of empty points, for instance. There is too much chance for a problematic link. How about something more specific and descriptive? Liberty (Basic)?, for instance? That makes a parallel with Liberty (Tactical).

Charles I agree that the title of the page could be improved.

Bill: Oh, Charles, we agree! How nice, for a change. :-) Maybe we should start a page, Charles and Bill Agree?. It might not have much material in it, though. ;-)

Charles In-joke for those up with popular culture: suggest BillAndSebastian? instead.

Stefan: By all means, keep disagreeing. It often leads to a thought provoking exchange of subtleties for the aspiring and hungry kyu lurkers around here. :-)

2003 November 4

SnotNose: Thanks Sebastian for your efforts in reogranizing pages (e.g., PlayingForAsNarrowAVictoryAsPossible).

mdh? : Charles, I like the idea of your two pages, The Sanrensei Files and The Low Chinese Files. I would like to make an observation/suggestion. When I went to them, I expected them to be some kind of list of pages that deal with these openings. Would an index for "further reading" at the end of each be out of place?

Charles I don't think that would be the right place: these are intended as developments for the Expert level. Indexes for each opening should occur on the introductory pages. That would be better 'ogranized'.

2003 November 3

Charles I really don't think that pages such as tofumaster? are acceptable here (names a supposed KGS escaper, anonymously).

phenomene: Of course. Please delete this page.

Arno: deleted.

2003 November 2

Charles ShapeQuestion has been renamed BQM124.

(Sebastian:) I changed BQM to a path. Actually, what I wanted was to have different paths for different difficulties. But most BQMs have no difficulty set. It would be awesome if experienced deshis could go through the pages and set them appropriately.


I'm an advancing kyu player with a question concerning the Blood Vomiting Game. I have added my question to the relevant page. Perhaps it would be nice if some stronger players were to take a look and write some comments.

2003 November 1

Darron Shaffer: In addition to other vandalism, "Joniboy" added a useless homepage. It should be deleted.

Charles No rush. Joniboy is currently blocked.

Arno: deleted Joniboy999 page.

2003 October 31

Fhayashi: Is it my imagination, or have there recently been a lot of new pages with little to do with go? Perhaps some of these things are best left in the already existing discussion pages, such as here. SL is a wiki about go, not a wiki about discussion.

(Sebastian: Moved ensuing discussion to MetaDiscussion)


(Sebastian:) It's Halloween! Does anyone have any spooky experiences with Go? Or are there particularly spooky tesuji or trick-or-treat moves?


2003 October 30

kokiri The other day I was playing a game on IGS when, in the late middlegame/early endgame, my AOL ran out of memory and crashed. When I finally fixed the PC & reconnected yesterday, the game was there under the recommence option but obviously as my opponent was offline I couldn't get into the game. COuld someone with more experience advise me if:

  • is there some way I can resign the game from outside it.

I thought I was winning comfortably, but it was late in the game and it was my computer error, so I'm happy to take the 'L', but I don't want to get a reputation as an escaper and it was an interesting game so I would like to get my hands on the SGF.

  • Anyway if you're out there Swedish BoHjort?, apologies, I (Haniwa on IGS) am not an escaper, honest. Thanks for the game.

RafaelCaetano: What about leaving him a message on IGS? kokiri how is that done?

BobMcGuigan: Try help message

Tristan: Just enter the stored command and then resign kokiri-XXXX or resign XXXX-kokiri (XXXX being your oppo's name).

kokiri: thanks for the help.


(Sebastian:) What happened to the history of this page? Try e.g. to display [v1431|MessagesToPeopleCurrentlyPresentInTheLibrary:v1431] - it displays errors and no text. Vandalism?

2003 October 30

Velobici: the last snapshot was over two months ago. is it time to consider redoing the snapshot idea? clearly, SL uses a version control system, which might be [ext] CVS. CVS allows one to publish a repository. [ext] FreeBSD and a number of other projects use CVS to publish the source to the community. could SL do the same?

Alternatively, SL could use [ext] Bit Torrent to distribute copies of itself each week. Bit Torrent is widely used to distribute anime and is now spreading to ISO images of Linux.

JohnAspinall Does anyone else think that Sebastian's comment in IllegalMove about women players is inappropriate? I think that the topic of women in Go is a legitimate topic (although the page will probably attract some inappropriate content). But taking an example of a game between two male players, as a place to inject some (highly generalizing, of necessity) comments about all female players, speaks of someone pushing an agenda awfully hard.

SnotNose: I don't see a problem with Sebastian's comment or his hypothesis. I don't happen to agree with it, however. I don't think that a link from the illegal move to the women in Go page makes a lot of sense. That is, I'd have linked from somewhere else, made my comment about "hard-heartedness" and then refered to the game as an example of it (if that is what I believed, which I don't). So, no problem with the appropriateness, just a minor one with the link logic.

(Sebastian:) Good idea, I'll fix that. John: I think you misunderstand me. I didn't construct any conclusions from the the male players of that game to female players - and certainly not to "all"!

(Sebastian: moving the discussion to WomenDiscussion)

2003 October 28

Naustin I have created a new path Philosophy and Go. Many of the pages on it are not on any other path. I hope that this will be a fruitfull line of discussion.

Charles

4-4 point low approach high extension, slide, pincer is the renamed 4-4 point low approach high extension, slide, squeeze?. And I have redirected an alias page to it to 4-4 point low approach low extension, slide, pincer, where it belonged. NB here squeeze is not used for pincer.

2003 October 26

(Sebastian:) Just cleaned up the SandBox. The diff shows -398, so I'm getting second thoughts, though. Is there any reason to keep this stuff?

Zook: I revived the previous version. I think it is useful for newcomers to see all kinds of messing around that previous visitors have performed. As a child, I preferred to play around in a dirty sandbox with a lot of toys spread over it, over a sandbox combed to perfection by adults.

(Sebastian:) I sympathize with your analogy, but I did not just comb it to an uninspiring box without toys. I spent some thought on it and I'm not happy that you simply indiscriminately reverted it all. To stay in your analogy: The sandbox does not primarily consist of toys, but of sand castles. Even though our sandbox doesn't have a wooden frame, it does have limitations, such as screen size and size ofthe editing box. The page has become so full that it is very cumbersome to play in it, e.g. when you do a preview and you have to scroll the main window all the way to where it shows, and then scroll the editing box to find the place where you left your toys. If the sandbox is all covered with old and unused toys then it is time to throw some of them away. The question is only, which ones. In contrast to a real-world sandbox, I think less is more, because SL makes it very easy to grab lots of toys in other pages and bring them to the box with copy and paste.

Charles Guys, just edit the Sandbox as you see fit, and don't bother discussing it. It's what it's there for. And nothing is permanently lost.

2003 October 25

Neil: I hope people approve of my KGSueMe edit. The facts are out there, William Shubert's words speak for themselves, and KGS users get a big caution.

I think everyone's a lot better off with this available than with word of KGSueMe going around just by rumors on KGS (which is how I heard about it).

Tristan: I'm happy with what you've done. I guess I won't be turning up at your house uninvited and trampling around in my muddy boots, after all :-)

Charles Not a lot I can do about it; but I'm not exactly exstatic about the use of SL for any contentious issues to do with servers. For some reason these cause a drop in the standard of manners and intellectual rigour by a factor of about ten (in any medium, it seems). Informative posts only, please.

Tristan: I thought the discussion panned out quite reasonably, actually, Charles. The resulting page that Neil made is informative, too: it tells you that a KGS client project is running and it states good reasons why you should wish to give it a miss.

2003 October 23

SnotNose: New page, not sure to what to link it. Difference Between Pros and Amateurs.

Charles How 'bout from rank - amateur and pro?

2003 October 22

Bill: I restored the Floating Stones page to reflect my understanding of the term. Charles, you appear to have a somewhat different view. We may want to edit the page to present both views. Perhaps John Fairbairn will have something to say.

Charles Oh, I think we can count on John ... Maybe weak stones on the second line wouldn't really be floating; but it feels like a vague term to me.

Chris Hayashida: I added a life and death problem from the 28th Meijin, game 5 on 28th Meijin Game 5 Life and Death Problem. What should link to it? I don't want it to be an orphaned page. Someone please adopt it.

Charles If all else fails, you can link from Random tsumego.

jk: Is there a page which discusses the following situation? DoubleApproach does not include it. Zook: currently only these: Honte Lib 4, BQM 30

[Diagram]
double approach -- high/low


(Sebastian:) Wiki Masters, pls take a look at the page WikiApprenticeEdit.


Bob Myers: What is the thinking behind the Linguistics-Japanese page? It seems to be that it's not correct to say that those pages have primarily linguistic content, or even that they are "scholarly talk" on Japanese terms.

Charles The thinking is one that has proved its worth in the past: gather up material with a common theme into a path. For example, the statistical analysis path. The major step is always to gather up the links - in this case there seemed to be an ongoing strand of discussion to collect. As usual, anyone is free to edit my placeholder text on the page, suggest a name change and so on.

(Sebastian:) Maybe what Bob meant was "should we dedicate pages to non-Go topics here?". That would be a topic for Meta Discussion.

Charles Well, Bob can speak for himself on that. Certainly I'd like to draw attention to these discussions; and certainly not for the sake of suggesting they are out of place on SL. But (if I can meta-discuss for a moment) there can be other solutions: eg a convention that TalkTsume will always mean a page talking about tsume as a word.

(Sebastian:) Good idea. I only would add the specifier after the term, as in xxDiscussion or yyTheBook.

Bob Myers: Sorry if I wasn't clear. I like paths, they're great. And no, I have no position on dedicating pages to non-go topics (I don't think these pages are on non-go topics anyway). I just thought the description for this one could be tuned a bit. I'll take your advice and edit the placeholder text when I get a chance. Thanks.

(Sebastian:) Good to know that I don't need to have a bad conscience for contributing to such marginal topics.


Velobici: the last snapshot was over two months ago. is it time to consider redoing the snapshot idea? clearly, SL uses a version control system, which might be [ext] CVS. CVS allows one to publish a repository. [ext] FreeBSD and a number of other projects use CVS to publish the source to the community. could SL do the same?

Velobici: is it possible to add a spell checker to the process triggered by the "Preview" button when editting a page? The number of typos and spelling mistakes is growing. A spell checker such as [ext] ispell is freely available and may be installed already on the SL host. We can add to ispell the words are specific to SL that are not recognized by ispell.

SnotNose: Good idea! I stink at spelnig. Which version of English would get used? I.e., is it three-color go or three-colour go?

Velobici: Either would be a great improvement over thre-color go.

(Sebastian:) I'd vote against it. Spell checkers can do more harm than good - they find typos that are obvious and hide or even distort ones that make a difference in meaning. I am grateful that there are several people here who enjoy correcting mistakes. Moreover, the wiki concept is so open that typos might even entice people into editing pages. (BTW, it just happened to me. I found a typo in my sentence, and while I was editing I realized that changing the wording could improve it.)

2003 October 21

Enough: Did anyone else see this? [ext] http://www.tournamentwinner.com/aga.txt

Chris Hayashida: I accidentally typed in the wrong page name for BQM116. I called it BGM116? instead. Can someone fix the page please? I figure it's cleaner than making a bunch of aliases.

I don't want to link it to the Big Question Mark page until the names right.

Thanks.

2003 October 20

(Sebastian:) I wmed the WikiOrphans page, as discussed. Arno: If your query yields significantly less orphans next time it may be because I mirrored the links on CompostHeap. Pls feel free to delete the list there, but pls leave the discussion.

kritz I am beginning to read out sequences. This typically entails reading out what "I" would do in response as the other side. It seems however that what I need to read out is all "reasonable" moves? Should that be "all" moves? Any thoughts? - how do I proceed as a low level player?

Niklaus: I'd say that with more experience, one gets a feel for shapes and which moves are worth exploring. I don't think "brute force" reading of every possible move will get you very far. When playing high handicap games, my opponents (black) often play moves which I didn't read out. However, usually I didn't read them because they don't work. When playing against stronger players, it's the other way around of course, they play moves I don't expect, which usually are better than the ones I read. There's not much more you can do but getting to the point that what you would play are the reasonable moves :) As far as I know pros read rather narrowly but deeply, because they "see" which moves are best and don't need to read all the failing variations.

Charles A major step forward is not believing the opponent: not answering plays, and also trying things that look less than obvious, based on faith in your own reading.

2003 October 19

Unicode discussion moved.

Andrew Grant: Can someone please renumber BQM200 and BQM201 correctly (they should be BQM112 and BQM113 respectively)? I don't know how to do it.

Charles Done (renaming can be done by Librarians).


2003 October 17

DJ: Uf! I finally found the necessary courage and I did it.
If fellow Deshi's don't like the new front page, they are free to revert it back to the previous version, but I think it is more readable like this.

Sebastian: It looks graphically pleasing. But now I realize that the different links may distract a bit, leaving the impression that there are three different games. As a novice, I might feel like Buridan's donkey and not know which link to click.

DJ: Mmmh... you may be right... but it was the same before, only it had less prominence... ;-)))
What about something like this?

"... about an around the game that goes by the name of

Go

(in Japanese)

Weiqi

(in Chinese)

Baduk

(in Korean)"

Feedback please!

TJ: Newbies might think the links are to pages in those languages. How about something like "the game of Go (also known as Weiqi and Baduk)" and let them go about finding out the languages themselves. Gives prominence to "Go", but that is the predominant name for the game in English, which the front page (and much of the wiki) is written in.

Sebastian: Both proposals solve the issue. DJ's addition of languages makes it more democratic - it doesn't favour Japanese. But it takes a bit too much room for my taste. BTW, someone (217.82.250.92) just reverted DJ's change. This was probably with a good intention, but since I couldn't find this IP address and I think that the DJ's change was an improvement, I re-reverted it.

Hu: In the process of the page edit war, the deshis have clobbered the alternate spellings of Weichi and Paduk, which are important search terms. Please be more careful.

Sebastian: This was not a consequence of the little edit fight, but it was part of DJ's original proposal. He asked nicely, and nobody protested. I thought it was a good idea to restrict ourselves to the 3 main spellings. Do we really need to have all possible spellings on our main page?

2003 October 16

benni: Is there a way, to force a link to be interpreted as an inline-picture? I wanted to include my DragonGo RatinGraph into my Homepage, but it does not work, the way intended. I think it does not work, because it is a dynamic php-page. But if there would be a command to say "yes, please display this as picture, even if it does not look as one", it would be nice.

unkx80: I applied the same workaround as what alter Pedro has done. ;)

benni: Thank you very much! Wiki as its best: I did not remember to ask a technical question anywhere and the answer is, that it is allread done :-)

2003 October 15

Charles Renamed NeraiSummary to Nerai, old Nerai page to Nerai Discussion, as requested by Bob Myers.

dnerra: Did someone block 216.11.121.21?

Arno: yes (effective for 12 hours). Thanks for restoring pages.

2003 October 14

Bill: Thanks, Unkx80, for moving the footnote on Infinitesimals to its correct place. The edit, some time ago, failed to do that. :-)

dnerra: Oops, could someone with the powers to do so please rename the Endgame Tesjui2 page to a more appropriate spelling? Thanks.

Arno: done.

Stefan: You gave me a scare, man. I thought that my edit removed the page content and then all of a sudden the page history was gone too. Next thing I'd been accused of WikiVandalism and thrown out of the library in tar and feathers...

2003 October 13

Gedh: help! I just put about 14 suggestions into kgs wishlist and they won't show up in recent changes. Anyone any ideas? What happened was that I added the 14 comments, saved the page, then went back in and added a line elsewhere. My original 14 comments disappeared from "Recent Changes". Now I have taken them out, they appear in "Recent Changes" as red (deleted). But if I add them back in they don't appear as green (new) in Recent Changes. Am I being silly here?

Sebastian: This was really a strange behaviour. I wanted to "third" a proposal which you had seconded before, and when I displayed the Edit page your seconding wasn't in there. I went back and refreshed the display and saw that it wasn't in there, either. So I checked the history, but there was no recent entry from you. Then I went back to editing, did my changes, and when I was done it said "someone else was just editing it". But there is no other edit in the recent changes list.
Hu: When Gedh alerted me I checked the Page History, and got a state where clicking on Sebastian's diff gave me Gedh's final addition. I think there might have been some database issues here. It seems that all is well now.
Gedh: Well, the bulk of my edit is back in recent changes, but I daren't go back in to add another line yet, as I wish to, because that is what caused my original edits to disappear from recent Changes in the first place. I suspect if i wait until someone else has edited the page, then I will be able to return and add the extra comment, without losing all my first batch from Recent Changes.
Arno: Your text didn't show up as green because:
* first you deleted it
* then you added it
* therefore your effective change was "nothing" - therefore no green lines
the original green edit was removed from RecentChanges because you edited from two different IP addresses - see October 6th entry on GuineaPigsFeedback for an explanation. As for why you accidentaly deleted it I don't know. Can't think of a reason. Try again modifying the one line you have.
ps: please obey the red warning - I was just editing this page.
Gedh: I only deleted it in an attempt to get it back into Recent Changes! What happened was I went back in and added another line, which removed my previous 'green' edit. Maybe I had reconnected in the interim to my dial-up connection and been allocated another IP address. I wasn't aware this would foul things up.
Since you mention it, I shall of course follow the red warning; I had been harbouring the misconception that it was advisory only, and didn't think it would be problematic to plough on.
Arno: no, changing IP addresses does usually not foul things up. As I said, I don't know why you lost the lines to your first edit when editing a second time from a different IP address. I will have a look at the code just to make sure, but I'm sure I won't find anything. As for the red warning: it is a warning and not a "must-follow-rule" as people might leave the edit-page without using cancel or for other reasons. But if the warning seems legitimate try to follow it. It helps other people to prevent making the same edits twice.
Gedh: Ok, thanks for all the help Arno. Since it was my first major attempt at editing something other than my own page and sandbox,I would expect it's something which I've done wrong and I wouldn't want you to waste your time checking code. However, Sebastien and Hu's observations above still seem strange. Either way, i'm too scared to add my additional line into kgswishlist until at least tomorrow :)

Hikaru79: Is Dragon Go Server down for everyone else too? I get:

Connection to database failed. Please wait a few minutes and test again. Mysql error: Too many connections

Dave: Same here at 02:23 10/13
Hikaru79: Never mind, it's been fixed after about 3-5 hours... at first I thought it was my computer as traffic errors generally don't last that long, but I guess it was just a busy day at DGS =)

2003 October 10

Charles: I have just renamed corner status? as joseki-related life-and-death example 3; it looks like this may have clashed with the latest edit.

unkx80: No harm done, I merely added some text at the bottom of that page and it is still intact. =)

Charles Done now - all back links fixed - and I was being more nervous than necessary.

2003 October 8

Charles Invade territory? has been renamed size and safety of territory.

Kritz Charles - thank you for the new chapter on escapes for your Shapeup book on the gobase.org site! it is great!

Are we ever going to be able to buy it, so that we can reward you for your efforts?

Charles No time to announce it yet - busy day for my club at the Fresher's Fair. The book may still be published - who knows?

2003 October 7

Arno: someone changed the Chinese Go Associations link on GoPlaces from weiqi.net to weiqi.cc. Could someone fluent in Chinese look which website is the Chinese Go Association? And (to avoid further changes) add a second link (either .cc or .net) with a correct description to either GoPlaces or LinkCollection? Thanks.

unkx80: The one at weiqi.cc is the Chinese Weiqi Association website. It used to be at weiqi.net, but that one seemed to be turned into a portal.

2003 October 5

Hu: What's up with the Premature End page? It was created and three edits made, including seven lines by the respected contributor Charles, yet it does not exist, there is no trace, and there is no explanation in the usual places. Undoubtedly there is a good reason, but I am curious what that would be.

unkx80: Charles moved it to Seeing a temporary seki.

Arno: I guess renaming pages should show up in RecentChanges to avoid confusion. I will add this some day.

Charles I think I see what I did: I didn't save it at once as a major edit, which would make it show up as new on RecentChanges. Apologies for any confusion.

2003 October 1

Karl Knechtel: In case anyone didn't get the message, NNGS is back up. :)

2003 September 30

Anonymous: 66.236.0.252 appears to be vandalizing pages. What is the procedure for dealing with this?

Niklaus: Set your experience level to "experienced SL deshi" at UserPreferences, then you get the option to revive the previous version of that page.

Arno: IP address is blocked by an admin now. According to the change log available to librarians and admins (s)he changed 4 pages. All restored. As deshi, just look at FullRecentChanges for pages modified and not yet restored.

Stefan: Yes! Another one in the bag... Good catch, Arno!

kokiri Both examples of tewari on that page seem to have aroused some debate. I have added tewari example 3 which seemed to me to be a good example of tewari, but maybe some stronger librarians might take a look at it and consider its worth.

2003 September 27

RBerenguel: Is KGS up? I was playing a tournament game, and I can't enter again. Hu: KGS is up after a period for a reboot.

2003 September 27

Neil: Can anyone reach NNGS?

Evand: I can't, and the word on KGS is that it's just plain down.

2003 September 26

mAsterdam: Hi all,

I would like to propose a project. It would result in a small collection of extensively commented games, with lots of alternative lines of play and lots of questions, that would serve as

  1. an entry to most - if not all - strategic, tactics and theoretical material at SL.
  2. an example to most etc..

I would simply start it if I thought I could provide a good start, relying on your willingness to make SL one of the finest resources for go reference material - but If I would it would not be the best start possible. Hence this proposal.

How many games to start with - one? two? - not too many, it will be a lot of work and the result would not be as dense as I imagine it. Not too few either - not every aspect is relevant in every game, even in alternative lines of play. E.g. to cover both resigning and miai values would take at least two games, no? Which games? Maybe beginner-problems are not easily explained with a pro-pro game at hand. Maybe it is best to start with a small game, say 9x9 to get the feel of how it develops. A famous game - or would that give raise to copyright problems - in short: I don't know.

Should the comment address a certain level of play? I don't think so, but I can think of good reasons to go that way.

Do you like it? Is it feasible? TIA.

Hu: I like the idea! We could pick seven (five, three?) illustrative games as a set to work on in parallel to begin with, to shake out the idea. I suggest that it be allowed to develop as a bit of a free-for-all initially, and then it be periodically Wiki-master edited, until a unique format and style of SL commentary gels. At that point, further commentary can be relegated to discussion pages that periodically get groomed and integrated; and another seven or more games can be begun for commentary.

For the first seven games, they don't have to be the ones with a famous move or two. I would suggest ones that are illustrative of distinctly different ideas and periods of Go. So a Shusaku game would be an absolute requirement for membership in the set. Likewise, I would suggest a Go Seigen game from the Shin Fuseki period, a Takemiya cosmic Go moyo game, Iwamoto Kaoru bean scattering Go, O Meien with original opening moves, Ma Xiaochun floating style, and a modern Korean fighting game, which would make seven games. More ideas at Professional Player's Go Styles.

JohnAspinall: Enthusiastic yes from me too. I'm respectable single digit kyu, I study various kinds of go material, but I never read pro games. I know I should, everyone says I should, I own a copy of AppreciatingFamousGames, and you know what... I'd rather eat flour. I find typical commentary dry, opaque, and (most important) frustrating. Every other statement about how such-and-such move is "exquisite", and so-and-so line of play is "superior", is completely UN-backed up by any sort of justification, reasoning, or counter-examples. If SL commentary can provide the reasoning, the alternative moves ruled-out, the foundation of how to think about the big decisions in a game, it will fill a huge gap in the literature.

kritz: Just a thought, but as a beginner (19k -kgs), it may be diffucult to find problems with these pro games to comment on. I love to review pro games. That said, mostly I simply can not understand what the Pro is going after when they move, much less recognize why a particular move is bad. How about about a 1 or 2 kyu games?

Velobici: It sounds like a very good idea. We need to make the set of games accessible to many levels of skill. Comments could be rated with level expected to understand this material. This will help to steer the newest players to material that is useful to them and prevent them from getting bogged down in complex/long sequences. One way to do this is to have games from several different levels: 15k game, 10k game, 5k game, 1d game etc. At each level we should start with correcting the most egregious mistakes, and populate the games will links into the rest of SL. The links into the rest of SL will further distinguish the games from what is offered by the Go Teaching Ladder. The larger set of reviewers here at SL is also a significant advantage over GTL. GTL might be a good source of raw material to start the collection.

mAsterdam: Reference games sounds a little boring, but for now it's adequate. Aliases to the rescue. I did put some of your remarks there. Thank you for your support. Now one particular game (I really wouldn't know which one to put there) and we can get started, I guess.

2003 September 14

Tristan: Hi all. For fun, I have kicked off an OpenGoStory. If you'd like to add to it, please do, there are very few rules and you don't have to be a good writer (I'm atrocious!). It's like HikaruNoGo all over again, except YOU get to create the characters and YOU get to decide what happens. What could be better than that?

(Charles Anna Karenina?)

Nico : what are all these pages for? You must have made about 100 today!?!

Nico: I was just adding links around. The number of minor edits is higly correlated with my level of boredom at work. Just guess how bored I was this day ;).

AshleyF: I'm planning to release a little free app for Pocket PC that allows users to catalog and solve Go problems: GoAlbum.

I'm thinking of including several hundred problems collected from Sensei's Library as the initial set that comes with the program. I want to make sure I understand the SLCopyright and that I'm not infringing.

The problems will not include any of the commentary or variations from SL; only the setup position and the correct play(s). I'll include a prominent mention that the problems came from SL and give the SLCopyright page URL the splash screen. Also the problems will be tagged (using the organization system in the tool) with a 'Problems/Source/Sensei's Library' tag and the tag description will state where the problems came from. This description is only seen when editing the tag though (not very prominent).

If necessary I can also show this in an initial 'licence agreement' screen on which the user has to click 'Accept' to launch (the first time only).

What I'm producing is not really 'content' and while there's the tagging, a splash screen, and possibly a 'license agreement' screen, there's isn't attribution on a per-problem basis.

Is this allowed under the SLCopyright?

-- AshleyF

Arno: what I am going to say may not be completely correct (legally speaking), but I'm sure it's in the spirit of the OpenContent licence (OCL).

  • The content (=problems) you use are from SL and under the OCL.
  • The only licence granting you to use this problems is the OCL
  • Therefore you have to comply with its terms:
    • Your problem set has to be released as OC as well.
    • That means everyone is allowed to copy, modify, ... the problems under the terms of the OCL
    • If you have added additional problems to the set you would still have to release them as OCL, as it could be argued that the "complete problemset" is a derived work of the "SL problemset" + "new problems" and thus the "complete problemset" has to be OC.
  • I think crediting once should suffice - it is not necessary to do so on every single page.
  • A 'licence agreement screen' is unnecessary, because if a user does not agree he is not allowed to copy/modify/... the problems but he is still allowed to use them. Only if he would like to copy/modify/... he has to agree to the licence (otherwise he would violate copyright law).

AshleyF: Thank you very much Arno!

http://www.feniello.com/go/album/images/splash.png


This page is pruned in irregular intervals. See the page info and history for previous versions.



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.