Meta Discussion
What do you like / don't like about Sensei's Library?
Write down your thoughts below.
Related pages:
- Guinea Pigs Feedback : discussing technical details
- Message Board : remarks of which the validity or relevance expires soon after postage
- Wiki News : announces the technical implementations of the Guinea Pigs Feedback
- Quick Questions
- Wiki Etiquette : crystallizes many of the results of the discussion here
- Future use of SL
- Coffee Machine : take a break and talk informally at the coffee machine
2005-09-12
Gronk: I'm working my way through KanazawaTesujiSeries. Up to problem 40 I'm finding these to be excellent problems with exceptionally crafted solutions. Bravo to the creators!
I've noticed that on problems 31, 33, and 36 there are some very distracting dark vertical lines on the diagrams (maybe it is only I who sees them?). I don't know how to fix this.
unkx80: You should thank Dieter for this. Anyway, I went through problems 31 to 40 to regenerate the diagrams, and also did a small amount of copy-editing.
I've also seen the dark line problem on 41, 43, and 44. Perhaps I'll notice more. Should I keep reporting them here? If I knew how to fix it I'd do it as I find them.
unkx80: The dark lines problem is a subset of the ugly distorted diagram problem, and is caused by the HTML width and height values differing from the actual image width and height values. What caused these is a bit technical and has to do with the passage of time as this Wiki evolved (does this sounds a bit like the MOTAS game?). The usual way I fix it is to either modify all the Wiki text representing each diagram slightly, or to cut all contents of the page, save the empty page, and then paste back the original text, and save again. Most of the time, these ways will force regeneration of the images. But improper use of such techniques may cause inadvertant Wiki-vandalism, so be careful of how you do it. Anyway, I have fixed the diagrams for problems 41 through 50 where neccessary.
Gronk: I see. I wonder if there would be a way for someone (guess arno) to run some program over the whole wiki that fixed all diagrams once and for all. Is that a reasonable suggestion or way too hard to think about?
unkx80: This topic was discussed before... but if I remember correctly, he seemed to be reluctant to do it because of the large number of diagrams in SL.
2005-09-11
Thad: When it comes to editing things on SL, if I am away for a while, then I forget how to use many of the editting functions. Perhaps we should create a SL CookBook?, with descriptions ( or links to descriptions ) of various editting techniques in some categorised manner.
unkx80: Please see the How To Use Wiki path, I believe it is already a SL Cookbook and has more than enough information you and I need. If you have further questons, please feel free to ask.
2005-09-10
Tamsin: It seems SL is a victim of its own popularity. There are so many users now, and as with any large group of people there are going to be disagreements about policy, about what should be here and what should not. Let's stop arguing about policy, because if one side gets its way, then the other side will resent it, and that will only hurt SL in the long run. Let's move forward in three ways:
1) If it's a social thing, then please use "minor edit" as suggested below.
2) If there's still material appearing that you don't want to read, then first, don't read it, and second, filter it out!
3) If Arno has time, please would he consider refining filtering tools further?
This way, we can all live together and enjoy Sensei's in harmony.
Arno: Now filters should work on subpages too. For the experienced SL deshis: you can set the default filter for your RC profile. That way you do not need to bookmark the filtered URL or change the filter setting manually each time.
ps: I also fixed AdvancedFindPage and the full text search from the top bar.
Bob Myers: Feature request--could the RSS feed for Recent Changes be made sensitive to my filter settings, perhaps by adding my username as a parameter to the URL for the feed?
DrStraw: PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! Allow us to make "no riff-raff" the default view for recent changes in our preferences. I am getting so tired of 75% of it being about clans I am about to stop reading SL.
MarkD: I have to agree with DrStraw. "No Riff Raff" and maybe a "no keyword = clan" option would be very useful. (How does "no riff raff" filter the pages? Sometimes the option filters interesting changes?) The RecentChanges page is full of clan edits, the really interesting edits are lost in all the noise. Furthermore, please make the "Minor Edit" box a default option.
Dave: One alternative would be to create a separate Recent Changes page for clan edits as we did a couple of years ago when the ongoing games were very active. If/when things quiet down on the clan scene, we can bring them back onto the main page. I think this is probably easier to manage than putting the responsibility on individual readers to manage the filters well and individual posters to appropriately use minor edits (obviously not working). Personally I think the large number of clan edits is only half the problem currently. The other half is the lack of new non-clan edits :-)
Arno: As for making "no riff raff" the default: go to UserPreferences, set your status to "experienced SL deshi", next UserPreferences should show a whole new set of options. Go to the RecentChanges section, at profile RC1 set the filter value to "2". Have a look at the filter code below: change it as you like.
Alternative: set filter value to "4", enter 4th filtername as "no clans", set filter value to '-k:"Online Go" -KGS -clan' That should be less restrictive than the "no riff raff" as humour and homepages are classified as riff-raff as well.
Actually I like Dave's proposal. I could make the separation of pages with keyword "online go" from the rest, just like we did with ongoing game pages. Experienced deshis could always undo the setting. I guess I will make the necessary preparations and implement it, unless people cry out loud.
- DrStraw Arno, is this safe? I looked at it but do not consider myself an experienced deshi and so did not want to set it that way. I was afraid I might give myself powers I might not be aware of and inadvertently do something wrong.
- Arno: Setting and unsetting affects only your personal settings. System wide defaults can only be set by me.
Thad: I think there are several things that need to be addressed here, but for the moment there are two major problems. As I underderstand it, people would have to chose the "online go" keyword. If they are not choosing minor edit, will they chose the "online go" keyword?
Arno: the difference is that the "online go" keyword has to be set only once, whereas the "minor edit" has to be checked for every edit.
Another bigger problem, there are people who aren't interested in clans, but are interested in online go. That means there are pages that they would miss, for example, an announcement of a new go server.
Arno: true. But I think a "clan" keyword is too narrow. As I said, all I would do is change the default profiles so that we get RC without "online go" and an "online go"-only RC. Anyone can change the default settings in their preferences.
2005-09-07
Dieter: I hate to be the usual whiner about what SL should look like and I know the administrators are far more flexible in this respect, but lately SL has become (again) more a device for showing off in public than for the discussion of Go. The whole clan idea is fine with me, but the usefulness for the rest of the Go community is very limited. I really don't care if clan X has acquired member Y. RecentChanges is flooded with homepages and clan talk. Again, I should be more patient and have faith in the long term strength of the community. Yet, I fear that people who play online on IGS for example, are apalled by the all the KGS related talk and do not regard SL as a Go discussion site anymore but rather as a KGS forum.
Once, for comparison I said "imagine Go clubs starting to discuss their social life here". Well, it has become true and ironically my own club is doing it. I am discussing this with my club members: I really think this social talk will kill the site eventually. SL is not a meeting room. It's not free webspace for clubs who are too lazy to develop their own virtual space. It's a library, for discussion of technical stuff and events that regard the whole world. I find In a Korean Baduk School for instance, an article of great value to many Go players: it is one of the first stories to give us an idea of Korean Baduk at work. It's told by a 6d, which is - in my elitist way of looking at stuff - very different from a 20k (or 2d for that matter) saying hello to the world. Such things can have their place at SL.
Morten Dieter, I agree with you in most respects. Like you, I don't (want to) care about clans per se, but annoyed at the attitude some of the entrants display. To be honest, I am hoping that the issue will blow over, like so many other issues have on SL...
To get back to the actual issue at hand: although I believe that SL should be a home for initial discussion of new concepts and ideas related to Go, and Go servers, I believe that SL should not become the 'home page' for clans or, as you put it, "free webspace for clubs who are too lazy to develop their own virtual space". As the Clans specifically belong to KGS, it is KGS which should provide them with an outlet for their discussions and flaming. If sufficently many users agree with this, we could kindly ask established clans (by an appropriate message on 'their page') to move their outlet to KGS. I still think SL would be a fair plce for 'new' clans to try to find followers.
This highlights a general issue on SL: there is no way to differentiate the wheat from the chaff... 'minor' pages will, by much posting attract more 'visibility' on RecentChanges than less heavily posted, but maybe more 'major' pages. Trying to change this would, apart from changing years of practice, also require much more 'administration'. Your suggestions are welcome...
Tamsin: Dieter, my friend, nothing is here that cannot be edited or removed if it outlives its usefulness (uselessness?). I can see your point, but on the other hand, should not this site be about all aspects of go? Online go is here to stay, and people of course are going to discuss issues specific to online go, and of course there will be a bias to KGS because of its popularity among English-speaking go players. The only thing I would ask is that we show tolerance to one another; there will always be technical material, and there will always be non-technical "social" material. Choose what you want to get out of SL and let others do likewise. Anybody who wants to learn about almost any technical term, concept or issue can easily do so by using SL's superb search tools; Recent Changes is not only way to access SL.
Admittedly, though, perhaps you fear we will reach the stage where it will be difficult to navigate through new material, because Recent Changes shows so many new pages and contributions, in which case it may be a good idea to come up with a new way of classifying and tagging material.
In the meantime, though, perhaps it would help if people remembered why the "minor edit" check box is there. It is, indeed, not very interesting to see that Clan MacCampbellDouglasKnox? has gained one more player. And looking back, I see that I have myself transgressed, therefore I will change my ways.
(Oh, by the way, is there a way to reach you by e-mail? I have tried dieter_verhofstadt@hotmail.com but without success. It would be wonderful to catch up with you, you know.)
DrStraw: My opinion is somewhere between those of Dieter and Tamsin, althought probably closer to Dieter's. How easy would it be to set up a requirement that all new pages be classified using keywords and then give options in the user preferences to check which types of pages are shown in the recent changes list?
Steve: I am one of those Recent Changes Junkies who goes through just about all the changes, including minor edits. I have started just ignoring the pages which seem to be listing clan changes etc. My proposed solution is to introduce "unwatched" pages, which are like the "watched" pages in recent changes. If a page annoys me with it's changes, I'd like to be able to tune it out, while someone else may be interested in that change. Update: It seems my proposal is already supported by SL. All watched pages in watch category 3 are automatically not displayed in Recent Changes. You can set which pages are watched, and in which category, here.
While DrStraw's suggestion has merit, it may turn out to be a problem later, such as making the short summary field mandatory: as that may lead to "." in the summary field overly often, many pages will just be assigned the top keyword on the list. And of course, wiki beginners who may be strong at Go are less likely to contribute if the page edit process is too complicated.
Alex: I tend to agree with Dieter and Morten. The signal-to-noise ratio on SL has been steadily declining since I started using the site two-and-a-bit years ago because of the arrival of many new users to seem to miss the point of the library and start posting their own, only tangentially related material, without seriously browsing it first to see what's here. When new, quality material gets posted, it tends to be overlooked in the flood of online go club/informal tournament chat and updates, and redundant, content-free pages created by users who really want to create a page but don't have the knowledge to add something meaningful (tip to these users: an intelligent question often creates way more buzz than an intelligent statement, and definitely way more than an inane one, and intelligent questions can be asked by players of any level). The introduction of clans and the use of SL as a space for them to track their membership and have discussions is only going to compound the problem. I vote for telling clans to get their own space elsewhere, or introducing something like DrStraw says and create "Go Club" and "Clan" keywords that can then be ignored by those not interested.
IanDavis: I think perhaps there is a case for saying that the This is just a minor edit box should be checked (or ticked) by default. That way people would consider how important their comments are, and then if needs be, uncheck the box to tell the world.
kokiri - well the watchlist option was a bit of a revelation when someone first mentioned it to me, so i guess it does merit bringing up again - i currently filter out every page with kgs or clan in the title, and am the happier for it.
I think that there is an easy argument to make that kgs itself should be the home for much of the stuff that gets posted here, but i take its presence as a sign of the success of SL.
One half of the library is a repository of knowledge, but i do think that SL as an active experience/medium for debate & discussion etc. is the greater half. On the whole i'd rather have a vibrant library with lots going on, albeit perhaps with a few kids on skateboards than a quiet dusty one with only some oap's asleep in the corner. I think it's like panning for gold - you have to wash through a lot of mud in order to get the valuable stuff and so up to a point more volume is inherently better.
It seems to me that the noise pretty much remains constant albeit on different subjects at different times, whilst the really interesting content is, by it's very nature, a more fickle beast and so ebbs and flows. So we're in a bit of an ebb at the moment? that's not inherently a problem - the problem would come if the level of noise starts to drive away the core contributors, strong or weak, who make SL what it is. I don't think we're getting to that stage are we?
As a more practical suggestion, perhaps introducing an 'online go' page type and allowing one to watchlist all the pages of a given type (or can I already do that?) would be a way of allowing people to customise their SL more readily. (edit: and I like ID's suggestion about minor editing - i'm forever forgetting to tick until afterwards ;-)
Bill: Well, I'm sort of in left field, I guess. ;-) Go related social discussion does not bother me. After all, we are amateurs and human beings. What does bother me is the prospect of SL acting as a kind of bulletin board service for KGS. Shouldn't KGS be providing these services for its members itself? Should SL favor any go server, even by default? (Since any go server or its members can post here freely.)
Kenn: SL does have categories clubs & places, and people, and I'm glad since I both found my local players and also recruited new players this way. I have my own webspace for my club, but SL is an invaluable tool in promoting that page. Filtering out appropriate categories and keywords seems like it should more than suffice to ignore the clans and homepages. I think having the minor edit box checked by default based on a page's keywords or having more than two levels of editing significance is a clever idea that might meet many people's needs. I know that I have, once or twice, forgotten to check that box while I was restructuring the redundant pages for the splintered (now united!) clubs in my area.
excession: i'd happily provide a bulletin board / whatever for these "Clan folks" that seem to be causing the current problems (I access through RecentChanges too). However from the sounds of things, it is more deep rooted than that. (and I agree with Ian's comment re minor edit being ticked by default :)
Calvin: SL is a Wiki, which makes it hard to use as a forum. Even this page, for example, would be better in a forum than a Wiki. IMHO, problem with the KGS Clan stuff isn't so much that there aren't similar discussions about other servers, it's just that that content is clearly transient, whereas the bulk of the Wiki content should be of slightly more lasting value and for a more general audience. If you have one or move forums hosted within SL (I don't think linking would be sufficient, unless it was seemless), then transient discussions could be moved to forums.
- I second the request for a "Clan" keyword, the clan spam is really getting worse every day here. It seems like the clan folks don't want to use the "minor edit" option, just look at the recent changes page: Every small edit appears there.
Drimgere: You know, I don't want to seem insensitive, i totally missed the minor edit box and that resulted in some of this spam, I'll make sure to use it from now on. Is it really such a big deal, you aren't forced to read all the recent changes, you can just skip over it....It seems like people here get offended real easily. In my mind Sensei's is both a source of knowledge and a place for go players to have go related social activity. ;-)
- Drimgere, you can check the "Default for MinorEdit" box in your user preferences.
Drimgere Now I just feel stupid..... I haven't explored the prefs yet, but now I'llmake sure to turn that on
Thad: Some unknown and illiterate person clipped the poem. I reinstated it for two reasons: 1) It is a cool poem. 2) The unknown person with poor English skills, clipped the poem in midsentence leaving behind a sentence fragment, and a half complete thought. People if you must edit someone elses statements, please don't mangle the English. They are quite capable of doing that without your help.
PS: Considering the commentator right before me, I find the poem quite appropriate.
First a poem I composed. Ok, I didn't compose it. I simply changed one word to KGSers. Guess what the original word it was.
KGSers are mean KGSers are fierce KGSers have teeth And claws that pierce
KGSers are great They can't be beat If I was a KGSer That would be neat
KGSers are nimble And light on their toes My respect for KGSers Continually grows
KGSers are perfect The e-pit-o-me Of good looks and grace And quiet dignity
KGSers are great They're the toast of the town Life's always better When a KGSer's around
This poem is dedicated to Tasmin?. who has some really weird
delusions of what KGS is, barely able to restrain herself from
calling it the one true Go server. One thing we can say about it though. It may or may not be the e-pit-o-me of GO servers, but if it is then it is not by much. The people who run SL should not have to bow before it.
That being said, I remember a while ago ( last December? ) someone had the great idea of people asking for requests for changes to KGS, allong with offers of money. The implemented feature requests would have their funds put into a special fund for desitute people to get KGS+ accounts ( I'm real sure they could use those in the Astrodome right now ). The money thus would be indirectly funneled to wms, who could then work less and spend more time upgrading KGS. Many observed that as long as SL was an unofficial web site for KGS such problems would keep occuring. I think the time has come for TPTB to clearly delineate what kind of KGS stuff is on this site.
Now some KGS stuff I see as useful, ie descriptions of the Wings Go Club, Sabaki Go club etc. Certainly the logon information. Also "brick&mortar" clubs leaving their contact information.I also think it is good for players to keep "GO diaries/weblogs" if for no other reason then newbies can come in and see long list of people who say "I will be shodan in a year", only to find those people are still ddk's three years later. I think discussions of changes to KGS sit on the border.
I don't particularly like filtering, except to say that maybe homepages should be filtered out except for when they are being watched.
Most importantly the minor edit box should be checked by default. There aare times when you can see a sequence of edits to a page by me simply because I forget to check the box.
IanDavis Generally there is a quite a bit of useful KGS stuff here, clubs, teaching schemes etc. Clans are no different from clubs, but are currently noisier :) If anyone wants to make a seperate bulletin board for clans I'm sure we'd all love them forever :) However I don't think SL is being torn apart by it, reminding people on KGS to minor edit might help I guess.
Arno: just a few points:
- we do have a 'online go' keyword since over a year
- RecentChanges does support filters (e.g. the "no riff raff" filter filters out all 'online go' pages among others.) See UserPreferences
- If the clan pages had keywords (easily correctable) and one would use filters for RecentChanges it would be rather 'clean' and undisturbed.
- about MinorEdit by default: many newbies would then do minor edits, even when it would merit a "major edit". Is that better or worse than the other way around?
- Personally, I don't mind the social pages (be it clans or other) at all. As long as they are related to Go and people adhere to WikiEtiquette (e.g. no foul language). That being said, the distinction library vs. social place has been discussed several times before. The best solution I can come up with is to create two areas or domains, which are in the same wiki, but have different aims and/or social rules. Keywords and filters etc. are a first step. One could even distinguish those different domains by different coloring (e.g. social pages could get a blueish theme) to make the areas easily distinguishable. If needed we can add a new PageHeader that creates different areas. It need not be limited to two areas after all.
Let go of the thought that SL has one type of audience only. All I can (will?) do is add tools to make it comfortable for everyone to use.
uxs: The riff-raff thing works for normal pages, but not subpages. It's impossible to add keywords to those subpages, so they don't get filtered. It's quite logical that subpages would inherit the keywords from their parent, but since those subpages can be more specific, extra keywords for those would make sense.
In any case, not being able to filter subpages is a bit of a problem.
Gronk: 2005-09-01. Could someone delete Beginner Exercise Failed Creation and its subpage? I've moved the content to BeginnerExercise241 and BeginnerExercise242.(Is this the right place to make this request?)
Note also: I've just gone through all the BeginnerExercises. I did this for my own reading practice. Where I noticed problems I fixed them. I wasn't uniform about this and I didn't look at all attempt and solution subpages. So, I am sure I missed some things. But, having done this I can now make a good assessment of what those pages need to make them better. (1) A thorough review and re-organization of material on solution pages by a dan-level player would be helpful. (2) Some way of indicating relative difficulty would be helpful. They are not all for beginners and the degree of difficulty varies a lot, even in successive problems. A real beginner would be pretty unnerved by it I think. I'm ending my efforts on these problems and leave it to some other motivated dan player (or nobody) to do this chore.
unkx80: Thank you for the efforts! I have logged the request into Wiki Orphans, will wait for Arno to delete the pages.
Bob Myers: 2005-08-20. Could "short summary of change" be made mandatory? When reading Recent Changes with an RSS reader such as I do, this field is critical to being able to figure out whether or not something is worth looking at.
Hu: It needs to be encouraged. However, if it is made mandatory, people will put in dots or an 'x', etc. I knew a guy who developed a programming language that required the programmer to comment every procedure in it. In the compiler that he wrote for it, he himself put a dummy comment in most of the procedures.
Velobici: 20050727: Is it better to use subpages or to have pages at the same level? Should we move KikasareExample1 and its subpages to Kikasare/Example1?
Bob McGuigan: I think it depends on the specific topic, but in this case I'd prefer it to be a subpage. This seems to me to be very like the attempts and solution of problems, which we usually do make subpages of the problem page. If the examples had independent interest then independent pages would make sense.
Charles Disagree. Subpages can't for example have their own keywords and difficulty levels. They should be used mostly where there is a strict intellectual dependence of material. Here it's a pro game example, so needs Expert difficulty level, for instance.
Bill: Also, subpages currently do not have their own discussion pages. So anything that might be worth discussing in its own right should not be a subpage. That's certainly the case for this page, which is rather high level.
Velobici: I regret to report that its does appear that subpages can not have their own subpages. (Recursion considered too advanced for go players?) Foo!
Given this limitation, we seem to be forced to limit subpages to those items that will never have a discussion subpage :(
Dieter: On July 2005 this is what Most Popular looks like, if excluding all meta pages, fun pages (mostly Hikaru) and KGS tutorials. It gives a fair idea what the (western) Go amateur is looking for. Apparently, a large majority of the people browse the beginner sections, including Sensei's own introduction to the rules.
The popularity of the joseki page shows how deeply rooted the belief is among amateurs that reliance on formula will make them better. For comparison, the BQM page, which lists technical discussions of al kind, equally is a reference page, but does not figure among the top 100. So, the fact that the joseki page is a reference page is not the main justification.
The quest for formulae (and Sensei's capability of providing it!) is confirmed by the fifth place of Go proverbs, and the popularity of basic instinct and all the pages about the opening (fuseki, about the opening, general opening principles.
Surprising high scores (for me at least) are Korean Names and Shusaku but not Go Seigen.
So, we can go two ways in shaping SL: either we get even better at what our customer (=we) wants, or we try to boldly go where no librarian has gone before.
- 114562 ... BeginnerStudySection
- 40977 ... Joseki
- 39435 ... RulesOfGoIntroductory
- 38777 ... Go
- 37831 ... GoProverbs
- 34279 ... Tesuji
- 33740 ... Fuseki
- 30983 ... GoTerms
- 30564 ... LifeAndDeath
- 27325 ... Seki
- 27007 ... KoreanNames
- 23105 ... Ladder
- 22742 ... BeginnerExercises
- 21742 ... Shusaku
- 21708 ... BasicInstinct
- 20614 ... Miai
- 19603 ... BadHabits
- 19258 ... BasicLiveShapes
- 19227 ... AboutTheOpening
- 18748 ... tenuki
- 18452 ... Tsumego
- 18378 ... Sente
- 18106 ... Aji
- 17636 ... GoHistory
- 17242 ... Nakade
- 17123 ... GeneralOpeningPrinciples
- 16794 ... Hane
- 16437 ... Kikashi
- 16404 ... TwoEyes
- 16271 ... Shape
I made a mistake here and believed that some interesting topics nore yet present are middle game joseki, or more focused: reduction joseki, invasion joseki.
I don't think that people are simply memorising joseki off of SL. I think they study them more or less the same way that I do. I encounter something in a game and think my way through it. When I finish the game and I had difficulties or for some reason am curious about the joseki I look it up. That way I naturally visit joseki first.
Rules of go - second tutorial: "Discussion moved from here to /Discussion?."
Imho: Discussions should be kept on the main page (as long as they concern the topic of the page), just after, but separated from, the organized, encyclopedic content of the page. (in pages like Bensons Algorithm, Rules of go - second tutorial) (otherwise they are somewhat hidden, which hinders the improvement of the page a bit) --ab (i moved it back on the page Rules of go - second tutorial, but nowhere else, currently)
Shaydwyrm wrote: IMO you should bring this up at Meta Discussion rather than just moving the discussions back to the parent page, especially since other users are actively doing the opposite on other pages.
Bill: There was some discussion here on SL before Discussion pages were automatically alloted for each main page. For those who participated in SL both before and after the change, the difference is striking and to the good. Many main pages were cluttered with discussions, leading to confusion, to say the least. Now, some main pages are created for discussion, but most are not. It is true that discussion can get lost. That is why, when a page has discussion on its discussion page, there should be an explicit link to the discussion page. Restoring discussions to the main page is rarely the best thing to do.
(Later). I took a look at the Rules of go - second tutorial page. Anybody wanting a tutorial on go would not get much, if anything, from that discussion. I am not sure that it belongs on the discussion page for that page, but that is where I put it. It certainly does not belong on the main page, where it is at best a distraction.
Migeru: I keep finding people on the Spanish Room of KGS who balk at the prospect of having to learn from Senseis because (horrors!) it is in English. However, there is now a parallel French site with interlanguage links going between the two. What would it take to start a third parallel site in Spanish, and how do the interlanguage links work?
Arno: all you need to start another wiki is either
- do it yourself
- or ask me for the GoWiki code and host it yourself
- or ask me to host the spanish wiki.
Note that 2 & 3 involve some heavy customization. The current GoWiki code is not prepared for other languages and many English terms are hard-wired in the code.
The interlanguage links have to be set manually. They are special links.
tderz: 05-04-2005 Dear Arno et al.: Is it possible to give a table of characters for easy insert? It could be placed right below the tiny editing screen. I thought of these Á á É é Í í Ó ó Ú ú À à È è Ì ì Ò ò Ù ù  â Ê ê Î î Ô ô Û û Ä ä Ë ë Ï ï Ö ö Ü ü ß Ã ã Ñ ñ Õ õ Ç ç Ģ ģ Ķ ķ Ļ ļ Ņ ņ Ŗ ŗ Ş ş Ţ ţ Ć ć Ĺ ĺ Ń ń Ŕ ŕ Ś ś Ý ý Ź ź Đ đ Ů ů Č č Ď ď Ľ ľ Ň ň Ř ř Š š Ť ť Ž ž Ǎ ǎ Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ǒ ǒ Ǔ ǔ Ā ā Ē ē Ī ī Ō ō Ū ū ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ Ĉ ĉ Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ Ĵ ĵ Ŝ ŝ Ŵ ŵ Ŷ ŷ Ă ă Ğ ğ Ŭ ŭ Ċ ċ Ė ė Ġ ġ İ ı Ż ż Ą ą Ę ę Į į Ų ų Ł ł Ő ő Ű ű Ŀ ŀ Ħ ħ Ð ð Þ þ Œ œ Æ æ Ø ø Å å – — … [+] [[+]] {{+}} ~ | ° ± − × ² ³ €
Espec. the " | " poses problem to me. If I do ALT+124 (or whatever the code was) then all what I wrote until then, gets wiped out and the page reloaded (#@^~%scream).
More about the future of SL
The systematic joseki storm has calmed down, not that my metaphor says something about desirability. Many questions have been raised on the maintainability of joseki here at SL. Somewhere else on SL, someone questions the usage of WIKI for keeping player info up to date, suggesting database technology is far more useful for this end.
What has been going on here recently are the BQMs of Alex Weldon due to his writing a book, many people creating their homepage or go-blog or club/tournament info.
I've also had a look at rec.games.go and noticed that the days of game discussions (mostly thanks to Tim Brent) are now over, and what remains is SPAM, commercial advertisements related to Go and the usual flaming.
Several initiatives are going on in the spirit of SL: the new flavour of go4go, Benjamin Teuber's ultimate go server, the already existing gobase repository ...
My main question is: SL providing an engine for diagrams and discussion, does not seem to have yielded substantially more discussion of game positions, which I believe is the most interesting application. Is the problem still a matter of technology? I suspect that the link between SL-format and sgf is still too obscure for people. Or is the problem one of poor interest?
My secondary question: yes we may find Kogo, goproblems, GTL, gobase, GoGod valuable resources, perhaps each one better designed to do what it is aimed for than SL for all of them, but can we expect any kind of merge in the future? If not, duplicate effort is inevitable, since we do want to refer to players, games, db statistics, tsumego ...
Reuven: As for the sj stuff, personally I stopped it because I'm not going to have fluent net access for a long while. But even though the go4go author allowed linking to games in his archive, I belive the little people who did participate (Including me) already realised (on their flesh?) the size of the issue at hand... And that it'd be much more reasonable for a site with a local db such as go4go or gobase... go4go does support comments to most things in a forum like manner and in the future dev list there's a possible joseki dictionary maybe we could ask for a wiki like commentary page between the joseki and the forum like notes? Of course it's not as much freedom in actual vars editing which would probably only be given to relatively strong maintainers or something of that nature... Anyway - A merge may sound like a solution but it's not so simple to put lines between types of content (I've tried merging forums and wiki before:)... Also would like to note a "local project" here on sl, the ugs which according to the plans wants to contain all of the above one day....
macelee: I am currently reviewing exisiting wiki systems that can potentially be used for a joseki dictionary at go4go. My initial thought is that the dictionary should have 2 levels of access control. A few strong players can be given full right to edit everything just as if they are using a wiki; all other users can take advantage of the existing comment system to discuss related topics. The main contents are less likely to be flooded by unwanted noise using this approach. Just my initial thought.
Reuven: Sounds nice... :) I wonder about the location of discussion, if certain vars are discussed at different points, it might be hard for somebody to catch up... But it kinda does make sense to put them where relevant... :S And there's also the how-to-explain problem... Ohh yea, and you write that you aren't planning to make a pattern search just yet but it'd make sense to allow the editors at least to search for patterns and make lists linkable for examples and such... ^^*
Arno: Morten and I have been discussing similar issues for some time now. I think we should start a broad discussion about what we would like to achieve. Every now and then I hear that SL is nice for newbies, but does not cover serious stuff. Of course, I don't share this opinion. But it goes to show that the average visitor doesn't have an idea how large SL really is and how much wisdom and food for thought its pages contain. It also shows that we need to improve the navigation even further.
Furthermore, because of its ongoing growth SL also got more "noisy". What I mean by this is that not every edit is related to discussing games or positions. Some people view this as problem as well, I don't. SL is different things to different people.
We have been thinking about the possibility to create different types of pages: reference pages and community pages. Reference pages are written like an encyclopdia. Sober, neutral point of view, no personal opinion. Maybe even with some edit restrictions in place. Community pages is basically everything else: discussions, blogs, home pages, you name it. Although this split is in attitude rather than appearance, different types of pages could have different appearance as well. One could go even further with the split like having special types for problem pages or game discussions. The integration of SGF is in the works. I think it should be ready before summer.
The database (structured data vs. wiki text) issue: I have been giving this some serious thought. I think that a template system, for defining fields and searching in these fields etc. is the solution to this. People would be able to define new templates - basically (in database speak) this would create new tables in the database that could be searched etc. Think of it like Microsoft Access for the web (ok, with less functionality :o), with focus on integration into a wiki.
So where should we go from here?
kokiri: I for one would not be very keen on the idea of creating two types of pages on SL as I think it's unnecessary given the recent(ish) move to create parent/sub-pages - the need to differentiate between authoritative pages and opinions/discussion etc was why that move was made wasn't it?
A problem with destruction of content might necessitate 'locking' of pages, but I'm not aware of that at all. As it is, more vigourous WME should make it clearer what is content.
I can well imagine that some of the content (& there is a lot, right) might be hard to find or navigate around for the beginner, but that to me suggests that there is a need for more WME-ing & more linking between pages, especially from pages that are authoritative definitions, to pertinent examples and discussions from the BQMs etc. This is how I would envisage improving navigation.
I guess it's only natural that the editing of old material happens less that one would like - i for one have intended to do a fair amount of WME-ing, but life being what it is, have not got around to it.
I do think that it comes down to the question what is SL at the end of the day.
It's a library right, but does that mean it's a repository of knowledge, or a place where people seeking to learn come together, or both or something completely different?
For me, the points where the library really comes alive are the energetic, messy, in-need-of-a-WME discussions that arise from time to time. We seem to go through droughts and gluts of these, the most recent arising mainly from alex's questions, but it is reading and participating in them that I think that i would highlight to an newby as the best thing about SL, and that here is where the real lessons to be learnt are.
I think that in general, we don't make enough of the pages where interesting discussion has taken place by linking to them from definition pages to which they may offer some insight. This makes the most interesting parts of SL quite hard to find, i think.
Thus, what i think SL needs is, more questions, more BQMs, more heated debate, more WMEing and more links between pages!
Bob Myers: I agree with all of Arno's suggestions. Here are some ideas:
1. I do believe there is an important role for SL as the "Wikipedia" of go. In other words, a collection of "reference pages", to use Arno's term. I would not suggest editing restrictions; after all, Wikipedia has none. Rather, what is needed is simply a way to mark the pages as being reference pages and establishing guidelines and suggestions about editing them.
2. Again, I agree with a database solution to structured data. My only comment is that I think creations of templates should be limited to a small group of super-wiki-masters. I would not want to see a dozen different templates for pages about professional go players, for instance. Initially, I think we just need two templates (or new types of pages, if you will): professional players, and terminology. To make this really useful, it is not enough to just allow searching for all pages matching some criteria in terms of the new database fields. There need to be custom reports that present the results in useful form.
Much later, we can consider other applications for the database feature. Events would be one.
3. A lot of what goes on in SL is forum-like in nature. Which gives rise to the obvious question: why not have forum features available, supporting SL features like diagrams, and tied into the wiki format. The very simplest approach would be to have a forum associated with each page, which could probably end up taking the place of the Discussion subpage. Forums have lots of advantages. I can mark threads to follow, even set up specialized RSS feeds to track a particular discussion, search by author, etc .
3, At the heart of SL is its support of diagrams. Were it not for this, any wiki or CMS or blogging software would do almost as good a job. This leads to an obvious suggestion--improving diagram support. Supporting SGF, if I understand what is meant by that, is certainly a huge step forward. However, there are other killer features which could solidify SL's position as the leading repository of, and forum for exchanging, go information:
a. animated diagrams. b. in-place (on-board) editing of diagrams c. searching for positions
4. Blogs are great (although personally I might like an RSS feed that omitted them :-), or was otherwise selective). And SL is a good place for go blogs because of its go-specific functionality (diagrams). However, wiki technology is not that well suited to blogging. I'd rather see blogging-specific functionality in SL. By blogging-specific, I mean typical blog features like easy posting of daily entries, easy-to-read pages with the last few posts, categories, etc.
Just my two cents.
LukeNine45: Speaking of blogs: I adapted SL's diagram code into a plugin for wordpress. You can view it in action here:
http://blog.lukenine45.net/topics/go-game/go-problem/ I could make it available if there is any interest or if people would rather host their own blogs. I agree that more linking and WME-ing would improve SL for people that don't read the recent changes everyday... I love SL!
Arno: could you detail how 3a and 3b would look or feel like? What do others think of having more features for thread like discussions? About 2: yes, creation would be limited to librarians or so. A sidenote on searching positions: yes, I agree that it is an important functionality, which I have been thinking about for a long time, but it is a very difficult problem. For server applications speed and resources is paramount. E.g. I like Kombilo very much and use it myself, but it would not be suited for SL if people started using the search seriously. So if you are an algorithm genius feel free to email me or take up the conversation on search algorithms.
Bob Myers: 3a: Each diagram would have a "play" button, which when pressed would, well, play the diagram. Under the covers, this could be implemented in different ways. There are Java applets which do this but probably a GIF-based script-driven approach is the most generic. 3b: Harder, but would make diagram authoring *much* easier and thus greatly foster the addition of useful content. Conceptually, it would be like having an SGF editor embedded in the edit page.
Migeru: 3b is actually *easier*. The process of opening an edit window and changing a single character of the diagram (say from . to O or X) could be easily automated. Inserting a full empty board at a given spot would always require editing the page manually. For the purposes of recent changes, the first of these automated edits could be a "major change", but all the others "minor changes".
P7A77: I know nobody knows me from Adam, but I agree that this site could use a major overhaul, and a handful of master editors. As an extremely anally-retentive person used to working out flexible, consistent, scalable systems (most notably my architectural AutoCAD layering systems), this is a task I would salivate at, then be terrified by the enormity of the task. And as a former graphic designer, I'd certainly like to see a slicker, deeper, more efficient layout. One that encourages more discussion while keeping things tidy, has better categorization and launching areas for beginners, and shows a face of which we can be proud.
Whatever hapless souls end up revamping the site, I hope they realize that a stitch in time saves a zillion. I think the idea of categories, heirarchy, ways of linking, article tone and layout, overall look and navigation, etc etc etc, should be hashed over to death with plenty of trial runs before any major work is done. We want this site to grow for generations. What's a few months (or years) spent working out the kinks? Usually such things are best left to a singular vision, but due to the nature of wiki and the like-mindedness of so many of us here, I think design-by-committee might work out.
...and of course I really want to be involved. :)
P7A77: I hope my last comment didn't seem too critical. I love SL and appreciate all the hard work everyone's put into it. It has growing pains, that's all.
Some thoughts on ways to approach this... first, I think this discussion needs a page (or group of pages) all its own. I feel it's best not to get too bogged down in details too soon. Start with general ideas first. For example, maybe have a brainstorming where everyone can give thoughts on the sorts of page categories they feel should be distinctive (joseki, blogs, game reviews, etc). Then, perhaps, we can all come in with ideas of how to take the scores of suggestions and fit them into scalable heirarchies. Once that's settled enough, then move onto navigational ideas, working out specifics of all of the great suggestions above, etc. When we're agreed on the skeletal structure, then get into things like graphical appearance. And keep in mind I'm coming from a layout/design perspective and know squat about coding. And this is just from my own experience, and what I've found has worked well for me in designing various things.
If I'm sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong, please thwap it.
Migeru: it seems to me that many pages are in dire need of the discussion being refactored somewhat. Sometimes there is a short definition of the term in the title, then a very long and informative discussion of how the definition is actually wrong, and no effort to condense the conses#nsus (if any) into a more readable article and move the discussion that can't be refactored into a subpage. We have for a long time had a Discussion subpage of every page and a discuss-this-page link. It doesn't seem to be used much, and when it is the top page is not being refactored. Just my 2p.
Bob McGuigan: I just tried the advanced search functions for the first time. I didn't know, for example, that it is possible to search for pages with specific levels or keywords. That makes it a lot easier to find advanced material. When I started out at SL I just jumped in, without reading any introductory material where this advanced search function might have been explained. Now I think that people could get more out of SL if they would read the instructions for use. Any way tobe more emphatic about that on the entry page?
2005-01-25 Expired Copyrights
Malweth: I've inscribed some of TheGameOfGoTheNationalGameOfJapan by Arthur Smith (1908). It certainly seems as though the copyright to this book has passed. If it's against SL TOS to add these here, the subpages of TheGameOfGoTheNationalGameOfJapan need to be Deleted.
Arno: I don't see a problem with that. The content appears to be in the public domain.
2005-01-25 BQM integration/deletion
Chris Hayashida: Recently, I have been noticing that the BQMs have been disappearing. Now, I understand the need to integrate the information into the library, but why do we need to get rid of the BQM page? Are we short on disk space?
Dieter: No, but we're rich in dispersed and duplicate content.
I sort of like going through the BQM pages as sort of a test/path for just random Go bits of information. I was thinking that maybe a WME of the BQM page, integrating the relevant information into the library, but leaving the BQM as-is might be good enough.
Dieter: Then restore it.
Otherwise, I think that managing references to those pages would be more trouble than it's worth, and I'm not sure if Charles and the others are taking note of referring pages before the BQM deletion. I fear the survivability of the "old content moved here" links.
Dieter: As a professional WikiMasterEditor, I try to keep the linkage in place.
Keeping the list of BQMs will also ensure that the questions are still in chronological order, as opposed to having gaps.
Dieter: I do not see the upside of that.
Since I help teach beginners, I have been using some of the easier BQMs as a gauge to see what questions beginners have, and what questions I feel I am able to answer.
It almost seems that there needs to be two sections for the library... the static, reference side, that (almost) no-one touches, after it's agreed that's its good information, and the fluid discussions and question-and-answer pages that make Sensei's so friendly.
Dieter: The fact that discussion pages are eventually filtered out into static content does not mean to discourage future questions. On the contrary.
I was talking with others about SL, and they noted the difference between SL and Wikipedia. Wikipedia looks a lot more, well, professional. But at the same time, I'd never post up on there to ask more information about a subject, even if I thought it was a good question. In a way, I want Sensei's Library to be like that for Go, but I also don't want to lose the interaction between deshi that I think is invaluable.
Anyway, would anyone object to leaving the BQMs in place, even after the content has been integrated? A "content integrated here" link with a date could be put at the top, or something. What do you think?
I was asking the same question a while ago in BigQuestionMark/Discussion. I too think that integrating the information is important but in a way, it's kinda fun and instructing to read questions and anwsers in a slightly more free environment... Reuven
mAsterdam: We could use aliases after integration. For example BQM73 could just be an alias of Manchurian Fuseki/Discussion. This way we get an ever growing list of numbered questions. I would prefer a I short list with not-yet-integrated material - but I don't feel strongly about it. So if more people prefer a long BQM-list - fine by me. BTW1 I don't like it when the numbers are reused: it means we lose history. BTW2 I am guilty of some of the integrations you mentioned.
Chris Hayashida: Sorry, I didn't see the discussion off BQM. Must've have come and gone on RecentChanges while I was away. Just for the record, I don't think that the integrations are a bad thing. I just would like to keep the original questions and answers, too. If it's an alias, it might look a little funny... Either the reference page would be in a Q&A format, or the BQM alias wouldn't actually have a question anymore. Does anyone like the idea of using a "see also" link at the top, pointing to the WME'ed reference page?
BTW, I don't want to say that the integrations are a bad thing... This place is great because of all of the work from all of the deshi. I'm only vocal because I care about it.
Bill: How about keeping the original question on the BQM page and linking to the discussion? That would mean a little redundancy, but a little redundancy is not a bad thing. :-)
Dieter: I couldn't imagine people think the original discussion very valuable for future use. The issues raised here prove me wrong. It's a Wiki, restore as you see fit.
Chris Hayashida: I don't know. I just thought I'd ask on here. I'm hesitant to restore things, since I feel that the other deshi deleted the pages after the integration for a reason. I just thought I'd bring it up for discussion on here to see what everyone else thought. It is *everyone's* library, and not just mine.
To be honest, I've only gone through the BQM path a few times, mostly just to see what kinds of questions people ask, and to see if the things I think about while playing remote resemble what the good players think about.
Anyway, I'd like to vote for Bill's idea, to leave the question intact, and put a link to the reference page with the answer. What do you think?
kokiri: I concur, I was intending to suggest something similar, but was procrastinating. I'm not sure what the advantage of freeing up BQM numbers was anyway until we've exhausted all the integers. That said, much kudos to the people who are going around linking in the questions to relavant subject pages, it's exactly the sort of connectivity that really adds value (sorry for the management speak). I think that mAsterdam's idea of aliasing BQMs as subpages of the relevant subject is the best - that way we don't have to duplicate text, and it can still be accessed by either path.
2005-01-23 - A few things that may be handy in Systematic Joseki and other pages.
- Link colors in diagrams - To clearly separate joseki,trick and wrong moves.
- Would be nice to control the alt of areas in maps - To say things like "Emphasis on the right side" and such. (In addition to the moves listing below the diagrams)
- Senseis doesn't support "tables", does it? I'm sure it was discussed before and... It may be a bit problematic but this particular page could benefit of the possibility of dividing it in two - One to show a local continuation, the other continuations in case of tenuki/pass.
Yes I think this particular project might be worth the efforts because it will be an important part of sls future... Reuven
adammarquis: You could circumvent the link colors by using a different letter set (say, t-z) for trick play links. I'd vote no for tables, there is no simple way to implement the markup and the guiding principle of wiki is simple free editing. The idea for controling the alt tags is interesting though, perhaps a format like letter? would be useful.
Yes [letter|target page|alt text] resulting in letter? would be nice... But it's much more usefull in diagram links which's slightly different because it's adding alt to areas in maps instead of simply adding alt to the link itself - Not that it sounds much harder now that I think of it ^^*... As for the table tags, it's also a problem design-wise for windows with small width... But it seems to work at wikimedia projects somehow... Anyway - It wouldn't be so usefull for the this particular purpose as tenuki has to be a sub page... As for ltrs - It's what's been used everywhere so far but I think colors (We only need a few marks fro diagram links afterall, Good, Trick,Bad and Special Strategy or something like that) would be a much better saperation, not only because it'd be much clearer with this many groups - But even with 3 groups, it doesn't seem too natural to non-native english speakers.. ^^* Reuven
Please check it out now at SystematicJoseki/Discussion - The important part is much clearer and shorter - Shouldn't be too long a read now. (Nevermind the 2b or not 2b conversation at the buttom) Reuven
19-01-2005
Dieter: There's a problem with the concept of WME. One will typically wait until a discussion has died, before WME-ing the page. However, for most of us Recent changes is the way to be reminded of certain topics. Older discussions, in need of a WME will scroll off the list. And we will not likely stumble on them in another way, especially if the pagename and references are subject to WME.
Morten Agree. But the problem is not with the concept of WME, but with the fact that we do not track or flag them. There is ToBeMasterEdited, but this isn't really used, and even if it were used, you wouldn't know that a page had been flagged as such without looking at TBME... Do we want a structure to track and follow this up?
mAsterdam: Yes. In other words: what kind of structure were you thinking of?
Dieter: How about an automated list of all pages that have not been edited for m days and at least n times the k days before. This would be a Wiki master edit candidates? page, which would replace the failed creation of to be master edited. Such a page could be mentioned high up the ladder, say, at starting points or on the recent changes.
unkx80: People are inherently lazy, so it seems that all manual tracking pages fail. (Another example is Unsolved Problems). So I support Dieter's idea of having a listing of pages that have not been edited for many days.
Arno: taking up on Dieter's idea: the sidebar shows the list of pages that have been created in the last 365 days and have not been edited for 45 days and at least 10 times the 90 days before:
Do you find this list useful?
Morten. Hmm. Some of the entries on the list are obviously more 'interesting' than others, but that's to be expected. I think that another way to add a page to the list should be by a checkbox on the editpage. Either directly, or if a certain page receives more than q of these 'votes' it is added to the list. Also, I would like some sort of signal on the pages themselves, maybe something like Candidate for WME underneath the page title? Finally, we will also need the ability to remove a page from the list once it's been WMEd...
Dieter: Yes, I think the list meets my expectations. For instance AmIReallyAMoronIfIDontConnectAgainstThePeep is a sure WME candidate. It is a funny pagename but not really practical for future research. The activity displayed there sure makes a review of the parent page necessary.
Bill: Do we really want to do WME's of Discussion pages? They are supposed to be amorphous and inconclusive, aren't they?
If a major edit is done of the main page of a discussion page, then some editing of the discussion page makes sense; for example, to preserve the context of some of the discussion, or to delete discussion about editing the main page, once those edits are done.
Reuven: As for the unsolved problems, could simply list all "problem" type pages which don't have "/solution" subpages - It'd work for most problems, some would need some content moving but it doesn't seem too hard to do...
Bill: Let me make clear that I am in favor of WME's for main pages. But under the new format, with discussion subpages, I have questions about whether WME's of those pages is either necessary or desirable.
Dieter: Yes, I came to understand that after I posted my in the meantime removed comment. On one hand I agree discussion pages by definition should not be WME'ed or erased. On the other hand they may grow out of order and become obsolete. Clearing and starting afresh may do good. No firm opinion.
Bill: Glad we agree, Dieter. :-) And I agree that sometimes they can and should be cleared of deadwood.
Arno: Bill, the list does not imply that these pages should be WMEd, but that they meet certain criteria, outlined above.
Bill: I am suggesting an additional criterion, to filter out <Page>/Discussion pages.
Morten: I think the fact that a discusion page has been actively used should indicate that the main page would be ripe for a WME... Alternatively, the discussion page should maybe spawn into another 'subpage' with it own value. (E.g. when the discussion has arrived at a clear explanation of a concept which should be explained, it may make sense to put this on an "/Explained" subpage or similar, as opposed to adding it to the main page.).
It is probably more useful to have a list which is slightly too large, with several entries on it ignored, than a list which doesn't capture all it should. (In line with my suggestion above that pages can be added 'manually' to such a list). However, again as mentioned above, we should have a tool to remove pages from the list as well, to avoid it being cluttered with obviously 'false' entries.
Talking of WME-ing discussions, I'll be WME-ing Systematic Joseki/Discussion tommorow into a few notes of possible standarts - To order the reading in case the "long" read's whats preventing people form entering the discussion... Unless somebody objects? (I have no expirience doing it btw, so beware of the resulting page;) Reuven
11-01-2005
What do you think of making a "page" requests page? Reuven
mAsterdam: What would you hope to accomplish with such a page? There are lots of places to ask questions and start discussions at SL. Anyway just create Page Requests?, see if it works - hoping that other deshi will actually start creating the pages you would like to see. If it doesn't catch on no harm is done.
2005-01-10
Chris Hayashida: Can someone put up directions for footnotes in Text Formatting Rules? I figured out how to do them, but I can't figure out how to put the directions up there. It seems like the natural place for the directions.
Thanks.
...continued: I'm starting to doubt my own faculties. There are notes for footnotes on that page. I moved things around so footnotes have their own section, and the order makes a little more sense (at least to me.) Thank you to whomever posted them, or sorry if I wasted anyone's time and they were already there... I think I need to get my eyes checked, or more sleep.
2005-01-07
What's the deal with Access Blocked? Suddenly my Firefox little search bar doesn't work anymore. Is this by design? It was such a nifty feature... Chris Hayashida
Later... *sigh* It was user error. I deleted my cache and cookies, and apparently I didn't go back to User Preferences and set everything up again. It's working now.
07/01/2005
Sometimes it'd be really helpful if custom made lists such as "Also See" could look like TOC and SUBPAGES... (And maybe the later 2 could look a bit less out of context? ;) Reuven
2005-01-04, Rant about orphans
Arno: having made the new list of WikiOrphans I feel the need to rant a bit. Orphans are evil (IMHO). Unless you do a search you will not encounter them, as they are not linked from anywhere. Apparently people like to create pages by entering the pagename into the URL box of their browser. Is it really so hard to link a page from somewhere? I could prevent this orphan business, by checking for link before page creation. But maybe that only leads to "junk links" from SandBox or some other unrelated place. :-(
Having said that: if you are a kind soul and suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Wiki Editing Disorder go over the WikiOrphans list and either mark them as "delete" or find them a new home by linking them from other pages (and then remove them from WikiOrphans).
Dave: I completely agree. At the time of writing this reply there are 10,405 pages at SL. Can anyone imagine that we have together created a site that effectively exposes all of that information to the new reader? To me the challenge that we (all contributors to SL collectively) face is not unlike the game of Go itself. In Go we play our stones one by one but the impact and effectiveness of the stones is not in their isolated existence but rather in their connections to each other. The same holds true for SL or any Wiki - how do we effectively tie all of this information together? How do we build bridges from one topic to the next and one page to the next? Wiki orphans are nothing more nor less than zokusuji. But this is not only true of the orphans. Linked pages that contain real content but are inappropriately named and incompletely linked are errors in direction of play :-) I could go on but we had a New Year's toast at my company today and I already drank to much sake. Hopefully you all get the idea. The number one New Year's resolution for all SL contributors in 2005 should be to go forth and hyperlink!
2005-01-03, Get strong at wiki
uxs: The GetStrongAtGoParodies page is great, but could probably use some cleaning up. Would anyone mind if I tried to clean up some of the mess ?
unkx80: Please do, it will be appreciated.
2004-12-19, Community Adverts on SL
Arno: @starline: I guess you missed the discussion right? You can turn it off, you know?
2004-12-08, KGS Wish Fund issue
(Moved from Coffee Machine.)
Bildstein: A page was created yesterday called KGSWishFund?, apparently discussed, and then deleted. There may be a good reason for it having been deleted, but I can't know, because there doesn't seem to be a way for me to see any version or diff of the page. All I have is the comments of the contributors. Here they are, FYI:
(deleted) Morten "Page removed in line with wms comments" (edit) ilanpi (no comment) (edit) wms "This page is *NOT* part of KGS" (edit) Morten "KGS may not be to blame for this" (edit) Reuven "o_O" (edit) Unkx80 "register disagreement of this page" (edit) Morten "Surely this is a joke?" (edit) ilanpi (no comment) (new) Sebastian "fund to actively promote the improvement of KGS"
I feel like this discussion has been censored; like someone else has decided that the general public should not be able to see this content, and I'm not happy.
Also, it would seem that Sebastian didn't have a chance to defend his newly created page before it was deleted.
That's all I have to say, for now. Thanks for listening.
Hikaru79: Well, the comments seem pretty self-explanatory. Sebastian probably suggested something along the lines of a fundraising event/donation option to make money for KGS; Judgingby the strong reactions (particularly from wms), it's even possible that Sebastian was suggesting that this idea was going to be implemented; people did not seem to approve (like Morten, Unkx80, and Reuven), and when wms caught wind of the page, he cleared the whole thing, and Morton came in and deleted the page. Note, though, that I never got to see any of the page either, so these are just conclusions I've drawn from the comments and changes, but it seems to fit. Correct me if I'm wrong :)
Bildstein: Yeah, that looks like an accurate reading of the thing (but I wouldn't know). I just figure there has to be something more to it than that.
Blake: I actually read it earlier. That's pretty much the gist of it. Sebastian's page made it seem as if this scheme were actually in effect; it even had dollar amounts listed for certain services. There was a bit of an argument over it. wms was understandably unhappy, and deleted all the content of the page.
Bill: I took a brief look at the original. It seemed to me to be a hoax or spoof.
Also, I do not think that the original author was really Sebastian. Not only did it seem out of character, there were some other small clues. I suppose that Sebastian will post later about this.
Bildstein: Sebastian sent me an e-mail telling me that he had created this page. This was how I found out about it.
Bill: Well, if it was authentic, deleting it seems precipitous to me. Sebastian has contributed a good bit of quality content to SL. It seems that he angered some people, but I feel sure that he did not intend to do so. wms says that the page was not part of KGS, but I didn't think that it claimed to be.
Blake: Well, wms is vehement about not taking money for anything he hasn't already announced, so anything which even seems to imply that he is doing so could be problematic for him. It wasn't clear that it wasn't affiliated with KGS; after all, it fooled several people before it was noticed.
Bill: My impression was that KGS was not to get any money directly, but that a fund was to be set up for KGS memberships for deserving but perhaps impecunious players, such as students. My impression was that this was not something that KGS was doing itself. (Bolstered by wms's reaction.)
unkx80: As Hikaru79 pointed out, the comments were pretty much self-explanatory. I think it was a well-intentioned post but Sebastian probably forgot that such an idea will anger a lot of people, because it violated some fundermentals. Indeed the tone of wms's comment seemed very pissed off. To me, the post looks almost like a troll, if not already one. It is also understandable why Morten quickly deleted the page, he wanted to prevent the issue from escalating, and such very controversial issues can escalate very quickly into a large scale flame war.
Rich: I agree; it was certanily not clear how official (or even serious) the idea was, nor how advanced in implementation; I'd have been angry in wms' shoes. However, I think Bildstein has a point - what if people have heard something about it, and come to look? It might be better to replace the content with wms' comments and an explanatory note, and leave the history there to see what the fuss was about.
Chris Hayashida: Having read the page before it was deleted, I have to say that I couldn't tell if it was a joke or not. Basically, the page talked about putting up money to fix bugs, and then that money would be used to give "deserving" individuals KGS Plus accounts, thereby giving KGS more money. It was an idea that sounds ok at first, but after thinking about it, I completely disagree with it.
I feel that often people don't realize how much work goes into programming, especially something as big as a Go server. If I were wms I would feel like it was a slap in the face to offer money to fix bugs or add features. On top of that, the money would be used to give to someone else (unrelated to fixing the bug or adding the feature.) Even if the money did go to wms, the $5-10 offered per feature would nowhere near compensate the amount of time that he had put in.
Figure that the average programmer probably get $30-70 an hour. Figure that the average bug may take several days or weeks to fix. Do the math.
I don't blame Sebastian, as I think his heart was in the right place. He wanted to give incentive to KGS to fix bugs and add features, and possibly add "sponsors" from the KGS users to help give financial incentive. I just think this isn't the way to go about doing it.
rubilia: I got to read the history of that page before it was deleted, and am rather confused about such a narrow-minded reaction to Sebastian's proposal. Of course, it was quite an unorthodox attempt, and furthermore, obviously, not coordinated with wms. However, all the basics are already there:
- people can support wms' effort on development of KGS (see
Is KGS Plus for me?)
- patrons can buy a KGS+ membership as a gift to someone else
- KGS users do have big interest in some particular feature implementations
The suggestion mainly was about to combine them to a "triple-win" concept. I don't see what'd be bad about that, nor do I, why it's necessary to get so heavily upset.
(Beside of that, such a project could yield useful side-effects, as providing an incentive to clear up the wishlist, or to converge similar but slightly different wishes in order to increase pledges for the unified one.)
Anyway, wms' rejection surely doesn't encourage to think on. I guess, we have to accept it.
ilan: Yes, it is too bad the page was deleted, because an all out flame war would have given people yet another way to sublimate their aggressivity through something other than playing go. Thankfully, there is still rec.games.go.
Bill: Given the people involved, I do not believe there would have been a flame war.
Chris, thanks for your account of the page. I missed the connection with bug fixes when I scanned it. My first reaction was, This can't be serious. My second was, Sebastian did this? And I moved on. Now I see how easily it could upset wms.
This episode raises a couple of questions in my mind. First, does wms (or KGS) "own" SL pages starting with KGS? Should they all be part of the KGS corner of SL?
Second, although we would surely not allow pages devoted to criticizing a player, what about pages criticizing go servers? Sebastian's page was not, it seems, particularly critical of KGS, but it still angered wms. Criticisms of IGS and other servers have provoked flame wars on rec.games.go, which we certainly want to avoid. OTOH, do we want to prohibit SLers from criticizing go servers?
Blake: This ties in with a discussion we had a long time ago, about whether the KGS Wishlist and so forth belonged here. I argued that KGS should run a discussion forum of its own for such issues, and that still makes more sense to me. If KGS did run such a forum, any postings at SL by people other than wms would have no air of legitimacy, and the KGS forums could be moderated as wms and Kiseido saw fit.
As it stands now, though, there are official KGS pages here. The KGS Wishlist and so forth. wms has complete control over these pages, mostly, and so they belong to him de facto. They are seen as official because, well, they are official. When someone posts a page like Sebastian's, it seems official by reason of association. "Those KGS pages at SL are official, so this one must be official, too." This isn't really a problem for things like the KGS Teaching Ladder, but when there is a sensitive issue like money involved, it can cause problems, as we've all just seen.
DrStraw I would have to question the use of the designation "official page". SL is a wiki. That means anyone is free to edit any page they wish. To say that some pages are owned by any one, wms or other, seems to contradict this fact. There are certain pages which are maintained by wms as a means of disseminating KGS information and, as a courtesy to him, other people do not edit them. If people chose to do so he could hardly complain. At the same time, it is unfair of people to assume that because a page has the name KGS in the title any contents are official. Anything written in SL should be treated the same way you would treat anything from the web: not to be trusted unless you know the source.
Blake: Well, that was why I qualified my statement earlier. Though it may not be philosophically correct for the KGS pages on SL to be taken as official, they are. They belong to wms in fact, rather than in principle. (That was the subject of my previous arguments about the suitability of SL as a forum for KGS.) Furthermore, because those pages acquire an air of official endorsement, pages associated with them, by name or content, will likewise acquire an air of official endorsement.
geno: The health of a community requires free expression and open debate; at a wiki, the concrete expression of these abstract principles is a detailed history of changes. If there was a misrepresentation of some sort, it can be marked as such. If the page was more along the lines of a suggestion for co-operative action, then there's no real harm done. Unfortunately, no one can make that determination or comment on specifics, as the page and its history are gone. The history should be restored.
2004-11-23, Classification of Humour pages
Rakshasa: See BloodyL. This page is classified under Shape, Theory, Go term, Humour. This seems wrong to me as it adds humour pages to keywords where you would (I would atleast) expect serious pages. IMO the keyword search list are large enough without adding irrelevant stuff.
Arno: I agree. I have removed the other keywords.
Rakshasa: What about homepages that has keywords like humour Dogbert and funny but not real proverbs being in proverb and humour CutFirstThinkLater?
I went through the Humour keyworded pages and removed obviously wrongly classified pages. BTW, UnusualGobans is in almost every imaginable keyword, is that right?
2004-11-21 Aliases
Chris Hayashida: I have come across some duplicate content. I think they should be aliases, and all the information should be combined put on one page. For example, Eyes Win Semeais and Me Ari Me Nashi seem like they should be the same page. I also think that Korigatachi might be a good alias for Overconcentration. There should be a standard, though. Should the base page should be the English word, so that it isn't biased towards Japanese? Or should the Japanese term be used, since it is more standard in English texts?
Another use for aliases might be the alternate romanizations of Japanese words. Jyuudan/Judan and Ouza/Oza come to mind, for example.
What do you guys think?
unkx80: Feel free to alias if you think it is appopriate. However, please note that there are some subtle differences between certain similar Go terms, which explains why they are on separate pages.
Dieter: Unify content: yes. Alias: yes, unless the page can elaborate on linguistic or other subtleties.
Charles I think the page name should be the English term except in a few cases such as (a) no acceptable translation (e.g. sabaki, even atari), and (b) common usage in English is too confused about the Japanese term's real meaning (e.g. shortage of liberties versus damezumari).
I'd also like to see more use of sub-pages for linguistic concerns. Perhaps it would be good to have a convention of a footer at the bottom of a page, listing all the subpages that exist. (Ah, there is now a list on the side-bar: excellent ... did I miss the WikiNews?)
Bill: I recently made reference to me ari me nashi. I would have been happier if that page were an alias for eyes win semeais. (I learned me ari me nashi, so the English version did not come to mind. ;-)) When unifying material, I prefer the English version if it is standard. The Go Player's Almanac is a good reference here. For instance, it does not have overconcentration in its glossary, but it does translate korigatachi as overconcentrated shape. Given that, I would prefer Overconcentrated Shape for the unifying page, with the korigatachi and overconcentration as aliases. If there is a fine distinction between overconcentration and overconcentrated shape, I do not see it on the overconcentration page, which says it is a translation for korigatachi. Anyway, if someone wants to make that distinction, they can un-alias the page. And, in fact, that possibility is a reason to make Overconcentration an alias. If it is the main page, and someone later makes that distinction, they cannot just un-alias the page. They have a lot of work to do.
Later: I see that Charles has been busy unifying that content. Thanks, Charles. :-)
Chris Hayashida: Just my opinion, but I think that me ari me nashi should be the root page, and Eyes win semeais the alias. The former is more of a standard, and the latter still has the Japanese language bias alongside a weird pluralization. (Don't get me started on josekis. :)
Why the distinction? I think nested aliases break, if I remember correctly.
Bill: Can we unite Sequence, Order of Play, and TeJun?
unkx80: I personally think joseki has no good English counterpart, but eyes wins semeais really should be eyes win capturing races. Then all should be happy.
Chris Hayashida: I think the original title was chosen because the rhyme makes it easier to remember. It's too bad, though, that the only people that can remember the proverb are the people that probably don't have to. Most beginners probably don't know the term semeai anyway. :(
Bill: Look, Mom! See me eye?
Sorry.
Upon reflection, I think there is a good linguistics point to keeping them separate. Eyes win semeais, is a proverb. Me ari me nashi, refers to a feature of a position. And it is used that way in English: "That's me ari me nashi." "That's eyes win semeais," isn't grammatical.
Chris Hayashida: I didn't really worry about grammar when making some of the aliases. For example, I would think that Overconcentrated (adj.), Overconcentrated Shape (n.), and Korigatachi (n.) can all point at the same page. It just sort of makes sense, and I think the benefits of reduced duplication of content (and having to click less to get all of the information) outweighs the cost.
On a side note, I heard some interesting translations of me ari, me nashi. I take it to mean, "eye exists, eye doesn't exist" but I have heard "eyes beat no eyes," "the eyes have it," and "I have an eye, so you can go f yourself." Since I never ventured forth a translation in the beginner's night, I was somewhat surprised what it translated into. :)
P.S. Please don't make any of the above into aliases.
Bob McGuigan: Anyone who has tried to read a clumsily translated instruction manual knows that a good translation has to read well in the target language. "Eye exists, eye does not exist" does not read well in English. Me ari me nashi is itself an abbreviation in Japanese. It stands for a (too long) statement such as "In a capturing race, having an eye when your opponent doesn't is advantageous". "Eyes win capturing races" might be confusing in the case where both sides have one eye.
Bill: I do not worry about grammar when making alias pages, either, Chris. Me ari me nashi is not a proverb, but Eyes win semeais is. If you have a position where one player will win a semeai because he has an eye and his opponent does not, or where he can form an eye while his opponent cannot, you call it me ari me nashi. IMX, that is a very common usage.
2004-11-19, Classification of problem difficulty
unkx80: A rough check reveals that there are loads of problems tagged as beginner (beginner exercises) and advanced (kyu exercises), but a number of them actually should be in a problem series that falls somewhere in between, i.e. intermediate. How about starting an intermediate exercises? series? Maybe we can then move a number of these problems to their true homes.
Cheyenne: My take (roughly speaking), would be that an advanced problem would be targeted towards a dan level player, intermediate would be towards a single digit kyu player and beginner would be targeted towards someone in the 20 (+/- 10) kyu range.
ilan: I haven't understood the goproblems.com ratings too well, but if I understand the caption at the top "N Kyu 55 seconds" to mean that the problem is for N Kyu players, on average, then intermediate problems there are in the range 4 Kyu to 3 Dan.
Cheyenne: I could agree to that. I guess my standpoint is that if I am a kyu level player (which I am), then I would view myself very much as a beginner and when (or if) I get closer to a dan level, then I might start actually understanding this game.
unkx80: Okay. But what is the expert difficulty for? I think it is understood that expert refers to (amateur) dan players?
2004-11-19, Discussion pages
Bill: While I am glad SL now has Discussion pages, I have a couple of questions about their use. One is that readers might not know that there is a discussion on the discussion page, and miss it. I think we need to show that explicitly. The other question I have is about pages that seem to me to be discussion pages without the name. Example: Teaching Go to Newcomers. Isn't that a discussion topic? But the page has been gutted, with material moved to its Discussion page, and elsewhere. I do not think that's an improvement.
Charles Yes, a flag of some kind raised to show existing discussion would be useful. But I don't really understand the other part. Discussion pages are for discussion of the material on the page (primarily). If material is inappropriately divided, then it should just be moved back to where it naturally belongs. Page entitled X is normally about X (I wish we had a better convention going about this), and X/Discussion is comment about the content of page X, actual or potential.
Bill: Material that is about the topic, teaching go to newcomers, has been moved to the discussion page. That is what bothers me. Yes, it is in discussion format, because there is no one way to do it, but many.
Dieter: I don't know, Bill. There are many ways to teach, probably as many as people teaching it. So that page could just contain a list of experiences. Alternatively, many ways of teaching are just instances of the same general idea, and the ideas could be categorized there, while people's experiences and opinions reside on the discussion page.
One of the main fucntions of parent pages is that they can be linked. I don't think SL wants to link discussions from everywhere.
Charles I prefer it if people who have problems with material just edit or move it; even if first efforts aren't always perfect. There are plenty of logjam debates here.
Bill: I brought up that page merely as an example. It started, I believe, as a discussion page. My question is about what we, as a community, want SL to be. Do we want to restrict discussion, except perhaps for brief asides or footnotes, to the discussion subpages? Or do we want also to have main pages for discussion about different topics (even if they are not labeled as discussion)?
Charles Firstly, SL is a wiki, so that any existing conventions have to be seen as mere temporary structures, and editing should not be constrained by any absolutes. Having said that, I like the model where we recognise 'main page' as centralising the major points and themes from a discussion; and subpages build up as a kind of penumbra. It's a text+gloss model, but with the difference that one expects some feedback from subpages into the initial discussion.
2004-11-12
(Sebastian:) Arno, you deleted Editing Pages / Editing Other Peoples Comments? because it was "obsolete". What has made it obsolete? The question still remains: Is it legit to edit other people's comments, and if so, to what extend, and how should you do it? Where is that answered? (Actually, it is likely that I checked this page before and found it OK to be deleted, but I don't remember it anymore, which isn't helped by the fact that the page doesn't exist anymore.)
Arno: the page was listed on WikiOrphans as obsolete for half a year. Noone objected. The contents were one question and two answers. The question and the answers are discussed on many other pages as well. I don't think we need an extra page for this. We have enough meta pages already. (btw I think that creating a new page asking your question was unnecessary.)
2004-11-05
Charles Enough thread mode. Keep it for discussion pages. Do I need to say more?
Bill: And it can become confusing. As Robert Pauli suggests, using footnotes can let people make their points without cluttering up other people's contributions. It also helps the reader make sense of what is being said.
(Request to aLegendWai and to The Powers That Be) Cheyenne: Would it be possible to have a subpage much like the /discussion pages that is labeled as "/beginner_explanation" or some such? aLegendWai, I'm not asking you to limit your contributions, however the number of edits, and the level of your explaining things does distract at times from purpose the page might be targeted for. What may be unclear to a beginner or intermediate may be very obvious to an advanced player.
For an analogy, one would not expect a 1st year physics student to be editing the papers written by PhDs? and interjecting questions and their own comments in to the paper. Even though those comments and questions would be helpful for laypersons or other students, there might be better places to put them.
Bill: We do have the Introductory page level for basic explanations. My own sense is that introductory pages deserve to be pages in their own right, not subpages.
Cheyenne: Well, what I'm talking about isn't about the introductory type of pages, but some of the recent edits have taken intermediate and advanced topics and tried to turn them into a "topic for Dummies" type of page. The point that I'm trying to make is that some people come to SL to find concise details and are instead having to wade through explainations of obvious things. Again going back to my analogy, lets say that you subscribed to "Physics Review" and in every article you had to wade through explanations that were at a highschool physics level. Again I'm not saying that the explanations are not warranted, but to clutter a page with commentary to explain or question every little thing becomes very distracting. Maybe footnotes as Charles suggested might be one way of handling this.
Rakshasa: Footnotes still clutter the page since they are on the same page. Sure it's below the actual content but it still 'bloats' the page. It also gives you more text to consider and discard as being irrelevant to what you are seeking.
Charles I think that creating sub-pages is a better option than footnotes in some cases. The two combined, as in a footnote that says 'see discussion at /XXX?' could keep it tidy. If there is a lot of what is complained of here - and there may be - it suggests two things to me. Firstly the overall topic structure is a bit undeveloped, still, and things need to be spread out over more pages, to give the impression of a more open-plan or porous style of discussion. Secondly, there is no convention here of introductory sections on a page; meaning that discussion may well take place in what you could call the wrong 'register'.
2004-11-04
unkx80: Some link spams were added today on nine pages and these were all marked as minor edits. Perhaps we will need to monitor the full recent changes page every now and then.
(Sensei's Library does not allow complete anonymous changes to pages. All IPs are logged.)
Morten: These seem to me to be semi-automatic, which is annoying - if someone can find an easy way to add this spam, it will become difficult to keep up with, and, as you say, the FullRecentChanges is not monitored as well as the RecentChanges.
It should be possible to implement a feature whereby any attempt to make an internal link into an external one is refused...
Does anyone have any other ideas/thoughts on this?
axd: No direct feedback for this, but wouldn't it be interesting to devote a page to vandal techniques/SL weaknesses, and the means to fight this? Strange as this might sound, as this gives the impression to give weapons to vandals; but I was thinking of a situation analog to what's happening in cryptography: a cipher is safe if its algorithm is known, but still cannot be cracked without the key: here the idea is to keep up with vandals. The analogy would be to openly list SL weaknesses and the tactics/techniques vandals use to sneak in (e.g. use minor edits) and list the countermeasures. The spiral of countermeasures countering countermeasures is not far away, but maybe it is better than try to keep things secret, hoping that vandal skills stay low. Another analogy could come from the Open Source world where identified problems get tackled more rapidly, the interested people can better focus on how to fight the problems, maybe this will help everybody to be more concretely aware of SL weaknesses and how to monitor them. (By the way, I have the impression that some vandals must be insiders.)
(Sebastian:) An easy technical measure would be to allow only registered users to change pages, or to limit the amount and kind of changes unregistered users can do. This has three disadvantages, however:
- It counters the principles of a wiki wiki site being open to anyone.
- It might deter some people from contributing.
- It might result in a flurry of fake registrations. Maybe this could be mitigated by requiring a valid e-mail address (like
http://gobase.org does).
axd: registering users is what I already suggested some time ago (sorry, can't remember where/when), I don't see a conflict with the openness of the site, it would also reduce for example the confusion caused by registered users doing changes in pages under another IP (because they are elsewhere, I have no problem with that). And casual visitors will not contribute in a significant way; if they want, they should feel the urge to get an account: it's not much asked to register, after all. But the third argument (fake registrations) is still a problem.
Charles Until there is a serious vandal problem, I don't think SL should orient itself towards dealing with vandalism. Registration is always a negative.
Niklaus: A different technological solution (or at least another obstacle for the vandal) would be to create the option to be alerted if somebody checked the "minor edit" box, but actually did a lot of editing. That way nobody has to read FullRecentChanges all the time and most of the vandalism would be noticed quickly.
Morten: Registration has been discussed many times before, and is not the way to go, for many reasons, mainly the one Charles states: vandalism is low, we do not need to change what is a fundamental concept of wiki and SL philosophy to cope with it. I like the 'minor' verification idea - subtle but should at least force some of the vandalism to the front.
Any more 'subtle' ideas?
[173]
rubilia: Maybe this doesn't outweight the useful effects of an "automated minor edit verification", but one drawback is that deshis could not deliberately keep stuff out of (main) RC anymore (except if meeting the "minor" criteria). For example, have a look at the page history of Rubilia/NormalValues. That page is not ready, yet, and I don't want to really "put it up" in the current state. However, many of the 452 edits are actually "major" ones, which would result in frequent alerts, then. I'd like to suggest an idea of compromise: to enable the "minor" checkbox at registered users' edits only.
Bill: Aside to rubilia. If I understand what you are doing, if we call the Japanese miai values J and the normal values N, in most cases N = (J + 1)/2. (There are exceptions with some sekis and kos.) Is that right? Thanks.
rubilia: Yes, in *most* cases that's correct (with N referring to the second part of normal values, of course).
2004-10-28, Keyword Proposal
rubilia: I can't see any appropriate keyword to the variety of topics related to teaching Go. What about creating a keyword "Teaching"?
Discussions on the following topics have now a separate page:
- Systematic Joseki/Discussion
- KGS forum at SL discussion
- Scoring and Counting Discussion?
- SL Copyright / Discussion : discussion regarding copyright issues. (See
http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?MeatballWikiCopyrightDiscussion)
- A discussion about our site name
- How off topic can we get at SL
- Deleting Pages
- Mentioning Grades or Not
- Advertising On SL / Discussion
- Joseki Library / Discussion
- Extended discussion on SL structure and debates now at 2003-11-20 discussion
- Editing Pages / Editing Freedom
This page is pruned from time to time.
Browse through the history of this page to find out about older discussions.