Coffee Machine
Taking a break? Go ahead and add what's on your mind right now. Alternatively, take a look at some go humour, fun go facts, or great quotes.
N.B. If continuing a thread, add your remarks to the end, even if in a previous month. If starting a new thread, add it at the end of the current month; if that month is not yet present add it at the top of the page.
| Table of contents | Table of diagrams [Graded go problems for beginners], vol 3, problem 254, black to play |
Motto for today:
fool (2023-04-05): This is a go proverb .. right? Well, I threw out the previous motto, it was getting really old. And when did someone last washed the coffee pot??
(You may change the motto of the day, but please save the old motto in Old Mottos.)
July 2024
Spam
unkx80: In recent days I removed several instances of forum spam with "Breaking News" as its title. These spam posts aim to gain subscribers for a major news organization in the USA.
If personnel from this news organization have to resort to such spam tactics to gain subscribers, then their actions only serve to damage the reputation of the news organization itself.
Question about calling tsumego unsound
Malcolm A few days ago I asked a question on the talk page for tsumego about about calling tsumego unsound. So far there has only been one response, from unkx80. I would appreciate a few other responses, particularly from SL librarians. I think it's an issue that merits some attention. By the way I mentioned this topic on ![[ext]](images/extlink.gif)
a forum and got two responses there. John Fairburn's comments are particularly interesting I think.
hnishy: I borrowed "unsound" from chess. A chess problem is called unsound when it has more than one solution or no solutions. The concept is quite similar to 失題 in Japanese.
unkx80: I see, thanks.
Slightly off-topic here, but I do think that the concept of 失題 deserves a page on SL. While controversial in the English speaking world, this concept nevertheless exists and is practiced by a significant proportion of Go players.
Question: Is 失題 pronounced in Japanese as しつだい? hnishy:yes, correct.
Dieter: I noticed the discussion on L19. I agree that "unsound" to an English speaker (I'm non-native but at least professionally proficient) comes across as if there is an issue with a problem having multiple equivalent solutions. In 30 years of playing and discussing Go, I haven't seen such a qualification. Quite the contrary, problems with multiple solutions, fully or almost equivalent, abound and are neither educationally troublesome, nor considered lacking elegance. I would therefore not give them the "unsound" label.
unkx80: My experience has been different. I started learning Go in 1989, and within several years I already came across the term 失题 (shi1 ti2) via Chinese language Go books, can't remember which though. In the early 1990s, English language media on Go was almost non-existent for me.
As further evidence on the term 失题, lets look back to 2006 when somebody created the Igo Hatsuyo-ron Problems page by transcribing the problem diagrams from an online Chinese document, this document still exists today. In this document, there are 18 mentions of 失题 in the problem descriptions, for which some reference the no-solution sense but others referencing the multiple solution sense. Where a problem has been modified in a later edition of Igo Hatsuyo-ron, the mention of 失题 may refer to the original problem, the modified problem, or both. Clearly, based on the problem descriptions, there has been attempts by people at fixing problem compositions that were 失题, although not all of these efforts were successful.
DudleyMoore: I'm not really a chess problem solver, but in chess an unsound combination is a sequence of moves that doesn't work as envisaged. Black tries to force mate, but he missed White's refutation. I wouldn't use it in chess problems, I'd prefer invalid or flawed. However I did find some examples of unsound being used on chess.com for chess problems/studies.
hnishy: Shitsudai article has been created by unkx80, with some additions by me. Coffee Machine is not prohibited to be productive. :)
Malcolm: That's a really good page! Well done! Minor comment, it could do with a CJK box.
Moving forward, I would prefer if in the future we progressively move the comment about a tsumego being defective / 失题 away from the problem page, towards the solution page. It would be good to have a consensus first however about this. Who says aye?
xela: I mostly agree that it would be good to move "defective" to the solution page. Especially for collections such as Xuanxuan Qijing and Guanzi Pu where John Fairbairn is telling us that the multiple options are by design, not to be considered a flaw. And I think it's legitimate to have "real game situation" problems: in a real game, sometimes there isn't a clear and unique best move. But for things like beginner exercises, or composed tsumego that are intended to follow modern conventions: if it appears that the extra solution is unintended, and it's in a context where people might reasonably expect the solution to be unique, then I don't object to noting the multiple solutions on the problem page.
Malcolm: I entirely agree with you xela.
Malcolm: I propose that rather than calling it defective or some other single-word term, we simply copy/paste a phrase like "this problem has more than one solution" or something along those lines. Or how about "this problem has more than one solution (shitsudai)"?
hnishy: I support Malcolm's proposal with the link to Shitsudai article for wordings. I just borrowed "unsound" from chess for lack of a better word. If Shitsudai is accepted as a loanword from Japanese, I have no objections. But the label should be on the problem page for internal consistency - our tsumego conventions page says "they often include the following... in composed problems, there is only one main line".
Malcolm: Regarding internal consistency, I don't think we need to decide about the label placement solely based on what's currently in the tsumego conventions page - I think that would doing things the wrong way round. We should first decide what we want, and then if a change is needed to tsumego conventions, it can be made. (In any case tsumego conventions needs an edit now to mention shitsudai.)
xela: I agree. Conventions on SL are not handed down on stone tablets. They were created by users, and can be changed by consensus amongst users.
hnishy: As I understand, classic problems on SL are mainly for training, not for history. For example, poetic problem titles are often omitted and no one complains, because they are not important for training purposes. So it's more practical to treat them like modern composed problems - it's bothersome to have multiple different conventions on SL.
Let's look at the big picture: the world of chess, which is larger and more advanced than Go, follows the one-solution principle. So does Asian Go. Only some in non-Asian Go, by far the smallest (and unfortunately the weakest) group of the three, claim the principle is not necessary. Are they right, or just unaware of their room for improvement? Why you stick to the pre-modern Chinese convention when the Chinese themselves describe some classical problems as shitsudai? They have advanced to the modern way in the 20th century. If the English Go community didn't know the one-solution principle, introduce it now. Why you decline to advance and catch up?
xela: Chess is a very different culture. They have a long history of problems as purely artistic compositions: the majority of chess problems are highly artificial and not intended for improving playing skill, to the extent that grandmaster of composing or solving problems is a separate title from grandmaster of playing chess. In recent years we've started to see some more practical problem collections appearing in both books and online, but this is a fairly recent phenomenon. Twenty years ago, people learning chess were discouraged from spending time solving problems (with the exception of endgame studies for more advanced students).
When you are solving problems to improve your play: in a real game, sometimes there is a unique best move, and sometimes there are two equally valid moves (as far as we can tell on current knowledge) where the choice is purely a matter of style. (Or for some life and death situations, the best choice might depend on the rest of the board.) It's good to learn to tell the difference. Therefore it's useful to train on some problems with a unique solution and some problems with multiple solutions. Especially for people who've come through an education system that emphasises asking questions ahead of rote learning.
I think SL serves the needs of both training and history. The lack of poetic titles is just because of the lack of a non-copyrighted English source. If we added titles to all of the Xuanxuan Qijing by copying from Gateway to all Marvels, I think John Fairbairn would not be pleased. I for one would like to see the original titles added if possible.
I'm amused that "advance and catch up" means the same as "follow the conventions established a century ago"!
unkx80: A couple of comments:
- I can accept the consensus approach suggested by xela and Malcolm, although I have no strong preference.
- Here and over at L19, some of the westerners seem to be ignorant of the very presence of shitsudai, or they pretend that shitsudai never existed and denounce it totally. I agree with much of John Fairbairn's comments, but frankly I am also disappointed in some parts of his comments, because I thought that he knew Japanese Go much better than I do. As I understood that shitsudai is a very deeply entrenched concept among a subset of Go players and it has a very long history, what I will defend is the very presence of shitsudai itself. But this is about as far as what I will defend.
- Personally I don't agree with the application of shitsudai to every single problem. There's value in having problems with only one solution, there's value in having problems with multiple solutions, and there's value in both stating or not stating whether a problem has one or multiple solutions. There are practical use cases for all of them. Similar to some of John Fairbairn's comments, hnishy's paragraph including "Why you decline to advance and catch up?" rattles me quite a bit. I do not think that sticking to the one-solution principle for every composed problem is the correct approach.
- Regarding the appropriate English term to use for shitsudai or whether to stick to the romanized form of the Japanese term, I have no preference. But in the spirit of SL, there should be consensus on the English term, if one is to be applied.
hnishy: I give up. If some of you insist on moving the label to Solution pages, proceed at your own risk and cost of time. Presenting multi-solution problems without caution will frustrate many readers, slow down their improvement and invite more questions. You are responsible, not me. How can multi-solution problems be instructive without the label? The reader will click on [/Solution] after finding one of its solutions, without comparing alternatives.
xela: Purely by chance, I stumbled across this today.
![[Diagram]](diagrams/23/755c93386ed8661a752acbe38b0c45c9.png)
The text under the diagram is just "Problem 254 (5 moves). How can Black kill White?" You have to turn to the back of the book to find an answer diagram with the 2-2 point as "the" solution, followed by a "reference" diagram showing two other ways to kill and saying "but the standard attacking move is Black 1 in the correct answer." Of course I don't know whether the text is from Kano Yoshinori himself, a ghostwriter or a translator. From memory, I think there's a handful of similar problems (multiple ways to kill or live, but one way identified as preferred) in this set of books.
Dieter: Hi hnishy. You're coming across one of the aspects of wiki-editing, which is that the collaboration causes friction because there's disagreement on how to proceed. It's fine to "give up" on this particular discussion in this case, just know your efforts in general are very much appreciated.
On the case at hand, I think a label "multi-solution" would cause less friction than "defective". The former is factual, the latter is judgmental. Myself, I'm of the school where a problem should contain minimal hints. The objective is not so much to get it right, as to read into it. But that's my opinion.
March 2024
bugcat: From now on, anyone who behaves in a grossly rude way will immediately receive a 36 hour IP range ban. If another admin wants to revert that, it's their business. It's just a shame we don't have anything longer. This is not RGG; SL is a civil community.
Article blankings will be considered rudeness and incur a ban. If you want to add a remove tag, put it on with your reasoning but don't delete the article's content. Even open a discussion thread if you want.
If other admins disagree with my approach, so be it, but for me this has gone too far.
xela: The above is bugcat's personal view, not an official policy on this site. I agree with this much: if you've ignored warnings and annoyed bugcat enough to get yourself banned, then you're unlikely to get much sympathy from the other librarians or admins. But on the whole, I hope we can welcome new editors, and be tolerant of small mistakes while people are learning. People are generally pretty friendly around here.
2a02:0587:3241:4b00: what community? a bunch of people is not a community. sense ceased being common here a long time ago.
unkx80: Unilateral removal of a substantial amount of content (or all content) from a page is considered vandalism. Vandals, especially persistent ones, are subject to blocks by librarians, of which I am one.
Dieter: while unsigned derogatory remarks, the refusal to identify oneself and operating from different IP adresses won't result into being blocked, they're not a sign of good faith, or common sense, for that matter.
2a02:0587:3241:4b00 you saw who spoke at the perl discuss page. the fact that their identities are known did not stop them from behaving, repeatedly, in a provocative manner. the people that have been here for so many years are the ones who are not 100% rational. and, just because they have been here for years, it does not mean that they are saints. it also does not mean that they are superior than the anonymous people at everything.
DudleyMoore: A wiki has to be edited in co-operation with others, in an atmosphere of respect. Insulting other users because they don't agree with you is not how it works. You resolve disagreement with conversation, not by ignoring the others and calling them dickheads.
no one ignored you and no one called you dickheads. i did not see any willingness to cooperate, and you disagree because you are believers. gods, trolls, and fairies do not exist. you did not earn respect because you reverted edits blindly and because you edited pages for zero good reasons. stop provoking people and ask questions to learn and to understand why all of you are completely mistaken and deluded. P.S.: this should remind you what the goal is:
DudleyMoore : My point was that you didn't attempt to resolve the conflict. Regarding pages like Perl or Python. I think that they could better be moved to subpages of Programming. It is not unreasonable to expect that a page describing the usage of Python or Perl being of interest to a newcomer to Go who might be looking for some inspiration for their hobby language. Insulting other users is not the an attempt to resolve the conflict. A wiki does on thrive on conflict.
July 2023
Dear 2.87.81.68. You make all your edits, including blanking articles and requesting their deletion, removing tags and information, and changing presentation formats, without describing what action you've taken, explaining your reasoning or notifying other editors and soliciting discussion with them.
It's importance to the maintenance of a community-driven site that viewers and editors are given a clear idea of what work is taking place and why, and are provided the opportunity to enter conversation on the topic.
Please begin using communication tools such as:
- edit summaries
- talk pages
- footnotes
- discussion threads
- the Coffee Machine
- an editor homepage
Although your contributions that are constructive are valued, Sensei's Library is not the isolated project of a single person. It's beneficial for other members to be consulted and informed.
Thank you again for any improvements carried out.
-- bugcat, SL admin
June 2023
bugcat: I notice there's disagreement over whether the Clubs & Places tag covers national associations. What do you all think?
one solution is to create an 'Associations, Clubs, Federations & Societies' page with the 'Index page' keyword. it will have links to 4 pages or subpages: 'Associations', 'Clubs', 'Federations', and 'Societies', and a 'See also:' section for everything else that is not one of the above (for example, 'Centers/Centres'). the 'Clubs & Places' keyword can then be removed, or it can be renamed to 'Legal entity'.
March 2023
fool: I don't suppose anyone drinks tea here?
xela: Not here, no, it's a coffee machine. But at home, yes, I drink tea. Malcolm Indeed, time for a cuppa
August 2022
Bamboomy: (being less than 24h ahead, I hope no one minds ;)
I wonder: I'm working on a go-variant (on a hexagonal board), and I don't know whether I can add it to the library (as go variant?)
Any thoughts are welcome :)
yuzukitea: I really enjoy discussing joseki... Oddly enough, of all places the Massachusetts Go Association discord has been my go-to place in recent weeks. Aesalon (one of the maintainers of the OGS Joseki Explorer) is active there, and it's been really fun getting their perspective because they spend a lot of time looking at professional games and pattern search engines.
I think I am kind of shy. Ideally, perhaps it would be best to post on reddit every time I am working on a joseki page, because the feedback would probably be strongest. However, the atmosphere on reddit kind of intimidates me. The conversational environment on discord makes it seem easier to ask questions.
May 2022
CD: This thing dead?
DudleyMoore: Not if you take it with milk.
Dieter: there's not too many people active on SL so there's little chance to find each other at the coffee machine. But hey, here we are!
CD / CDavis7M: Is there a longer version of the "recent changes" page? I'd like to see what happened over a week or month or more.
- WarEagle: I asked the same at the Full Recent Changes Discuss Page, here https://senseis.xmp.net/?topic=12331
bugcat: I know it's not exactly what you're looking for, but there is the history of Most Popular. It uses the Internet Archive to see what pages had been created and were popular every 6 to 12 months or so.
CD: Thanks for sharing that. Not what I was looking for but this page is better to review than the "random article." But how would I be able to know that this page exists if you didn't tell me?
September 2021
bugcat: I just read the news in the AGA E-Journal that Katayama Yasuo has been promoted to 9p:
To 9-dan: Katayama Yasuo (200 wins; as of Sept. 17). ... He was born on July 28, 1964 and became 1-dan in 1981. His career score is 491 wins to 471 losses, 11 jigo and 1 no-contest.
Sounds like a professional who has been fairly strong and active for a long time.
Does he really not have an article?
I checked with Go4Go to confirm that the spelling of his name is accurate. They list the name but with only 17 games, which is odd. Waltheri only has 12, though. He's featured in the list of Japanese names.
By the way, I often have cause to chuckle at a comment I recently read here that it was "unlikely that SL is missing a 9p" when I've added multiple, as well as updates from players who have been promoted up to 9p from the low ranks.
DuEm6: It's as you said. He was just recently promoted. Most people probably don't care about some random old 8p. Go4Go is not reliable. Nihon Ki-in's website says he played 976 official matches, winning about half of them.
August 2021
bugcat: Should rank updates be made as minor edits? I understood minor edits to be more correcting typos and fixing links. I've been mainly correcting ranks with the major edit, but is that bad form?
tapir: Not a question I have ever thought about. Fine either way, i would do major edit if I want attention to page and edit, minor edit when I don't care about that.
July 2021
"Masaki" and "Masaaki"
bugcat: We currently have articles with both spellings. Masaki is more prevalent, and Takemiya's page says Masaki. Should Masaaki become Masaki? Perhaps a macron would be useful.
DuEm6: I don't speak Japanese. But:
- The Kanji for Masaki in Takemiya Masaki and other Masaaki's (double a) are different.
- Masaaki's in List of Japanese professionals are the accepted romanization used in Nihon Ki-in's website and other websites/databases. Including SL.
I know it's confusing. There's probably a good reason why we shorten the long vowels oo,ou to o, uu to u, but not ii to i, or aa to a in these Masaaki's. No idea.
hnishy: They are different names. Masaki is Masa+Ki, for example 正樹 in Takemiya Masaki. Masaaki is Masa+Aki, like 正明 in Fukui Masaaki. More kanji combinations are possible.
Removals + communication
tapir: I was so glad to have some easy deletions lined up that I mindlessly ran over kmr in SGF2PDF delete request. Sorry for that, it looked unproblematic to me. Would appreciate removing the request if you are hammering out a keepable page.
Typo errata pages
bugcat: Real errata pages, eg. about important informations like misplaced or incorrect diagrams, or factual errors, are useful. But why do we have pages like this one that merely list typos? How is that meant to inform the reader? Do we want to maintain these pages or get rid of them?
Malcolm: Maybe they could be useful if ever a publisher wanted to do a second edition. I would vote to just leave such pages alone; if ever someone notices a bigger error that isn't just a typo or a copy-edit then that could be added to the existing page.
Romanisation and Typos Lounge
bugcat: Japanese, Chinese, and Korean names are all subject to competing Romanisation systems. I'm finding this especially relevant as I input Korean professionals, not always sure that they don't already have an article under a different spelling. I exercise due diligence, but it'd be nice to have a page on which we can discuss specific issues. So, I suggest a Romanisation and Typos Lounge?.
DuEm6: (2021-07-22) I don't speak any of these languages. But I guess you meant Romanization/Discussion? According to that page, Japanese: use "wapuro" style that ignores long vowels and diacritics, Chinese: use Pinyin.
For Korean, I guess you need to know/google the alternative romanization. Like the Yi Huiseong page you made. Either you figure out Lee Heesung is a reasonable alternative romanization. Or you try to convert it to Hangul, and work backwards. Hangul converters, google translate, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Korean_given_names, https://www.goratings.org/ and KBA website can help.
tapir: Just for historical interest: If I recall correctly, SL used some semblance of McCune?-Reischauer due to many Korean people pages being lifted (partly?) from the work of John Fairbairn and T Mark Hall. I personally never felt competent enough to change that to newspaper romanisation (however many people requested that), but also not competent enough to really enforce the local romanisation when Koreans put out different romanisations all the time, and I suspect other non-speakers of Korean among the librarians felt similarly. I believe, you should just do as you see fit and keep talking to each other so no one feels left out by the emerging practice.
DuEm6: I don't think I'm alone in this. But I prefer the familiar but less-standardized/accurate romanization. Not RR or MR. Lee instead of I/Yi. Oo instead of u. Park instead of Bak/Pak. And so on. It's best to just include the Hangul/Hanja and KBA's profile link, so people can google/edit/fix the names or make aliases later.
edit: (2021-07-23) I've been checking romanization libraries for SL pages I created.
For Chinese, pinyin works just fine. They are different to the romanization used in Taiwan, but not a big problem. Like Zeng vs Tseng.
For Japanese, I think Hepburn and editing out long vowels probably would work most of the time.
For Korean, most libraries convert Hangul to RR or MR. I could only find one inactive library called hangul-names on pypi that seems to do what I want.
Malcolm: (2021-07-30) DuEm?, for Chinese, some characters have multiple readings - so there are multiple pinyin. This could make a difference and be a source of errors in some cases.
DuEm6: (2021-07-30) Thanks for the info, Malcolm. Since you understand Chinese, I got a question. Am I right that all of the websites for Chinese Weiqi Association are down? I was looking for some official list of professionals in their association. The Nihon Ki-in, Kansai Ki-in, Hankuk Kiwon, and Taiwan Qiyuan provide such list.
Malcolm: (2021-07-30) DuEm?, my Chinese is still fairly limited. And I'm not at all familiar with the websites for the Chinese Weiqi Association. Not sure I can help much with this at the moment, sorry. (Still, I'll try to look into it a bit this weekend.)
DuEm6: Thanks for the answer, Malcolm.
Is there a notability threshold for professionals?
Lately I've been seeing a lot of young professionals who aren't mentioned on SL. My instinct is to make them all pages, even though those pages are going to be stubs. The way I see it, if it's felt later that the pages are clutter then they can simply be deleted, or else transformed into subsections of larger articles.
(Not to mention the cynical argument that I could always make them subpages under my own name :P) -- bugcat
DuEm6: (21-07-2021) I think you need to update List of Korean names, List of Chinese names, and List of Japanese names pages too. It seems all past profile pages were linked to these pages. For what purpose, I don't know. There's a claim that we need those 3 pages because SL search function doesn't accept Asian characters. Doesn't make sense imo.
bugcat Good point. Though I think I've only added a single Korean professional. What I'd really like to do is tag all the pages I created with the People category, but either I never became proficient enough to understand the menuing or I never received the requisite privs.
DuEm6: (22-07-2021) Btw what source did you use? It seems they have mistakes, like in ranks and dates. Some names have weird romanizations. Not sure if they are typos. For the typos you noticed, perhaps Remove Template could be useful. edit: My bad. I misunderstood.
bugcat I'm transcribing them from Go4Go. Certainly there'll be mistakes in names and dates, and have some odd romanisations. My aim is just to get some information out there and later recircle with more detail. Note that when I say "Professional; 3p in 2016" I don't mean to state that they are still 3p. They were just 3p in a game of theirs from 2016, and the article text is a placeholder for a more detailed overview to come later. For the moment it tells the reader that there is a professional of that name who has reached at least 3p.
Consider the original text as the lowest grade of information. An association profile or news item should absolutely override it. By the way, I've realised that "Qualified by --" is a better phrasing than "Qualified in --" for this, as said, low-quality data, since it doesn't preclude the individual from having qualified earlier than that date.
You're absolutely right about RemoveTemplate. I don't have very good technical knowledge so I took an easy but lazy option.
tapir: There are no notability thresholds on SL whatsoever. You can make a page and play a correspondence game with some friends if you wish so. It has been open to a wide variety of content. I personally would prefer to remove a lot of old stuff that has no value as resource (while remaining open to a wide variety of new content), but a complete database of all professional players is something even I would happily include. We just did not manage to build it with the collapse of activity in recent years. Add all professional player bios you want and even better with a link to their biographical blurb on the pages of the professional association in question.
Should we consider HTTP image links dead?
2021-07-10 PJT I note that DuEm6 has become very active, and has removed several dead links, which is useful when they are truly dead or hijacked. In the case of their edit to Cho Hun-hyeon's Lectures on Go Techniques (from Yutopian) on 2021-06-27, however, it is not so clear cut. There they removed links to images of the covers that work fine for me. The links are ![[ext]](http://www.yutopian.com/yut/images/prod/PAY20.jpg)
http://www.yutopian.com/yut/images/prod/PAY20.jpg , PAY48.jpg & PAY51.jpg . I suspect that DuEm6’s problem with these links is that they use HTTP rather than the more secure HTTPS. I tried ![[ext]](https://www.yutopian.com/yut/images/prod/PAY20.jpg)
https://www.yutopian.com/yut/images/prod/PAY20.jpg, but that only worked (on 2021-07-10) in Firefox if one allowed it to ignore the problem that the site certificate was only valid for bizland.com. I have just written to ![[email]](images/email.png)
info@yutopian.com and compliance@bizland-inc.com (which may not be the ideal address) asking them to fix this, but I do not know how likely they are to do so.
- What should we be doing with such links?
DuEm6: Oops, my bad. I'll restore them today. And for other books too. 2021-07-11. edit: Ok, so I checked the links I removed again. Personally, I remember they didn't load for me last time when I removed them, but they work again now. I don't really care what happened with Yutopian websites, so I'll just revert the changes. edit2: Slate and Shell image links are truly down though.
2021-07-11 PJT Thanks. I have had no reaction so far from Yutopian or Bizland. Sham about Slate & Shell!
tapir: Imo, remove bad links without hesitation. We have too many of them (we did not have the sense of wikipedia to enforce a limit on outside links) and now a few years down the road we are littered with them. (Still have gogameguru links, I believe.) You can remove a hundred more in the time you otherwise spend on futile correspondence. If you feel like starting with a blank page again, I would very much clear / delete all the old link lists to online resources that are hopelessly out of date.
February 2021
Sensei’s certificate problems
On 2021-02-03, in Firefox I get a security warning that the certificate for the website is out of date. --robert jasiek
On 2021-02-03, in Safari I also get a security warning that the certificate for the website is out of date. --robert jasiek
Herman: I had this a few days ago, but right now it works. The current certificate is shown as provided by LetsEncrypt? and valid until April 2nd 2021. Could your browser or provider be caching things?
Herman: Now I'm sporadically getting certificate errors, like it's sometimes serving the old one, sometimes the new one.
PeterHB: I'm having intermittent certificate errors in Windows chrome too.
RobertJasiek, 2021-02-04 6:30 UCT: Right now in Firefox with the setting "When a server requests your personal certificate | Ask you every time" and cookies cleared on closing browser, I do not get an error message.
Reuven: Saw the same cert expiring on feb 1st, approx 23pm uct 2021-feb-04 but now, some 29 mins later seeing one expiring on apr 3rd.
November 2020
Dubious addition to Chinese players
Malcolm the edits "version 166 modified on October 31, 2020 - 00:22 by 98.13.1.17" for seem to me to be wrong and worthy of an "undo". Not sure if it should be called vandalism - it just seems incoherent to me! I'll probably do a manual "undo" later on at some point.
Patrick Traill That edit added two entries, neither in correct alphabetical order, one of which (Chen Dea ࢨ뷯晐) was wrongly formatted but otherwise not implausible at first sight, the other (Coyi bang 縙ꁹ) where it struck me as a little odd that a 9 dan should not be wiki-linked. Searching for the Chinese characters did not bring up primarily Go-related pages in either case, so I suspect it is advertising spam or juvenile vandalism – but I could be wrong! Perhaps someone familiar with the Chinese scene can help.
Malcolm Hi Patrick, I have intermediate knowledge of Chinese and the "Chen Dea" entry looks highly implausible to me. The first character doesn't seem to be Chinese; I think it looks like it's Arabic. Also Dea and Co are not valid Pinyin (Pinyin = the standard romanisation scheme used in mainland China). Do you have a "revert" button, or does it have to be a manual edit?
Patrick Traill 2020-11-12: I have erased that version, so it is no longer visible.
October 2020
Go page on travel guide wiki
Wikivoyage recently added https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Go which mainly covers places to play or to buy equipment when travelling. Like any wiki page, it needs contributions. (Pashley)
August 2019
Personal vandalism
Robert Jasiek (2019-08-29): Yesterday, vandalism attacking my homepage was thankfully quickly undone by Herman Hiddema. It was much more than wiki vandalism: personal, insulting attack criminal under the ordinary law with a possible sentence up to two years of prison. The temporary page tag "humour" does not change the nature of the contents.
Wiki Etiquette or Zarathustra's wisdom (do not do to others what you do not want being done to yourself) help. Contributors to Sensei's Library should also reflect the impact of their contributions to the overall development of go and this wiki. Personal attacks never help but might even endanger the existence of the wiki because the site owners might also be liable to some extent if attacks should not be noticed and removed soon. (It is not my intention to let them be liable, but third persons might decide such.)
It is possible to discuss or criticise persons or their actions but such must be done without personal attacks. There is also space for humour, if it is free of personal attacks. Even so, homepages should be, and have been, respected.
Patrick Traill (2019-08-30): I have since removed the version in question, as I saw no reason for it to be visible even via the page history. It was offensive, destructive and perhaps cowardly.
Robert Jasiek: Good, this is appropriate, thanks!
May 2019
Category template
Patrick Traill (2019-05-22): I observe that a number of pages try to use a Category Template? that no longer exists:
Pagename Last modified PageType Difficulty Keywords Curtis Tang 2012-09-02 by 96.41.1.246 none n/a People Dae Hyuk Ko 2011-11-30 by 69.68.182.121 none n/a People Eric Lui 2017-11-13 by bugcat none n/a People Feng Yun 2018-10-19 by Raye none n/a People Francis Meyer 2014-08-13 by tapir none n/a People Jiang Mingjiu 2015-06-02 by Iepur none n/a People Jie Li 2011-11-30 by 69.68.182.121 none n/a People Joey Hung 2011-11-30 by 69.68.182.121 none n/a People John Lee 2016-12-15 by OscarBear? none n/a People Liang, Jie 2011-11-30 by 69.68.182.121 none n/a Liu Zhi Yuan 2017-09-22 by DudleyMoore none n/a People Thomas Hsiang 2014-10-06 by 128.151.162.24 none n/a People Yang Yilun 2012-12-10 by Dieter none n/a People Zhaonian Chen 2012-05-30 by 209.135.35.83 none n/a People
It evidently did exist, as these changes can be found by a search of recent changes:
Pagename Diff Username MinorEdit Version Last modified CategoryTemplate? diff Dieter* (194.78.35.195) 1 0 2019-05-15 12:58 CategoryTemplate? diff Dieter* (194.78.35.195) 0 3 2014-06-20 15:24 CategoryTemplate? diff Dieter* (194.78.35.195) 0 0 2014-06-20 12:07 CategoryTemplate?/List diff Dieter* (194.78.35.195) 0 0 2014-06-20 12:06 CategoryTemplate?/List diff tapir* (87.102.154.35) 1 3 2011-12-15 21:21 CategoryTemplate? diff tapir* (131.152.145.240) 1 6 2011-11-28 13:18 CategoryTemplate?/List diff tapir* (131.152.145.240) 0 2 2011-11-28 13:17 CategoryTemplate? diff tapir* (131.152.145.240) 0 0 2011-11-28 13:12 CategoryTemplate? diff tapir* (87.102.154.35) 1 5 2011-11-27 14:02
It looks a bit as though it was deleted in error: does anyone know more?
tapir: If memory serves correctly this was once tried in a few rare cases (your examples are all America based professionals / top players) to have sth. more akin to categories in the wikipedia world. I am not sure when and how it was removed or whether data loss intervened to produce the inconsistencies. There was no real content on the category template page involved, just an attempts to use the default mechanics of templates to auto-generate lists.
PJT (2019-09-27): Indeed, I see that a few samples (those now linked) all contain the invocation {{category|name=topamericanplayer}}. I often wonder whether the effort put into categorising on Wikipedia really pays off! Should we remove these invocations, or is there any chance of them becoming useful?
tapir: I would remove it, mainly because I now find the autogenerated lists a gimmick that makes editing harder (need to learn about templates and autogenerated lists), not really saves work (unless you have a flurry of lists you maintain this way), auto-generated lists have a bunch of issues due to browser cache (or even weird interactions I learned about post data loss event, where I ended up making empty edits to pages to get them listed again), you can't even properly format said lists. At wikipedia a lot of busywork is done that contributes nothing, some of it may be necessary for access, navigation ... but in the articles I wrote I often saw 50-100 busywork edits over the years while the original content still stands as good or bad as it was back then. Having editcount as some sort of credential of course does not help.
tapir: And I did remove them.
December 2018
Rogue ko
Patrick Traill (2018-12-24): I have added a provisional definition to Rogue ko, based on my reading of the available material. It would be helpful if Bill Spight or someone similar (but is there anyone similar?!) could check it and tidy up as appropriate.
September 2018
Forcing text below diagrams: for mobile phones?
Patrick Traill (2018-09-02): I have recently noticed several edits such as https://senseis.xmp.net/?diff=MakingGoodShape&old=53
which mainly just add ‘%%%%’ after loads of diagrams to force the following text below rather than to the right of the diagram. Sometimes this is desirable, as the text has little or nothing more to do with the diagram, but in cases such as the edit above that is not so (though it does also add useful content). If anything, I have the impression that the intent is to make the article fit onto a narrow (e.g. mobile phone) screen, as the text is indeed a commentary on the diagram. While I can see that is helpful on a mobile, I find it a shame on a larger screen. While the ideal situation would be (as on Wikipedia) pages that adapt to the user’s device, I do not think we have the resources for that. What does anyone feel?
May 2018
Attacks on “Art of 9×9 Go”
Patrick Traill: I see a bunch of edits by 210.246.245.8 blanking The Art of 9x9 Go, a reference to it and Art of 9x9 — do we care?
Patrick Traill: I have added an instruction (with caveat) at the top for where to post, but is it right?
VanMorrison - Given the hubris of ArtOfGo? I don't care.
tapir: It is a wiki. You can just revert. For an ebook I find it surprising that no way for purchase or download was ever mentioned, none of the postimg images shows as well. Or as the author writes: "My ebook, The Art of 9x9 Go: How to Beat Dan Players at GoQuest, will be the best 9x9 ebook by 2027, and helps some kyu players breakthrough to shodan." - Polite way would be to move the whole thing to a subpage of the author, but as it has subpages as well that won't do.
tapir: I revived for now. This should be a subpage or deleted imo, but not by blanking the page and leaving the subpages in the limbo. Opinions welcome. See also: Page Delete Requests
Patrick Traill (2018-09-02): I agree that the material around The Art of 9x9 Go should really be tolerated as sub-pages of the author (Monteo), but I see that even the author’s page has been blanked; whether by the author themself in a fit of modesty I cannot tell. I fear that SL lacks the tools to deal with this sort of problem, and after looking at the stuff I do not care much either.
tapir: I feel page rename and page delete are sufficient tools to deal with it in principle. Just as a librarian it feels very lonely to make the decisions since feedback on library work is completely gone. Since Monteo is gone, delete seems appropriate to me.
April 2018
Image hosts
bugcat: The site postimg.org, which hosts some of our images such as the one on Karigane Junichi's page, has been down for a few days. It is looking increasingly likely that as a website, it is gone for good. So I wanted to provide a place for discussion over how to replace the affected images, what images need replacing, and whether or not in the future we should host important images actually on the SL server.
Affected images:
In Karigane Junichi: "Tamura, Shuei, Karigane", ![[ext]](http://s24.postimg.org/h4twe5q3p/1367230207_317235436_m.jpg)
http://s24.postimg.org/h4twe5q3p/1367230207_317235436_m.jpg
In Honinbo Shuei: "Honinbo Shuei (本因坊秀栄)", ![[ext]](http://s27.postimg.org/tko3kzh6b/syuei.jpg)
http://s27.postimg.org/tko3kzh6b/syuei.jpg
In Jowa: "Honinbo Jowa (本因坊丈和)", ![[ext]](http://s27.postimg.org/ygo8i4cdv/Honinbo_Jowa.png)
http://s27.postimg.org/ygo8i4cdv/Honinbo_Jowa.png
In Go Seigen: "Go Seigen (吳清源)", ![[ext]](http://s16.postimg.org/glcn181h1/14cz8m9.jpg)
http://s16.postimg.org/glcn181h1/14cz8m9.jpg
In Kitani Minoru: "Kitani Minoru (木谷実)", ![[ext]](http://s30.postimg.org/jhzdyu7z5/url.jpg)
http://s30.postimg.org/jhzdyu7z5/url.jpg
Other affected pages include Maeda Nobuaki, Hashimoto Utaro, and Sekiyama Riichi.
... Are in fact ALL of our major images hosted on postimg?
Patrick Traill: While, being fairly new here, I would not know what is hosted where, I was wondering whether we might do well to use WikiMedia Commons, e.g. Go Seigen at
![[ext]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Seigen#/media/File:Go_Seigen_01.jpg)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Seigen#/media/File:Go_Seigen_01.jpgHerman: All images on SL are hosted on a variety of outside services. That has risks, as the disappearance of postimg shows. Ideally, it would be great if SL had its own file/image hosting, but that would add a large bandwidth cost to hosting it, as well as issues w.r.t. copyright and abuse. If we allow anyone to upload, which would be consistent with the spirit of a wiki, then you need to police the uploads constantly to avoid copyright infringement and to remove uploads unrelated to go. Wikimedia is a good source, as it is a large project which probably isn't going anywhere for a while, and because it already keeps track of copyright for images.
tapir: A good chunk of images are (current and legacy) player portraits. For them the best practice would imo be to write the major Go associations a polite letter, whether they are fine with their player portraits inlined here. A bit late ... and of course that means removing portraits when the answer is no.
bugcat: To Patrick Traill: I don't think that WikiMedia permits other sites to leech their images (that is, to display them on another website via link to WikiMedia.) In fact, I tried to use that very image of Go Seigen on the relevant page and it didn't show up.
PS. Could you sign your post please? Patrick Traill: Done, sorry! (Also corrected your spelling of my name!)
To tapir: I think perhaps that would be foolhardy if we can leech the images from their sites without forcing ourselves to ask permission, as we do with the Nihon Kiin for example. Better not to ask to be allowed if we don't have to.
Also: I've just realised that we can find at least some of the old images on archived pages of SL that are hosted on the Internet Archive?. For instance, I just found our old image of Jowa: 
. Perhaps this would be the best source of replacement images, to use the archived versions of the old ones.
Patrick Traill: If we cannot use the images stored in WikiMedia (which I have made an alias of Wikipedia, where I have added information), then it is a bit pointless; I wondered about copying from there if their terms permit it, but that does not solve much.
Bass: Stack Exchange hosts their users' images on Imgur. Imgur's policy is "The Imgur API is free for non-commercial usage. Your application is probably free if you don't plan on making any money with it, or if it's open source." Maybe we should integrate Imgur image uploading to the wiki?
Patrick Traill: Sounds promising!
tapir: Well, removing them (leeched player pics) if request is unanswered or answered w/ no is at least unambiguous, but of course I never felt entitled to write a letter on behalf of SL. Regardless of how we end up handling individual cases, we should have some way of keeping track of problems. E.g. currently plenty of photobucket images. I once added a page Image Workshop? to do so, but it got 0 traction so I abandoned (and deleted) it after a while.
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