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Meta Discussion
Keywords: SL description
What do you like / don't like about Sensei's Library?Write down your thoughts below. Related pages:
2002-12-02 JonatanLindstrom: I'm still learning to operate this thing and what do you know: I've got a new question. When you want Japanese, Chinese or Korean characters you enter a numeral code, right? Where can I find out which numbers to use? Also, if anyone is speaking Japanese I would like some help to find the pronounciation of two characters. unkx80: I am using Windows XP and Internet Explorer so I installed the Chinese IME that came together with the Windows XP setup. To me such numbers, just like telephone numbers and ID numbers, are meaningless. So I used the IME to enter the code, and somehow Internet Explorer automatically converts the characters into the numeric code. 2002-11-28 JonatanLindstrom: I just created the page HowToRecordAKifu but I screwed up and now the page title is "How To Record AKifu". The name of the link is correct but the title isn't. Is it possible to change it or do I have to get the page deleted and then create it again? Stefan: You can change it via a normal edit. JonatanLindstrom: I'm probably blind but I can't find where to change the title. Where on the edit page? unkx80: I suppose your access level is set at "casual visitor". However, at User Preferences, you can change your level to "experienced SL deshi". Then you can change the page title. =) JonatanLindstrom: Aaaah! Thanks for the info. By the way, is this the right page to ask these kind of questions? Hu: Yes, this seems to be a good place. 2002-11-18 jetifi: Hi there. I'm new here and a beginner at Go. After a spell away from the monitor (it broke), it occurred to me that having a 'printable version' of pages like Beginner Exercises that has all the excercises on one page might be a good idea. I won't jump in and start cut'n'paste-ing if it's already been decided this is a bad idea. Thoughts?
Jan: Nice idea! What would be even better, I think, is an SGF file containing all those exercises which could be used in Arno: Is it worth it? How many people are going to print out 50+ pages of problems, plus maybe another 100+ pages of solutions? I don't think that an automatically generated all-in-one page is very useful. OTOH, if GoWiki would create e.g. latex files, and someone did a nice latex-style, plus some manual reformatting we could publish nice SL booklets as PDF files (not just problems, but many other topics as well). That would be interesting .... *sigh* if I had just a little bit more time. jetifi: The main reason I'd like to be able to print problems etc. is that I find it easier to use a real goban for thinking over problems. If I recall correctly, there are TeX macros for converting SGF files into LaTeX (the result looks fantastic, as with all things TeX). I think for now I'll assemble the page using a text editor and render it in the sandbox. I can print the sandbox page and restore it to its original state afterwards. 2002-11-14 Dieter: I do not want to offend anyone but I would like native English speakers to try and refrain from imaginative phrasing. Sometimes it is difficult for me to understand what's said so I think that people whose English is even worse than mine will give up already. I must say that if anyone asked me to keep it simple in my own language, I would feel apprehensive about it too. Anyway, just a thought - and please go ahead and correct my own sloppy contributions. unkx80: I kind of agree on this too. Ideas can be expressed using many kinds of terminology, and so how to find those creatively phrased terminology will be a headache. Perhaps what I say is influenced by me being a Computing undergraduate. Creativity in naming variables/objects in programming/application development is a bane as far as I know. But still like what Dieter said, it is just a thought, and also please feel free to correct my sloppy contributions. =) DaveSigaty: Sorry about that. Some of us native speakers do not realize when we abuse the patience of our international colleagues. We need a little hint now and then. Please feel free ask for clarification. To help make this relatively painless I have created Watcha Mean By That with the alias WMBT. Just add a line: WMBT? as a signal to request further clarification. Let's see if this helps. unkx80: Actually what I really mean is that with concepts, ideas and pages being named so creatively, it is difficult to find them. So far I generally understand what people like Charles are bringing across (and thanks again for the contributions), but I feel that some standardization in the naming will help a lot when it comes to searching and referencing. Also this standardization can also help non-native English speakers I believe. =) With this I am deleting my comment from the WMBT page (which has been copied from this page). Ironically the term "Watcha" sounds more like a slang than "What You", I am not too sure whether some of the non-native English speakers understand it. 2002-11-14: Hu: What's up with the battle of Rank tables? Specifically the IGS ranks in the table are being changed back and forth up or down 2. What's the real story? 9 November 2002 A thought occasioned by the discussion (very interesting too) going on over in Center Search Algorithms. SL really seems, to me, to have two sorts of pages: a) static; predominantly "encyclopedia-like" reference pages. b) dynamic; ongoing discussions, often then WikiMasterEdited into type-a) pages. RecentChanges is good, in as much as it lets you see what's been being changed on the wiki, but it doesn't separate these two types of pages neatly for people who want to read the debates going on. (FWIW, though I'm in principle in favour of Usenet, at present the standard of discussion here is much higher than that on rgg, and we seem to be comparatively troll-free.) Hence, I had the idea of a supplementary page, say "RecentDiscussions", which would have a list of pages edited (excluding MinorEdits) by, say, two different users or IPs within some timescale (24/48 hours). I wonder if anyone else would find something like this useful? (This is in no way meant to denigrate the value of the encyclopedia-like content, by the way - it's just that article-like content and ongoing debates seem to be two different beasts to me, to some extent.) Actually many SL pages continually switch between the two states a) and b) you mentioned above. Pages get WikiMasterEdited, and then later somebody adds some interesting comments and they become dynamic again. Personally I am in favour of RecentChanges. -- unkx80 The new idea (I like new ideas) would be more complicated so Recent Changes is fine with me because of the dynamic nature of pages here. -- Hu I have been toying with the idea of "CustomRecentChanges?" for some time now. It would feature a "search" dialog which allows you to only show RecentChanges of pages with certain features (sort of FindPage combined with RecentChanges). That dialog could include such a "discussion" setting. But I'm still not 100% convinced to introduce such a feature. I think that RecentChanges, FullRecentChanges and RecentChangesGames is good enough already. --Arno p.s. to HU: your edit shouldn't have been a MinorEdit, no? Hu: Yes, nominally not minor, but I made it minor because the Andrew's and unkx80 were flagged major and would get people's attention well enough. Keeps Recent Changes smaller. Hu, then how would I or anyone else who have read my comments (but before reading your addition) know that you have added your comments? I do not read FullRecentChanges because it is too long (however, I appreciate the effort made by some people who go through all the pages and correct the typos and language errors). =) --unkx80 Perhaps I was too conservative. I tend to avoid claiming authorship at Sensei's. -- Hu To emphasise: I wasn't proposing changing RecentChanges at all - it does exactly what one would expect, which is a good thing. Also, it's not exactly critical whether this happens or not, it was just a piece of blue-sky wondering on my part. Re unkx80's point: pages tend to either be in "static" mode or "discussion" mode at any given time, not both - so it seemed that it should be possible to distinguish between them somehow, such as by something analogous to the method I suggested above. (Of course, the page would still show up in RecentChanges: think of my suggestion as a filtered version of that.) Of course, the key question about adding features to any volunteer work is "would the added complexity *and* the time necessary to add the feature be outweighed by the utility of the feature?" - which is why it's necessary to fly a kite with ideas like this, to see what people think, and it seems that the gain would be fairly small for significant effort in this case. Charles Matthews If one can extrapolate - which is hazardous - there might be 10000 pages on SL by the end of 2003. But a 'page churn' rate of only about 1% per week, mostly new stuff. Something needs to happen before that, I think. Pages fall into various classes, the least regarded being 'needs first edit' and the top grade being 'Master-edited and definitive'. There is some marginal or questionable stuff posted here, though not a huge proportion. If there were more keywords such as 'Maintain', 'Expand', 'Review', 'Critique' and so on, they could be used by for the workers in this particular anthill as signposts; and raised as flags by anyone. I mention this only as one possibility: it seems that the Please Review Me page isn't much used at present. 5 november 2002 Dieter: turned the EyesCollection into a path. This way we don't need the beginning statement This page belongs to the eyes collection. I don't like such a beginning statement. I think it is OK to give links to related pages at the end of the page. Hu: A path is a good idea, but when the page is accessed from outside the path, there is no indication at all that the page is part of a path or related to the other pages in the collection. Thus I think the link to the Eyes Collection is very useful. This applies to all pages in all paths. Arno: up to 10 references and all paths are listed in the left hand yellow area. So, people accustomed to SL can see that easily. If that is not enough, you can add a link at the bottom. But I agree with Dieter - top links are not that nice. Dieter: Indeed, linkage and content should be separated as much as possible (opinion, OC). On the false eye page, I think I want to learn about false eyes first before being guided to related issues. Is it at all possible to make the 10 references shown at the left to be most popular/most recent ? Or are they already not random ? Arno: The 10 references are the most popular. Hu: I had wondered about that, good to know. Good also to know to look for paths on the left too. I still think it is useful to put a link to the path master page on a page, but at the end of a page is a good place in general. I think an exception should be made in a few cases where the pages are lengthy and involved, whether or not they are in a path. In the case of lenghthy and involved pages, a link at the top to a couple of related pages will help many readers quickly find the material they want. If the page is lengthy and has a lot of closely related links, then re-organizing it into a path page, a definition / introduction page, and possibly a discussion page, is often good. 2002-11-02: Hu: Lengthy dense pages make additions impossible for some, it turns out. I've moved part of this page to Meta Discussion 2001. Hu: shouldn't we eliminate the Recent Visitors page. It has only been edited on Nov. 14, 2000, and June 16-17, 2002. The page seems useless. unkx80: I was not here as long as the existence of SL. I suppose Recent Visitors existed when SL was created but now this page has been superseded by Homepages instead. What if I turn Recent Visitors into an alias pointing to Homepages? Hu: I haven't been writing here for long, myself. I suggest getting rid of it. Contributors here may have interesting home pages but not be recent visitors. August 2002 Dieter: I don't want to be guilty of lack of hospitality, but I feel that a discussion in German about the name of the German corner on KGS, should not be held on Sensei's Library. Although a couple of Belgians are present on SL, we discuss our matters in a separate newsgroup, created for these purposes. I am the last person to encourage the Anglomania currently overwhelming our world but the unwritten rule in SL has been to write in English. A FAQ on the German corner and a few related pages in German is all very well, but that's where it should end. Illume: I'm sorry for any inconvenience. Perhaps you could state your opinion on GuineaPigsFeedback, since there's an older discussion about this. Remillard: Otherwise I think these pages are fantastic. I've learned quite a lot browsing. It would be somewhat helpful to have pronunciation on the Go glossary. Arno: About pronounciation: there's a page on the web somewhere, can't remeber where though. Maybe Ken's index is a good starting point?
Stefan: In true Wiki-spirit, I could just kick it off and see how it catches on... but how do you all feel about maintaining a worldwide go calendar on SL? Personally I think it would be nice to have an overview of all go events great and small in one place, with the 6th game of the Meijin side by side with the Brussels GP. Enabling people to post their own events somewhere could also give some relief to current maintainers of calendars (AndreEngels - you there? I reckon the Europen calendar is time consuming for you to maintain, no?) Lastly, if SL hosts the ultimate go calendar, this can further boost our number of visitors. (*evil grin*) Thoughts?
SAS: I'm a little surprised at the number of links to external images that there are on Sensei's Library. On
Dieter: If only I knew how to link to images without their appearing on the SL-page. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Surely linking cannot be a nono ? SAS: I was talking about linking as an inline image - sorry that I didn't make that clear. In Sensei's Library, I think you need to put brackets around the URL to make the image inline. If you omit the brackets, you should just get a link to click on. Arno: from TextFormattingRules:
But, I agree with SAS that inlining should be carefully considered, as it appears that these pictures are part of SL (which they are not). I see no problem with inlining on HomePages or pages like KGS, but pages like Mitani, Waya, Isumi, and FujiwaranoSai contain only links to images, nothing else. I made those links external links - no longer inlined. Oh, btw most of these links are broken. If you do a full-text search for one of .png, .jpg, or .gif you will see that there are not so many inlined images at all. Arno: it seems like playing games on SL becomes popular. How do other deshis feel about this? (We don't want to point fingers at the guy who started it all). Personally I don't care too much, but if the trend continues we will have to find a solution for RecentChanges, because reading changes about 20 different game pages is not entertaining. Dieter: You're right and the one I started last was accidentally. I thought ChessWhiz wanted to play on a server but once the game was created on SL I didn't object. I suggest that people playing games check the FullRecentChanges instead. I thought OngoingGame was a good idea, because it was a communioty game. Private games are not of real interest to the community. But then again, Arno, I have to admire your Wiki attitude with which you watch your baby grow. ChessWhiz: Well, I enjoy watching the TeachingGames in SL, but I can see how they clutter up the RecentChanges page. Maybe there could be another page, maybe called RecentGameChanges, that contained only game page updates. The "Edit Page" link would then have a checkbox that put the update in RecentGameChanges instead of RecentChanges. It would be pretty similar to the current MinorEdit checkbox. Sounds like a lot of work for Arno, but it could be worth it, enabling more games on SL without cluttering up the RecentChanges. Any other ideas? Rmsp: I'll be the voice of the faceless masses (?) who lurk here learning without yet having much to share. I LOVE the teaching games; it's hard to find games so thoughtfully and thoroughly commented, and they're a great source of links into the rest of the library. I second the suggestions of ChessWhiz regarding RecentChanges. A separate page would be great, and wouldn't be "too" much of a hack organizationally :-) DaveSigaty: Arno, how hard would it be to add a Page Type = game and base the separate treatement on that? BenShoemaker: I would like to voice my support for the teaching games as well. I think they are a valuable format for capturing game-focused advice, as well as being illustrative of people's thought patterns throughout a game. Perhaps some thought could be put into a "Teaching Game" area, which would focus on ease of commenting and ease of reading. (for ease of gameplay we have go servers!) Not cluttering up RecentChanges is a great idea. Arno: I have thought about the game PageType as well. I think I will will give it a shot over the weekend. The real problem (technical wise) is of course, that SL was never really meant to handle games, which have untypical characteristics (such as >300 versions per page, etc.) Let's see how it turns out ... ChessWhiz: Great job, Arno! The new RecentChangesGames page is wonderful. Excellent work! Terrific! :-) 19 March, 2002
Gorobei: As some RecentChangesJunkies may have noticed, I'm trying to write a Go Program. Initially, (i.e. last night,) I made an external link to my current code, but now I'm finding that it is already out of date with respect to my SL notes. I'd like to keep a page in SL with my code so that my notes and code can be compared easily without cluttering up text pages with big blobs of code, (SL's versioning system works well here,) but at the same time I don't want to turn SL into a CVS respository. So, my question is: is a page like this acceptable for SL, or should I move it to Arno: I don't know what others think, but it is acceptable for me (actually nothing comparable has been tried on the web before, so we could see where this leads to). Maybe I could provide special markup, so that it's easier to insert code (without the need to indent it or creating unwanted [links] with square brackets. (Something like %%RAWTEXT-MODE-START%% and %%RAWTEXT-MODE-END%%). Gorobei: %%RAWTEXT-MODE*%% would be nice, tho it only costs me sixteen keystrokes to indent a block of text one character. Spurious links are a sign my coding style has gone awry. That is of course, assuming that you don't take over RecentChanges with your updates. I.e. if too many of your changes start cluttering RecentChanges, then I'd suggest that you use MinorEdit on most changes and "publish" the crucial ones only. People following your progress could still use FullRecentChanges. Maybe you should create a GorobeiChangeLog?? (wandering off: hmmm, personal RecentChanges for people that change many pages .... And only that main page linked from RecentChanges .... good idea? I'm not aware that any other wiki has something like this. Interesting, I think.) --Stefan: You could make it switchable, e.g. let people choose through UserPreferences whether they want to publish to their personal or to the master RecentChanges. May add a layer of complexity to the library though, which I understand is a concern for you guys. And as someone in between the admin and the casual visitor: I don't see any issues with Gorobei's idea either. Arno: I was thinking about having an extra box on the edit page where one could add to which page the RecentChanges entry should be logged. As we now have the distinction between casual visitors and deshis I think this would be a deshi feature only. Dieter: go ahead with your page and make sure you don't overload or monopolize RecentChanges. I don't think that even deshis should get too many additional features. Besides, I never really liked the idea of multiple levels of access. Deshis become casual visitors and casual visitors become deshis. The only ones who never change - I dearly hope - are the administrators. Arno: I share your concern about different classes, but for me the idea of this 4 level access is simple:
So e.g. allowing saving a RecentChanges entry to another file than RecentChanges is a feature that could confuse the casual visitors, but deshis have access to it. Note that from the access right perspective there are only three levels, as anyone can switch from visitor to deshi and back again. For me the difference between deshi and visitor is actually a GUI issue. Gorobei: Thanks. I shall do minor edits unless I have anything significant to say or ask. 12 March 2002
I'm still a newbie here, so it's with some trepidation that I make the following suggestion. Does anyone else think we might could use a snazzier banner, for use on the GTL and Goproblems? I like the stone drawing, but the simple red lines looks kinda drab. I've put some modest suggestions up at January 4, 2002 Do we need a spoiler policy here? I for one would be happier if spoilers for a certain popular Manga were restricted to the pages discussing it. --Matthew Woodcraft 2 January 2002: Scartol: I'd just like to take this opportunity to say that this is one of the best websites I've ever visited in 6 years of surfing the net. The anarchic format not only makes it easy and profitable for users to contribute, but makes navigation much easier (a la the axiom of: the best way to learn something is to teach it). I have scanned all over the web, looking for intriguing and helpful text about how to sharpen my neophyte Go skills. No wonder I couldn't find it -- it's all here. Kudos to all. Discussions on the following topics have now a separate page: August 25, 2001: I have done a WikiMasterEdit of this page. See old version (v71). Unsolved issues and recent postings remained here. Technical stuff moved back to GuineaPigsFeedback. Created some new discussion pages on a clearly defined topic. --DieterVerhofstadt 2002-11-02: The 2001 contents of this page (from version 193) have been transferred to Meta Discussion 2001 -- Hu This is a copy of the living page "Meta Discussion" at Sensei's Library. (C) the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0. |