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How off topic can we get at SL
    Keywords: SL description

[Note to gentle reader: OT means "Off Topic".]

Example: Monty Python Parrot Sketch?

Tristan: My view is that pages here should be primarily about go. That said, there should be room for go-related humour and for material that addresses issues likely to be important to all users of SL, such as spam and ways of using and abusing the Internet. Whatever, IMHO we should be tolerant towards each other. Heaven forfend that SL should become a battleground like rec.games.go!

Bill: Errr. What happened to the rest of the discussion? Too OT? ;-)

Tristan: I have restored it, below, in response to a private request from a friend. To be honest, I feel that an ugly squabble like the following belongs on SL far, far less than the page under discussion, but I realise that I cannot go around deleting things wholesale just because they hurt my feelings.


There was an argument among deshis about Tristan's page Spank A Spammer. To summarise, some felt that since it was not about go, it should be removed; others felt that since it was useful and addressed an important background issue, it should stay.

THE ARGUMENT

Scartol: I hate to be the Negative Nelly here, but I think I'm going to object to this page appearing on SL. The English debate was one thing -- it has to do with Go and how we talk about the game. But this isn't even tangentially related. True, in a wiki format, people who don't want to read these pages don't have to, but it does make the RecentChanges page into a headache for us junkies. So on behalf of myself and .. well, actually, that's the only person I feel comfortable speaking for (others can add their own comments).. On behalf of myself, please let's stick to Go-related discussion only. Thanks!

Tristan: To Scartol: Will you also be asking for Wiki Vandal, the Coffee Machine and Michael's Cafe to be removed? Indeed, this page is not go-related, but it does provide helpful information for people who use Sensei's Library and other web-based go resources, so that they can get more out of the Internet in general (and that includes Sensei's Library). When you take part in an open forum such as this one, you make yourself a target for spambots and other techniques for putting the Internet to bad use. People can use the information here to protect themselves. Besides, the title of this page should make it obvious to everybody that it deals with a background issue (but certainly not a trivial one) and not a go matter, and therefore should not trouble a Recent Changes Junkie too much.

Hu: I too don't think this is an appropriate page for SL. Right at the beginning, Tristan writes "This is not a Go-related page". The Wiki Vandal page is directly related to SL, the first three items (July 19, 18, and 16) on the Coffee Machine related directly to SL, and so does at least the first discussion on Michael's Cafe (I looked no farther). Thus your three counter examples all fail. (I suggest that the reference to non-Go discussion be taken out of the Michael's Cafe page charter).

Anybody with access to Google can find the same and better anti-spam info. Post your tips in one of those fora. The single tip about disguising your email address could be posted to the How to Use Wiki page. Please delete this page.

Tristan: I will respect Arno's decision, but I strongly disagree with you Hu. It took me a long time to find out some of the material here, and I would have very much appreciated a page like this had somebody else posted it, since I have been plagued with spam problems for a long time. I really was only trying to provide some useful information to my friends here and I feel rather upset that you have jumped on me so hard. You might at least have recognised my positive intent instead of preaching at me.

Could have been worse, you could have signed in italics -BlueWyvern

If you really cannot bear the existence of this page, then please cut my suggestions above and copy them to my homepage here at the bottom, under the heading "Tristan's Tips for Dealing with Spam".

Blake: Honestly, I don't see the problem with having (a few) pages like this. It's at most 100k, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the size of most SGF files and so forth.

Tristan: Thanks for that Blake.

JG: I think this page is justified. The internet is clearly the context for what we do here. Only the page title is unnecessarily obscure.

BlueWyvern: I also agree that this page is perfectly justified. I view the Sensei's Library not as "a web site where I go to look up go stuff", but rather "a community of people brought together by go, a lot with opinions I highly respect." In this context, any page based on something that is probably of benefit to the majority of the community belongs. I'm sure that spam is a problem that every single user of this site has had to deal with at some point in time, and as such, I believe it has a place here. If, however, I were to make a page concerning just how much the Boston Red Sox rule, people would be perfectly right to insist that I remove it, regardless of how shiningly true it would be. And I'd think it would be really cool if Byung Hyun Kim walked into the MGA and asked for a game.

Tristan: Thankyou guys. If this page is allowed to remain, I will very soon delete the objections (and supporting comments), to leave only the spambusting material. I can understand more easily objections to the title, which on reflection does sound a bit flippant and maybe does not make it clear that this is a anti-spam page and not a humorous page. If a librarian wants to change the title to "How to Handle Spam" or "Tips for Handling Spam" or similar, I won't be upset by that.

mAsterdam: Deleting stuff just when it gets on topic for SL? May I suggest moving it to some page like How OT can we get at SL?? Hm... now I feel I have to give my opinion, too. I could imagine someone writing about ligthing of game rooms and the acoustics of game rooms (or wood), or the development of molecular theory paralleled to the development of games. Tristan, I like your style and most of your contributions here. This page just isn't one I am interested in when I read RecentChanges. Other sites cover this topic.

I would not expect a Wiki administrator to remove it. That is more [ext] Kuro5hin-style, not Wiki. Both approaches to blogging have merits, and there are borders one shouldn't cross even at a Wiki, but administrative removal of this page would make SL cross another border I do not expect it will at this time. HTH.

mgoetze: Personally I am not in the least interested in a discussion about spam here, since I've known everything Tristan posted about it and a lot more beyond that for years. I would be interested, perhaps, in a discussion of how to combat spam at the level of major ISPs or RIPE, but then I doubt most other people here would. And that is exactly the problem - even if we see SL as a community of people rather than a repository of go knowledge, we still have varying degrees of interest in various topics. If a discussion ensues which happens to involve other topics in a major way (e.g. music), then that's OK. However, starting off a new discussion that is blatantly off-topic is not, IMHO. Especially not if the original poster considers it "very important to everyone here at SL", because it probably isn't. (For me, SpankASpammer was a waste of time even worse than reading discussions between Bill Spight and Robert Jasiek...)


TO BILL SPIGHT:

Tristan: A) I was rather hurt by the tone of some of the responses my Spank A Spammer page received. Okay, the choice of title was a bit flippant and I regret that, but the idea was surely a good one, i.e., to set up a page for deshis to share their spam-busting tips. Some people rather snottily said, "Oh, we knew your spam-fighting tips already and had better ones of our own so why make this page?", completely forgetting that they contribute go material despite being even weaker players than I. But do I say, "Oh, your joseki page is of no interest to me because I play better go than you do?" Of course not: if I can, I offer suggestions to improve it. So, I thought the best thing to do with the argument was to delete it, in the spirit of "least said, soonest mended".

B) I gave fair warning that I was going to perform the deletion.

Sorry to come over strongly, but as I say, I was somewhat hurt that certain deshis only criticised me without acknowledging that I was trying to help everybody. I was excited because I had found out some material to relieve a problem that has driven me nearly to tears, and I thought some of my friends here would actually appreciate it. Anyway, I shall concentrate from now on strictly go-related stuff and if I catch any of my critics indulging in any digressions...I shall try to be forbearing and forgiving, even though I would like to...

Bill: I see I pricked a wound. I apologize. I was just curious. It is unusual to do a wholesale delete here. :-)

Tristan: I just didn't like that argument lying around near the surface of SL. I don't think it did me or some of the other participants credit. If people really want to look up the deleted material they can, of course, but I think it would be rather like going to a rubbish dump just to see what cheese looks like after it's been lying outside in the sun for several days, i.e., it's not something worth doing. I made the page, some people objected, one in rather supercillious terms, while others supported me, and the page stayed. End of story. Let's consign the argument to the rubbish heap, remember that we're all friends, and move on.


Arno: just adding my €.02: There is a limit on the volume of off-topic pages a wiki can bear. If the OT stuff gets substantial enough (say 10-20% of all pages) SL will start to attract other people, not sharing the one common denominator: go. Sooner or later non-go people could outnumber go people. I have been carefully monitoring other wikis on the web. If you have a look at the successful ones, then they all focus on one area and one area alone. That is to say: Morten or I are not necessarily deleting every and all off-topic pages. But don't be surprised if we start deleting them either. For me the most important indicator is, how the majority of people feel about it (this may sound democratic, but it isn't because Morten and I still have the final word).

Tristan: Thanks for the clarification, Arno. Please would you delete the argument - I really want to put that behind me. Also, please would you change the title of Spank A Spammer to something less potentially offensive, such as Dealing With Spam And Other Internet Nuisances?. I do earnestly entreat that the page itself be allowed to remain. First, the number of people who defended it was about the same as those who objected. Second, spam and other net annoyances such as pop-up ads were driving me nearly to distraction, and I would have been exceedingly glad had somebody here set up a page sharing tips for dealing with these issues much earlier. It would have saved me a lot of time and irritation. Third, I would contend that it is not completely off-topic either. This is an Internet go forum, after all, and anything which would help us to use the Internet more easily and effectively should also enhance our discussions on go.

Rich: I would say that, in my opinion, it is off-topic and that off-topic material should be restricted where possible. True, spam can degrade one's internet experience, but so can choice of operating system, the processing power in the computer, one's choice of ISP. Are these all then open for debate on Sensei's Library? There are many hundreds of web pages dealing with spam, computer upgrades and so on far more completely than SL could hope to: why would one even start looking for anti-spam tips on a Go resource rather than, say, Google?

As Blake rightly says, one page doesn't make much difference. But with the growing number of contributors, it wouldn't stick at one page. Even now, I occasionally stumble across pages in which go is barely mentioned in passing, that may be hugely interesting for the two or three people involved to show how cool/clever/witty they are but could, egos aside, be best carried on in email.

Tristan: Fair points, Richard. That said, all I was asking for, really, was for a small number of non-go pages dealing with very general issues likely to be of interest to most if not all deshis. As I suggested, all noisome aspects of the Internet experience could be dealt with on one page, called Dealing With Spam And Other Internet Nuisances?. Surely that isn't going to break anything, is it? Arno's posting seemed like common sense to me. In the end, if SL becomes too strict, it won't be any fun, and if it is too liberal, it won't be any use. I guess it all depends on what kind of atmosphere you want here. Is this going to be an online Bodleian Library of Go, where all utterances must be 100% relevant and only people with ranks above 6 dan are allowed to contribute material? Or is it going to be a forum, busy and productive, but with the occasional cranky street preacher?

amc: I can see both sides of the point, really. I agree that the SL is, by this point, not only a "Go Dynamic Encyclopedia" but also the community of people who regularly read and edit it. The community is naturally interested in talking about other things, and hence should have an outlet IMHO. Still, I think a distinction should be made. Having a certain number of pages of discussion between the community is one thing (like the message topics, or the CoffeeMachine), but the Spam page was something else. It was an information article. While the community of SLJunkies can only meet here, Spam information can be had all over the place. In my opinion, the SL should be restricted in it's information articles to Go topics, simply because to do otherwise would very fast degenerate into a general Wiki, without focus. As for pure discussion between members, written as a conversation and not as "perennial" information, that should be a lot more free.



This is a copy of the living page "How off topic can we get at SL" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.