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 Post subject: UliGo metric
Post #1 Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 9:13 am 
Gosei

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In busy browsing time today I found this nice metric on UliGo.net
Seems to show that January is the most popular month to play Go on KGS


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 Post subject: Re: UliGo metric
Post #2 Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 10:28 am 
Judan

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Interesting graph. I can't see a significant bump in January, but what I did notice was the big drop in spring/summer 2012 from which the numbers never recovered. Whilst there some similar sized drops in 2010 they appear to be fluctuations around a mean of about 1400 games from 2009 to 2012 (and a bit lower at the start in 2008), that drop seems to show a systematic shift down to an average around 1000. I wonder what caused that. A big sporting event (seems too early for Olympics)? Stone sound bug? Release of some English client for asian server? Nice weather so people went outside instead of playing Go inside? Rank shift so a load of 7ds became 6ds?

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 Post subject: Re: UliGo metric
Post #3 Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2015 5:07 am 
Dies with sente

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Uberdude wrote:
big drop in spring/summer 2012

One may get the impression that Go in the West is losing some popularity.
Some years ago Go was an active topic. SL was frequently updated.
Nowadays even the statistics on SL use are no longer updated.
The size of the snapshot grew by 10MB in 2013, and by 1MB in 2014.
The information in the English Wikipedia is often a few years old, and outdated.
There are 37 pages in the category "2011 in go" and 1 in "2013 in go".
Lifein19x19 "General Topics" had 2000+ posts in 2013, 1600+ in 2014, 1200+ in 2015.

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 Post subject: Re: UliGo metric
Post #4 Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 1:09 pm 
Dies in gote

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If anything, the recent drop in KGS games was probably triggered by a non-Go event (or series of events): the beginning of browser restrictions on Java plugins. To be clear, that doesn't explain the 2012 drop... the restrictions started phasing in around the start of 2014. But I don't believe there is, even to this day, a way to access KGS without Java, correct? There was a paid Android app at one time... I haven't checked recently to see if it is still supported. That will need to change, if KGS is going to make a comeback. While I support a developer's desire to have a little payment for his time, building site traffic is going to require a FREE app, and a non-Java way of accessing the site from the desktop.

While it will probably always be possible to launch the (Java) KGS client directly from the desktop, it takes a little finagling, and I'll bet that some significant portion of the user base just decided that it wasn't worth it. There are other places to get a game.

This pains me, because I feel a strange affinity for KGS... I just like the place.

As for this forum, I believe that its URL was badly named (too clever by half). People only peripherally familiar with Go won't associate the site with the game. GoDiscussions.com was the perfect name for a Go forum. To prop up the number of users here, it might even be worthwhile to take over the old GoDiscussions.com URL, and redirect it to the home page of Lifein19x19. The original owner of GoDiscussions.com appears to still pay the yearly fee for the URL (and some minimal hosting), because remnants of the site are still there.

To prove my assertion about the non-discoverability of this forum, here's the results of a few searches on Bing and Google, for terms that people might use to find a Go discussion forum. Anyone even vaguely associated with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) knows that your goal is to always appear in the first page of results from a search engine. Or, maybe it's just Bing that is the problem:


Bing
----

"go game forum" -- defunct GoDiscussions.com is the 2nd result, LifeIn19x19 not on first page
"go game discussion" -- GoDiscussions.com is the 1st result, LifeIn19x19 not on first page
"go forum" -- GoDiscussions 2nd result, Life not on first page


Google
------

"go game forum" -- LifeIn19x19 is first result, defunct GoDiscussions.com is 8th
"go game discussion" -- LifeIn19x19 is first result, GoDiscussions.com is 3rd
"go forum" -- LifeIn19x19 is third result, GoDiscussions.com is 9th


Anyway, Life In 19x19 could do a better job of being discoverable.


This post by Gohst was liked by: xed_over
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 Post subject: Re: UliGo metric
Post #5 Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 2:10 pm 
Oza

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vier wrote:
Uberdude wrote:
big drop in spring/summer 2012

One may get the impression that Go in the West is losing some popularity.
Some years ago Go was an active topic. SL was frequently updated.
Nowadays even the statistics on SL use are no longer updated.
The size of the snapshot grew by 10MB in 2013, and by 1MB in 2014.
The information in the English Wikipedia is often a few years old, and outdated.
There are 37 pages in the category "2011 in go" and 1 in "2013 in go".
Lifein19x19 "General Topics" had 2000+ posts in 2013, 1600+ in 2014, 1200+ in 2015.

Correlation != causation

I would expect SL activity to go down over time. Its a wiki, and initially there's lots to document. Later, not so much.

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