From experience: if players approach it carefully and discuss in depth and do analysis, the collective is stronger than its strongest member (see Kasparov vs. the World). If that doesn't happen, the collective is probably weaker.

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Occupy Babel!

I thought I'd raise the idea and I think I'd slightly prefer it. I can see it being more hassle than good though.



I disagree with this. This type of scenario is exactly what I had in mind when I suggested the group might get weaker. The correct move in a position depends on following it up correctly no matter which unexpected direction the game takes. It is very easy to turn a good move into a very bad one. It's also very easy to get lost in a game that has been played out very differently to how you expected (though I think the turn-based aspect might mitigate this a bit).

I'm thinking in particular about the gang malkovich game where Black's play ended up just bonkers and inconsistent.

The alternative where the strong player ends up effectively playing every move isn't particularly exciting.



I'm sure this can happen. I don't think it will in this case though.

None of this really matters though as long as the game ends up reasonably even.

From what I remember of the experiments carried out about this kind of thing, I think you need a very large group for this, all the voters to be independent from each other (i.e. no discussion) and voting to be anonymous. It'd be an interesting experiment but would be far less interesting for observers to watch. It'd be treating each move as a whole board problem each time though. Whether that'd be a good or bad thing I've no idea. There's a book "The Wisdom of Crowds" on this if you're really interested in it and some of the experiments done. It's been 5 years since I've read it though, so I've forgotten most of it.

That's why I wanted to separate the discussion from the voting.

I think the collective would be strong if every move starts with an analysis of the situation left by the opponent and, only then, the voting process starts. That way most players can see the analysis made by some and take an informed decision.

I think it will work perfectly if the discussion goes along the lines of: "'a' would make the bottom group safe but it's a bit slow. 'b' is much better because we can lean on the side. 'c' works, but it's risky."

That way:
- players of every rank can vote and influence the game.
- strong players protect us from blunders and give the rest the vision of what's happening in the game, only they have.
- Everybody learns by not only reading about a game where moves are analyzed but also feeling involved in it.

And, the most important objective: we train for that time where we have to crush the team from another forum and impose LI19x19 as the greatest forum of them all.

As soon as the first game is on, we'll have to start looking for a worthy forum foe.

Do we agree we should try to get the strongest possible opponent?

After all, if we are crushed we could always go to Game Analysis and get a collective lesson.

I think we should take on breakfast ..

Well, Kasparov vs the world had a huge group, and I believe it had anonymous voting, but it did have discussion, and that was the crucial element. It helps that in chess, single lines can often be decisively refuted, even by weak players, whereas in Go, things are often fuzzier and less decisive.

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Occupy Babel!

The problem I was thinking of wasn't that I would be out of line contradicting a 6d, but rather that I would automatically assume that the 6d was right and thus have no desire to contradict them. I think discarding ranks would foster a more involved discussion.

I don't think hiding the votes is possible. In order to do that you would have to have a poll with limited options, and the poll creator would have to decide in advance which moves to add to the poll. This would be a maintenance headache, plus what if someone wanted to play a move that the poll creator didn't think of? I think the best way is to just have the voting thread work whereby you simply post the coordinates of your move, and at the end the thread creator goes through and tallies up the choices. This gives people the freedom to choose any move they want, even a move that nobody else thought of.

Of course there are other ways but it would involve a substantial amount of work, like setting up a custom voting system where you vote simply by clicking a position on a board. But that's not something that's built into the forum software, and probably not part of any pre-existing software package, so someone would have to write all that from scratch. There's other ways, like having everyone PM the thread creator, but that's going to be annoying for the thread creator. A third option would be if phpBB2 supports a forum permission option where an administrator can give special access rights to a thread where you can only see your own post in the therad, but no other post. If voting threads were set up this way, then basically: thread creator would be able to see all responses, non thread creator would only be able to see his own response to the thread.

Anyway, for starters seems like KISS (keep it simple stupid) is the best approach.

JMO

Eh, I imagined people would just use hide tags in voting thread.

This way you don't look down a long list of stronger players saying R9 when you go to vote for D6 (because, although you have seen their arguments, you think it surely is more important to limit the moyo) and change your mind or not bother voting.

I always forget the level of gentlemanliness one can take as granted in this forum.

I will suggest the use of hide tags even if that forces me to click on each one of them when counting votes.

I wrote a script for Firefox a while ago that will open and close all the hide tags on a page with the click of just one button, which appears beside the "Previous Topic | Next Topic" links on thread pages. Just install Greasemonkey and then you can find the script here. Unfortunately I never put in the time to make it work on Chrome, and I don't even know if any other browsers support adding user scripts like this one.

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

Well, there's enough of us for the first game.*

As soon as Joaz Banbeck sets up the sub-forum I'll start the hunt for the strongest player willing to be crushed by the mighty LifeIn19x19 Legion.


*: you can keep joining until the opponent is selected, just take into account that we'll have to bother Joaz Banbeck for each addition.

Chrome lets you do extensions and it's pretty painless to do so, but it also looks like there's a greasemonkey clone (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... ldmpobfkfo). Maybe I can write up a version of your script.

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Occupy Babel!

You can already install it in Chrome, it just doesn't work (whether or not you use Tampermonkey). I kind of stopped working on it once I got it to work in Firefox, which was my browser at the time. I had intended to add Chrome support, but then I got busy and quickly forgot about it. Anyway, you can find the source at the link above if you're interested in adding Chrome support (though it seems I didn't document it like I should've ).

The addLink() function just adds the link you click to show/hide the hide tags, and the showhide() function shows or hides the hidden text based on the state of the first hide tag (if the first hide tag is closed, all will be opened, if it's open, all will be closed). However, at least one of the things I do within showhide() doesn't work in Chrome, so that's where you should look.

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

Ok, I have a version that works in Chrome, available at https://gist.github.com/3724409.

This version actually should be compatible with all modern (IE9+) browsers, though I haven't done any testing. It uses capability detection to ensure that IE8 users won't even see the show/hide link. So once a few people test it, we can add it to L19 if the admins so desire. I will probably try to make it work in IE8 this evening or in the next few days (sorry, IE7 won't happen unless you bribe me).

For people who know what a tar.gz file is, the simple way to install in Chrome (sorry, I don't know about Firefox, Safari, IE or Opera):

1. Copy paste the two code snippets into manifest.json files and showhide.js files in their own folder on your computer.
2. Go to extensions in Chrome, located under the wrench menu that's to the right of the location bar.
3. If it's not already checked, check the box for "developer mode". You should know see button reading "load unpacked extension" and "pack extension".
4. Click "load unpacked extension". This will give you a file browser, select the folder that contains the two files.

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Occupy Babel!

Doesn't phpBB support the ability to give custom permissions to a thread where you cannot see any responses other than your own?

I know for a fact vBulletin has it becuase I've used it.