I am not an AGA member so probably do not not belong in this thread at all, but I could not resist. How in the world does anyone take this statement seriously in an organization of and for those with a personal interest in Go? I assume that those writing about Feng Yun and Jie Li equally believe that other members need to recuse themselves on 'weak player' issues (Oh, unless they agree with 'the interests of the AGA' of course)? I'd like to think, 'only in America', but I don't actually have such an optimistic view of humanity as a whole.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

I found a link in my email:

http://www.usgo.org/news/2012/02/%E2%80 ... d-meeting/

At the following board meeting, I asked what happened to the report that we said we were going to make, and the general feeling was that the issue had blown over and didn't need to be brought back up (more detail may or may not be in the minutes). I didn't push hard, now I'm wishing I had. That's my own mistake; next time I'll make a bigger fuss.

My understanding (and this is just me, not an official statement of any sort, and I'm saying this from memory without going back through my email) is that the loss was primarily due to there being many more cancelations than expected, and a few more comps than were budgeted. I also understand that adjustments have been made so as not to repeat this in the coming years.

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

I see nothing wrong in Feng Yun's letter. I actually agree with most of what she says and laud her courage to speak out. Indeed, AGA is very opaque, and nobody knows how a decision is made. We should let people who really care about Go to run it, be they are professional players who depend on Go for life or enthusiastic local organizers who keep live Go alive.

If the ability to spot problems with the AGA and complain about them was what made a good board member, we'd have dozens on the L19 boards.

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Occupy Babel!

I did wonder about this too. It seems to be open to quite some interpretation. For instance, is voting for a Congress to be held near where you live, a conflict of interest?

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North Lecale

I think that ability is neither necessary nor sufficient, but having at least 1 member with it will definitely be beneficial.

Of course you're a board member because you're interested in some sense. You care about go, you would like to be able to play go, you are a participant in the AGA, and so on.

But I'm incredulous that anyone would fail to see the difference between those interests and Feng Yun or Jie Li voting on the proposed tap. If you want to argue that there's no interesting way to draw a line in general, that might be reasonable. But in the cases mentioned so far, there's a big difference.

P.S. How are congress locations decided? I'm blanking on that.

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Occupy Babel!

I was wondering if it was a conflict voting to get a congress far away from where you live.

To be honest, I personally don't agree with it. The strong players are also part of the total players base and some representation makes sense. If you are talking about them being directly affected, the weaker players are also affected as they benefit from the tap - should no one be allowed to vote?

Disclosure: I'm not a member of either the AGA or the CGA, and don't really have enough information to judge. Still, I don't fully agree with disallowing strong player votes for taps.

Jie Li's presence on the board followed just a few years after a very public dispute in which he accused the President and Chairman of the Board of acting secretively and against AGA policy. So certainly we have seen critics before.

To be perfectly clear, this is not a criticism of Jie Li. It's just noting one very visible instance where a current board member is someone who's a critic.

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Occupy Babel!

The weaker player benefits in a small way, indirectly (for instance, I cannot exactly figure out how the tap has *any* effect on me personally). For Jie Li or Feng Yun, it might be several hundred dollars.

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Occupy Babel!

Then wouldn't it make more sense for those who are more impacted by it to have a say?

Unrelated: My limited understanding is that the underlying support for the tap is that the AGA helps with travel costs and such? Is there any way to have players "opt out" of travel cost support and also the tap? I'm just wondering if my understanding is correct.

Yes... while I have great respect for ez4u and javaness, wtf? In government, corporations, and non-profits it's standard procedure to separate personal interest from broader interests, fiduciary duties, and so on, and recuse oneself from conflicts of interest. I.e., I have an interest in efficient trash collection in my neighborhood, and you have a 5% interest in your nephew's waste disposal company, but these are totally different kinds of interest.

Things could be different in Japan and Ireland, of course... very different, if I remember The Bad Sleep Well accurately...

I wasn't saying that (perceived) conflicts of interests shouldn't be avoided. Just echoing the idea that the whole perception thing could get a bit mirky.

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North Lecale

The board currently has several members with this capability. I wouldn't say it was lacking in this area.

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

I still hear some complaints about lack of transparency. Is that just an image left from the past (if transparency was ever an issue) or are there reasons why transparency is hard to achieve?

Transparency is hard to achieve because people are bad at modeling the informational state of other humans. From the perspective of those who already know this stuff, it's usually pretty mundane, and it's really hard to imagine how it feels to not know it. This causes people to have no idea that what they are doing doesn't seem transparent to an outsider.

Everybody is in favor of transparency, but not everyone realizes that this means you actually have to, like, voluntarily tell people stuff. Everybody thinks they are being transparent--"ask me anything, I'm an open book", etc,--but that behavior, while laudable, doesn't actually create the impression of transparency in a group that's larger than your circle of friends.

You can't be transparent without taking efforts--vastly more efforts than feel necessary--to increase the distribution of information.

Of course there are other possibilities. For example, one could want to hide something in order to take advantage of people. I honestly do not think this is occurring on the AGA board. In my experience, very few people--from their own perspective, anyway--would want to do this anyway, so it should not be the first thing that jumps to your mind in most situations such as this one.

The last thing--which does happen on the AGA board--is the desire to minimize the number of angry people. It's surprisingly unpleasant to get emails like a few that were sent after the whole tap thing, and even though I personally got many more supportive messages than hate mail, it's the unpleasant stuff that sticks in your mind.

I can think of an experiment you guys could do. I don't know if it would work, but here's two things to try in the future:

1. If the board does something you don't agree with, discuss it without denigrating the people or accusing them of making the decision in bad faith. Even if you think they actually did make it in bad faith, it is not a good way to negotiate and immediately puts them on the defensive (and it makes you look like an a*cough*e).
2. If you see someone violating #1, call them on it, or at least send a nice letter to try and compensate. Respectful disagreement can easily be expressed in a nice letter.

I think it would take a while to "train" people that it's ok to freely spread unpleasant information, but it might help. It's just an idea.

In the mean time, if you can think of anything that could be implemented as a policy that would actually help (example: the press releases), please let me know.

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

I like Feng Yun because she is straightforward. Sure she cares about her own interest, but who does not? Pointing out problems is not hard. But doing it non-anonymously and with possible serious consequence is not easy. Compared to other candidates, she probably has the highest interest in seeing Go flourish in US. She certainly has the experience. If she is willing to devote her time and energy, she sounds an ideal candidate to me.

Daniel, I certainly respect and appreciate your effort in improving the transparency of AGA. Here are some suggestions: 1. move this disucssoin board to AGA and linked from the home page (not buried deeply); 2. change all the regional election to direct election.

@daniel_the_smith: Thanks a lot for taking the time for such a detailed response! Your explanation makes a lot of sense. Perception of transparency does seem very difficult to achieve without a lot of effort and time spent.

One possible idea for increasing transparency may be to establish/publicize a channel through which feedback on transparency/current issues may be obtained (perhaps e-mail or forum). Then find someone (preferably not a board member, but should be fine either way) to choose the more important feedback/questions and relay them to the board. Give some time (10-20 minutes?) at each board meeting to read/respond to the feedback/questions.

I would imagine the most difficult part to be making the channel well-known so that feedback actually comes in (perhaps the e-journal can be used to advertise). Another issue might be finding someone to take the time to sort through the comments and to get the board to respond seriously and candidly - tone at the top would be a key success factor. However, this should not be unfeasible in terms of costs and can allow board members to both better understand member concerns and take transparency seriously.

Daniel, I think the number one thing the board could do is approve minutes much more quickly. I imagine at least half of the things that people are thinking of as "opaque" would be resolved if they could read the minutes the month after the meeting in question (or the week, if that's allowed by by-laws).

I've had to take minutes for an organization before, and I know how vain people can be about minutes, but you really just have to convince them to swallow their pride and approve them immediately, unless there is some gross factual error that can be amended immediately.

Number two is to not rely on the silence to inhibit criticism. I know it can be really, really demoralizing to be on the receiving end of spiteful behavior when you are being magnanimous with your time. Many institutions have a strong urge to circle the wagons for exactly this reason. But you can't imagine how bad it looks to the outside when people say "we're withholding information to shield people from criticism". Imagine a police department trying that after brutality accusations, or a public school system trying that after a cheating scandal. We naturally begin to try to imagine something unimaginably bad, that could explain the need for privacy. When instead they announce which officers/teachers/whatever are accused of what, and when the disciplinary hearing is, everyone immediately loses interest.