Yahoo’s Go closed, let’s tell ’em where to to play!

[illluck]

I have not been on that site in years but from what I remember it is not a great loss.

I think Yahoo is a major loss. Yahoo (whether we like to admit it or not) for most of its run was larger than KGS or IGS often larger than both put together. It did the go community an incredible service in the form of raising awareness of the game.

Yahoo wasn't pretty, the rating system was crap, a lot of the user behavior was annoying, and it's rules implementations were questionable...but perhaps that was the beauty of it. Instead of getting bogged down in all the minutiae as we go players are wont to do, Yahoo ignored all that and gave a wide audience a "play now" button. It didn't care how the stones looked, how fair a pairing it was, or how the exact procedure for ending a game should be...it simply wanted to make go as readily available, as quickly as possible, to as many people as possible, knowing that if they just play they'll fall in love with the game exactly how many of is in this forum have.

If you ask me, we could all learn a thing or two from Yahoo.

The only reason why Yahoo had a large-ish userbase is because it's Yahoo. I'm not sure what you can learn from it other than broken rules and non-existent dispute resolution.

[Bantari]

I have not been on that site in years but from what I remember it is not a great loss.

I think Yahoo is a major loss. Yahoo (whether we like to admit it or not) for most of its run was larger than KGS or IGS often larger than both put together. It did the go community an incredible service in the form of raising awareness of the game.

Yahoo wasn't pretty, the rating system was crap, a lot of the user behavior was annoying, and it's rules implementations were questionable...but perhaps that was the beauty of it. Instead of getting bogged down in all the minutiae as we go players are wont to do, Yahoo ignored all that and gave a wide audience a "play now" button. It didn't care how the stones looked, how fair a pairing it was, or how the exact procedure for ending a game should be...it simply wanted to make go as readily available, as quickly as possible, to as many people as possible, knowing that if they just play they'll fall in love with the game exactly how many of is in this forum have.

If you ask me, we could all learn a thing or two from Yahoo.

The only reason why Yahoo had a large-ish userbase is because it's Yahoo. I'm not sure what you can learn from it other than broken rules and non-existent dispute resolution.

It offered a place where you can play surrounded by BS other than the BS on KGS or Tygem or whatever.
Many people preferred it, so it had a large user base. Maybe there is a lesson in there somewhere?
A lesson that upstarts like Kaya or Nova could have learned?

[Bonobo]

[..]

Many people preferred it, so it had a large user base. Maybe there is a lesson in there somewhere?
A lesson that upstarts like Kaya or Nova could have learned?

You mean a lesson like “How to be loved”? Dale Carnegie, I think, wrote about “How to win friends and influence people”, and there are psychotherapeutic techniques which include creating “rapport” with a client …

but really, the reason that there were so many people on Yahoo is that it was, uhm, similar to AOL in a way and being founded sometime in the Mesozoic it carried generations and generations of people who passed it on to their offspring. Imagine it being a sidearm of homo sapiens.

Uhm, these day dreams, forgive me. I’ll stop it now.


Greetz, Tom

[Bantari]

but really, the reason that there were so many people on Yahoo is that it was, uhm, similar to AOL in a way

I am not sure this is true. How do you know that? Have you played there, made any friends there, talked to people at length? What?
Here is what I know:

There were quite a few stronger (or at least - decent strength) players on Yahoo, who knew about other servers and preferred to play on Yahoo. For quite a while I preferred (or at least played there often) even though I have also played on other servers. I have never been an AOL member, so what you say definitely does not apply to me, nor to people I knew there.

From what I have talked to people on Yahoo (and later on PlayOk which is similar) the main advantages of playing there were:

• no hassle - no need for client, no need for even registration, just enjoy
• no worries about pesky dictatorial admins telling you what to do and not do
• more serious servers are generally more uptight, which does not suit everybody
• too many rank-chasers on other servers (not that there were none on Yahoo, but nobody really cared)
• you could play many other fun games with the same account and using similar interface within the same server (almost)
• ...and so on

I think for some people who played there (at least occasionally) - these might be some good advantages, not offered by any of the "serious" servers.
I somehow find it disrespectful of you to be just dismissing it all with "similar to aol " or "funded in mesozoic."
You don't like Yahoo, that's fine. But don't just look down upon people who did.

[illluck]

but really, the reason that there were so many people on Yahoo is that it was, uhm, similar to AOL in a way

I am not sure this is true. How do you know that? Have you played there, made any friends there, talked to people at length? What?
Here is what I know:

There were quite a few stronger (or at least - decent strength) players on Yahoo, who knew about other servers and preferred to play on Yahoo. For quite a while I preferred (or at least played there often) even though I have also played on other servers. I have never been an AOL member, so what you say definitely does not apply to me, nor to people I knew there.

From what I have talked to people on Yahoo (and later on PlayOk which is similar) the main advantages of playing there were:

• no hassle - no need for client, no need for even registration, just enjoy
• no worries about pesky dictatorial admins telling you what to do and not do
• more serious servers are generally more uptight, which does not suit everybody
• too many rank-chasers on other servers (not that there were none on Yahoo, but nobody really cared)
• you could play many other fun games with the same account and using similar interface within the same server (almost)
• ...and so on

I think for some people who played there (at least occasionally) - these might be some good advantages, not offered by any of the "serious" servers.
I somehow find it disrespectful of you to be just dismissing it all with "similar to aol " or "funded in mesozoic."
You don't like Yahoo, that's fine. But don't just look down upon people who did.

Yahoo had a large-ish number of players because it was a large search engine/portal. I'd be willing to bet that far more players (both in numbers and in proportion) left it when they discovered other servers than there are players who left other servers to play at Yahoo. If that's true, then "learning" from Yahoo would be the last thing any server wants.

[Bonobo]

[..]

I somehow find it disrespectful of you to be just dismissing it all with "similar to aol " or "funded in mesozoic."
You don't like Yahoo, that's fine. But don't just look down upon people who did.

I was kidding. Apparently not explicitly enough. Didn’t mean to be condescending. Well, at least not more than jokes about East Frisia are in Germany.

All I really meant to say was that Yahoo is OLD, and thus, similar to AOL, it has a large following. Uhm, like, e.g., Fox “News”. Or the BILD“zeitung”. Ach, forget it

Perhaps it will be clearer when manners of players coming from there show where they’re coming from … and perhaps I’m totally wrong about this.


Tom

[hyperpape]

Yahoo had a large-ish number of players because it was a large search engine/portal. I'd be willing to bet that far more players (both in numbers and in proportion) left it when they discovered other servers than there are players who left other servers to play at Yahoo. If that's true, then "learning" from Yahoo would be the last thing any server wants.

Well, while it's not clear how we should act on it, there's a message there: Go games that are easy to access because they're connected to something else big have a lot of potential to expose people to the game. And maybe even some stronger players will enjoy playing there because it is "no fuss".

[Bonobo]

[..] there's a message there: Go games that are easy to access because they're connected to something else big have a lot of potential to expose people to the game. And maybe even some stronger players will enjoy playing there because it is "no fuss".

… just checked again: it is posssible to log in to ☯GS as well as to the new public beta test of ☯GS using Facebook, Google+, and Twitter … while I know that there are critical points to these, it definitely means no fuss for those who use these social networks which have HUGE user bases …

[hyperpape]

Yeah, I think those features can only help. But what OGS still lacks (aside from lots of players for real-time games) is visibility.

[oren]

Yeah, I think those features can only help. But what OGS still lacks (aside from lots of players for real-time games) is visibility.

and a bit of UI improvement...