Popularity of Go

[Bantari]

To me this this is another attempt to solve the symptoms rather than the problem.
The problems are, as I see them:
1) lack of (strong) players to teach for free;
2) lack of (strong) players to write Go books for free;
3) lack of good study materials in English (lack of translators, lack of permissions to translate, whatever);
...and so on...

You cannot solve these problems by providing (yet another) venue for stuff nobody is really doing (for free).

When I say 'for free', you can insert the details of the 'barter' system you propose - once you have the details. And when you do that, when this is worked out and attractive to strong(er) players to such degree that they start actually contributing, then we will have a different discussion. Until then - I think there are better ways to popularize Go and to contribute to a Go community. See if you can translate some existing Go books into whatever language. Or some websites. Or anything... post more good games or problems to L19 if nothing else.

Well, we started the whole discussion in a thread about Joanne Missingham and the utter lack of english go news about even the top events in the world (Asian Games here). This lack is imo much bigger than any lack of books or teaching or so. (You can have english go lessons and teaching games online, and in europe you will quite often meet former insei or actual professionals to comment the games at tournaments these days, there are more go books available in english than i will ever read.) And there is no collective drive to translate news already... people write individual blogs but it doesn't aggregate very well. I feel very much cut off, I can find kifu somewhere often, but weak as I am I just replay them have some thoughts about it... it would be nice to be able to connect to players emotionally and follow them on a more regular basis. Probably this is unimportant fanstuff to some, but I would so much like it (even if I probably can't give anything back).

But of course there is the big question mark with the volunteers. Those who can translate, why should they do it? I don't translate my daily newspaper either, if dear friends ask, I do translate single articles but that's it. Why should anyone bother to translate news for people who are too lazy to learn Chinese, Korean or Japanese? (It is altogether a different issue than sharing other knowledge, which is widely done - even for free - but because it helps people improve it is seen as part of the general endeavour as opposed to professional news which is seen as geek stuff even if the same people know the current player base of half a dozen football clubs. )

You are right, and if I understand you correctly, what you say goes hand-in-hand with my points.
We lack volunteers to track and translate and post news about Go events around the world. For free.
Venues to do so exist aplenty. Therefore providing yet another venue is meaningless by itself.

On the other hand - I am not sure I agree with you calling people who don't have time to learn Asian languages 'lazy'.
I find it slightly offensive to thous who work hard to learn all kinds of other things, but also wish to learn and enjoy Go.
I do not take it personally, though, since I do not really want to learn more Go, and I already enjoy it enough.

[tapir]

To me this this is another attempt to solve the symptoms rather than the problem.
The problems are, as I see them:
1) lack of (strong) players to teach for free;
2) lack of (strong) players to write Go books for free;
3) lack of good study materials in English (lack of translators, lack of permissions to translate, whatever);
...and so on...

You cannot solve these problems by providing (yet another) venue for stuff nobody is really doing (for free).

When I say 'for free', you can insert the details of the 'barter' system you propose - once you have the details. And when you do that, when this is worked out and attractive to strong(er) players to such degree that they start actually contributing, then we will have a different discussion. Until then - I think there are better ways to popularize Go and to contribute to a Go community. See if you can translate some existing Go books into whatever language. Or some websites. Or anything... post more good games or problems to L19 if nothing else.

Well, we started the whole discussion in a thread about Joanne Missingham and the utter lack of english go news about even the top events in the world (Asian Games here). This lack is imo much bigger than any lack of books or teaching or so. (You can have english go lessons and teaching games online, and in europe you will quite often meet former insei or actual professionals to comment the games at tournaments these days, there are more go books available in english than i will ever read.) And there is no collective drive to translate news already... people write individual blogs but it doesn't aggregate very well. I feel very much cut off, I can find kifu somewhere often, but weak as I am I just replay them have some thoughts about it... it would be nice to be able to connect to players emotionally and follow them on a more regular basis. Probably this is unimportant fanstuff to some, but I would so much like it (even if I probably can't give anything back).

But of course there is the big question mark with the volunteers. Those who can translate, why should they do it? I don't translate my daily newspaper either, if dear friends ask, I do translate single articles but that's it. Why should anyone bother to translate news for people who are too lazy to learn Chinese, Korean or Japanese? (It is altogether a different issue than sharing other knowledge, which is widely done - even for free - but because it helps people improve it is seen as part of the general endeavour as opposed to professional news which is seen as geek stuff even if the same people know the current player base of half a dozen football clubs. )

You are right, and if I understand you correctly, what you say goes hand-in-hand with my points.
We lack volunteers to track and translate and post news about Go events around the world. For free.
Venues to do so exist aplenty. Therefore providing yet another venue is meaningless by itself.

On the other hand - I am not sure I agree with you calling people who don't have time to learn Asian languages 'lazy'.
I find it slightly offensive to thous who work hard to learn all kinds of other things, but also wish to learn and enjoy Go.
I do not take it personally, though, since I do not really want to learn more Go, and I already enjoy it enough.

Well, I am one of those "lazy" people, so nobody should be offended. (Though I really do feel lazy when I don't understand people The point of the proposal which i would emphasise is not being just another venue, but that the proposal was for a collective effort (even if it may end as just another venue if started now) centered on different languages and translation. And really that is what I don't get about all those individual pages and go blogs. I see the point with different languages, but otherwise: Why can't people just do something together? (The author was born east of the iron curtain.)

And of course - there is no compensation - who would pay for mere news. I mean seriously (newspapers? individual readers?). And giving some knowledge as compensation won't work if the endeavour is limited to a game which happens to be less known in the "occident". There are of course kyu players in Korea, Japan, China as well who might like teaching as compensation - however if they want to they likely can get a (better) teacher easily and I even would advise them to do so. Effectively, an handshake and sincere gratitude will be the only compensation to offer.

[nagano]

@Bantari If a lack of strong players is a problem, what is the cure? If they play on the internet, you certainly cannot allege that it is a lack of viable opponents at any given level. So the issue is education. Korea and China have advanced compared to Japan and the rest of the world because of their innovation in curriculum design and their use of study groups. This is the reason for points 3 and 4. The element of this that perhaps I have not emphasized enough is users promoting the site in their own countries. In particular efforts need to be made to promote involvement of players in Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan. I guess that really the chief aims of such a project are to integrate the Western and Asian Go communities and to provide a source of materials for study that are not bound by copyright and can be printed on demand.

[hyperpape]

Since copyright has been mentioned, I would note that getting the right to translate news articles is non-trivial.

[nagano]

The articles would not necessarily need to be translated directly. They could be original articles based on the direct reports.

[Bantari]

@Bantari If a lack of strong players is a problem, what is the cure? If they play on the internet, you certainly cannot allege that it is a lack of viable opponents at any given level. So the issue is education.

Well, I never said there is a lack of strong players.
I said there is a lack of strong players willing to invest their time and effort for free to the extend in it would be needed to make what you suggest interesting. My argument for this is that if the strong(er) player wished to contribute en-masse, they do have the venues open to them to do so now. But they don't, and this is the problem. Providing yet another venue will not solve it. My personal feeling is that the really strong players got to be so strong because they put their effort on learning and studying rather than on teaching and writing.

Korea and China have advanced compared to Japan and the rest of the world because of their innovation in curriculum design and their use of study groups. This is the reason for points 3 and 4. The element of this that perhaps I have not emphasized enough is users promoting the site in their own countries. In particular efforts need to be made to promote involvement of players in Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan. I guess that really the chief aims of such a project are to integrate the Western and Asian Go communities and to provide a source of materials for study that are not bound by copyright and can be printed on demand.

The aims are good.
The solution is ass-backwards, I think. As I said - trying to solve the symptoms rather than the problem.

First, you should find people willing to do the work - teach, write, translate, dig out and post news, etc. Find them, and get them to post on any of the existing sites, Sensei's, GoBase, whatever. Get them to do it for free (or in exchange for some other services you can provide), and on a regular basis, and get them to be dependent and disciplined and not flake out after a month or two. And THEN, if the experiment is successful, and you have found a core group of contributors, start thinking about consolidating the services into a dedicated site.

The site will be relatively easy, its finding the people and getting them to do the work what is hard!

Otherwise you are putting a lot of effort up-front into a project that is most likely destined for a failure (see the recent go-voice-chat experiment, among many many others.) I have seen it happen so many times before, almost every single time somebody started the way you propose - by providing a venue and then sitting back with the words 'now YOU contribute, now YOU work'.

Each successful Go site I can think of started with first having a group people dedicated and willing to do the work by themselves, then expanding to additional 'volunteers' to grow once the service got successful. GoBase, Go4Go, KGS, etc. L19 might be an exception, but one could argue that there was a strong steady base of contributors - in rgg and GoDiscussions - to tap into, so even that started with strong core group of people willing to put the effort.

What I do agree with you the most is a solid English-language site providing news from Asian Go scene(s).
But again - such sites do exist (GoBase comes to mind, among many others) - the problem lies in getting people to post the news. So we are back to the same issue - we need people to do the work, and THIS is the problem. Not the lack of sites where they can post their stuff.

[tapir]

@bantari: Yes indeed, writing on venues like Lifein19x19, Sensei's Library, making reviews on GTL, adding problems to GoProblems.com may help others to improve but not those who contribute the content. Bad luck for all of us.

[nagano]

Is anyone here involved in the advertising industry? I'd be interested as to your thoughts of how to spread the game.

[Bantari]

Well, I am one of those "lazy" people, so nobody should be offended.

Well, that's really not a good excuse.

(Though I really do feel lazy when I don't understand people The point of the proposal which i would emphasise is not being just another venue, but that the proposal was for a collective effort (even if it may end as just another venue if started now) centered on different languages and translation. And really that is what I don't get about all those individual pages and go blogs. I see the point with different languages, but otherwise: Why can't people just do something together? (The author was born east of the iron curtain.)

I would second this motion gladly.

However, what I have seen happening was not
'Hey, let US get organized and translate and teach stuff, I start, here!' but
'Hey, I can create a website where YOU can do translations and teaching and writing books and whatnot!'

To me, these two statements are fundamentally different.
The whole point of my involvement in this topic is that I think the first statement to be a good start, while the second one needs to wait until there is need. Starting with #2 and hoping for need to develop somehow, spontaneously, out of thin air - is not realistic from what I know about people. But I don't wish to squish nobody's enthusiasm, so maybe I should just be quiet about this.

[nagano]

The "need" exists. It's simply that no one has filled it.

[emeraldemon]

What happened in South Korea and China? Obviously people have been playing there for a very long time, but it seems like it wasn't until the 1980s or so that they started competing with Japan internationally and winning. What changed?

[Bantari]

The "need" exists. It's simply that no one has filled it.

It does not look like there is.
Or do you mean the need for weak(er) players to have easy access to free stuff?
The more I read what you say the more I have the feeling that this is what you are talking about.

The need I am talking about is the need for a more dedicated venue. This can be defined by an observation that the currently existing venues are not sufficient. In other words, there is stuff that does not get published because of a lack of venue. Or that there are people who wish to tech for free, write for free, and translate for free, but they don't see any venue to present their work. I see no indication of that, yet - or are there people writing and translating like mad on SL and GoBase but these servers cannot accommodate all this content and so another website in addition to what we have is necessary? If so, I am mistaken and will withdraw all that I have said. But please demonstrate first.

[HermanHiddema]

@nagano: Are you aware of 321go?

[hyperpape]

What happened in South Korea and China? Obviously people have been playing there for a very long time, but it seems like it wasn't until the 1980s or so that they started competing with Japan internationally and winning. What changed?

Organization seems to have been the issue, though I'm sure a more nuanced story could be told.

[Kirby]

What happened in South Korea and China? Obviously people have been playing there for a very long time, but it seems like it wasn't until the 1980s or so that they started competing with Japan internationally and winning. What changed?

Organization seems to have been the issue, though I'm sure a more nuanced story could be told.

I would suspect that being occupied by Japan could have had an effect on a country's go development.