Life In 19x19

From the "ASR has become private" thread:

climu wrote:

Kirby wrote:Someone should just organize a new league with less drama

If anyone is up for this, I still have some contacts/experience I would be happy to help with.
I can probably find some kind 6d to teach for free to help us for instance.
But one need a team of motivated guys to start/run it and a team of IT guys.

I think in starting something new like the ASR was, it would probably be helpful to consider why the ASR seemed to fade out after a few months or a year each time it started up again.

I know there were complaints about not being able to get games in your group, or problems with lots of people dropping out, but I'm not sure how frequent this was as I wasn't in it. I got the impression that the idea to have it set as an 'insei-style' league may have been part of the problem, by fragmenting the user base into many different groups. Various admins seemed to try to alleviate this repeatedly, but I don't think it ever went away. For this purpose, perhaps it would be better if people were slotted into strength bands, with the expectation that they play X number of games with people in weaker bands, or X%?

To look a little more broadly than this, what is the purpose of such a room or group? Is it to organize and view lectures? To play many opponents and games at different strengths? To get reviews of games? To climb a ladder of opponents? To create a social group of go players? Something else?

All of these are possibilities, and aren't exclusive of each other, but each one also requires an allocation of resources that may be limited. Lectures, for example, may require money or some other compensation to keep high-quality lecturers coming back. Some of these features are also already available in different venues, and creating another one without a lot of buy-in may just fragment the go community more, or fail to launch due to the need already being met.

So, what would people want from such a group?

It seems to me that the main advantage of ASR is the ability to play longer games and review them with your opponent. I can find someone around my level to play a game with almost any time. Finding someone who wants to play and review is a lot harder! (The ladder aspect is also nice - it's fun to compete - but I feel this is secondary.)

To this end, I've considered making a web site that helps players match up against others who are willing to play and review games. The idea is that it would allow you to enter rank, servers you play on, and general availability and help you to schedule a game. Do you think this would be a boon to the community and cover some of the same niche as the ASR?

Hi guys,

skydyr wrote:it would probably be helpful to consider why the ASR seemed to fade out after a few months or a year each time it started up again.

My opinion from my experience: It's way to much work.
Let me explain myself. Each time ASR revive is because you have a motivated team that comes and find some sponsors for prize, set up events to advertise for the room, manage the website, deliver prizes...
This kindof work is really time-consuming and it's hard to really organise as a team to do that.

So when ASR has started faded is, I think, when such community managment has stopped too.

I think what is needed is a really community driven go study room.
I think the league had some fun and competitive that motivated ppl to play (plus the prizes).
As for the lectures, the goal has always been to offer teaching content to the community and to advertise for the room.

As to how to organise the league, it's a complex question. I don't know.

@jeromie: Hi,
Your idea might be good.
I had some nice IT plans for ASR go community. For instance get all the reviews that have been made in ASR and list them. Then allow ppl to question/answer every review on the website. Such a feature was quite easy to implement on our system.

What would be best imho would be an IT team that work on some gpl tools dedicated to such a go community.

Maybe the Nova league on OGS is happy to have some new volunteers. I never took part, but the way I understood it, it's supposed to work in a similar fashion as the ASR league does.

Patience and waiting till the ASR will finally get its traditional restart is also an option.

bayu wrote:[..]

Patience and waiting till the ASR will finally get its traditional restart is also an option.

I just wanted to reply with this:

Seeing that “LinuxGooo” (aka “Jorja Renoldsa”—if you watched their latest video, you’ll have noticed this pseudonym at the end) is meanwhile abusing ASR for spamming links to his “mysanrensei” blog (as was to be expected), I’m not sure whether that should be expected any timed soon.

… then I wanted to look up something on that site but ASR was offline, and according to http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/advancedstudyroom.com it’s down for everyone, not just for me …

Maintenance? Or would that be the restart already? What other possibilities would there be? Expiration date of that domain, if not renewed, would be 15-nov-2016 (according to whois).

While I prefer to see it as a new start rather than a replacement, I made something already.
We have a blog, a forum, a league tool, 38 players and 6 games played.

Website

L19 announcement

reddit announcement


I am very open to any kind of ideas/feedback/help.

Edit: I just wanted to clear something out. OSR is not going to replace ASR. It's just a new place we are building for those who don't feel home in ASR anymore.