It is not necessary to confuse beginners by redefining territory differently from how it is used in go. Simpler and correct: "counts for White" or "scores for White" or "counts as a point for White" or "scores as a point for White".

You mean this thread? viewtopic.php?t=8520
Seems like you took a senseis page and naively modified it "slightly" to use territory scoring instead of area scoring, without realizing that this makes the rules as stated actually incomplete/inconsistent.
Then you get defensive upon people pointing this out to you.

In fact, the powerpoint presentation of the OP seems to suffer the very same problem: the question of what to do when your opponent just plops a stone into your "territory" is blatantly obvious to any beginner and should be addressed by an introduction to the game. (Imho it's more essential than explaining ko, let alone mentioning suicide.)


The wording reminds me of the logical rules of go, which I find much easier to understand than Robert's kind of convoluted language.
Anyway, I don't think either is meant for beginners.

I completely agree with this statement. The problem is that I don't see lots of flashy color and glitz as being professional. The front page for our university's private access was recently redone. It now has no menus and minimal text, but does have lots of pictures and color and buttons to click. It looks like it is designed for a bunch of kids who cannot read instead of for a professional organization. If well done, it can look okay, but glitz can never replace a well organized arrangement of material. I am very happy with the stuff we have at present and would rather see all efforts directed to producing better content than a different presentation.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Its not necessary to be so pedantic in an introduction to Go. An introduction should be just that... an introduction, a starting point. There's plenty of time to get into the exact precision of rules definitions later (which have never been exact nor precise throughout the history of the game anyway).

Absolutely agree. IWTG is a good concept, but the execution is appallingly outdated. Not only is it ugly, it needs either flash or java, meaning it does not run on any mobile devices or tablets.

I love Sensei's Library for its content, but its style is 10 years out of date.

KGS has great features, but visual appeal is not one of them.

There are a few projects that are breaking new ground, either technologically or from a design perspective. Pandanet 2.2, the latest version IGS client, looks great, for example. And projects like OGS and Ootakamoku are definitely moving forward and using new technology in interesting ways.

Sometimes being grumpy is totally OK, otherwise some people don’t get how serious one is


Exactly the same sentiment for me. And respect to you, Hayang, for taking up even the shallowest criticism as a friendly suggestion.

Reminds me of “Don’t let those who say ‘it can’t be done’ stand in the way of those who are doing it.”

What goTony says: “Keep up the good work!”, don’t let anything demoralize you.


Greetings, Tom
curious to see what you’ll come up with

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

I still find that text harder to read than it should be. It could just be me though.

This has been quite the hot topic and I wanted to chime in. I believe that a more modern look, better graphic, ect would help in the long run. Presentation and first impressions go a long way - with video games being prominent with the future Go players lives they come to expect realistic, nice looking visuals. Seeing graphics that come from the 80's - 90's would turn them away (not all of them of course), but most.

A lot of gamers - which most of the up coming Go players are- equate outdated graphics with poor/inferior game design. So why not attract them with a realistic board and stones? An attractive menu system and good functionality? After all its new players we would like to attract and were not getting any younger.

Also to implement something like that into KGS shouldn't be too difficult from what little I know of programing - hell I would even pay for an upgrade like that as long as it was maintained and of high quality.

Perhaps KGS could go open source and some talented folks could assist? There has to be some talented folks out there that could make great graphics given specs by the developers and then implemented. In effect giving the coders time to code while the community assists with graphic creation.

Sorry for the long post, I just strongly believe the two go together.

I assume you are talking to/about me.
In this case - you are right, my apologies.
It *is* something nice the OP is trying to do.

PS>
While I stand by what I said, I was maybe a tad too harsh.
As a matter of fact, I considered what I said more of a constructive criticism.

It is great to have motivation and people willing to do stuff, I would never say anything against that. But I think that it is also important to have some community input as to which direction is the most beneficial. OP can listen to it, or not, but its nice to have such input. This is why I said what I said. And besides, it is my belief that lack of pretty interfaces is *not* what "severely hampers spread of Go", so I had a beef with the premise itself, I guess, which contributed to my tone. Now that the title (and the premise) was changed, I think the message is much more on-point and I am more agreeable.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Or me.

But what is the point of posting a question if only positive responses are acceptable? You have to accept the good with the bad and get a sense of the balance of opinion. It seems that the majority like the idea and therefore it seems appropriate to explore further. But getting down on those who are not so enthusiastic is not a good policy for open and free discussion.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

So people should be allowed to be negative about the original idea, but then being negative about those people's reactions is wrong?

Perhaps getting down on people for not being enthusiastic about negative reactions is not a good policy for open and free discussion?

I appreciate the feedback you guys are giving, and I completely expect and embrace that people will disagree with ideas or my design approach, so feel free to say what you want. No offense taken!

Please, let me as OP say that I don't mind.

With that said though I think my first post doesn't really merit much discussion, since it's just saying "I wish something existed". I'll open a new thread that I think will get us talking about something more specific and interesting. See you guys there!

Huh? I suppose there must be some logic in there somewhere, but it is lost on me.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I think I overreacted in my post, which is why I edited it. I come from a discipline where taking critical potshots at people is surprisingly prevalent and I was stressed out for other reasons at the time. Disagreement is all well and good, but the more constructive and charitable, the better. It also doesn't hurt to keep the tone more positive, even when disagreeing (but then again, perhaps us Go players are just a bunch of practical-minded engineer types who don't care about how things are packaged, right? ). I think it's especially good to keep tone positive when someone is undertaking a clearly well-intentioned project, we don't want to discourage people from trying to help the cause of Go, right?

I don't want to derail the thread with meta-discussion so I'll just leave it at that.

There is a HUGE difference between saying something like "I disagree or dislike this idea" and "I don't think you should be saying anything negative about this idea."

I'll leave it at that. Something for you to ponder, grasshopper.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

<- symbol indicating my post was tongue in cheek. A joke.

Problem with all these little pictures is that for those of us who only use one or two, at most, we don't have a clue what the rest of them are supposed to mean.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Ugh... in such case, I really stepped into it. My apologies.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Most of them are exaggerated versions of common facial expressions. Happy. Sad. Shocked. Confused. They're supposed to be easy to understand to anyone with a basic ability to judge facial expressions. We add them because we can't add tone of voice to text on the internet, which in normal conversation would immediately clue people in if something was a joke. If you don't understand them, perhaps you should learn. They're a pretty basic staple of internet communication, and have been for 30 years.

For me, the problem is that different people use the very same symbols in very different ways. For example - the symbol you used was a "wink". It can be used to denote lack of seriousness, or saying "don't worry, even if you're wrong this time, I still like you" or anything inbetween and beyond. So sometimes it is hard to tell. In situations which are inflamed or lead to inflamation, I find it best not to rely that such symbols are clear enough to clearly communicate intent. Especially if the intent seems to be contrary to the actual words chosen.

PS>
For example - I used the same "wink" at the end of the above paragraph. Does it mean I said it all in jest or that I don't mean any of that?

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!