I don't know where to post this but, following Joaz' Thanksgiving post, I'll put it here. If there is a better place for it, please move it.

I used to spend a fair amount of time on this site's predecessor, GoDiscussions.com. With this site, I kind of look in once in a while, mostly because of time constraints on my end, not because I find it less interesting, or anything like that.

My question, then, is this: L19 seems to be less "populated" than the old site. Is it prospering? Or is membership (and number of posts/threads, etc) declining? I suppose one could call this question a proxy for "How is English-language Go faring in general", if one wanted. I also suppose that the answers could morph into a discussion of how to drum up more interest for this site.

Also, the question *isn't* about the financial health of the site. I don't really care about that part, unless the site's financial health is something that might cause an imminent shutdown... *then* I care, and would ask "What can we do to help?"

Thanks,

Gohst

oddly enough, I don't this site has ever been as popular as godicussions, don't know why. maybe the name just isn't catchy enough to attract new members? or maybe the growing popularity of other social forums (Facebook/Google, etc.)

but I don't feel we're really declining that much, if at all. new members come, old members go. eb and flow.

Time for some SEO to direct new members this way! I have a smilie, but I'm not actually kidding. It is a pretty sad statement that, years after the demise of GoDiscussions, a search for "go forums" on Bing *still* lists GoDiscussions.com as its top result. Google, however, has L19 as its top result.

Also, there still is a page, of sorts, over at the GoDiscussions.com URL. If anyone knows how to get in touch with Don, maybe he'll link to this forum.

The GoDiscussions.com page at Sensei's points to this forum, and I'm pretty sure that is how I found my way here... certainly the title of the site isn't that illuminating for someone searching for Go discussions or forum.

There is probably quite a bit of scattering effect from things like Facebook and reddit.

As far as I know, go is still "what is that?" to most people outside of east Asia, and "my grandfather plays that" to people in that region.

Most people will end up sticking onto the first forum they find, and large social sites are definitely closer to a random person with sudden interest in go than any separate forum is. There's probably some scattering effect to servers with their own discussion forum, too.

The old forum seems to have predated both reddit and facebook's popularity, which probably means that for a long time, it was the most visible destination, despite not being any more visible than this forum is now. Especially if the previous forum didn't shut down with a clear successor fully in place, the previous users will have started to scatter a fair bit before the new forum could attract the community.

I have always expressed the opinion that the various go servers and associations should partner with a common go forum (godiscussions originally and lifein19x19 now) instead of implementing their own and fracturing the community.

_________________
Michael Dobbins; Dragon: mdobbins, KGS: mgd, AGA#: 4253,
My Website

Good gracious! Where did you surface from? Your first post in eons. Good to see you are still kicking.

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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).

As others say, social interaction today is more and more limited to social media, the dicussions of the game is alive both here and on Facebook and Reddit, though Reddit is low traffic.

And there is a lot of cross-posting.

Also a lot of people rather play then talk about playing (maybe I should to, then I might acctuall advance in knowledge)

(edit:
also I use all of thoose, though my prefared social media is boardgamegeek and in fact it was from there I was directed here)

Reddit low traffic? It's not huge, but r/baduk has around 10k unique visitors per month. November and december saw this rise to 15k uniques per month. That's not huge, but it is not low either (also, it needs a subreddit mod to check the stats)

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Sorry, I meant post volume and not traffic, also I am comparing with the wrong things (e.g r/magicTCG) and of course this is rather much based on emotional reasoning as, as you say I have no actual data.

As for post volume, well, taking into account new posts and not just replies/comments, it has more volume than L19 I think.

As a somewhat fairer comparison, r/chess has 33k subscribers to r/baduk's 5k. r/chess seems slightly more active than r/baduk, though. Subscriber-wise, 1/6 is not a bad ratio, taking into account chess' more widespread practice in the Western world. For more comparison, r/magicTCG has a whooping 115k subscribers

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Although this is a nice idea, I think in practice it is a bad idea. In my opinion, and I'm sure others feel totally different, other sites like e.g. reddit and the OGS forum have better forum software than L19. Experience shows that a software ecosystem without diversity leads to stagnation (see also: Windows, Internet Explorer, etc). Competition leads to improvement. Personally, I'd hate to still be stuck with rec.games.go

I'm not sure how a single forum must always mean stagnated.

Especially considering how tiny the go community is compared to many other communities. I'm sure there will be plenty of technological diversity left, even if all the english-speaking active go players of the entire world (20000 people?) are stuck on a single forum.

Even this very forum uses technology not fully developed within the community, so...

EGD says there are 6581 active European players and the AGA doesn't give a number and I can't count them quickly on iPad, but ID-wise it's around 20k (I guess active may be half that). Of course this misses active and non-tournament-active players, as well as Australian and other players from the region.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Well, even if all of EGF is regularly engaging in English conversation, and together with AGA and other western associations in fact number 100.000 or 1.000.000, that still doesn't strike me as such a huge number of people, compared to the rest of the human species.

Clearly, we must evangelize the heathen masses.

The AGA has roughly 2000 active (with unexpired memberships) members these days.

A few points here:

1. You cannot compare a forum to a software. Forum is a community, its a process, its communication. Software is a product. Where products are concerned, you are right, competition is good and leads to improvements. Where forums are concerned, competition is a different story. In an extreme case, each of us could be using a different forum and it would obviously be very bad. On the other hand, if each of us used a different browser - no problem.

Competition leads to fracturing and loss. Consider: a better forum software comes along, and then what? We all move, handles get misappropriated, old posts get lost, and everybody will have to spend time to adjust to the new look-and-feel and new functionality ideas. Just to do it again next year when a yet better forum comes along. No thanks.

2. Forum can be improved not by fracturing, but by looking at other forums, comparing, and implementing the options that are useful and which are missing. phpBB can be extended rather easily, its one of its good features. All it takes is a few people willing to put some work into it. And the work will probably be less than trying to, for example, switch forums and squeeze the old data into new format to preserver the old posts.

Btw.: how is the conversion of old GD posts going, anybody knows? Are they already part of L19?

3. rec.games.go had a few very specific and very bad flaws, and this is why (most of) the community moved to GD and then to L19. Without those flows, I see no reason not to continue using it - it also had some very substantial advantages over most game-related forums like L19. Unfortunately, in case of rgg the disadvantages outweighed the advantages.

PS>
Personally, I think that the more the community is scattered and fractured, the weaker the community is. And there is no reason for that fracturing, really. If another site/forum offers useful options L19 does not have, these options can be built in. I think that the other sites should just direct the people here instead of starting dozens of new forums. Or whatever other place we decide to be the hub.

Alas, these days, everybody wants to be a king.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

the backup of the old GD posts were incomplete -- maybe half or less. Many of the tables are just missing.

As the great Bret Victor never ceases to remind us, the form leads the content. SL had a fair community but some dreaded the Markup language, experts wantend signed contributions and Arno never got round to integrate sgf. So the community fled to GD and L19, despite their ugly interface and their incapacity to structure and consolidate. New forms will come and L19 will be abandoned.

Blogs have died by the thousands because the new kid had a friendship feature. That will die too ... Unless we force everything to integrate the old form in a way that is hard to disrupt. I hope not, in the name of progress.

What progress?
Is moving from egg to GD and then to L19 progress? Is losing all the old posts without getting much in return progress? I have been around these forums since the 80s, and honestly, there are not many new features other than kiddie candy like the "Like" button. Not here, and not really somewhere else. The only real improvement in terms of functionality I can see is that GD and L19 implement game diagrams, while egg did not. And this is "progress" over the past 25+ years - which is like several lifetimes in terms of software and internet. When I look around at other forums - programming, games, whatnot, stuff I read and look at - I don't really see any improvements over L19 other than more shiny interface, maybe. But the best forums don't even care about that. And whatever improvements there are, can probably be easily built into L19 code - with less effort than switching over and rebuilding the community.

This is a discussion forum, and it fulfills its function well.
It could be better, sure, but not at the price of abandoning it all and moving on.

Each time I see a forum fold is for one of three reasons:
- the owner got bored or did not want to run it for whatever other reason (GD), or
- the community did not have a need for (another?) forum, or
- lack of moderation run the forum into the ground (rgg)
It was never because some other forum came along which offered better features. Although there might be cases like that out there, for sure. I doubt it is very common, though. Or very compelling as indication.

Part of the value of such forum is that it offers a wealth of knowledge, which certainly includes historical data and posts. Each move will, almost by necessity, include loss and/or distortion of data. Just like the rgg->GD->L19 move. If the goal is to have a "friendship" feature and more shiny interface, I am definitely against that.

Now I know that part of what you say is true - L19 will eventually fold, just like GD and many sites before that - nothing lasts forever. But I think we should strive to prevent that, not embrace the fact as something "good" or even "progress". Its certainly not progress, its more like regress - each time it happens. Just look at the history.

PS>
Quick question:
If I/somebody put up a forum with a prettier interface tomorrow - how many would abandon L19 and move there?
What if I put in a Facebook login option? Bigger avatar images? Other useless gimmicks?
How strong is this community, really?

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I don't think people abandoned Sensei's for GD/L19 (some did, I'm sure). These sites serve completely different functions, and both are needed.

Sensei's is a wiki. a library of searchable information.
RGG/GD/L19 are discussion forums.

Sure you can do one on the other, but its not very convenient. They were never intended for the other.

Other social sites also serve different specialized needs that don't necessarily replace what these sites currently serve, so still no need to jump ship (yet).