Well it does not, but I can see how you might read that from the line taken out of context. I do not think anyone in this debate really want not to be part of EGF. In all aspects it is a good thing to stand together. It is just that you do not really want to pay more for a membership than others. I find it reasonable to have a lower limit on the membership fee. But EGF has many countries with less than 100 members of their go assosations. Actually half the countries in EGF has 200 or less organized go players. I think the old lower limit of 100 national members is better suited. Thereby fewer of the "poor" countries will pay for the "rich". Right now each member of the Danish Go Assosation pay 4€ compared to less than 1€ in i.g. Netherlands, Germany and France. With the old limit of 100 members it would have been only 2€. So as the membership fee to EGF was doubled for the large countries it is quadrupled.

Sorry that I cannot give you other examples than Denmark. Last year I made calculations for all members of EGF but I cannot remember where I put it.

The EGF has spent a lot of money in the past, the ING money for example, about 100.000 US$ worth per year. What is the outcome? In my opinion had these expenses been successful there should be many more go players in Europe.

wow, , US$ per year!

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求而不得
舍而不能

seems odd that the European Go congress appears vibrant

http://egc2011.eu/

equally look at the AGA website - it's full of ideas and initiatives.

The BGA website is a little dated but at least an effort has been made.

The lead website for the EGF looks awful: Dead links, little in the way of useful resource, a small hint at sponsorship.. The site appears old and tired. The saving grace seems to be the European Go Database although in the current climate where lower ranks are won online the value of the EGF ranking might seem questionable.

Looks like the time is ripe for new ideas and enthusiasm..

if were looking at sites, what does the IGF site tell us apart from basically nothing...

The way i see it is that a country has a go association and if it wants to be part of the egf you have to buy an entrancefee. The number of members is irrelevant.
In my opinion, a association should decide wether or not the want to be part of the EGF and if costs for participation is worth it. If not then don't.

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

Yes, sorry, I did not mean to imply that you, personally, or the Danish Go Association would want to quit the EGF. My remark was just aimed at the general sentiment.



I think that a system where each association pays the same amount is, theoretically, a fair system. As long as each association receives the same rights in return, that is. In practice, that does not work because it is either high enough to be an insurmountable burden upon the smaller countries, or low enough that the EGF receives too little income.

How about a system where each association pays some fixed basic amount, say 100 euro, then on top of that pays 1 euro per member (no minimum) So if you have 20 members you pay 120, if you have 50 you pay 150, is you have 500 you pay 600.

If such a system were introduced, it would probably give the EGF just as much extra income, if not more, compared to a raise of the minimum fee. But unlike the current system, it would burden all associations about equally.

Sounds like you do not care whether small associations are members or not?

Personally, I think the EGF should make sure that membership is worthwhile even to the smallest national associations and above all that fees should never be so high that the effect is stiffling to small go communities. Or am I wrong that EGF is meant to spread go in Europe and unite European go-players in one organisation?

If I were a member of a very big national go association like for example the German one (of which I have been a member), I would feel it a bit strange that contribution to the EGC should be limited to the capacities of a very small nation go association such as the Irish one. But of course having a common fee for all may be convenient and does not necessarily prevent rich associations from voluntarily providing further funding to keep the common fee at a reasonable rate ...

That said, 200 Euro does not really sound like that much to me, but what do I know.

I suppose Russia has been a special case in this respect, but the majority of small
EGF members don't vote with Russia all the time.

In my opinion you and Javaness are under estimating the benefit from EGF membership. Even if you disregard completely the value of participation in WAGC, KPMC, WPGC and other invitation events i the far east, there are still big advantages directly through the EGF.

The European Go congress has from the very start been the most valuable thing the EGF is involved with. It is particularly valuable to the smaller countries I think. Try and estimate the value more precisely. Except a few eyars, the EGC has had support from an international main sponsor, which naturally goes directly through the EGF and which has been the direct results of efforts by the EGF. Typically this main external cash support was around 10 keuro. If we generously take the average number of participants at the EGC to be 500, the EGC support is worth 20 euro per participant. If Denmark or Ireland have say EGC 5 participants they immediately cash in 100 euro support through the EGF, or half the membership fee. All you need to do to reach break even is to get the EGC participation up to 10, and that would probably
greatly contribute to enhancing the go level in the country.

But of course this benefit is just a minor fraction of what you potentially get through the EGF. For many years the EGF/EGCC got yearly deliveries of playing material through the support from the Ing foundation. One foggy issue in the EGF is where that material ended up and on what conditions. Some was handed out to EGF members as Ing grants, Sweden got quite a lot of playing material for free and bought some at low price, I don't know what Denmark did, but if you asked for material you probably got some. Other boards, stones and clocks were handed out to EGC organisers who kept some after the EGC:s, sometimes selling it, oddly there doesn't seem to be any records of who got stuff, on what conditions or how much. This is wrong in my opinion, but in principle the EGF is transparent, so information like that should be available, if the EGF/EGCC officials stick to the rules and to common sense. What I'm arriving at though is that the EGF still controls large amounts of playing materials, which can be lended to organisers of big events (the EGC being the biggest). This makes it posible also for small go associations to organise big events. In EGC 2008 in Sweden we had 718 participants in the main tournament. If we had had to find the boards, stones and clocks ourselves, we wouldn't even have been able to bid for the congress. But thanks to EGF/EGCC (and Ing of course), a small country ( go-wise) like Denmark can easily orgnise a big event if you want to. The big countries are not dependent on the EGF for playing materials, countries like Germany or France can more easily bring sufficient materials together themselves. It's open for judgement how to value that in euro per year, but it is surely significant. Add to that some services such as website and rating system, and you will already be able to conlude that you are getting sufficient benefit from what you pay. But there will likely be many more benefits, even without counting the far east invitations, look for example at the various European championships and the support they can get, if not directly through the EGF, then at least indirectly.

Finally as said, all members have influence, so they should all work towards an EGF which makes efficient use of its resources and can help developing go as well as possible.

cheers,
Henric

i was just pointing out that joining the EGF is not something you HAVE to do but you CHOOSE to do. If your go association only has 15 members, is it really worth paying all that money to the EGF? do you get something back? can't you spend that 200 euro's yourself to make go bigger in your country? only after answering all these questions you can decide if its worth CHOOSING to be part of the EGF.

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

I see your point. My point is that the EGF does not HAVE to exclude national go associations of a size which makes 200 euro too much to pay. It could CHOOSE to let them become members for a smaller fee. I think it might sometimes be in the interest of the EGF to do so.

ah, thats true, but they have chosen and the choice is now up to the assocs to take that offer or not. Unless you get a convincing vote at the next egf meeting for changing this of course:)

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

Why is it reasonable to have a minimum fee?

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A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

By "minimum fee" you mean a smaller fee for small associations?

Why is it reasonable that different associations pay different amounts?

Because an association with 50 members has differents needs (possibly more) and means (probably less) than an association with 10000 members?

I know. IMO, both Harleqin's question and my own counter-question represent a uselessly oversimplified look at the issue. I asked it as a devils advocate.

In reality it is a complex issue, where there are many factors to consider and there is no easy answer. There is a certain fairness both to a fixed fee and to a membership number based fee, and some balance need to be struck.

Is there some sort of benefit that the EGF disburses on a per country basis, such that arithmetically similar contributions from each country would be proportionate to benefits received? It's not like the EGF sets monetary policy or anything.

At a minimum, if the majority of the members/leaders of the EGF have a strong common feeling that small national organizations absolutely must pay at least X$ to be part of the EGF, why not work out what X$ is per capita for the small countries and make that the common per capita rate?

I think that one of the reason for the base fee is that you can't very easily create or maintain dead souls organizations to win something in the EGF general meeting voting or maintain other substantial benefits only for a handful of players. For a European association the membership fee is very cheap in comparison to any other sports or mindgames.

And then, don't we all want Go to gain more ground and to get more players everywhere? I met very happy but suspicious looks when I once suggested in the WAGC that Finland would like to pay a bigger membership fee because of the increased go population.

Cheers,
Vesa

The answer is yes, there are and have all the time been benefits that come per country. The problem in this discussion appears to be that Javaness and policeps don't accept reference to an average estimate over many years, they claim that the benefits are small this particular year and probably don't think they will be bigger again in the future. Moreover Javaness insists, wrongly in my opinion, on disregarding completely the value of the invitations to the far east.

* Typically, when championships like the European Pairgo Championship or the European Student Championship or (I believe) the European Youth Championship, the European Team Championship etc have been sponsored, there have een benefits per country, such as travel money for one participant per EGF member country. The European Oza was a similar example. The amounts could be something like 200 euro per country and event, in typical cases. I don't have any precise statistics. There weren't any complaints then about the big countries getting a "raw deal" when they had to share the benefit between many hundred or even thousands of players, whereas the smallest EGF members shared the benefit between numbers of players like 10-20.

* If we do consider the invitations to the far east (WAGC, WPGC, KPMC, World mind sports games ), the value per country may have been typically 2000 euro per year or more. Likewise, no complaints were heard about sharing that between 10 active players vs sharing it between 1000 players.

* The WPGC might be a special case, it is explicitly the EGF which has been asked to distribute the invitations among the European countries. There is a size scaling in the point system, but it is logarithmic in numbers of players/members, so it strongly favors the small countries. How much is that worth to a small country? If the value (flight tickets for two people, food and accommodation for a couple of days) is something like 3000 euro (?) and if a small country is invited to send a pair every five years or so, it's worth about 600 euro per year to that small country. Per capita the corresponding value for a big country can be neglected, so the WPGC alone is a per country benefit that is worth more than 200 euro per year.

* The most important benefit could of course be the voting powers in the EGF, the small country has in principle the same possibility as the big country to decide how he common resources in the EGF should be used. If many countries, especially the small ones, have not taken their role in the EGF seriously, at least not at the AGM:s, maybe an increased membership fee can help them to do so, that might be an additional advantage. The EGF is in principle democratic (on a per country basis) and in principle transparent. In practice I can agree with those who think that the EGF has not been sufficiently transparent, it hasn't been easy to follow what's going on or what is being planned, in time to have any influence.



I agree completely with this. This is why I find it a bit irritating to have to discuss the benefits from the EGF membership fee as some kind of subscription fee to some private service. The idea of an association is for the members to contribute something towards a common goal.

best regards,
Henric

@henric,

I think you need to distinguish between money that flows through the EGF and money that comes from the EGF. If the Ing Foundation, the IGF or the Nihon Kiin gives money to the EGF for international events that then gets distributed on a per country basis, presumably that's because the sponsor wants it that way. If, for historical reasons, the EGF only had five members and all the other go associations in Europe were independent, presumably the sponsors would have given less to the EGF and more to the independent countries or rival federations.

The pair go subsidy sounds like more of a genuine EGF disbursement. If you conceive of the EGF primarily as a convenient way to fund expenses for a European Pair Go tournament, with one pair per country, then it makes sense to want a flatter schedule of fees.