Hello JoeS1,

welcome to this forum! Your quoted post contains a lot of interesting opinion on the topics books, teaching and go community. Since, on L19, derailing is depreciated and some subforums exist for specific topics, I have had to split my reply in three threads. Regardless, your opinion deserves replies on every topic. Here is my reply on the topic of go communities.



The go communuity differs from country to country and continent to continent. Here, in Germany / Europe, I cannot share your experience: mostly the community is like a huge family. Online discussion also differs from service to service, forum to forum and server to server; my experience has been extremely mixed. Another differentiating factor is unmoderated (active users are happy, spam occurs) versus moderated (some active users are restricted for the alleged benefit of a greater number of less active users, spam is deleted).

"The (one) community" is an euphemism. While at times the world of go can be perceived as one family, at other times you wonder where the heck some communities disappeared.



This differs very greatly depending on in which community, forum, server etc. you are, and when. E.g., KGS discussion moved from "free, lively, and sometimes ironic" to "if you dare to be off-topic, you might be excluded" because nowadays moderators enjoy their power too much. Similar, but different in nature, things can be said about some other communities.

When moderation kills motivation of some previously active users and closes part of prior openness, the task of quality or friendly discussion falls to the second- and third-most active users. However, there is a very great gap in potential activity between most-active and less-active users. This has been so in every community I have seen - real world or online communities.

Super strong players or most-active discussants do not grow like grass. Either kind greatly profits from being exceptionally well-informed about go matters. If a community does not cultivate them, they lack motivation or move to different communities or (go) activities.

Then a community develops as a "mid kyu have the saying" group, and you find yourself right in cricising such a state of affairs as greatly suboptimal for learning or at least long-term rich discussion.

Another factor: the more interesting (for the experienced users) your questions are the more likely you get profound answers and lively discussions - until a moderator thinks it would be too lively and confuses serious, detailed discussion with flooding.



KGS is a go playing server rather than a discussion forum. Discussion occurs mostly in top games. However, recent years' moderation has restricted very much of that. If commenting is no fun because one may not make a joke or have an off-topic interlude (usually rather high level because so many bright people would want to discuss), then some strong players quit and discussion quickly drops to 1/3 of what it could have been.

Everybody perfectly understands that children must be protected from undue, careless adult talk but moderators on KGS have overdone their job greatly. It is hard to be a moderator: watch a lively discussion for hours without saying anything can easily be beyond a moderator's patience and tolerance. Uhm, who recalls the lively IGS comments about dove soup in the stone age of the internet?



On KGS? I guess this is a tough place for such help. People are expected to use discussion forums for help and servers for playing.



Right. We grow too slowly, or not at all.



You can complain about the dans or reconsider their honorary overall contibution to go communities of, in some cases, dozens of thousands of hours. (As, e.g., in my case. I quit university because of too much study and discussion of go.)



Yes. So far the theory.



We had a lot of high level discussion on rec.games.go, an unmoderated newsgroup.

I understand there are real clubs where people can come together and play and hang out. I was more speaking to my personal experiences with the online community which was mostly in the past and how it could be better.

I wasn't really complaining overall about dans and implying they don't contribute enough to the community. I can't say that. I just wish I saw more book reviews from them. I kind of assume many have read tons of books to get to their level and could tell which ones stand out in the grand scheme of things. I would trust their judgement and experience over a 5-8 kyu who is reviewing books that are about dan level and higher. That's all.

Yeah I've heard about KGS's strong moderation. That may be why there is no discussion on their servers, but then why have a place to chat in the main rooms then if it's not encouraged to? There could still be discussion about go and asking questions about improving. I'm not familiar with the other servers. I was under the impression KGS was the most popular Western server there is. That's why I made my judgement that I was surprised the number of people looked about the same after years and that there were as many strong players on the server as use to be. But someone pointed out the English clients for Eastern servers. I have played a bit on Tygem and WBaduk. So that could be a good reason as well.

I don't think it matters too much. Because my experience doesn't represent everyone's and probably not even a majority. I just put my thoughts and ideas out here for what would help with people like me that don't live near anyone to play and have to rely on an online community, when playing, learning, and maintaining an interest in the game. I didn't expect them to get this kind of attention.

The community is just too small. Things were much better during the Hikaru boom. Also the decline of KGS has fractured the online community even more.

Personally, I haven't read many books (less than 5 books, if you don't count books that are made up entirely of problems) and I didn't find that I got much out of those that I did read. That might be more about me than about books, though I think most of the dan players I know have not read many books.

Yeah I know I've heard some dans say they've never read any books or read only a few. It's difficult to understand that and how it works for you guys. I suspect you can simply read further and more accurately ahead, and are maybe good at seeing your own mistakes when reviewing games. This allows you to improve by yourself by fixing your own mistakes.

For me it's more difficult. I don't have a very good imagination which I think makes reading accurately harder. It's easy to see the next 1 or 2 moves when the stones are the board, but then trying to predict what your opponent will do on his second, third or higher move becomes difficult. It becomes harder to be objective. I know many times I assumed a sequence would go a certain way and then totally missed a possibility that would have been easy to see once the stones were on the board. I also have problems seeing my own mistakes, or maybe more accurately seeing the best move to correct my mistakes.

I always question myself and see lots of possibilities I could have taken but never know for sure which way was correct or which move is bigger, maybe because I make so many mistakes in books when doing problems or when watching reviews where a pro asks a question. Another example is when some sort of joseki moves in the corner are played. If I go to Josekipedia to see what the proper way to play it is, and they don't have it, then I can review those moves in the corner forever, and not be sure which way I should have played. Even after playing through 5-10 different sequences.

I also guess that Lessons of Fundamentals in Go got it in my head that I needed to practice the fundamentals regularly to master them. I've been hunting down looking for any book series that discusses them in depthly so I can master them to no avail.

On the plus side I think my reading has improved a little bit recently from replaying pro games on gokifu. I've had problems improving it with life and death and tesuji problems in the past. I just have to remember to read in between their moves and not just go on autopilot when clicking the board. I kind of get the feel for the direction and what the pros are trying to do, just am wrong quite a bit about what moves they choose to do it.

Everything you say applied to me when I was a kyu player too. You have to play and try new things to learn. As long as you play the moves you think are good, and you're willing to accept when your moves aren't as good as you think they are, you'll be fine.

Hi JoeS1, I don't see all my mistakes of course, that's why I ask people for reviews, but I find it easy to find *some* mistakes.

What do you do when you are looking for mistakes?

I'm saying basically I'm not good at seeing my mistakes. I see possibilities but I don't know if they would be better or worse. I'm just not good enough to see it. Unless it's a case of a joseki gone wrong and I can look it up on Josekipedia or if it's some simple life and death problem with a limited number of choices. Sometimes even Josekipedia doesn't have the answer and I can try to play variations, but never fully sure whether or not I've explored all possibilities the opponent could make to the new moves and whether something is a couple points better than something else.

It sounds like some book learning could give you some guidance. Also, playing over pro games, especially if you spend some time working out how you would play before looking at the pro's move, would give you important feedback.

Edit: Also, playing against players at least 3 stones stronger than you can help. They can punish many of your mistakes.

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