musai wrote:
I agree with your point that for somebody seeking to play many games the inactive players are a burden, they don't provide these games, and they take place of other potentially more active ones. But you need to agree that the threshold of activity/inactivity should be set to some value. And, after a lot of thinking and tweaking over the years the ASR came to a conclusion that 4 games a month works OK.
I was under the impression that the 4 game was decided upon almost immediately, and was never really discussed. There's been some pretty heavy analysis of the people in the league and their playing patterns over the years. For example, "
population distribution problem" and "
Ideas about the league". I don't even really think the 4 game limit is that bad, in fact the two papers I've put out regarding activity both suggest that since activity is rewarded far more than strength, a 4 game limit is actually pretty meaningless and there should instead be a reward for strength (i.e. for teaching). I do however think raising the 4 game limit would provide a solid psychological boost to the league because it will send a signal to people that it's a bit more serious than a one game a week -- maybe -- sort of thing.
One of the biggest problems with stuff like this is that people just don't "get it". A lot of times you will see complaints that this is promoting an elitist attitude, or that the league isn't designed for "competitive" play. But that isn't really the issue. The issue is that people have trouble finding games because there is no restraint placed on new entrants. Frankly, a league can't function well if half it's participants are not serious about playing their games. It's really much less of a scheduling problem than people think. See, I even went thru the trouble of data mining everyone's timezone, back in the day, for the purpose of setting up beta and gamma by timezone. What I found was, there isn't really a scheduling problem at all. It's that people just are not serious about studying and learning, despite being in a league about that. And it shows, it really does. We have a nice big fat league of inactive players. 100-150 of them couldn't care less about the league, and they will show it by dropping out or demoting without a word to management this month.
It's my position that if these players were removed, there would be more games played in the league with fewer players, more teaching, and more learning, because more rooms would play to capacity. Secondly, since the league would actually function, stronger players would be attracted to the league, which would up the profile and solve a lot of other problems as well. These changes are well within the purview of current management. They just don't really believe there is a problem. And maybe there isn't.
musai wrote:
Bottomline, in my opinion the league is currently pretty well balanced. It is true that players who want to play many games will need first to work through the lower tiers, but even there you can get plenty of games (usually). Players who can't invest regularly too much time can still enjoy serious games once in a while in a friendly environment and 'live' in Gamma.
It feels like you are rushing somewhere, it doesn't feel like the right attitude (to me, at least)
Right, but when I posted to this thread it was in response to someone stating a problem. If you don't think there is a problem, then of course the solution won't seem to make much sense. Management of the league, for the most part, don't think there is a problem. So the solutions that get tossed up are usually laughed at or mocked by the league admins, and not taken very seriously. That's kind of disturbing actually. Dunno, I had a lot of high hopes for Breakfast's league, but now that it seems to have collapsed I wonder if it's time to start pushing a new, more serious league. It's kind of funny, the name "Advanced" study room has already been taken, so what wold you call a room dedicated to the study of advanced concepts in go, vs. just sitting in a league all month?