How's the site doing?

Gohst · Post by **Gohst** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 7:58 pm

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

xed_over · Post by **xed_over** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 9:04 pm

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.

Gohst · Post by **Gohst** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 12:16 am

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.

tentano · Post by **tentano** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 6:02 am

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.

mdobbins · Post by **mdobbins** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 4:28 pm

There's probably some scattering effect to servers with their own discussion forum, too.

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.

DrStraw · Post by **DrStraw** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 4:33 pm

mdobbins wrote:
There's probably some scattering effect to servers with their own discussion forum, too.

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.

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

virre · Post by **virre** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 1:48 am

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)

RBerenguel · Post by **RBerenguel** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 1:57 am

virre wrote: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)

virre · Post by **virre** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 3:52 am

RBerenguel wrote:
virre wrote: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)

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.

RBerenguel · Post by **RBerenguel** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 4:30 am

virre wrote:
RBerenguel wrote:
virre wrote: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)

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

HermanHiddema · Post by **HermanHiddema** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 5:56 am

mdobbins wrote:
There's probably some scattering effect to servers with their own discussion forum, too.

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.

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

tentano · Post by **tentano** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 6:42 am

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...

RBerenguel · Post by **RBerenguel** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 7:01 am

tentano wrote: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.

tentano · Post by **tentano** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 7:21 am

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.

skydyr · Post by **skydyr** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 7:59 am

RBerenguel wrote:
tentano wrote: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.

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

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