Shall we talk about Tan Xiao instead of meta-discussions on Iyama Yuta?

Come on mods, can we just ban TheCannyOnion already? Just another troll, lets get rid of him and get back on topic.

As I apparently still have mod powers, I shall attempt to wear a mod hat without abusing them.

I don't particularly see an inherent issue in holding a very strong view about Japanese professionals being weaker than any others, everyone has a right both to hold it and express it. However, a number of the recent posts are personal criticisms of posters (as individuals rather than just criticising their opinions - calling people triggered/sensitive/etc). Please stick to discussions about Go and Go players rather than fellow posters.

It would also be good if this thread in particular was about the thread subject rather than a different player. Continued posts about meta-discussions of Bob being offended by Kate's Offense at why Iyama is or is not the best or worst player ever will be deleted from this thread.

Maybe it would make more sense to make a single thread on notable news, player appreciation, and whatnot. That is, instead of making individual threads for players that quickly become obsolete.

As the originator of the thread and a big supporter of the Japanese go scene, I didn't find the onion man's contribution tiresome or off-topic - very much on-topic, fact. He's not trolling, and his acerbic remarks can easily be considered a frustrated reaction to an over-judgemental reaction to his post. He didn't start out trying to be rude.

We have enough trouble trying to get discussions going here without banning someone else. If those who don't like his posts have the time and inclination to count his posts and haven't yet learnt to let their eyes swish over what he says, perhaps they need to re-consider how to spend their coffee breaks.

I can't give him my full approval while he remains anonymous, of course, but for heaven's sake - there are plenty of worse faults on this forum than a bit of repetition. Apart from anonymity, there's thread derailment, lurking and over-modding.

To try to get back on the rails, it's not just about what a few fans here think. In my opening post I made the point that Tan Xiao is not well represented on Google in Chinese compared to some other successful players. I mentioned him because he's just won another title, but there are other players about whom the same point can be made.

To quote some (I hope) indicative figures from doing a search on the name + weiqi (in Chinese) for a few players who floated into my mind, I got hits as follows:

Ke Jie (16 titles): 158,000
Jiang Weijie (6 titles): 54,700
Xie He (6 titles) 45,100
Mi Yuting (9 titles): 38,500
Chen Yaoye (17 titles): 31,000
Gu Zihao (6 titles): 23,300
Gu Lingyi (6 titles): 22,500
Tan Xiao (6 titles): 22,300

Shi Yue (5 titles) scored 288,000 but presumably that's because his characters have a common meaning outside his name.

We see that Chen has the most titles in that list but languishes well down in terms of hits. There is a wide disparity of those with 6 titles. but two whose hauls include international titles (Gu Zihao - Samsung; Tan Xiao - Chunlan).

Since we having been talking in other threads about tournaments and fans' reaction to them, and by implication the extent to which sponsors are influenced by fickle fans, it interests me to know why we have such a wide range of internet hits. I asked about one possibility - Jilin being an fashionable go area compared to say, Shanghai, but I'm far from saying that is either true or is cause-and-effect, and I'm sure there are many other factors - but what?

FWIW CannyOnion (in English) scored 2 hits - some troll

Things seem to have calmed down. For a while I thought I was back on rec.games.go. Maybe others here might remember the flame wars and trolling that took place there.