L19 in decline?

[Knotwilg]

Last time I checked I could upload games like this. Has something changed? Testing.

[Knotwilg]

and the inability to upload diagrams and photos has rained on what was left of our parade.

I don't understand this - we can still do that as we could in the past, no?

I personally don't see reddit as an alternative. The difference is between a theatre and a circus. I can admire many circus performers immensely, but essentially it's still for kiddies.

I don't know why L19 would be intrinsically be different from reddit/baduk. Both are discussion forums.

I sense two insuperable problems, both much bigger than the diagrams problem. One is the continual "videofication" of life. This is a major impediment for me, as a deaf person, but I think it hampers the enjoyment of very many people - people who are used to speed-reading, people who like to go back and look thinks up, and people who generally don't want to be slaves to their phones and PCs. Some video problems may be assuaged with time. The all-too-common abysmal sound quality (both sound level and pleasantness of voice) may be improved. Decent subtitling may become the norm. There may come a time when indexes are added to the end of videos. The ability to zap ads may be enhanced. But I don't see these or other solutions coming from within the go community.

The main drawback video has over text (with diagrams) is that humans can't quick scan a video and have to sit through it to decide what to skip and where to go back to. Text & pictures you can quick scan and study in an order not imposed by the creator. But ...

Video creators have the big advantage of using the 4th dimension to their advantage. And writers too often suffice with just spitting out text for their own glorification rather than the reader's benefit.

I'm often quoting the videos by 3Blue1Brown as an example: you learn about math in 20 minutes what you typically need 2 days of reading for. That might not please book authors but students know why they choose video. Also, youtube is a very competitive environment, pushing video quality to the highest standards, in content and form.

The other problem is AI. There are basically two types of go fan. One is the "I wanna be strong" player. It is easy to see why AI appeals to them, and so more actual playing activity may now be going on (with the caveat that it's online and not face-to-face with other humans). The other group is more interested in the wider social and cultural aspects of the game, which essentially is almost entirely about human-to-human contact and/or interest in other humans. I am certain from my own observations and from conversations outside L19 that this group is in sharp decline (east and west), and, sadly, that may explain part of the decline in L19 activity.

I agree that AI will appeal to the "I want to be strong player". But AI doesn't prevent the other, more cultural, group to continue doing what they're doing. Usually when a domain is being enriched with something, like Go with AI, the general interest grows rather than declining. When Hikaru was at its peak, probably pleasing the cultural side more than the improvement seekers, I don't recall the latter being in sudden disarray. It added to the overall atmosphere.

So, yes, I believe video and forums with better capabilities are taking over from L19.

[kvasir]

I don't think generating thousands of posts is enough reason to bring up every cheating accusation and rule dispute that one knows about. Sometimes it's interesting to discuss such things. However, if no one brought them up then likely no one (that was in the know) was very interested in discussing it here. Personally I'm more likely to read about controversy surrounding possible cheating in Go than anything about snooker and flatulence. All kinds of topics are probably welcome by different participants but there really could be more about playing Go.

I don't mind that there aren't 30 posts everyday to read, or rather not to read.

To make things clear, I don't want to start a new discussion about cheating. I'm just saying that controversial threads generate a lot of activity in general. Besides, discussions on this forum tend to be rather high level and laypersons may shy away from them (even topics on snooker and flatulence sound almost serious). When was the last time a beginner came here and asked to explain a 20k tsumego?

I realize that you were joking when you said that "we need a new scandal to stir up activity"

I was trying to point out that those large threads, full of disagreements, misunderstandings and semantics have an oversized impact on this kind of statistic.

I'm not sure when was the last time a beginner asked about tsumego specifically. I have noticed that such posts sometimes go unanswered for a few days. I usually check "View new posts" but it appears to clear twice a day if I'm logged in but if I'm not logged in I can get a list of new posts going back 6 months It's easy to miss a post.

A different thing related to interacting with new posters. Sometimes it's no fun! For example I don't participate much in review requests. My impression is that most players asking for reviews online ask for a review of the same game on many websites at the same time (i.e. L19, OGS, GoKibitz, Redit, ...), have played 10+ more games since that game and don't reply to anything anyone comments, not even to say "thank you". The others ask less often. It's my own impression and I think others will have different perspectives but for some reasons the "Game analysis" board is almost dead. Maybe this is because it's not fun?

[jlt]

DDKs sometimes ask for game reviews on the OGS forum. When I answer those requests, I sometimes get thanks, sometimes not. Here on L19 I don't see many review requests, probably because not many DDKs come here, and stronger players feel that reviewing with AI is good enough.

Another problem you pointed out is that we miss posts from new members. It seems that if a new member posts a message at time T, it needs moderator approval. So the message appears only at a time T'>T after it got approved. But if I marked all forums read in the interval [T,T'], I can't see the message in "View unread posts" so I miss it.

[John Fairbairn]

Dieter:

I get a no-no message when I try to upload illustrations. Can't remember what it said exactly, but my reaction is not to research it but to just give up and go away. I'm the wrong generation and I've got plenty else to do.

I have posted to reddit and don't read it very often, so I may have a distorted view. But it comes across to me as more of a group of kids shouting and screaming in the playground. I'm quite happy if people want to see L19 as a group of old codgers sitting nursing a pint of Guinness in the ingle of a pub - even if I don't drink or go to pubs.

I'm not convinced by your maths video example. I don't doubt its effectiveness for you, but IU think you are viewing it as an existing maths experts, and one advantage of the video format is that they can jump in and start at a high level, this giving you what you want in a short time. But for beginners in any subject, I think the slower pace of books is very often an advantage. Beginners' brains need more time to absorb new concepts. Horse for courses. But I also happen to believe that most western go players belong in the categories that need more time absorb new concepts

My sense of the thinking of people on the "cultural" side of go (and chess) in response to the advent of AI is along the lines of "why should I bother taking an interest now?" To give a specific example, many go players have marvelled at and enjoyed the games of the likes of Shusaku, Sakata or Cho Chikun (or whoever). But now AI tells us their famous moves were crap, and it rather takes the shine off that player. That's not just an AI thing. Fans lose interest in a player and, by extension his sport, for things like drug-taking, cheating and sexist remarks. Even worse, when fans are suspected of losing interest, sponsors lose interest, and the spiral continues. All pros need to shine. Twinkle, twinkle BIG star.

[Shenoute]

Another thing: does the forum have a mobile-friendly version? If not, could it be a partial explanation to the decline?

[Kirby]

So, yes, I believe video and forums with better capabilities are taking over from L19.

In an ideal world, what capabilities would a website for a go community have? Clearly, it shouldn't have some of the bugs that have been reported here.

What would an ideal site look like though? I'm asking particularly in regard to the things that L19 doesn't have.

[Kirby]

My sense of the thinking of people on the "cultural" side of go (and chess) in response to the advent of AI is along the lines of "why should I bother taking an interest now?"

"Why should I bother taking an interest?"

This is a question I have asked myself a lot over the past few months - not just in go, but in many areas of my life. A sense of meaninglessness leads to apathy. Feeling apathetic reduces motivation. Accordingly, to be motivated to do something, finding meaning is important.

So how do you find meaning?

On one hand, it seems like meaning is something that may be hidden in the bushes - something to be discovered after having acquired sufficient life experience. But with recent events in my personal life, I was at a loss to know where in the bushes that meaning was to be found. I read Viktor Frankl's famous book on man's search for meaning. He had some theories on how meaning was acquired (achievements, experiences/relationships, through suffering). But what stood out to me was man's unique capability to assign meaning to things independently of some universal rule.

In other words, maybe meaning isn't hiding in the bushes somewhere. Maybe meaning is something that I can create arbitrarily within my experience of living.

But this doesn't answer the question directly for a given topic: "Why should I bother taking an interest?". For example, if we want to answer the question, "Why should I bother taking an interest in go?"... there isn't a universal answer, except that "One should take an interest in go if one has decided to assign meaning to go". Which begs the next question, "Why should one decide to assign meaning to go?". It becomes recursive:

"Why assign meaning?" --> "Because you've chosen to assign meaning" --> Why choose to assign meaning?" --> "Because you've chosen to choose to assign meaning?"

Until one steps back out of this loop and realizes:

"The process of assigning meaning and achieving enjoyment from that meaning is, in itself, good."

The alternative to assigning meaning to at least some aspects of life is to not assign meaning, which results in a meaningless life. And a meaningless life is not desirable - I think that's close to a universal sentiment...

Coming back to assigning meaning. If the act of assigning meaning to something and finding meaning through that assignment is good, then all that is necessary is to find a medium through which to perform this assignment. Go can be one such medium. But it is only a good medium if you can convince yourself that the meaning you assign to the activity is beneficial.

Here are some potential aspects of go that I believe might make the assignment of meaning beneficial and worthwhile:
- Enjoyment from playing the game. Maybe it's dopamine, or maybe it's something else. But I experience positive sensations when I believe I am winning a game. I experience positive feelings when I've killed a group. I experience positive feelings when, maybe I haven't won, but I feel that I have utilized my brain and played well. I feel positive feelings when I feel that I have stretched my ability. I also feel positive feelings from concentrating on something for a long time. That concentration is nice - it's maybe similar to the famous "flow state". I don't have to worry about my wife dying or global warming or my job or the politics on the other side of the world: I can focus just on the black and white stones and what can happen in that finite, yet infinite board.

- Enjoyment from progress. I have a positive sensation and a feeling of achievement when I realize that I have improved at something. Maybe this is similar to Frankl's point about finding meaning behind achievement. By being "less good" at something, and then becoming "more good" - it's easy to see the "good" in that activity. It feels less like the time you spent on earth has gone to waste - you at least showed improvement at something, which means that you are learning something in your limited time on earth.

- Benefit from study. Similar to playing a game, studying can produce a state of flow and concentration, which invokes positive feelings. Maybe studying in itself is less competitive in the moment than an actual game. So folks who are less competitive may enjoy this aspect of achieving concentration while not worrying about competition. Surely, there's something worthwhile about this.

- Benefit from community. Has AI destroyed the aspect of community? I don't really feel this, because the community itself is one thing that still separates the humans from the AI. While it's nice to concentrate within the boundaries of the go board, being connected to other people brings us in touch with a body of people larger than each one of us as individuals. This can deter feelings of insignificance and/or mortality that one might face when considering meaning in their individual finite life. The community will outlast the player. After I die, the community remains. That's not as good as having eternal life, but at least it's nice to know that part of your memory or whatever will live on.

- The "cultural" side of go. I will agree that some aspects of go "culture" feel different now. Maybe we can see flaws of Sakata or Shusaku more easily now. However, I don't think it necessarily has to be a reason to let go of all meaning behind the game. If a specific "culture" were the only meaningful aspect of go, meaning would be lost whenever a new generation of players rose to the top.

---

On the flip side, there may be reasons one might choose not to assign meaning to go. Here are a few I can think of:
- Being absorbed in a game feels good. But maybe it comes at the opportunity cost of spending more time connecting with other people. Maybe it means less time spent outdoors or exercising.
- At the end of the day, you're just putting stones on a board. What makes it different from gomoku or othello? I'm not sure if this argument is as strong. While the physical aspect of putting stones on a board is true, the meaning acquired by being absorbed in the game is in the context of the rules of the game itself, so I don't think we can isolate the activity to just putting stones on a board.
- Losing isn't fun. For those who are competitive, maybe it can feel meaningless to study when you end up losing against others. I suppose, if you choose to assign meaning to go, the competitive nature of the game should not be the only reason for playing, lest you aim to be the best player in the world.

Overall, I believe that go is a perfectly valid *medium* for assigning meaning to an activity in this lifetime. The biggest reason not to choose to do this is in the event that you have another activity or thing in life, which gives you more meaning. In that case, the opportunity cost of playing go is high, given that you might get more bang for your buck assigning meaning to something else. We're here in life, able to divvy up meaning according to what we want. It's like being in a candy store with some cash that can be used only to buy candy at that store. We should certainly not miss the opportunity - we should buy whatever we can with the resources we have: let's not waste any money. But the choice of what distribution of candy to buy...? That's up to you. What selection do you think you'd regret the least?

[CDavis7M]

So many other activities in life. I'll be back in 1 month to 10 years to add more posts.

But in general I've noticed that many hobbyists tend to go for Discord or Whatsapp chats where conversations get lost. There's no time or energy to draft a post for a forum.

[Elom0]

ヒカルの碁 was on both sides, since it wasn't just a 바둑 Manga but specifically a manga about becoming a pro 棋士

[Knotwilg]

I'm not convinced by your maths video example. I don't doubt its effectiveness for you, but IU think you are viewing it as an existing maths experts, and one advantage of the video format is that they can jump in and start at a high level, this giving you what you want in a short time. But for beginners in any subject, I think the slower pace of books is very often an advantage. Beginners' brains need more time to absorb new concepts.

It's a decent hypothesis which, as an expert in math, I can't disprove, although the channel possibly has topics I haven't studied before yet - I'll try those. I'll switch the argument to playing the guitar, where previously I had been learning from books, and today's instruction videos are 1000x more useful. Then again, guitar playing is a highly physical-technical-temporal activity, while Go and math are more abstract and in a way "static".

To give a specific example, many go players have marvelled at and enjoyed the games of the likes of Shusaku, Sakata or Cho Chikun (or whoever). But now AI tells us their famous moves were crap, and it rather takes the shine off that player.

That's a valid point. AI's validation methods and inferred claims, probably take away a lot of the intrinsic variety.

As you said, it's not only AI though. In today's tennis, only baseline counterpunching survives, serve & volley becoming an extinct style. As a result, it seems like nobody knows how to flat serve or volley like in the days of Ivanisevic, Becker, Edberg, Sampras ... There's hope though: the new prodigy Alcaraz has reintroduced the drop shot and now everybody starts to drop shot. It probably takes a new kid who builds his game on a strong flat serve and extreme volleying skills, to revive that specialty. In the last Madrid finals, we already got a hint of that by Jan-Leonard Struff (but he's not young and it was more like a situational tactic).

In Go, the trend and style are being determined by an "absolute truth" hence less likely to be reversed, although I don't exlcude that further refinement of AI will see the revival of pincers or extinct joseki, maybe even that dreadful early 3-3 will one day vanish from our gobans.

[kvasir]

Better make a post and measure if L19 is in a sharp decline in last couple of days.


This post is 277786 and this topic was opened with post 277650, I think, 3.25 days ago. That is 42 posts / day. We did it we are back

[Joaz Banbeck]

...and there's a shift going on to other forums, notably reddit/baduk?

...Reddit... while woefully inadequate for discussing go games and positions, is not doing too shabbily...

I personally don't see reddit as an alternative...

Nor do I.
Reddit is taking up it's natural share, and we should not perceive that as a problem.

...The likes of Bill Spight have not been replaced...

I don't think that the likes of Bill Spight will come along frequently. We got lucky there, and should not expect a replacement.

The other problem is AI... and, sadly, that may explain part of the decline in L19 activity.

I've been thinking about the general topic of growth and decline for the last few years ( part of an admin's responsiblity ) and have come to the conclusion that this is just the natural order of things.
In the online go world, there are a number of places where one can talk about go. In a mature online ecosystem, each will play its part, and all will coexist. There will be a natural equilibrium, as each site fulfills some need.

( The advent of AI may shift the equilibrium, but it does not funamentally alter it. Before AI, chop wood and carry water. After AI, chop wood and carry water to a different place. )

We have a number of alternatives ( and I have ordered this list according to permanence ):

1) Twitter - Great for spreading news, but tends toward superficiality. It has its place, however limited.
2) Reddit - Slightly less ethereal than twitter ( a low bar, indeed ). But a great place for quick discussions.
3) OGS Forums - I have only been there once or twice. Am placing it on this list according to Gennan's advice.
4) LifeIn19x19 - A good place for longer discussions. It may result in some conclusions worth saving.
5) Sensei's Library - Primarily a repository. Some discussions occur, but they are slow and few.

( An observer may notice that I have not included Facebook in the above list. I tend to avoid the place except when absolutely necessary, and consider myself better for the effort. If I were to spend some time there, I suspect that it would go in the above list next to Reddit. )

But Facebook or no Facebook, and AI or no AI, the fundamental point is this: the L19 forum exists in an ecosystem with other sites, and there is currently no substitute for a forum. Some sites are faster and more topical, some sites are greater repositories of information, but none are quite like a forum. We have our place in the ecosystem, and will for a long time.

I have more to say about this, but lunch is getting cold. I'll write more later. In the meantime, I invite all to read my signature.

[gennan]

I would add the OGS forums to your list. I would place it in between Reddit and L19.

[karaklis]

2) Reddit - Slightly less ethereal than twitter ( a low bar, indeed ). But a great place for quick discussions.

FWIW, probably not a lot of people know this, but Reddit is not available in all countries. Here in Indonesia it's blocked by the government. I am grateful to have L19, and even though I am not very active any more, I am still reading.