Life In 19x19

Joaz Banbeck wrote:Can't they just be numbered? I have an AGA number. I have a L19 membership number. I suspect that Asian organizations at some point use a number in ther membership lists. Can't we refer to Hankuk Kiwon #123 or Zhongguo Qiyuan #1234, etc?

Reminds me of a Jules Feiffer cartoon, where the punchline is like, "Oh, 9, you got me a 4."

Can't they just be numbered? I have an AGA number. I have a L19 membership number. I suspect that Asian organizations at some point use a number in ther membership lists. Can't we refer to Hankuk Kiwon #123 or Zhongguo Qiyuan #1234, etc?

How do you deal with historical players, amateurs, go writers, sponsors, go-playing celebs, people who change their name, names that may be one person or two persons, programs, anonymous players, mis-spellings, people who belong to more than one oraganisation, etc, etc?

These are names that appear in the GoGoD database. There are currently 4,046 entries in the GoGoD onomasticon. That's slightly more than the number of current pros.

Your suggestion would exclude Go Seigen.

John Fairbairn wrote:Your suggestion would exclude Go Seigen.

at first i thought you were right, but Go Seigen would be N1001 (N for Nihon Ki-in)

(of course i agree with your objection and i suppose Joaz Banbeck was joking )

at first i thought you were right, but Go Seigen would be N1001 (N for Nihon Ki-in)

But he's a member of the Kansai Ki-in, and hasn't always been a member of the Nihon Ki-in....

Real life is messy.

Am I the only one who thinks the Nihon Ki-in should give these guys professional diplomas? If Sakai Hideyuki gets one from the Kansai Ki-in for winning the WAGC, why not give it to these ex-insei who beat 9 dan professionals?

Laman wrote:... i suppose Joaz Banbeck was joking...

I am absolutely serious. Numbers are unique. Names are not.

I'm not advocating using numbers exclusively, just adjunctively.

For most transactions in this world, you can't get by without an id number. If you register for a go tournament, pay taxes, use a credit card, etc, you have a number attached to your name. Even relatively anonymous transactions have numbers. If I use cash to buy a burger, the clerk may call out my name when it is ready, but my receipt has a transaction number.

( Note that for the purposes of this discussion I take no position on the sociological contention that such behavior is depersonalizing, nor on the political contention that it is big-brotherish. I simply observe that it is efficient. )

We like to think that we live in a world where we can refer to people by names. It seems more natural to us. But underneath the names are often numbers. For example: in the above quote Laman ( L19 user #325 ) quotes me ( user #5 ) when I wrote a post ( #p68295 ) ( alternately post #15 in thread #3878 in forum #13 )

I favor using the names when possible, but having numbers to back it us when the possibility of name confusion arises. ( I'm sure we can find some way to assign a number to Go Siegen if neccesary. )

Joaz (#5)

I am not a number! I'm a free man!

Best wishes.

lovely wrote:Am I the only one who thinks the Nihon Ki-in should give these guys professional diplomas? If Sakai Hideyuki gets one from the Kansai Ki-in for winning the WAGC, why not give it to these ex-insei who beat 9 dan professionals?

Well if Kim wants to become pro - I assume he does - his goal right now has to be to win this tournament. People who win are much harder to ignore than people who make it to the finals.

I think that if he does win, it would open the whole 'what is a pro' debate up. The easiest solution would be to make him a pro and return to business as usual.

Lee Hajin wrote a little about pro vs amateur on her site here: http://www.starbaduk.com/25358#0

For most transactions in this world, you can't get by without an id number. If you register for a go tournament, pay taxes, use a credit card, etc, you have a number attached to your name. Even relatively anonymous transactions have numbers. If I use cash to buy a burger, the clerk may call out my name when it is ready, but my receipt has a transaction number.

( Note that for the purposes of this discussion I take no position on the sociological contention that such behavior is depersonalizing, nor on the political contention that it is big-brotherish. I simply observe that it is efficient. )

It's not really efficient. A whole stratum of work, investment and resources is necessary to create and maintain a numbering system, and that's assuming agreement (which itself will take a huge amount of time and resources) can be reached. This is massive overkill for a small business like pro go.

From memory, there are only about four cases among current pros where there are pairs having the same name (in English - even fewer in the original languages), and these can also be easily dealt with by the use of Sr. and Jr. or m and f.

Ales Cieply tried to impose a PIN numbering system in his Progor ratings, and he kept it up for a longish time, but he seems to have given up in 2008. The problems he had (and frequently - I know because I had to field most of the questions) were things like an Oriental name being written differently in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, old Japanese, old Chinese or wrongly (Rui Naiwei's name is almost always written wrongly). Whenever he met a name that was new to him, he didn't know if it was a new player or just a spelling he hadn't seen. Often he assumed a new player and made an entry accordingly in the database, only to have to unravel it later once he discovered it was an old player. It's easy to imagine the huge amount of work this takes, and why he eventually grew sick of it.

It would, of course, be possible to give every entry in the GoGoD onomasticon a number, but then there is the question of propagating the system and maintaining it, and all the public would get is a number - to do what with? If you use the onomasticon instead, which works perfectly well with text searches, you get biographical details (often extensive) plus all the variant names recorded. That seems more useful, and so efficient, to me. Having an extra number to go with that would be as useful as a fart in a perfume factory.

John Fairbairn wrote: ...Ales Cieply tried to impose a PIN numbering system ...

It would, of course, be possible to give every entry in the GoGoD onomasticon a number,...

Maybe I didn't state it cleary enough. I'm suggesting using already existing numbers generated by the the home organizations, not a new set of numbers invented by an external third party.

TMark wrote:I am not a number! ...

You are number 85.

I think this numbering business is a great idea, but let's table it until we've reaped the efficiencies of switching to Esperanto, ok?

hyperpape wrote:I think this numbering business is a great idea, but let's table it until we've reaped the efficiencies of switching to Esperanto, ok?

And Dvorak keyboards too.

ez4u wrote:

John Fairbairn wrote:Another Japan-based Korean amateur has reached the finals (the last 16) of the Agon-Kiriyama Cup. Ha Seong-pong beat Furuya Yutaka 8-dan to secure his place alongside Kim Seong-chin. Furuya admitted he was trounced.

Kim will play Iyama Yuta in Round 1. Ha's opponent will be Mizokami Tomochika.

Kim (21) and Ha (29) met each other last year in the challengers' final of Japan's Amateur Meijin. Ha won through, but Tsuneishi Takashi (now a pro) beat him in the title match.

Ha is really on the borderline of being an amateur. Although he has appeared in the World Amateur, he works as a go instructor.

Ha beat Mizokami on June 23rd to advance the quarterfinals. His next opponent is the winner of the game between Takao Shinji and Yamashita Keigo, which is not yet scheduled.

Ha Seong-pong played Yamashita on Monday, July 25th, but could not continue his streak, losing by resignation.

It seems this phenomenon isn't occurring in just Japan; two days ago, Yun Junsang was knocked out of the Myungin preliminaries by amateur Cho Insin.