Life In 19x19

I would be interested in participating. Obviously I'm too weak to be of much help, but I think it would be a great learning experience to read see the game played out this way and read all the discussion.

Is there any way for ranks to be hidden when posting in a particular sub-forum? I think it would be a lot easier for weaker players to participate if it isn't so obvious that we're trying to contradict a 6d, and it would encourage the stronger players to clearly justify their moves. Obviously we'll recognise user names and stuff, but if it's a simple change then I think it would be worth it.

Splatted wrote:Is there any way for ranks to be hidden when posting in a particular sub-forum? I think it would be a lot easier for weaker players to participate if it isn't so obvious that we're trying to contradict a 6d, and it would encourage the stronger players to clearly justify their moves. Obviously we'll recognise user names and stuff, but if it's a simple change then I think it would be worth it.

It would be separated anyway. You can contradict or agree with a 6d in a discussion thread about the move or you can even create your own thread about how you think the game should go.

Eventually, the stone placer will make the move only by counting the voting thread, and I don't think anyone else will be reading that one, taking into account it's just a succession of post like: "B4", "B4", "C3", "B4", "C3", "R10", ...

Maybe it makes sense for votes to be hidden. It probably doesn't change much but it might help encourage discussion.

How strong a player will the opponent be? It's very hard to judge how strong the collective will be. Maybe a stone or two weaker than the average rank of the most active participators. Either way the stronger the opponent the more interesting the game will be.

Tooveli wrote:Maybe it makes sense for votes to be hidden. It probably doesn't change much but it might help encourage discussion.

How strong a player will the opponent be? It's very hard to judge how strong the collective will be. Maybe a stone or two weaker than the average rank of the most active participators. Either way the stronger the opponent the more interesting the game will be.

It's hard to hide the votes. It might encourage discussion but it brings many organizational problems of the kind that can kill this kind of ideas.

I have no idea of LifeIn19x19's strength. I think it will be closer to the top participating players, because whenever the players are about to make a blunder he could come in and just comment "be careful with this scenario".

Just imagine someone like MagicWand adding a diagram about the expected future. Even if he does it every several moves it would surely raise the combined player to mid dan.

Life & death? Once a strong player shows you the path, even the hardest tsumego becomes "obvious".

From experience: if players approach it carefully and discuss in depth and do analysis, the collective is stronger than its strongest member (see Kasparov vs. the World). If that doesn't happen, the collective is probably weaker.

Alguien wrote:It's hard to hide the votes.

I thought I'd raise the idea and I think I'd slightly prefer it. I can see it being more hassle than good though.

Alguien wrote:Just imagine someone like MagicWand adding a diagram about the expected future. Even if he does it every several moves it would surely raise the combined player to mid dan.

I disagree with this. This type of scenario is exactly what I had in mind when I suggested the group might get weaker. The correct move in a position depends on following it up correctly no matter which unexpected direction the game takes. It is very easy to turn a good move into a very bad one. It's also very easy to get lost in a game that has been played out very differently to how you expected (though I think the turn-based aspect might mitigate this a bit).

I'm thinking in particular about the gang malkovich game where Black's play ended up just bonkers and inconsistent.

The alternative where the strong player ends up effectively playing every move isn't particularly exciting.

hyperpape wrote:From experience: if players approach it carefully and discuss in depth and do analysis, the collective is stronger than its strongest member.

I'm sure this can happen. I don't think it will in this case though.

None of this really matters though as long as the game ends up reasonably even.

hyperpape wrote:From experience: if players approach it carefully and discuss in depth and do analysis, the collective is stronger than its strongest member (see Kasparov vs. the World). If that doesn't happen, the collective is probably weaker.

From what I remember of the experiments carried out about this kind of thing, I think you need a very large group for this, all the voters to be independent from each other (i.e. no discussion) and voting to be anonymous. It'd be an interesting experiment but would be far less interesting for observers to watch. It'd be treating each move as a whole board problem each time though. Whether that'd be a good or bad thing I've no idea. There's a book "The Wisdom of Crowds" on this if you're really interested in it and some of the experiments done. It's been 5 years since I've read it though, so I've forgotten most of it.

Boidhre wrote:

hyperpape wrote:From experience: if players approach it carefully and discuss in depth and do analysis, the collective is stronger than its strongest member (see Kasparov vs. the World). If that doesn't happen, the collective is probably weaker.

From what I remember of the experiments carried out about this kind of thing, I think you need a very large group for this, all the voters to be independent from each other (i.e. no discussion) and voting to be anonymous. It'd be an interesting experiment but would be far less interesting for observers to watch. It'd be treating each move as a whole board problem each time though. Whether that'd be a good or bad thing I've no idea. There's a book "The Wisdom of Crowds" on this if you're really interested in it and some of the experiments done. It's been 5 years since I've read it though, so I've forgotten most of it.

That's why I wanted to separate the discussion from the voting.

I think the collective would be strong if every move starts with an analysis of the situation left by the opponent and, only then, the voting process starts. That way most players can see the analysis made by some and take an informed decision.

I think it will work perfectly if the discussion goes along the lines of: "'a' would make the bottom group safe but it's a bit slow. 'b' is much better because we can lean on the side. 'c' works, but it's risky."

That way:
- players of every rank can vote and influence the game.
- strong players protect us from blunders and give the rest the vision of what's happening in the game, only they have.
- Everybody learns by not only reading about a game where moves are analyzed but also feeling involved in it.

And, the most important objective: we train for that time where we have to crush the team from another forum and impose LI19x19 as the greatest forum of them all.

As soon as the first game is on, we'll have to start looking for a worthy forum foe.

Do we agree we should try to get the strongest possible opponent?

After all, if we are crushed we could always go to Game Analysis and get a collective lesson.

Alguien wrote:Do we agree we should try to get the strongest possible opponent?

After all, if we are crushed we could always go to Game Analysis and get a collective lesson.

I think we should take on breakfast ..

Well, Kasparov vs the world had a huge group, and I believe it had anonymous voting, but it did have discussion, and that was the crucial element. It helps that in chess, single lines can often be decisively refuted, even by weak players, whereas in Go, things are often fuzzier and less decisive.

Alguien wrote:

Splatted wrote:Is there any way for ranks to be hidden when posting in a particular sub-forum? I think it would be a lot easier for weaker players to participate if it isn't so obvious that we're trying to contradict a 6d, and it would encourage the stronger players to clearly justify their moves. Obviously we'll recognise user names and stuff, but if it's a simple change then I think it would be worth it.

It would be separated anyway. You can contradict or agree with a 6d in a discussion thread about the move or you can even create your own thread about how you think the game should go.

Eventually, the stone placer will make the move only by counting the voting thread, and I don't think anyone else will be reading that one, taking into account it's just a succession of post like: "B4", "B4", "C3", "B4", "C3", "R10", ...

The problem I was thinking of wasn't that I would be out of line contradicting a 6d, but rather that I would automatically assume that the 6d was right and thus have no desire to contradict them. I think discarding ranks would foster a more involved discussion.

I don't think hiding the votes is possible. In order to do that you would have to have a poll with limited options, and the poll creator would have to decide in advance which moves to add to the poll. This would be a maintenance headache, plus what if someone wanted to play a move that the poll creator didn't think of? I think the best way is to just have the voting thread work whereby you simply post the coordinates of your move, and at the end the thread creator goes through and tallies up the choices. This gives people the freedom to choose any move they want, even a move that nobody else thought of.

Of course there are other ways but it would involve a substantial amount of work, like setting up a custom voting system where you vote simply by clicking a position on a board. But that's not something that's built into the forum software, and probably not part of any pre-existing software package, so someone would have to write all that from scratch. There's other ways, like having everyone PM the thread creator, but that's going to be annoying for the thread creator. A third option would be if phpBB2 supports a forum permission option where an administrator can give special access rights to a thread where you can only see your own post in the therad, but no other post. If voting threads were set up this way, then basically: thread creator would be able to see all responses, non thread creator would only be able to see his own response to the thread.

Anyway, for starters seems like KISS (keep it simple stupid) is the best approach.

JMO

Eh, I imagined people would just use hide tags in voting thread.

This way you don't look down a long list of stronger players saying R9 when you go to vote for D6 (because, although you have seen their arguments, you think it surely is more important to limit the moyo) and change your mind or not bother voting.