Life In 19x19

L19 is frequently offline. Was it one or two days this time? People will use different forums, or what to call them, differently and above all as they please but when something is temporarily unavailable then they can't.

I think the slower pace on L19 can be good. Many posts and comments on the other platforms mentioned are often either ignored or deluged by many replies in a very short time. Admittedly, that seems to put other people off too and I have noticed that some of them have calmed down a bit. It's anyway not always better to have more of something.

One thing that is frequently ignored is that there is quite a bit of lurkers that only read and never or rarely post anything. Anyway if people desire more posts they can achieve that by making more posts.

I think L19 is probably going to end up very good for a particular niche in the baduk world not covered by other platforms, although I'm unsure as to what thtr niche would be.

I can agree that L19 has a different feel. It seems more old school. OGS forum is nice too though, and it has some great discussion. But it also has a lot more funny/fluffy discussion.

Reddit and the rest are too temporary. It's difficult to find anything and it all just comes and goes.

I'm happy that L19 is still going. I worry when I get a connection error.

All the cool kids use Discord . I do like forums however (searching in Discord would be a pita, and it's just not the same). That being said, the UI is quite archaic...but functional, sort of.

I think there is a lot that L19 can provide that AI doesn't. Many people ask questions such as how should Black play in a given position. AI will give an answer to the question but without any explanation. A strong human player could answer the question, answer follow-up questions and give explanations. I suspect that a lot of weaker players just imitate AI moves without understanding them just as in the past pro moves or joseki books were imitated without understanding. As for the pace of posting, I notice on other forums that a position from a game, usually a DDK game, with a question about what to play in that position. A flurry of responses, many from weak players contradicting 5-dan level comments, appear rapidly. It seems that few posters read anyone else's posts, and rapidly it becomes difficult to find the gold among the dross. This does not create an environment for thoughtful communication. For me, the game of go has a history which I find interesting. AI doesn't help much with learning that history and the rest of the culture of the game. On this forum we are privileged to have John Fairbairn with his fund of knowledge, ability with Oriental languages, and vast experience to share. I am afraid that many people just take the go scene as a source of entertainment, not something that they want to put effort into to deepen their understanding.

I don't think it's wrong to consider go as "entertainment", people may prefer to play go casually and put more effort into other activities.

Joaz Banbeck wrote: and there is currently no substitute for a forum.

This is quite correct, which is why you should have another look at Gennan's suggestion and check out some things about OGS and its forum. Personally I got into fora many years ago and I love PHPBB fora like this one, but there are two main issues with L19.
a) it is not attached to a gaming server. Ergo it cannot be easily found by new players. Jlt noted that it is rare that 20k players would come here and ask for a review, but that is not rare in the OGS forum. Why? because the forum there is attached to the gaming server where the game took place. New players do not learn about this forum. I've seen Sensei's getting links and mentions all over the internet, since it is a repository of Go knowledge, but I've never seen a link anywhere pointing to L19 saying "here this was discussed and you will find an interesting answer or discussion there". It seems L19 has gotten out of the loop of the ecosystem you mentioned, even though some very important, smart and insightful people are writing here exclusively.

b) The issue with the images needs to be resolved. Limits with image uploads in size and dimensions, uploading errors, parsing errors of the img tag and so forth are a severe hit to a forum about a board game. I had a similar issue trying to upload an image to my usual announcements and it was resolved by some other user here posting and telling me "the secret" of changing "https" to "http" in front of an image link and then it would work. Staying behind such an internet-wide standard and not even incorporating the hint to the error message is a big issue. For example, could we have this discussion, in this forum or would most people spend most of their time wondering how to upload their variations?

https://forums.online-go.com/t/question ... seki/46594

Over there someone just makes a screenshot of the variation (or whatever else) and just drags and drops the image in the post - regardless of shape and size - and of they go with writing their post. That kind of speed and efficiency is crucial for a game like Go where image-based discussion is important.

Just my two cents on the matter

JethOrensin wrote:

Joaz Banbeck wrote: and there is currently no substitute for a forum.

This is quite correct, which is why you should have another look at Gennan's suggestion and check out some things about OGS and its forum. Personally I got into fora many years ago and I love PHPBB fora like this one, but there are two main issues with L19.
a) it is not attached to a gaming server. Ergo it cannot be easily found by new players. Jlt noted that it is rare that 20k players would come here and ask for a review, but that is not rare in the OGS forum. Why? because the forum there is attached to the gaming server where the game took place. New players do not learn about this forum. I've seen Sensei's getting links and mentions all over the internet, since it is a repository of Go knowledge, but I've never seen a link anywhere pointing to L19 saying "here this was discussed and you will find an interesting answer or discussion there". It seems L19 has gotten out of the loop of the ecosystem you mentioned, even though some very important, smart and insightful people are writing here exclusively.

b) The issue with the images needs to be resolved. Limits with image uploads in size and dimensions, uploading errors, parsing errors of the img tag and so forth are a severe hit to a forum about a board game. I had a similar issue trying to upload an image to my usual announcements and it was resolved by some other user here posting and telling me "the secret" of changing "https" to "http" in front of an image link and then it would work. Staying behind such an internet-wide standard and not even incorporating the hint to the error message is a big issue. For example, could we have this discussion, in this forum or would most people spend most of their time wondering how to upload their variations?

https://forums.online-go.com/t/question ... seki/46594

Over there someone just makes a screenshot of the variation (or whatever else) and just drags and drops the image in the post - regardless of shape and size - and of they go with writing their post. That kind of speed and efficiency is crucial for a game like Go where image-based discussion is important.

Just my two cents on the matter

Lots of good points here. Myself I still lament the day the SL community went to GoDiscussions, then here. SL has talk pages now, preserving original thought, and probably was just a little too late with those to avoid the shift here. It didn't and doesn't have sgf integration, which was the other, perhaps main reason for moving out. You're right though that other forums are even the other way round: they are part of a "growing sgf db", a server.