SL - L19 - reddit

[Knotwilg]

I recently went back to reddit and found that it is much more active than L19. I remember coming here after the discussion on SL died. I believe two elements led to the demise of SL: 1) no integration of sgf 2) the whole "SL is not wikipedia/signed contributions" debate which deterred those who prefer knowing who said what, rather than a synthesis which represented all and no opinions.

L19 has sgf integration and is designed as a forum, but it has many drawbacks. The UI reminds of the 90s. The indexing is poor, so that you have to refer to and crystallize discussions elsewhere (SL), or the same questions get repeated over and over.

The latter is true for reddit but its UI is contemporary and it has social features like upvoting both Q and A. Whether due to these features or not, it has a more active community. If it weren't for the familiar names here, I would probably move there soon myself. One doesn't exclude the other but time is a factor.

[Bill Spight]

I recently went back to reddit and found that it is much more active than L19. I remember coming here after the discussion on SL died. I believe two elements led to the demise of SL: 1) no integration of sgf 2) the whole "SL is not wikipedia/signed contributions" debate which deterred those who prefer knowing who said what, rather than a synthesis which represented all and no opinions.

I think that SL is an excellent resource, given what it has become, a go encyclopedia written by amateurs.

[John Fairbairn]

My two groats:

SL and L19 are provided free and ad-free by go lovers. That alone gives them a big edge for me. But both are aged and flawed.

SL: Main flaws for me are lack of signed contributions, too many mistakes and messy pages. I look at it daily but very rarely go beyond the front page. In that sense I can't really say SL has any benefits for me, but I'd be sad to see it go.

L19: Flaws for me are anonymity, spectacularly awful searching and indexing, and discussion limited to too few people. The low level of discussion id due, I think, to a combination of overlurking and overmodding (too much American-based PC). Its merits are that it is not Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/WhatsApp or whatever, all of which I abhor, and the presence of a few big names whose opinions, insights and facts I enjoy and respect. A also treat L19 as my home page.

I have little to say about Reddit. I look at it about three times a year, just to check if anything's changed. Otherwise I make sure I am socially distanced from it by much, much more than 2 yards. It reminds me too much of the old rec.games.go. If L19 is a gentlemen's club, Reddit is a pub, and I don't like pubs. Would I migrate there if the club closed down? Probably not. Its "liveliness" means little to me because I can get plenty of news from the oriental go press, and I have little interest in the European or British or American scenes beyond certain personalities. I'd be influenced by what those personalities who currently appear on L19 do, but I suspect they'd be drowned out by the Reddit kiddies.

Go groups I've seen in other languages don't appeal to me either.

[Kirby]

Summarizing the the opinions shared so far, it seems that a couple of the big areas where L19 could improve are:
* User interface
* Searching/indexing capability

[gowan]

Summarizing the the opinions shared so far, it seems that a couple of the big areas where L19 could improve are:
* User interface
* Searching/indexing capability

Being old school I don't find the interface particularly a problem. Ever since L19 opened and I saw people migrating from SL to L19 I have been aware of the search/index issue. If I have a question I first look for what I want on SL and then raise something on L19. However, on SL, where people can search for things, there was too much of just asking in the middle of a page instead of looking things up. Because of this I suspect that if there were better searching or indexing capabilities on L19 we'd still be getting the same questions over and over.

[SoDesuNe]

The L19 search is plain aweful, I guess there is no way denying it (whatever the (most likely technical) reasons may be). But as gowan says, I also have the experience that even with a good search, a lot of questions are still asked multiple times and one of the first answers will always be a link to a search result. Be that as it may, I remember trying to search for Uberdude's initial LZ-gospel post a while back. Took my ages since I ended up clicking backwards through his recents posts...

I for one am still waiting for a proper wysiwyg-editor when replying but that's minor. Since I'm most likely as old as the underlying technical construct of this forum, I don't feel out of place, yet.

As for the low level of discussion: I don't see this - generally speaking. When people feel passionate about something, we easily generate 5+ pages within days (e.g. online cheating, rulings involving time loss/disconnect). When we feel we can help, we also post frequently - see game analysis forum. The "problem" of low level of discussion stems from - in my eyes: The theme being too high for the average poster, a way of thought unentertaining for the average poster or simply the average poster does not really care as much.

I had higher hopes for the responses to my blitz tournament idea as well. On a side note: The thread in the (smaller) german go forum has more replies, substantial ones even and votes than the thread here. For me this is primarily interesting, regarding reach and target audience in general since I do have more ideas which involve Twitch and different go formats. But I guess what I'm missing is not a form discussion culture here on L19, L19 just doesn't seem to be the target audience for such things.

On a different tangent: Even new Twitch go-channel seem to pull some 20+ viewers consistently. More established ones get around from fifty to a hundred. By my estimate the majority has a more limited understanding of go than me (one time an unranked but self-desclared OGS 1-kyu delievered a highly entertaining review with... interesting variations). But the majority is also ready to be excited and are primarily looking for enjoyment. The majority also does not seem to care about go culture, go personalities and go history. They care about their streamer though, even when most cap at 5- to 6-dan on Fox. (Half of the streamers I know are not even that strong but still very enjoyable to watch.) No hard conclusions here, yet, but the audience on Twitch seems to be at least (way) younger than on L19 - maybe akin to Reddit, but I don't really use that.

Since I (try to) contribute more and more on go-channels over at Twitch, I find myself referencing SL quite a lot again. Sure, a lot of pages are flawed and derailed by question/diagrams mid-page but still you will often get a quick overview of terms and standard life-and-death-shapes. I also (re-)discorverd that SL is actually quite potent when it comes down to building a nice page - though handy, it is not. As a wiki I don't really miss a sgf-feature. Maybe another instance of target audience: The basic pages are actually quite good. A lot of higher level pages derail quite a lot since no one who is actually "strong" is supervising - just in my limited experience.

[gennan]

Does any of you ever visit the OGS forums?

I do lately and to me it feels somewhere in between Reddit and L19.

[mhlepore]

Is there any organization to Reddit's posts? I don't see a forum/sub-forum structure like we have - it seems like an ever growing string of posts. Would be happy for someone to show me I am wrong.

Also, after reading John's post, I had to look up the meaning of gentlemen's club - it means something different where I am from.

[Tryss]

For me, these three website have a different usage :

SL is fit to be a knowledge base
Reddit is a place fit to discuss news
L19 is a place fit to have long discussions

[Calvin Clark]

I haven't been following go forums in a while, but that's mostly because I've been preoccupied with other things and not playing go. There are so many online go resources now. I would not attempt to keep up with more than a couple of them or even one. I was an SL Recent Changes Junkie^TM at one time and that was sort of weird because I wouldn't have thought of a wiki functioning well for conversation, but people tried.

Reddit is okay, but it lacks the diagram capabilities we have here. Posters try to make up for that by posting links to eidogo or OGS, but find it valuable to see the diagrams inline. Reddit also is not suited for long-form content like the historical insights and book summaries provided by John F., the deep investigations by Bill and Robert, or any of the serial blog-like threads. It's optimized for current events. Reddit has a lot of anti-KGS bias and some rude users, but I guess no online venue is really immune to trolling.

I don't follow the Facebook group anymore. I still have an account but I rarely log in. To me, FB felt more and more like I was a subject in a dystopian mind-control experiment. Occasionally Janice Kim would say something funny and that would make my day. It may have had a more global reach of users, though.

I find it heartening to see that some of the same posters are active here. Please keep it up!

[gaius]

I quite recently stopped posting on Reddit, and migrated back here. So it is interesting to see this subject under discussion! This is, in fact, my first post since migrating back.

In my opinion, Reddit is designed for maximum reader addiction. Top upvoted posts are often short, and convey some kind of striking message. There is not much possibility for longer discussion with multiple people, because only those messages which are upvoted float to the top and get visibility. Also, Reddit feels a bit anonymous. Yes, the username is displayed above every post, but there are no signatures, no introduction posts, nobody ever welcomes anybody into the community, and there are no subforums beyond /r/baduk.

All of the above turned me off after some time. Forums are much more suitable for fostering a community feeling, and also for extended conversation. You are not limited to seeing only those comments which are floating to the top due to all the upvotes. That is, of course, both a blessing and a curse; but luckily lifein19x19 is blessed with a high average comment quality. But as a poster, I remember my previous activity on this forum (some years ago) much more fondly than my activity on Reddit has ever been. So I certainly hope this forum will stay operational for a long time to come!

[Uberdude]

If you think this forum's search is bad, wait til you try finding some old post on reddit...

[danjosely]

As for the low level of discussion: I don't see this - generally speaking. When people feel passionate about something, we easily generate 5+ pages within days (e.g. online cheating, rulings involving time loss/disconnect). When we feel we can help, we also post frequently - see game analysis forum. The "problem" of low level of discussion stems from - in my eyes: The theme being too high for the average poster, a way of thought unentertaining for the average poster or simply the average poster does not really care as much.

If I understand this correctly, then this pretty much hits the nail on the head I think. Several in this thread have said they prefer L19 because it's like a club for gentlemen compared to a pub. To stick with this analogy, the thing that makes a gentleman's club for gentlemen is exclusivity. At the risk of stating the obvious: if the level of discussion on L19 was even close to that of reddit, then it would more likely than not be saturated with low effort rubbish and beginners asking the same questions a hundred times.

The "theme being too high" for most also rings true. Most people are not dan-level players, so most people won't, or at least feel like they won't, have very much insight into many of the discussions had. Again, at risk of stating the obvious, most people are probably DDKs. I have not, however, spotted many DDKs contributing to discussions since I've been on the forum (obviously this is entirely anecdotal, and I would love to be corrected if I'm wrong).

L19's niche, therefore, seems to be to facilitate higher level, deeper discussion (as has already been said), mostly between those of at least an SDK rank. Only if there's a substantial increase in the number of people in this group will the level of discussion increase. Reddit, when all is said and done, is essentially just a social media website, which while it makes it more accessible, it also provides about the quality of content one would expect on social media.

[bogiesan]

Is there any organization to Reddit's posts? I don't see a forum/sub-forum structure like we have - it seems like an ever growing string of posts. Would be happy for someone to show me I am wrong.

Also, after reading John's post, I had to look up the meaning of gentlemen's club - it means something different where I am from.

Reddit is not set up like a forum and the structure is not easily searched. It is more of a stream of consciousness thing and no one every goes back a few weeks to see if their question has been asked before.

[daal]

Side note: Most of you probably know this way of searching on for something on L19, but if not, here's an example of how to use google search to do it:

LZ gospel site:Lifein19x19.com

This will offer google's brief excerpt of each hit, enabling you to find what you are looking for fairly easily.