Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Go

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Contents 1 Go diagrams 2 What to discuss? 3 Template:Go-stub 4 Templates discussion 5 Names 6 Edit war 7 Go or go in template names? 8 Promotion history template 9 Category moves 10 Regarding copyright on some pages 11 Template:Infobox Go player 12 Years in professional Go 13 Nomination 14 Go terms transwiki 15 Collaboration of the week 16 More AFD 17 Games played with Go equipment 18 Sensei's Library 19 Macrons

[edit] Go diagrams

Of course something needs to be done about posting go diagrams on Wikipedia. I see that attractive chess diagrams are posted on FIDE World Chess Championship 2006. Can anything like this be done for Go? -- Bob McGuigan

I think the position is that various diagram have been created here, at different times, and we need to assess those potential solutions. A practical long-term solution would perhaps be to use the filters at Gobase, which can render SGF as exportable diagrams. I mean, Sensei's Library or other sources may provide SGF for diagrams, and a once-for-all program that converts to diagrams will eventually save everyone time.

It is possible, as I've done here, but I do agree that there needs to be an easier way to produce these ;P CanbekEsen 19:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

My idea is to use the 'filter' at http://gobase.org/software/sgf2misc/. You paste in SGF, and it returns a diagram, for example PGN. I have just been emailing Jan van der Steen about this, and he has sent me a sample. I'll post it here tomorrow. (There are some advantages in creating SGF files first, but of course it all becomes more serious at that point.) Charles Matthews 22:08, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

So this on the left is a PNG I made with the sgf2misc page at Gobase. That is with the kaya and no letters/numbers options . You paste in the SGF file, and get a page with diagram, from which I saved it. Charles Matthews 12:02, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

To add to that, I should mention the convenience of entering diagrams at Sensei's Library. You can then export diagrams from there as SGF; I have just done this with a single right-click. So really there is a slick way to do it all, for anyone with a Gobase account anyway: make diagrams at SL, export the file, paste into sgf2misc, save the diagram, upload at Special:Upload. Charles Matthews 22:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

A big problem with this is it's a pain to update or modify images, compared to having the board inline when you click on "edit". What is preventing us using SL type board diagrams (getting from an SGF to them is pretty simple, after all). --Steve Kroon 14:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. The SL diagrams are a feature of the special wiki software developed by Arno Hollosi. How could an ASCII-type board be rendered here on WP? We are not going to get help from the developers any time soon, that's for sure. In any case if one keeps the SGF, one can do any actual editing on SL, and rr-export? Charles Matthews 14:57, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I like the look of the diagrams Charles posted here but I also see the point about editing. It seems the only way to edit these diagrams is to create a new one and delete the old one. I mentioned above the chess diagrams on Wikipedia. They seem to be produced from ASCII. I suppose that Wikipedia must have some utility that translates the ASCII into the chess diagrams, and that is what CHarles is referring to when he says we can't expect to get help on this. Bob McGuigan 17:56, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

As CanbekEsen pointed out, we can use quasi-Ascii representations of the boards - there's a Game of Go Position template which he used on the Cho Chikun page - the example is copied here. The rendering and colouring is not ideal, the amount of detail input is not ideal, it doesn't have move numbering, and it doesn't do partial boards, but it may be possible to ingeniously optimise it... (use "edit" to take a look at the source).

19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 a b c d e f g h j k l m n o p q r s t

Cho beating Fujisawa in Game 4 of the 1983 Kisei.

Actually, this template is better than I thought - there are corresponding 9x9 and 13x13 boards, they support numbering (0-9) and stone marking (triangle), and some partial boards. For more details, check out Wikipedia:Sandbox/Game_of_Go/Manual, and some more examples at User talk:CanbekEsen/Archive 1 --Steve Kroon 07:34, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think we can have much better diagrams, in terms of looks. You are not showing numbers on that one. This way of doing it, a tiling method as I would say, is the typical solution coming from the tech side. But I really think such diagrams are stopgaps. We should be using the established SGF file format, and the work already put in on utilities for that. What I would suggest is that we, the WikiProject, systematically build up an archive of the SGF files needed. In fact in the longer term we may want to put those on Wikipedia Commons.

To go back and forward on SL is easy, I think, at least for short variations, by using this page [1], which turns SGF into diagram. So we have a full process that can go

Create diagram using SL as scratchpad

→ export as SGF file

→ save SGF file, archive here

→ convert to preferred diagram type at Gobase

→ upload diagram at WP

→ any diagram editing by taking SGF, importing and editing it at SL.

I think that covers a practical cycle of development. With several windows open it would actually be quite quick. The only major aspect missing is cropping diagrams. I'm sure that can be done in several ways.

Charles Matthews 08:27, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure, it could look better, but the major restriction at this stage is simply the quality of the tile images - uploading new, better looking tiles will address that. I can't see anything wrong with generating a tiled diagram from a tiled description in the edit page. After all, if we want this to be an "encyclopedia anyone can edit", we can't assume they are SL users, Gobase users (can take a while to get an account, etc), or the like - if it's tiled in the page itself, anyone can open it, and, by just taking a look, figure out how to make a correction/change.

In addition, if SL becomes Wikipedia's Go scratchpad, we'll be clogging their recent changes (albeit with minor edits) - this can be solved by creating the SGF in a regular editor instead of using SL, and saving the SGF. However, uploading images to Wikipedia is, in my opinion, a real pain (not to mention if we have to upload an SGF and an image for each diagram we wish to make). If the engine could generate the png's from the board description, it would be ideal (especially if the generated image linked to a generated SGF download). Note that Chess diagrams have had their game successfully implemented like this (without the download), so I can't see why we can't get it done as well (especially if Jan would be willing to donate his Gobase code, although I don't know if he'd do that). While we're waiting for that, I can't see how complicating the diagram creation with SGF->diagram conversions and diagram->image conversions, and, notably file uploads, improves the simple solution of using the existing templates (which mighty easily be usable if someone can write a filter to alter SL-style diagrams to match the WP template style; or a new WP template which takes SL diagrams and pre-processes them for the current template we have on WP).

Let me also just say that I agree that the current template, as is, is not efficiently usable, since we have no development cycle to go from an established SL diagram or SGF to a WP template diagram. However, once we have such a tool, I think using an inline format will be inherently better than having to replace an image each time one wishes to make a change. As such, I think it's worth it to rather spend a bit of time trying to get a good solution of this kind, rather than using a workaround with which we can get results now, but which may be sub-optimal in the long run. It seems, therefore, that while you consider the "tiled" solution a "stopgap", I consider the solution you are proposing as being the "stopgap". --Steve Kroon 09:21, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. The basic argument against tiling is that you can't guarantee that it will look the same on all browsers. I really can have no idea whether you and I are seeing the same result: I see each horizontal line separated by a white gap.

I doubt there would be issues about using SL under minor edit. I'm a Librarian (admin) there, I think, though I did try to resign once, and it's not a high-traffic place. I'm sure something could be sorted out with Arno and Morten.

I agree that the point of the discussion is to try to get a good way ahead. I have to say that I have put together 1000s of diagrams in my time. Editing that quantity of ASCII boards would not be good. Naturally there is a preferable way, which is point-and-click on an SGF writer. The state-of-the-art on SGF handling programs is not something I want to lay down the law on, absent some more research. But given that SGF is the online format, and widely supported, I do think we should start at that end. If people want to go from SGF to the tiling format, one can convert to an SL ASCII diagram; and then some software wizardry can potentially produce other tiling formats from that. Charles Matthews 11:28, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

OK. I've given my opinion, and would just like to re-iterate that in the long run, we'd like to be able to, like chess, have some code running on the wikipedia side to generate PNG's that get served, not serve a bunch of tiled images, which as you say, can look clunky (but they don't in my browser). But, since I'm more interested in editing on pros, and tournaments, I won't be doing that many diagrams (and I haven't got that much experience). I'm willing to concede to your greater experience at publishing diagrams: if you believe uploading a PNG and sgf pair, and mapping the two to each other somehow, for each diagram, is the way to go, we can use it. I just perceive it as a huge barrier to entry for other people. But enough of that. I guess the question is what some other people say, not just you and I. --Steve Kroon 10:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

What experience mostly shows is that getting the words right is harder than the pictures.

So, a way to go is

• • census of existing diagrams
  • creation of new single diagrams
  • while the discussion is still fluid, just comment out previous diagrams
  • add SGF for new diagrams in place, also commented out.

Charles Matthews 13:57, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, another way to go. Have a look at this, found in a German wikibook: http://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bild:Go.gobrett.png. It's a screenshot from a program, Jago. Not quite sure how to do it, but a high-quality image. Charles Matthews 16:49, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What to discuss?

I think life and death would be a good place to start. I have already added seki, which wasn't even mentioned. That led to the observation that the page go terms has characters in the section headings, a bad idea for linking to them as anchor points.

We should also get into the habit of adding references.

Charles Matthews 13:13, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Go-stub

I've finished tagging all the Japanese go player articles with the stubs. CanbekEsen 11:49, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Templates discussion

I'd also like to suggest the following templates:

• A name template for Go players, showing the player's name in Kanji, Hangul, or the like, as well as the various romanizations. Have we chosen a standard for the main article on each player?
• Short biography template for professionals, showing date of birth, date turned pro, date retired, date died, place of birth, affiliations, etc.
• A promotion history template for each professional, showing year of each promotion (and reason for award, perhaps)
• A tournament template, indicating which countries and players participate, the general format, the prize money?
• Succession boxes for the various tournaments to be displayed on the player pages
• A table for listing tournaments/titles won by a professional

--TheKro 10:09, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Succession boxes. Good for getting the old Honinbos in order. I think for getting the modern holders of the Honinbo title in order, we should be very careful of arguing we need all that. South Korea has 15 major pro title, Yi Ch'angho's page could easily be made unreadable by too many boxes. Charles Matthews 13:25, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I added oshirogo records at Honinbo Chihaku. Partly that was because the other information didn't say much. In general doing the historic Honinbos properly can provide a 'spine' to develop all the Edo period go material. Which is very much an encyclopedic goal, to do once well, and complement current tournaments. Charles Matthews 14:04, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Names

There are two big issues.

• Korean names, I think McCune-Reischauer is the only systematic option, and certainly the one that fits with the good English sources (Gobase, SL, GoGod, Go World ...)
• Japanese names. The overall policy is bad for us, considering that for 40 years or more go players have followed the Japanese name order, while enWP has standardised now on Western name order. We should raise our voices as a project on this, I feel. Overriding the name order in common use is not actually a good piece of policy.

Charles Matthews 14:04, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

There is a problem regarding the Japanese names in that common English language non-go usage puts the given name first and then the family name. That is how newspapers do it, for example. Even in the go world usage is sometimes confused. I have seen a go news article that referred to the current Meijin title contestants as Shinji Takao and Cho U. Even on Wikipedia there are articles with the Family name, Given name order, especially regarding the old Honinbo title which was actually a "family" name. So we see articles titled Honinbo Dosaku and Cho Chikun. What would happen if we just went ahead and wrote the articles the way we'd like to, i.e. using Family name, Given name order? Would we start an editting war?

Bob McGuigan 9:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Bob, have you seen this? Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)? I personally preferred the names they are called in their home country (Takao Shinji, Fujisawa Hideyuki etc). CanbekEsen 21:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. In my opinion this policy is likely to cause a lot of confusion. And it isn't followed rigorously anyhow, witness the article Cho Chikun. The split between historical figures and modern people seems arbitrary. Unless someone knows a lot about a a person's dates, for example, or is very well informed about Japanese naming practice, a randomly encountered name will be a source of confusion. There is good precedent for having the go project naming convention be Family name, Given name because that is the current and historical practice in Japan and also is the policy in the almost all English language go publications.

Bob McGuigan 28 October 2006, 14:50 UTC

We need to petition the Japanese MOS on this. No one wants to read about 'Seigen Go'. Their convention should not over-ride 40 or 50 years of common usage. Charles Matthews 16:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the current official policy must, at least partly, derive from the custom in published translations of madern literature to give the author's name in Western order (e.g. Haruki Murakami). user:By78's talk page has some valid points to use in discussion with the Japanese MOS. I imagine many Japanese people might feel uncomfortable writing the Western order, and we might hope for contributions from such people in the future. Bob McGuigan 15:39, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

My understanding is that the over-riding Wikipedia policy is that when a particular name is definitely the most commonly recognized form among english language readers, then that is the form of the name that should be used. Thus it is and should remain "Go Seigen". For most other cases, I would generally like to follow Charles lead. Hu 08:13, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edit war

We have an edit war brewing, with User:By78 reverting my attempts to introduced standard NPOV and other improvements to Honinbo Shusai and Go Seigen. Charles Matthews 16:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Go or go in template names?

Which one should be used, the capital Go, or the undercase go? Please share your opinions. CanbekEsen 07:30, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I always think that it is best to capitalize Go. I generally advocate adherence to well established rules of english usage, but rules are meant to serve, not strangle. The verb "go" is so common and brief that readability is enhanced when the name of the game is distinguished, so I strongly urge breaking the rule and capitalizing Go. It is briefer and often better flow to write "Go" than "the game of go". Hu 08:07, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems good enough a reason, I'm going to start moving them. CanbekEsen 20:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

OOPS! My bad. I misread the section header. I thought we were talking about article titles and text. For templates, I suggest leaving them as lower-case "go". Hu 12:28, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Promotion history template

I'd like to suggest a template for giving the promotion record of players. Basically, this would entail two columns, one for rank, and the other for the date/year it was awarded. Further notes could be added in text, or may be a third, optional column: this could be used for specifying what tournament victory, for example, led to a promotion, or other notes. --Steve Kroon 08:38, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I've tried something like this recently, at Rin Kono and Lee Sedol. CanbekEsen 04:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Looks great. Seems like creating templates (for promotion history and yearly records, as per Lee Sedol), should be quite doable? --Steve Kroon 08:47, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I've done a preliminary template, go to Lee Sedol to see. CanbekEsen 23:45, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I like this. However, I'd suggest making the users type in the ranks (1 dan, 2 dan, etc). It makes the wikisource more readable if changes or corrections need to be made, and it means that ranks can simply be left out if they are skipped (such as the early Chinese pro's going straight to 9-dan, or ranking jumps for tournament wins in Japan. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Steve Kroon (talk • contribs) 08:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC).

Done and done. CanbekEsen 20:24, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category moves

Someone has suggested moving every single Go category from Go to Go (board game). Anyone else see this? CanbekEsen 06:55, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding copyright on some pages

I have been informed that some pages on go players here have copyrighted material that is copied word for word without any permission from the copyright holder. The biggest one, Kaoru Iwamoto, is said to have all information copied from the original copyright source. Pages who also have sources from the GoGod Encyclopedia (including Honinbo Doetsu) do not have the permission to use the copyrighted material. I will hope that some comprimise is made to correct this. CanbekEsen 01:31, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I discussed this with John Fairbairn of GoGod. He is chary of any systematic use of GoGod material here. He didn't ask me to remove the (very limited) number of references I had made to GoGoD, but he clearly didn't want to have me use the CD-ROM as standard reference. So at that point I started to use old Go Reviews as sources. With policy on reliable sources as it stands, there is a problem: there are not so many good sources for plain facts in English, and yet adding factual material here (as opposed to people's theories about strategy) is the most encyclopedic way to develop. Charles Matthews 13:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Infobox Go player

I've created a universal infobox for players who come from another country to play in another (e.g. Cho Chikun, Cho U etc etc). CanbekEsen 21:18, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Years in professional Go

I've done a test page on my sandbox User:CanbekEsen/Sandbox. CanbekEsen 00:28, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a great project. Charles Matthews 14:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

How does it look so far? Anything need to be changed? CanbekEsen 02:42, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nomination

Is it time to renominate Go, the board game, for Featured Article status (or Good or A class for that matter)? It looks like all the citations demanded have now been provided. --ZincBelief 15:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems so. We should take a shot :) CanbekEsen 00:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems no matter what, we can't get a good article rating. I've added a bunch of references, and I don't know how the article can be cited any more, as a bunch of this is basically "common sense" (in the way that it's easily accesible) for anyone. I don't know what to do anymore, but I find it amusing that Backgammon has been given good article status, when there are a bunch of citations missing. CanbekEsen 17:57, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Go terms transwiki

I have just taken down a {{TWCleanup}} tag placed by a bot on go terms. The proposal was to move it all across to Wiktionary, which really is wildly unsuitable. I don't have time right now to go and explain to the bot and its owner. Please be alert for a repeat. Charles Matthews 18:06, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Collaboration of the week

I think it's time to update this, as it has been a few weeks :p CanbekEsen 22:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More AFD

Someone has nominated 20th Kisei here. We should add references establishing notability. I'm not sure where to find them -- and probably how to read them if I did. Can anyone do this? --Selket ^Talk 09:04, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Games played with Go equipment

I'm wondering: what exactly does the Games played with Go equipment article add to knowledge about go? It seems to me that a whole variety of games can be played using a goban and stones, and the broader the allowed variation, the more games possible. For example, Ko shogi is mentioned, with the caveat that stones would need to be marked: well one can say the same for other shogi variants, and even chess, if the board was reduced in size. Tic-tac-toe can be played with unmarked stones on a reduced board as well. And similar articles can be written for other popular games as well: Arimaa can be played with chess equipment, and so on.

I'm not at the point where I think this article should be deleted just yet. (At the very least, I think the gomoku family deserves mention in some way.) But I think we need a discussion on what exactly can be done to improve this article, particularly whether we can expand on the possible games or restrict them. Kelvinc 09:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't have much worth at all. It was originally created as a means of removing a large passage of banal information from the main page on Go.--ZincBelief 10:32, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we can list games that are played with Go equipment in real life (or similar equipment, such as a smaller goban), but the stuff on Ko Shogi and checkers probably can be dropped. I know that Renju equipment is superficially similar to standard Go equipment, but I'm not sure about many of the rest (and some, like Philosopher's Football, are so obscure there is probably no official equipment). The criteria seem somewhat subjective: it may be better off just deleted, but I wanted to get a sense of the mood here about the article first. Kelvinc 21:27, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sensei's Library

Sensei's Library got deleted for failing WP:N. I have temporarily restored a copy from Answers.com at User:Unkx80/Sensei's Library. You guys decide whether you want this page restored; feel free to edit that subpage of mine. --unkx80 18:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Unless that page can be considerably expanded with information about the history and significance of the website to the Go community, it should probably stay dropped. Kelvinc 21:27, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Hang on, that was a very misleading nom. If you Google for Senseis Library you get many more hits, for one thing. For another, SL is one of the largest non-WP wikis. Charles Matthews 22:17, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think to actually get a permanent article you have to provide some background information on the website, and some reviews of it. I can see why the present article suffered deletion Do AGA or BGA websites have any reviews we can use? When was the article created. Which authors worked on it. What information does it contain. All of these need to be added in to the article if it isn't to get deleted again. Looking at the review page some people were very keen to get it deleted.--ZincBelief 12:03, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I have beefed up the article a little at User:ZincBelief/Sensei's Library. Can anyone provide a year for the website's founding?--ZincBelief 12:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC) Update - found a year and recreated the page.--ZincBelief 13:36, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Macrons

I started fixing the spelling of the name in a few articles before I realized how many there are that need to be changed. I would very much appreciate it (and it would be good for the 'pedia) if you could take the time please to fix the spelling of all these. As Honinbo is not an English word, nor commonly used in English outside of the specialized niche Go context, it deserves to be spelled (romanized) appropriately, according to WP:MOS-JA. Thank you. LordAmeth 16:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)