Talk:Go (game)

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See Talk:Go (board game)/Archive1 for older discussion.

2004-06-22 Jasiek: This Talk page needs compression the most urgently. - I have rewritten the essential rules section by making it essential. Any unrelated information has been moved elsewhere. Terms are avoided as far possible, in particular "liberty" is not used. The fewer terms the more easily the text is understood. The most essential removal is the ommission of anything related to strategy: life and death! The scoring is: more stones on the board (stone scoring). This has the brilliant characteristic that a concept of surrounded need not be explained on the main Go page!!! Explaining different scoring systems is a task for the Go Rules page! PLEASE do NOT add anything like complicated scoring systems to the main Go page! Recall that the average reader does know almost nothing about Go. - I will improve the Go Rules page later.

Hello, Robert. Well, many people have tried to do something with this page. As you see, this is already at 'featured article' standard. One point: this is an encyclopedia, so it is supposed to record facts first. About superko, therefore: as we both know, this rule is in fact applied much less in the global go population, than ko rules of other kinds. So, from a factual point of view, anything said about it must be said very carefully. Charles Matthews 10:09, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hello, Evercat: Your wording of the removal rule is about as bad or good as mine:) One can endlessly change the wording of a rule text back and forth to no avail. What matters is the contents. And to some extent the wording, too, so that the readers recognize what they read earlier and want to read again. - So your wording is fine, too, and we may as well keep it. - It is much more essential that we keep the contents though. - Hello, Charles: Of course, this is an encyclopedia. Therefore I provide quality contents and facts only. I think that the Go page suffers from too much features, as you call it, and should be compressed to essential facts again. - Why have I included superko? It is easier to state superko than to state a basic-ko rule. The main Go page deserves that ko rule that provides the standard effect of prohibiting 2-play loops and has the easiest wording. The superko rule does both. - Hello, all: Ok, I understand your point to agree to real world rules. So I have changed to No Suicide again. In case of superko vs. basic-ko it is not clear. Even Japanese and Chinese rules have / had some superko rule. So using superko here agrees to real world rules at least as much as basic-ko does. In case of scoring, we really should disregard the real world conflict between Area Scoring and Territory Scoring and simply stick to the simplest, practical scoring, which can be taught to beginners: Stone Scoring.

Well, I still think citing any sort of superko rule here is below Wikipedia's standard of accuracy. Superko is not a rule of go, for almost all pro games, for example. Some form of words or link should be provided, for example jumping to an anchor point on go rules, which is more accurate, such as 'there is a rule that prevents repetition of position by forbidding plays'. By the way, the WP purist might find the use of the word 'essential' a problem here (POV). Charles Matthews 14:22, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

For information about superko vs. basic-ko see my major update (1) of the Go Rules page. There I explain why superko should be used and if this does not convince you, we might have a discussion that is more detailed... Wikipedia's standard is to provide accurate contents, I suppose. Complete rules are more accurate than incomplete rules. (Later there will be explanations of both rules.) I agree that "essential" is a little doubtful. So far I have used it on the Go Rules page for consistency with the Go page, but I would not mind its replacement.

Robert, I think you must be missing my point, though I'm really sure you do know what I'm saying here. If Wikipedia says 'the rules of go are these ...' then arguments why 'superko should be used' aren't relevant at all. You know and I know that in Japan and Korea the pros don't use superko; and in China the handling of triple ko has not _in practice_ been via superko. So, saying 'complete rules are more accurate than incomplete rules' is really beside the point. This article must only contain factual information about rules than cannot be disputed. That means it will not contain any complete rule set. OK, there is plenty of room in WP for all legitimate rule sets to be discussed. Charles Matthews 15:31, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I don't see the superko vs Japanese ko debate as being very important: given that they're practically the same thing in 99.99% of actual games. I myself am more concerned with keeping things simple. In practice the rulesets give the same result, so if we're trying to give the "essential" rules, which more or less approximate all rulesets, why not stick to a simple ruleset (ie area counting, life and death is not a rule)...? Evercat 20:23, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Sorry - saying superko is an accepted rule of go is a lie (not to put too fine a point on it); and 'essential' is pretty much a lie, too. WP material goes to dozens of other web sites; accuracy matters, and it would be better not to say anything specific about repetition than to get it subtly wrong.

Charles Matthews 21:31, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

As I said, I don't regard the ko rule debate as important, so go ahead and change it to simple ko, if you can word that concisely and clearly (I don't think, for example, that it's clear to say that a move cannot recreate the previous board position, as you really mean the board position 2 moves ago...) Evercat 22:26, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

To clarify exactly what it is I do regard as important - the "essential" rules need to reflect the mathematically and logically simple nature of the game. In my opinion New Zealand rules are the best for this, but since nobody uses them, I think Chinese rules are the right choice. Japanese rules, with all the special cases and rulings that Japanese counting forces upon us, are far too complicated and cannot possibly be considered "the essential rules". The essential nature of the game is simple, but this simplicity is not reflected in Japanese-style rules.

On a different note, I could argue that since China is a major Go playing nation, and apparently the place of origin for Go, Chinese rules have as much right to be used as Japanese... Evercat 22:52, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)