Talk:Go (game)/Archive 7

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"Many in the field of artificial intelligence consider Go to be a better measure of a computer's capacity for thought than chess."

Only 'many'? Is there any real dispute about this? I mean, yes, I'm sure there would be no significant number of programmers who think that anything very near a full artificial human mind is needed to make a superhuman go program, but they'd certainly call it closer, wouldn't they? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rorrenigol (talk • contribs) 08:24, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, there are also quite a lot of people who think that neither chess nor go are any kind of measure at all of a computer's capacity for thought. The most successful current Go programs are those that play specifically to the strong points of the computer, ie doing a lot of mindless calculation really fast. Nothing even approaching intelligence is involved. HermanHiddema (talk) 09:52, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Capacity for thought and intelligence may be different things. Sticking to intelligence, though... Re/ "doing a lot of mindless calculation really fast. Nothing even approaching intelligence is involved." Hmmm. "Even approaching intelligence"? That's a pretty strong opinion. I think it's quite reasonable to allow the AI camp to pursue intelligence by starting with huge amounts of primitive operations, each of which is doing nothing "mindful" on its own. Animal brains can be viewed similarly, as doing a lot of nothing but mindless activity at the level of their building blocks (biochemical operations, electrical operations), yet we like to call the result of those familiar black boxes "intelligent". Some animals execute billions more of these mindless operations per second than others and we typically see those animals as more intelligent. Is it not reasonable to make that same leap with dumb silicon operations as we do with dumb bio-based operations? --Ds13 (talk) 21:46, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Merge Go symbols in Unicode into this article

I think Go symbols in Unicode (a stub which practically only contains the symbols themselves) should be merged into the main article. -- Prince Kassad (talk) 16:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. I do not think that the contents of that article would add anything of interest to most readers of this article. JRSpriggs (talk) 21:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. I suggest deleting Go symbols in Unicode instead. I do not think it adds anything to wikipedia, I don't see the encyclopedic value. HermanHiddema (talk) 22:02, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. I agree, no real value, people who have Unicode can find the symbols they need.

kibi (talk) 23:06, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Non-Asian Pros

" In total, as of 2007, only eight non-Asian Go players have ever turned professional." I wonder if this includes Diane Koszegi: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/include/print.asp?newsIdx=17821 It's interesting that 2/3 European pros are women! It's so rare in Asian culture. I wonder if we could have an article on women in go. Rachel63 (talk) 11:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I have included Diana and updated the text to read "as of 2008". How do you mean 2/3, are you unsure whether it is two or three? Of the six European professionals, two are women, of the three American professionals one is, so in total three out of nine are women. An article on women in go sounds like a good idea! HermanHiddema (talk) 11:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I do not see a list of non-Asian Go professionals in Wikipedia. Please supply one! JRSpriggs (talk) 21:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
The article mentions three European pros, so I assumed there are three. But maybe that just means pros recognized by that association. What's the difference between an honorary pro and a non-honorary one? Rachel63 (talk) 08:53, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Ah I see, yes, there are three European professionals that are associated with the Hanguk Kiwon (Korean Pro Organization), Diana Koszegi (1 dan), Svetlana Shikshina and Alexandre Dinerchtein (both 3 dan pro). The other European pros are associated with Japanese organizations. These are Catalin Taranu (5 dan pro), Hans Pietsch (4 dan pro before he was shot dead in a robbery, posthumously promoted to 6 dan pro) and Manfred Wimmer (2 dan pro, deceased).
The difference between an honorary pro and an non-honorary one is the reason for their promotion. Most pro players are not honorary pros, they became pro by taking the pro exam (very difficult). Honorary pros are often promoted for special reasons, such as their contributions to promoting go. As I understand it, all three European pros associated with the Korean Hanguk Kiwon were promoted by special recommendation for their work in promoting go in Europe. All of them are strong enough to play on even with the weaker pros, but not strong enough to pass the pro exam. HermanHiddema (talk) 09:44, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

If they're different in playing strength shouldn't we say "honorary pro?" It's clearer than just pro. Rachel63 (talk) 08:24, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Although perhaps more accurate, I haven't seen any other sites doing that. So according to wikipedia policy, there is little choice but to follow common usage of outside references. Perhaps a good way to express this is to mention on the page of these players that they were promoted by special recommendation or similar wording, if we can find references for that. HermanHiddema (talk) 09:26, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Casing

The name of the game of go is usually spelled in lower case, in line with for instance chess. (See Chess). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Björn Lindström (talk • contribs) 12:18, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I spell it either "Go" or "GO". I definitely capitalize the "G". Writing it as "go" risks confusion with the much more common verb. Consistency with the spelling of other game names is much less important. JRSpriggs (talk) 01:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Writing "Go" instead of "go" is a choice made here. As mentioned in the first paragraph: "In order to differentiate the game from the common English verb go, the game is sometimes written with a capital G". Personally, I do not mind much either way, as long as the usage is consistent within the article. HermanHiddema (talk) 09:24, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Capitalizing go is wrong, puts it in category of trademarked games like Trivial Pursuit. If the "confusion" argument was valid, bridge would also be capitalized. kibi (talk) 00:44, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Kibi is right. It is not a proper noun and should not be capitalized. 199.125.109.107 (talk) 04:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Capitalisation is not wrong, that's prescriptive linguistics and out of place here. Normal English usage is to capitalise, which may be an exception to the normal (descriptive) rule. In the many books English books on Go that I have read, lower-case has been very much the exception. See http://chinese-school.netfirms.com/go-game/tutorial.html or all but one of the links they give to other tutorials. Andrewa (talk) 02:25, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

"Normal English usage is to capitalise" what? If you're right, why aren't bridge, chess, checkers, backgammon and other classic games capitalized in their entries here? kibi (talk) 13:14, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Normal English usage is to capitalise the word Go when referring to the board game. As to why bridge, chess, checkers, backgammon and so on aren't similarly capitalised, I don't know. Nor do I know why we soften the second c in electicity, but we do. I'd guess the capitalisation of Go is to avoid the ambiguity with the verb, but I may be completely wrong, it may have something to do with the cultures in which Go is most popular, or there may be some other reason. But so what? Wikipedia follows English usage. We don't promote what we think the usage should be. Andrewa (talk) 02:53, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus to move the page, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 14:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

It turns out that Go is a very heavily trafficked site, getting almost a third as many views as Sun and almost a fourth as many as Earth. Go (board game) gets almost ten times as many views as any of the other articles at Go (disambiguation), Go (1999 film) and GO Transit getting the most views. There is no reason to make it so difficult to get to and should definitely be moved to Go. 199.125.109.107 (talk) 04:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Survey

  • Strong Oppose There are clearly many viable targets for the word "Go". A game played almost only in Japan is clearly not the primary meaning. TJ Spyke 18:22, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
See discussion below. No one is looking for any of those "viable targets", and I checked the stats on all 21 of them at Go (disambiguation). Go is played around the world, not just in Japan, and has even been played in outer space. We can thank the very active Houston Go Club for that last item. Go Places lists all seven continents, outer space, under water, and the internet, although it is not clear whether go has been played in Antarctica. 199.125.109.107 (talk) 18:30, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
    • The wiktionary "go" entry records that "go" is the 117th most used word in the English language. It would be wrong if this commonly used word was used for a board game. Snowman (talk) 10:52, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I kind of like the name. It's short, to the point, and when it is someone's move you can say "go". Note to Snowmanradio, this commonly used word (go) "is" used for a board game. If you have never played it, try it, you might like it. Millions do. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 16:35, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I think that the game is not very popular in the UK. Snowman (talk) 18:25, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Among those who have never heard of it or never tried it, yes that is probably true. However, of those who have tried it, it is very popular in the UK. And everywhere. I really wasn't expecting an answer, I was just stating the obvious. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 19:07, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Even the introduction of the article does not agree with that. The article says "It is mostly popular in East Asia but has nowadays gained some popularity in the rest of the world as well." I note that you are not logged in. Snowman (talk) 20:44, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Lighten up. I'm making a play on words. One definition of popularity is well liked, as in I like chocolate. If you have never tried chocolate, how would you know if it was popular with you? The other definition is what the article is using, played by lots of people (hanging people can be popular if it is done a lot, but is probably not particularly liked, by those who have tried it). 199.125.109.102 (talk) 21:13, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
For those interested, here is a link to a Japanese census of Go players worldwide: http://web.archive.org/web/20021217041220/http://www.fin.ne.jp/~igo/census.htm
Although it is mostly in Japanese, it is not hard to find the numbers for different countries. The document asserts 35,000 players in the UK and 120,000 in the US. Of the 24 million players worldwide, over 23 million are from Japan (4.1m), China (10m) and Korea (9m). Because I do not speak/read Japanese, I have no idea of the methodology behind it all, and I don't know if it is mentioned in the document. Perhaps someone who is able to read the Japanese can enlighten us? HermanHiddema (talk) 09:34, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Oh, and another link: http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/Stats_Country.php
This is the European tournament database, which list 1375 active tournament players in the UK, of whom 417 have played in a tournament in the last year. Given this, I assume that the figure of 35,000 above is an estimate of the total number of people that know how to play the game (know the rules, have a basic understanding of tactics, basically anyone who has ever successfully completed an introductory course). HermanHiddema (talk) 09:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support Given the traffic stats, this seems to be the Primary Topic. HermanHiddema (talk) 18:50, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. "Lies, damned lies, and statistics", as the saying goes. I don't consider traffic stats to be conclusive evidence of anything, and they certainly shouldn't form the sole basis of a page move. I'm quite sure that most people would expect the verb to be the primary meaning, not the board game. PC78 (talk) 22:59, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
"One should not assume; it makes an ass out of you and me", as the saying goes. I agree that for most people, "go" is just a verb. I also think this is entirely irrelevant, because I seriously doubt whether there is a significant number of people looking for the meaning of the word "go" on wikipedia. Go (verb) has a very low number of hits. WP:PRIMARYUSAGE list as primary topic indicators: "this may be indicated by a majority of links in existing articles or by consensus… …that it will be significantly more commonly searched for". Go (verb) has 45 incoming links, Go (board game) has over 2000 incoming links (Go (1999 film) has less than 100). HermanHiddema (talk) 23:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Touché, I suppose. But I don't need to assume anything; we're here to find out, aren't we, by discussion and concensus? The key word in your quote from WP:PRIMARYUSAGE is may. I trust you read the rest of the guideline? PC78 (talk) 15:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Yep, discussion and consensus is our goal. I felt that "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" was not much of a proper argument on its own, hence my counter-quote ;-)
I did read the rest of the guideline. There is little question that disambiguation is necessary, of course, the question here is how. In the first section, "deciding to disambiguate", it says: "Ask yourself: When a reader enters a given term in the Wikipedia search box and pushes "Go", what article would they most likely be expecting to view as a result?". I think there are two possible takes on this: 1. Ask 1000 random people what they would expect to see when they type "go" into the search box. 2. Ask those people who have actually typed "go" into the search box what they were expecting/looking for. I think the answer to (1) is obviously go (verb), but I think the answer to (2) is the relevant thing here. My opinion on this is, that given the traffic and link stats, the majority of people actually doing that are expecting "Go (board game)". That first question, together with WP:PRIMARYUSAGE seem to be the main guidelines on whether to use a disambiguation page or to use wp:hatnotes. HermanHiddema (talk) 16:33, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, the quote wasn't the whole of my argument. My point was that this move request is based solely on the statistics, and that statistics alone don't tell the whole story and are of course open to interpretation. Looking at the stats myself, I can see that Go (board game) has been viewed 73906 times (in 2008-01), compared to 20345 times for the dab page. You seem to be assuming that those 73906 people found that page by typing "Go" into the search box, but the numbers don't support that, otherwise those people would have been taken to the dab page first. On the other hand, do we even know that this traffic tool is accurate? (A genuine question, as I know next to nothing about it.) PC78 (talk) 23:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm not assuming that those people came through the search page at all. I will go out on a limb and assume that the majority of page hits for any wikipedia article come from these 4 sources: Internal links, external search results (google, yahoo, etc), external links and Wikipedia searches. Wikipedia would be in dire straits of all its page view came only from its own search box. For the search term "Go", Go (board game) is the number 2 result on google and the number 3 result on yahoo. Which may or may not be another indication of its prominence as a term, but is certainly an interesting result. We have no direct information on how often what link on the disambiguation page gets used, but general traffic statistics do tell us something about the general popularity of a page, and this popularity may well be reflected in how many hits it gets through the search box. HermanHiddema (talk) 23:24, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
But that's my point (and you seem to be contradicting yourself here): we don't know how many hits it gets through the search box alone, and that appears to be a large part of your argument. I'll grant you the search engine results and the internal links, but I'm not really questioning the popularity of the board game on Wikipedia (it has it's own WikiProject, for crying out loud). The main question that we need to consider is (as you pointed out above) "Ask yourself: When a reader enters a given term in the Wikipedia search box and pushes "Go", what article would they most likely be expecting to view as a result?" I'm still not convinced that the average reader would be expecting the board game. Hence, the target of Go should remain the dab page. PC78 (talk) 00:06, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
We indeed have no direct information on how many of those 20345 people that viewed the dab page were looking for Go (board game). I was therefore making the (IMO reasonable) assumption that other indicators of popularity (traffic stats, incoming links, search engine rankings) would be reasonably predictive of how often those searching for "Go" would be looking for the board game. If we compare the traffic stats for "Go" and for "Go (board game)", then we can see that generally "Go (board game)" gets more traffic on days that "Go" (the dab page) gets more traffic, so there is a correlation between the two. So yes, my argument is only a personal opinion, but is backed up by available data. Your argument is similarly a personal opinion.
To help answering the question "Ask yourself: When a reader enters a given term in the Wikipedia search box and pushes "Go", what article would they most likely be expecting to view as a result?", the wikipedia guideline gives two possible indicators: "majority of links in existing articles" and "consensus that it will be significantly more commonly searched for" (the WP:PRIMARYUSAGE indicators). On the first indicator, there is no disagreement, Go (board game) has far and away the highest number of links. On the second, we have not reached a consensus, but I do feel that traffic stats and search engine rankings are things to be considered in that context. HermanHiddema (talk) 10:59, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
There are 667 articles that link to Go (board game) and 13 that have links to Go (verb), 56 to Go (1999 film). Talk about overwhelming. In addition, there are 11 templates that link to Go (board game), none for Go (verb) or Go (1999 film). Face it, go (the game) is a very popular topic. Chess has three times as many links and twice as many views, but Poker only about a third more views as go. Bridge (contract bridge) gets one third the traffic of go (game). Go (verb) is more of a dictionary topic - the Wiktionary article is almost twice as long as the Wikipedia article. 199.125.109.107 (talk) 00:50, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Support This quite obviously the primary usage, according to all the data available (not just traffic stats). Policy clearly supports a move here, and it's simply the most sensible thing to do in my mind. The stats, links, etc. show that this article is largely what people are looking for, it doesn't have nearly the wide range of common search options as stop does - that has it's links and hits more spread out evenly between them. Our goal here is ease of viewing for as many readers as possible, and making this the main link would do that. VanTucky 04:10, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: While this is the most important article linked by Go (disambiguation), I am concerned that the large number of links to this article will make the change-over difficult. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:59, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually not. The change is trivial. There are a few double redirects that need to be changed ([1] [2] and a few more), but the guideline is not to change redirects unless you are already editing a page (though I prefer to edit them anyway just to clean things up), because edits take about 1,000 times as much work from the server as redirects the guideline is that it is only worthwhile editing a redirect if it gets clicked on at least 10,000 times. See WP:R#NOTBROKEN and Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups/About fixing redirects 199.125.109.131 (talk) 16:37, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Support. It's a strange one in some ways, but I think the unqualified title should be used for the popular Asian game as proposed. Article titles are noun constructions, and the fact that there's a homonym that's a verb should not enter into it. If we restrict the candidates to noun constructions, then I think WP:NC will give us the game as the preferred subject for this title. Andrewa (talk) 20:03, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Support. The statistics speak for themselves. Most people who type "go" are looking for the game. (If anyone comes here to find out what the word "go" means, they're in the wrong place, they need Wiktionary.) kibi (talk) 17:53, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose: a commonly used word should not be used for a game as the primary topic. Snowman (talk) 15:27, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
    • I was surprised that this was not a sufficient explanation. I think that most people would not expect a board game to be the primary topic for "Go". There is a long list to be disambiguated for the word "Go" showing that that Go needs to be a disambiguation page. I think that the proposed move would add to confusion to the wiki in sending many people to a page on a board game. Snowman (talk) 21:33, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Actually moving go (game) to go would not send people to the wrong page. Stats show that people tend to go directly to the page they wanted. Note that go(board game) is viewed 3.4 times as often as go. And there is no way that everyone is just typing all that in (I don't). If you go to Google you will see that Google makes links to articles, not to disambiguation pages. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 16:29, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

After three weeks it looks like the "ayes" have it 5 to 3; and two of the "nays" are either misiniformed ("played only in Japan") or content to make blithe unsupported assertions ("common word shouldn't be a game" - why??) What now? kibi (talk) 16:44, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

    • I think that the points made to oppose the proposed move are valid, because this game is played by a small percentage of people, and ALL the other uses of Go need to be considered. I have added more explanation to my Oppose. Voting counts are irrelevant as it is the correct arguments that prevail. Snowman (talk) 21:33, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I consider arguments from popularity to be invalid. It is obvious from the number of items on Go that "go" needs to be disambiguated, so Go should remain as it is. --Una Smith (talk) 19:39, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
  • There is no question that disambiguation is necessary, but there are two common ways to disambiguate, via a "disambiguation page" (current situation) or via "wp:hatnotes" (proposed situation). One of the few criteria valid for deciding between the two is popularity. HermanHiddema (talk) 11:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose This removal of a disambiguation would add to confusion IMO. I am really not convinced on the use of web stats to decide primary usage. Heck, for all we know all the people going to Go (board game) were really trying to find out about the Go on the Monopoly board. Narson (talk) 19:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Please remain realistic. Go (Monopoly) is only two lines down from Go (board game) on the disambiguation page, but got only 34 hits in january. HermanHiddema (talk) 11:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. "Go" is a very generic term and despite heavy usage and the statistics pointing to the board game, there is enough ambiguity in my opinion to warrant keeping the pages where they are. While Go (board game) may be the single most viewed site that is named "Go", how does it relate vs. all the other sites combined? It'd take nothing short of a complete whitewash (such as one that allows for article at Michael Jordan to refer to the basketball player) for me to agree here. Bssc81 (talk) 08:10, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
  • I have added a full list of stats below. Go (board game) gets more hits than all other 49 Go articles combined. HermanHiddema (talk) 11:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, that table supports my initial view. It gets just over 50% of the hits related to the term "Go", that suggests to me that the other 49.7% were looking for something else. (I realize you can't make that assertion completely, because many of those 49.7% still may associate Go most with the board game, but this is true of the reverse as well.) In any case, these figures do not line up with what you would probably find if you checked Michael Jordan hits vs. the other guys at the disambiguation page. I still vote oppose. Bssc81 (talk) 14:45, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
One article gets over 50% of the hits from a disambiguation page. Go (board game) may not be the "overwhelmingly" primary usage, but it's hard to argue that it's anything less than the clear primary usage. I confess I don't understand why you set the bar so high. -- Exitmoose (talk) 01:20, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support Michael Jordan is viewed 93 times as many times as the next most viewed. Any page that is viewed more then 2 times as many times as the next most viewed in my opinion should also be used as the primary usage. Some pages that only have 20% more views are used as the primary usage. The correct criteria has not been established, but should probably be around 2:1, however, whatever the correct number is, go is clearly above that number. There are over 10 times as many links to go (board game), which is the other criteria which is to be used in deciding primary usage. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 17:26, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
  • But, "Michael Jordan" is not a verb commonly used in the English language. Snowman (talk) 15:08, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Stick to the guidelines. WP:PRIMARYUSAGE does not say anything about common verbs either. When it says that if a subject is "much more used than any other" (meaning that article is read more or has more links to it), it is only referring to "in Wikipedia", and clearly states that by the explanation given. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 15:35, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Selective quoting to wikilawyer is a bit of bad form. It doesn't state "in Wikipedia" as a qualification, it merely mentions that one way of judging this might be from articles linking to it. It also says consensus is annother way to work it out. Also, the header points out there will be occasional exceptions to the guideline, so even if the guideline /did/ recommend it for an article, we wouldn't have to follow such a recommendation if it would be absurd or create a non-desirable situation. Narson (talk) 17:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
And your point was? Clearly making "go" the name of the article is not absurd, it is obvious. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 01:12, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

That there are other ways of judging primary useage than worshiping at the altar of net traffic stats and that obviously this move is not considered 'obvious' by several of the contributors to this discussion. Simply repeating the net traffic stats over and over convinces no-one of anything. Narson (talk) 19:02, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I do not think the move is obvious to everyone, but your assertion that is is absurd is also patently false, given that is is supported by several people. I do not think calling it either absurd or obvious is helping the discussion along, so lets keep the discussion fair, ok? HermanHiddema (talk) 20:35, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I was talking in more general terms about the guidelines there as the anon was selectivly quoting sections and didn't seem to be reading the rest or the qualifiers that surround guidelines vs policy. I'll clarify. Narson (talk) 21:35, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
I also would like to apologize for being too sensational, and I also am only interested in finding out where the bar is supposed to be set. I have found at least four other articles that are directed to the wrong primary usage based on stats - one is prohibition - when anyone says prohibition, what do you think of - alcohol prohibition from the 1930s, right? Well not any more. Today four times as many people are looking for the article on drug prohibition. How about public enemy - has to be the FBI most wanted right? Nope, there is a band called public enemy (which of course is named from the FBI term) that gets twice as many views. So I think the guidelines can be tweaked a little, now that we actually have real stats on page views. I fully understand that for 90% of the US population no one has ever heard of this massively popular game called go and doesn't have a clue why anyone would want to use a common verb as the article name, but such is the case with a lot of popular Wikipedia articles - they get hundreds of thousands of views and yet I for one have never heard of the subject - look at the top 1000 articles for en:Wiki[3] and I challenge anyone to have heard of all of even the top 100 articles. Newton anyone? Hint - they aren't looking for Sir Isaac Newton. Some clown programmed a bot to hit the SI unit of force article 300,000 times in one day.[4] Add that to the list of rare anomalies. Note that erroneous data like this is normally really easy to spot, and by backing up each decision with number of links you can be pretty confident of making the right decisions. But please refer to me as an IPuser, not an anon. I'm far from anonymous. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 03:14, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I note that you do not have a user page for the address 199.125.109.102 that you use. -- Snowman (talk) 11:00, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
True, but I make an awful lot of edits, and IPusers are a lot less anonymous than Pseudonym users. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 21:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support - I find the arguments discounting usage statistics to be unconvincing. Go (board game) is clearly the most common usage by a wide margin. Granted, go (verb) is an important word in the English language, but as the numbers show, it's not the primary usage on Wikipedia, and this is the standard we should use to decide what goes where. -- Exitmoose (talk) 01:12, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support as primary usage here. The verb belongs on Wiktionary. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:37, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The verb "go" is the primary use of the word. The board game is after all only a board game, and I can see no earthly thing wrong with Go (board game). It's clear, it says what it means, it's easy to find – and it does not capture those people (whether few or many) looking for other meanings of "go". Statistics are not helpful here – what we should consider is the potential for confusion, not the amount of traffic. With the current arrangement, anyone looking for the game will find it quickly and reliably from the DAB page, as will anyone who wants Go (verb) or any of the other meanings: no-one is confused. The proposed move would force all the other meanings to go by way of the game, thus potentially confusing all those users – in other words, the potential confusion is raised from very low indeed for everyone to considerable for many users. (Incidentally, why was there no note on Talk:Go about this discussion?) --Richard New Forest (talk) 14:58, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
No one is questioning the primary usage in spoken/written English. What we are discussing is primary usage on Wikipedia. This isn't a dictionary, it is an encyclopedia. No one would suggest that Wiktionary should default to go (board game). However Wikipedia should. Right now there is a huge number of people who are getting to the page by typing "go" into the search window and having to go through the go (disambiguation) page. However the biggest percentage of people, 70%, mysteriously go directly to the intended page, and I can assure you that it isn't because they typed go (board game) into the search window - it is because they got there by typing go into google or yahoo and were able to go directly to their intended page. Yes there are a very small number of people who have never heard of go and type go into the search window looking for the verb or any of the other uses, but they are in the extreme minority, and by putting a hatnote at the top they can easily get to go (disambiguation). The following is what you get if you type go into Yahoo:
GO.com - Official Home Page
Disney's web portal, Go.com offers news about the world and sports, and also provides weather, shopping, games, and other information from a variety of sources.
www.go.com - 52k - Cached
Go Hawaiian InterIsland Airline Flights – Mesa Discount Airfare: www ...
go! is a Hawaiian airline that offers interisland airfares with stops on each island throughout Hawaii, including Maui, Oahu, Kauai, Kona, Hilo, Lanai, and Makai. ...
www.iflygo.com - 52k - Cached
Go (board game) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The standard size of this grid is 19 × 19, although the rules of Go can be freely applied to any size: 13 × 13 and 9 × 9 are also popular choices for simpler and ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(board_game) - 278k - Cached
Go (1999)
Go! tells the story of the events after a drug deal, told from three different points of view. Visit IMDb for Photos, Showtimes, Cast, Crew, Reviews, Plot Summary, ...
www.imdb.com/title/tt0139239 - 55k - Cached
You can see the stats below for each of those other uses of go. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 17:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Indeed. Why should the person looking for the airline or the verb have to go to the board game first? The board game may be a large proportion of the traffic, but it is not really any more significant than the other meanings, and I can see no reason why it should be "the" go. It's fine as it is: don't fix it. Even if you insist on getting hung up on the statistics, they show that about the same number of people do not want the game as do want it. Send everyone to the DAB. --Richard New Forest (talk) 19:44, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
They won't go there first. Stats show that 70% of users go directly to the intended article no matter what you call it. There are countless examples of this. You can see why when you look at the google and yahoo results for go - the link is always directly to the article. However, when you have a primary usage, that 30% can be a whopping big number of people going through the disambig page. Since it is a primary usage, the next most viewed page gets only a small number of views, and 30% of a small number is an even smaller number. Trust me no one is going to freak out because they found out about a game they never heard of before. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 21:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, they'll go there first – the people we are talking of are those who do just type "go", not those who get to the page some other way. The point I was making was that there are about the same number of people looking for all the other things as for the game, so even the numbers don't stack up (and sheer numbers are not the most important thing anyway, as we all know). Why should half of the people using the DAB page have to go to the wrong place first? The alternative, as now, is that those people looking for the board game by typing "go" get a DAB page first (as one might expect when typing a single word).
I can't accept it is correct that the game is a "primary usage". That is for a situation where a very commonly used word has some other minor meanings: "dog", say, or "train". In this case there are many meanings of varying degrees of popularity, but none has any special claim on the word – although in fact almost all of them are related to the verb. In any list of varying popularity there will always be one which is more popular, but that does not necessarily mean it is "primary". --Richard New Forest (talk) 21:48, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm curious. What is your criteria for establishing primary usage? Assuming that you have recently read WP:PRIMARYUSAGE, if there are a dozen articles about the subject foo, what ratio between most used and second most viewed in your opinion establishes primary usage. Is it 10% more, 20% more, 2:1, 3:1, 5:1, 10:1, 50:1, or 100:1? Is there a number of articles about foo that influences whether one of them should be a primary article? For example does it matter if there are 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, or 100 other articles named foo? Does it matter if there is a non-encyclopedia use of the name foo? For example does it matter if foo is used in other contexts than ways that it would appear in the encyclopedia? To me this is all about "you tell me what the guidelines are and I can go follow them", and "if no one has a clue what the guidelines mean I can't help you". 199.125.109.70 (talk) 22:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:PRIMARYUSAGE says that if a prolonged discussion about this occurs, then it is probably not the primary use. This qualifies (in spades) and thus I must ask the question why has this discussion not been closed considering it is obvious that there is no consensus? Bssc81 (talk) 22:31, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Accorinding to WP:RM when no consensus had been reached, an admin may "re-list the request to allow time for consensus to develop, or close it as "no consensus".". The article was relisted at WP:RM on april 7, and is currently in the backlog. The discussion was resumed, but no consensus has been reached. I assume that as soon as an administrator finds the time, they will decide whether to close it or to keep the discussion going. HermanHiddema (talk) 21:58, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
My review is that there are good reasons to move the article, and that all the oppose views stem from go being a common verb that gets only little use as an article in Wikipedia. Most of the oppose views I believe have never heard of the game. The bit about if there is a prolonged discussion applies if you think for example that Sting the wrestler gets more views than Sting the singer, for example, and have no way to prove your point either way. No one thinks that go the verb gets more views on Wikipedia. The web stats also take a lot of the guess work out of the picture, and will hopefully lead to less arguments. One thing that those opposed to the move should realize is that go is as much a national pastime to some as baseball is to others. No one would complain about naming the baseball article "baseball", so why not name the go article "go"? The use as a verb does not conflict, on Wikipedia. Decisions don't get made by counting votes. They get made by what makes most sense. 199.125.109.64 (talk) 00:39, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

See the statistics at http://stats.grok.se/en/200801/GO_(board_game) for each of the articles at Go (disambiguation) for the last three months. There is no reason to make this article parenthesized. Go is the most played game in the world. 199.125.109.107 (talk) 04:26, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea. The main opposition generally given to this is that usage of go as a verb is much more common in English. The article go (verb) is the only one listed above go (board game) on the go (disambiguation) page, but gets virtually no hits according to the above stats page (about 50 per day, while go (board game) gets about 2400 per day). I think that an important point here is: What do people expect when they type 'go' into the search box? I think there are very few people searching for information on the verb "go". With that in mind, it seems logical to redirect Go to go (board game) instead of go (disambiguation). HermanHiddema (talk) 16:13, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Agree. But better still to move the article on Go the board game to the unqualified name as proposed. If we simply change the redirect, it is unlikely to stay changed. Andrewa (talk) 18:35, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
But you can not tell how many of these are hits for people genuinely searching for Go (board game) or just looking at the Good Article list, because it happens to be a Good Article. This is another reason why the hits numbers are not representative here. Snowman (talk) 10:15, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, please visit WP:Good articles and see how long it takes you to locate Go (board game) by just browsing through the page without specifically looking for Go (board game). And furthermore, I fail to see how people coming from the good articles page somehow "do not count" when assessing popularity. HermanHiddema (talk) 12:08, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Web statistics tool for some discussion of the statistics tool. Andrewa (talk) 02:35, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Traffic Stats

Traffic stats for January - March 2008:

Article January February March
Go (board game) 73906 62323 63551
Go 20345 19299 18875
Go (disambiguation) 26 23 36
Article January February March
Go (board game) 73906 62323 63551
Go! (Mario album) 16432 18702 17732
Go (1999 film) 9960 9524 6793
GO Transit 7853 8005 8179
go.com 3608 3532 2654
Gene Ontology 3183 3485 3538
Go! (airline) 2857 3392 5117
GoAir 2466 2730 2958
The Go 2117 2023 2355
Go (2001 film) 1988 1585 1497
Go Fly 1718 1580 1500
Go (verb) 1625 1745 1955
Go (Prison Break episode) 1605 1818 1297
Go (Vertical Horizon album) 1603 1474 1528
Go (song) 1566 1584 1346
Go – The Very Best of Moby 1388 1395 1420
Go (common song) 1269 1544 1632
Go (Newsboys album) 932 876 908
Go (Pat Benatar album) 873 641 772
Go! (Letters to Cleo album) 821 719 695
Go (band) 768 902 881
Go (Moby song) 657 794 1144
Go (H2O album) 641 612 656
Go (novel) 603 568 541
Go! Beat Records 536 422 478
Go! Discs Records 526 446 509
Go of Balhae 521 580 1192
Go (Hanson song) 482 476 468
Go (modern board game) 460 1115 965
Go (Dexter Gordon album) 448 516 503
Go (game show) 394 470 467
GO (Malta) 362 409 368
GoTV Networks 354 392 356
GO Corp. 350 412 411
Go EP 273 336 284
Go (radio) 227 251 182
Go! (band) 214 248 248
Go (Korean name) 184 300 372
Go (Go album) 183 397 427
Go (TV channel) 171 192 220
Gō (volume) 160 119 117
Go (Sarah Bettens) 122 131 91
Go Records 94 119 92
Go! (Fair Warning album) 90 159 157
Go (Steriogram song) 85 125 102
Go (Monopoly) 34 275 257
Gigaoctet 26 88 76
Gō 15 88 78
Go (Kelly Clarkson song) 9 78 91
Go! (Cartman album) 7 109 123
All other Go articles total: 72860 77483 75732

Go specific articles (not a complete list):

Article January February March
Go (board game) 73906 62323 63551
Hikaru no Go 32538 29079 28432
Computer Go 5131 5022 5416
Rules of Go 3676 3452 3505
Go strategy and tactics 3495 3289 2849
Go ranks and ratings 2745 2559 2478
Go terms 2656 2492 2108
Go players 2377 2101 1799
Go software 2185 1770 1869
Go equipment 1593 1556 1623
Go complexity 1429 1163 1262
Go professional 1143 1019 960
Go proverb 1131 983 1078
Go variants 660 573 586
History of Go 613 594 583
Shape (Go) 550 626 408
Go competitions 490 488 534
Four go houses 400 399 402
List of Go organizations 384 340 367
Internet Go server 353 525 516
Go handicaps 350 347 366
Go centers 152 100 105
Ladder (Go) 139 212 254
All Go articles total: 138096 121012 121051

Discussion of stats

The counts for March 2008 for "Go (board game)" are actually 63551. If you ask people most people, I guess most would say the "the use as a verb" is the most popular use, but they do not have to look it up. This hits data is meaningless in this case because of the well known use of a word which people do not have to look up. I wonder what the google hit counts are, but there is still the problem that people do not have to look up the common usage of the word and is not represented in the counts. Snowman (talk) 12:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

"Go" is the 117th most used word in the English language; see wikitionary "go" entry. This makes all these statistics irrelevant, because such a commonly used word is clearly not commonly used for a game. Snowman (talk) 10:49, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
  • These are the traffic stats for January, not March. HermanHiddema (talk) 13:08, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Go (verb) has a low hit count exactly because people do not have to look it up. I think that the number of people that use the English language wikipedia and go looking for the meaning of Go (verb) is negligible, and is actually an argument in favor of considering Go (board game) as the primary topic. HermanHiddema (talk) 13:08, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Surely, it supports the view that "Go", a commonly used word (which people do not have to look up), with many generic uses should not be in second place to a game. Snowman (talk) 13:35, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
  • So the data in the table above is out-of-date. Snowman (talk) 13:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
No, this Requested Move discussion was started on March 10, so data for March was not available at that time. And although it is now, this discussion may be causing extra hits and using data from March would therefore be scientifically unsound. HermanHiddema (talk) 13:54, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
But there is less hits for "Go (board game)" in March 2008. Snowman (talk) 19:33, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, so? Each of these pages will receive a different number of hits depending on month, year, etc. Fluctuations happen. For example, Go (Mario album) has a lot of hits currently because the album was released in december, making it a very current topic. It is unlikely to stay at its current level of popularity over time. January is a random sample over a recent 30 day period, there is no reason for it to be either more or less reliable than the months preceding or following it. Using the data for March is scientifically unsound however, because from March 10 onward people were aware that hit count might sway how people looked at this issue. It would have given anyone the opportunity to artificially boost the hit count of their favorite article. HermanHiddema (talk) 21:44, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
As a matter of policy it is my opinion that only the previous months hits should be used in making a decision, along with the number of links to an article. While there are indeed fluctuations, I am sure that no one will support moving a thousand articles around from month to month just because the stats changed a tiny bit. The ratio for moving a page because of primary usage could be at a higher bar, say 3 to 1, than the ratio for keeping a page, say 2 to 1, to help minimize moves. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 15:53, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
  • As mentioned in earlier discussion, Google lists wikipedia's Go (board game) article second for the search term "go", With first place taken by disney's go.com portal. HermanHiddema (talk) 13:08, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
What is most important to me is the ratio between the most viewed and the second most viewed. If that ratio is more than 2 to 1 in my opinion it should be used as the primary topic, no questions asked. I think it is a matter of policy that a number should be chosen as to what ratio to use as the deciding criteria. I have seen articles that are only viewed 20% more than the second most viewed used as the primary topic, and others that are viewed 20 times more that are not used as the primary topic. It's like good grief make up your mind! What exact number constitutes primary usage? Is it a ratio of 1.01 or is it a ratio of 100 to 1? No in both cases, but what number is the correct number to use? In this case I would look at Go (1999 film) because Go! would not be confused with Go, and since the ratio is 7.42:1 I would use Go (the game) as the primary usage because the ratio is greater than 2 to 1. End of discussion. So in other words the only discussion is what ratio to use as a deciding point. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 04:52, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Is this number of unique addresses checking out the page or page views? For example, someone editing a page will view it at 1+<number of edits> per session of editing. Someone slamming refresh like a rabid badger might view it 100 times a minute. Narson (talk) 08:58, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
AFAIK, the stats tool counts page hits, not visits, so it will count multiple hits by the same person. HermanHiddema (talk) 09:27, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
If you are editing a page you should be using Show preview each time you view it and that will not show up in the page views. It will show up as 2 hits, one before the edit and one after the edit. It is annoying and not recommended to make 50 tiny edits to the same page one after the other. Better to do them all at once or in at most 4 or 5 sectional edits. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 16:03, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
  • I think that the these wiki hit statistics and the discussion of them are largely irrelevant to the name of this page, because "Go" is the 117th most used word in the English language; see wikitionary "go" entry. Snowman (talk) 10:58, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Indeed, the use as a common word totally swamps out any attempt to try and search for any data...I think that this is definatly an instance where Go should be a disambiguation page, not to have any article as primary usage. Narson (talk) 11:03, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
For the nteenth time, if you are looking for the verb you are looking in the wrong place, you want wikidictionary not wikipedia. Almost everyone knows that and almost no one views the wikipedia entry for go (verb). The tool does not block multiple hits like most hit counters do, I know, because if you go to a page that gets one or no hits a day and hit it a few times they will show up in the stats the next day. While anomalies are possible, they are rare, which is why it is good to check how many links are made to an article as well. The most obvious anomaly is canine reproduction which jumped from a steady 450 hits a day to a steady 170,000 hits a day for about two weeks and then dropped back to a steady 8,800 hits a day. Most articles show very regular hit patterns that appear to be very reliable. An example is Julie Dubela who appeared on American Idol on January 30, and her article views spiked on that day and then tapered back down rapidly.JanuaryFebruary Weekly TV shows show the same pattern in even more pronounced a manner - they spike each day the show is on and have few hits the rest of the week. 199.125.109.102 (talk) 15:38, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

This is silly. What's with the comment on 'go' being the 117th used word in English over and over? If you look up something in the Encyclopedia you obviously want to know something about it. Who wants to know about the verb 'go'? They probably want any of the other topics in there. Use a different argument, because that one is just silly tripe. --John Moser (talk) 22:18, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

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