How to make IGS a more attractive place

In my opinion the following list of suggestions will make IGS a more attractive place for European Go players. It's a working document, every day more thoughts and ideas are added. The potential of internet to broaden the popularity of Go is limitless and the facilities to learn and teach exceeds everything we've known so far in our quest to spread this wonderful game.

To understand how to make IGS a more attractive place to visit it's important to understand the main reasons why people decide to visit a Go server like IGS in the first place. Basically, the reasons are the same as a regular Go club:

• meeting friends, chatting, killing time
• playing games
• studying go
• teaching go

1. Meeting friends, chatting, killing time

Lots of people come to IGS just to meet people and have a nice chat about Go or any other topic. So in this respect IGS serves as a kind of internet-bar which is open 24 hours/day and has lots of interesting people visiting from countries all over the world.

People kill time by watching Go games. Many players connect to IGS from work and have a small window on their screen with a Go game, just to be connected and see Go moves.

tips:

• Have many admins who have the power to shut up users who emit bad language. Punishment means no communication facilities for say 15 min. Clearly publish these rules on bad conduct.
• Pay these admins in IGS-dollars.
• Broadcast whenever a professional starts a game (even when the pro is anonymous)
• Weekly meet the pro corner
  A professional visits IGS to chat with amateurs for 30min.
• Support photos of IGS members (voluntarily).
  Think of GoBase.org biography pages, which also include performance graphs.

2. Playing games

Many players just want to play a Go game. IGS is an interesting place to play since it's available 24 hours/day and has a large variety of nationalities and playing strengths. So there is an opponent for everybody, every time of the day.

tips:

• Run a few copies (robots) of igowin, an interesting computer program playing 9x9.
• Run lots of tournaments: lightning, rapid, serious,...
  all organised automatically, ladder ranking by achievement, lightning and rapid tournaments finish in a few hours, serious tournaments take a few days. The player has several ratings, one for each tournament type, one for games played otherwise.
• Create a new command: 'seek [handicap] [timespecs]'
  This command requests a game with another player with comparable 'timespecs' and with a maximum of 'handicap' handicap stones. So with 'seek 3 10' i am looking for a lightning game of about 10min each within handicap 3 strength difference. when a match is found the game is automatically started.
• Ratings should respond faster, like the ELO system. Winning 4-6 games in a row against an equal opponent should increase someone's strength with one stone.
• Support turn-based games, ie. you play a move and quit.
• Support playing by mobile phone.
• Support flood-remove during count/removal phase.

3. Studying go

Most people want to (or hope to) improve their game. It doesn't matter how much they improve, maybe 1 stone/year, maybe 10 stones/year, but all Go players from all over the world want to make some kind of progression.

A Go server like IGS is a perfect place to improve your game. You can play stronger players, you can get advise from stronger players after the game, you can watch games of stronger players and ask questions about moves, you can guess the next move and judge your perception, you can check your rating.

tips:

• Study sessions with pro commentary on certain themes such as invading, reducing, opening developments, attacking, defending,...
• Connect IGS with the GoBase.org repository service
  Games will be automatically stored and all GoBase.org database facilities will be offered to the game collection of each member.
• Real-audio game comment channel related to special tournaments broadcasted on IGS. Commentator can be strong (top-level) European amateurs/pro's. For example Catalin Taranu. The audio channel can be used for various other purposes as well.
• Weekly hour by Michael Redmond
  Users can send questions to Mr. Redmond (or an editor) by E-mail. Mr. Redmond selects a few questions and answers them on IGS.
• Teach request
  Many players want comments on their games but not everybody can affort a commercial teacher. Allow users to do a "teachme [game]" request with [game] being a game played on IGS. A related command "teacher [range]" indicates a user is willing to teach players within the indicated strength range. Requests and offers are automatically matched. Teachers are awarded for their teach activities with IGS-dollars which can be used to pay other services.
• Beginners corner
  Go on the internet attracts lots of new players who know a little about the rules but have no experience whatsoever. The beginners corner is for them. Experienced players help beginners to get started. These players get IGS-dollars for their work.
• Allow betting on the next move with IGS-dollars during big game events (Honinbo, Kisei, ...). The relayer with the help of a strong player decides such betting moments in the game.
• Replaying/analysing pro games
  I've replayed various pro games in public and explained/discussed the moves to help weaker players to understand the game. This was a very popular activity which unfortunately I had to stop due to lack of time. Create weekly hours for such analyse sessions, pay the commentator with IGS-dollars. Replayer should have higher dan-level strength.
• Connect an IGS board with Gobase.org for joseki/fuseki searches.

4. Teaching go

Both amateurs and professionals use IGS to teach their pupils. Amateurs usually teach friends and for free. Professionals are paid to play teaching games.

tips:

• Much better teach/analyse facilities
• Private teaching boards
  Only accessible to teacher, pupil and a selected audience
• Public teaching boards
  Accessible to teacher, pupil and all registered users
• Pro teaching games can be bought with IGS-dollars.
• While teaching make sure the analysis are saved in the SGF file. Right now all variations are lost, only the main line remains.
• Daily teaching by Michael Redmond (very popular in the west)

5. General

tips:

• PR in Europe
  Most important. Stop server war in public media, concentrate on making IGS (far) better than comparable servers.
• Interview IGS-ers
  To get feedback of users and adjust services accordingly.
• Award for new revolutionary IGS server/client ideas
• By default 'automail' is 'off', should be 'on'.
• Reminder when account is about to expire.
  Expiration date should depend on years of membership. For example, never expire someone who has been a member for more than a year.
• Permanent IGS questionary on GoBase.org?
• Announcements on GoBase.org?
• Create better IGS frontpage, ie. the page people are shown when they connect to IGS (see below for a proposal).

6. Toyota-PandaNet tour

tips:

• Create special 'coverage' command on IGS to support the user who broadcasts the game. The command will set up more interesting player names, automatically periodically xshout, sets the game title, and all other administrative actions...
• Live commentary during the games by top-ama or pro (insei).
• Banner of IGS-PandaNet which can be displayed at all tournament places.
• Promotion material such as IGS-flyers, posters of IGS special events to be distributed to tournaments and other Go events.
• IGS advertisement in national magazines to generate more publicity about all Go-related activities of IGS-PandaNet.
• IGS automatic demo to be displayed on tournaments and other Go events
• Laptop for coverage of tournament games (now private laptop is used). This laptop is equiped with wireless network facilities, most recent client software and the IGS demo (see below).

The points above are my first impresssions on how to make IGS a better and more convenient place to study, play and watch Go. More thought and discussion is needed to create the perfect strategies but IGS can be developed in phases. Adding features will keep users interested overtime.

Jan van der Steen