I would like to start my response to this issue with an analogy. Imagine you live and grew up in a country in which killing people who frown at you is socially/legally/morally acceptable. There’s a poll, “Is it ok to kill people who frown at you?” Probably a lot of people will vote yes because it’s all they’ve known. It’s the immigrants, reformers, philosophers and travellers who have experienced other cultures in which killing people who frown at you is not okay who will vote no. With questions of culture there is a bias to the status quo.
A bit about me. I learnt Go in 2004 at my university go club and on KGS. In 2007 I joined old OGS when it was correspondence only and rose to be one of its top players (and an admin). I’ve played over 100 real life tournaments, taught adult and children beginners and non-beginners, studied in Asian go schools/camps, been national champion and
representitive in international tournaments, managed online leagues, played on many different Go servers, chatted in lots of Go forums, read lots of Go books. So I am fairly well informed about Go culture online and offline.
I strongly believe analysis should be enabled by default for correspondence games, and disabled by default for live. This is assuming the overpowered AI score estimator can be disabled more widely as an independent issue.
As others have said disabling by default or disallowing entirety doesn’t prevent people making a board to analyse outside OGS. Just like you can’t stop them asking a friend or AI. But you set expectations of what is normal, acceptable or cheating behaviour. You lead the culture through the features and default options of OGS for those who are introduced to the game here. I fear that a whole generation of Western go players who learnt on OGS now think it is normal to use analysis boards in live games (and also that handicap games are not normal, but that’s another issue) and this ill prepares them for real life play, and because OGS is their home they will vote to keep it that way. It was a mistake when old OGS merged with Nova that default analysis and no handicap options, which made sense in the correspondence world, carried over to live games. That the most popular poll answer is to default disable analysis in live, despite the bias of culture questions to the status quo, is significant. The change should be made.