Ah… I see that once again this topic of conversation has cropped up…rearing its head once more to engage the forum users in its thrall!
I think it is fair to say that on the two sides of this argument, there are valid points being made. Some people will never want to play against bots… and that is valid. But there are some who dont really mind as long as they arent getting smashed by someone botting, using katago or whatever other go program that exists, to cheat their way to an easy win.
I do, however, think that it is a point of contention that has been brought up many times before: that the community of stronger players typically migrates away from OGS.
We should, by now, at least have a cursory understanding of this topic and understand why this occurs.
There are, in my estimation, 3 primary reasons that take precedence.
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Wait times, which are caused by a lack of playerbase beyond a certain point.
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lack of strong Western players overall.
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And the final issue is a compounding effect of the first two issues.
It is fair to say that if you want strong players to stay on OGS, then Strong players should take the initiative to actually stay on OGS. The problem with that, however, is that there really isn’t much point in them doing so. Then we must ask the question… Why should we burden anyone with the responsibility of ensuring a playerbase beyond any level of the game?
There is no intrinsic value in demanding players do this. And there is no reward for them to do this either. Why bother putting in the effort of creating a community of players in one place when another server already meets the needs of that player?
Now, I’m aware that this is somewhat of a cynical stance to take. But, this does somewhat link back to a point I was making a while ago in another thread, around an altogether similar topic of conversation… at least in a sort of abstract sense.
Now…why do I link to a post I wrote that essentially advocates for the opposite?
It’s simple, really. The burden of creating a community shouldn’t fall on one person, or even on one group within a greater community. Indeed, I believe that the responsibility for this lies on the shoulders of every Western Go player.
But… the caveat here is a simple one… people should be allowed to play where they want to guilt-free. And the idea that OGS “Has” to have a strong community of players at the upper end of the skill table is kinda absurd to me. I myself am 5kyu. That already puts me in the top 20% of players (estimating here) on the website, and I don’t even consider myself a strong player. A dan level player, 1dan, would be something like the top 1% of people, or thereabouts.
It is unreasonable to expect so few people to carry the responsibility of something that they stand nothing to gain from, where their needs are met elsewhere. And until such a time as OGS has better global reach, where its able to be accessed by people in China, Japan, Korea, and other countries where the player to population density is significantly higher, it is unreasonable to even expect there to be a pool of players in the top ends of the ranks, to populate a site that routinly has far less traffic than nearly every other of the “large” go servers (not icluding KGS).
Further to this point… I dont actually think that OGS “Needs” to have a pool of strong dan level players for it to keep on doing what it has been doing for years. Be the home of western Go players, who use OGS to teach, and to introduce Go to any and all people they can.
OGS is a fantastic environment for new go players, and indeed mid level go players. And as a community, we should own that. Yes, we could always aim to be better, to get stronger, and to try and pull more stronger players in. But, casting doubt and aspersions at the server, or at people who choose to play in other servers because of any arbitrary reaons, does not help anything.
More self-awareness needs to be earned by all of us, as to the current state of what we call the Western go community. And so too, must we also be better at advocating for ourselves, and what we do well. There will always be things that we need to work on as a community, and there are many people out there that are seeking to grow the western Go community in any way they can… to draw in new players.
I have no doubt that at some point in the future there will be enough people around for OGS to have a community of strong dan-level players, but until then, I dont think its particually wise to suggest that the fault of that falls on any person or small groups of people. As such, throwing arbitrary ideas to increease the amount of games artificially, isnt going to help. If anything its going to drive people away from an authentic experience, which is one of the things that OGS does extremely well.