maybe they are just not the target market.
maybe Shogi is more fit to them.
One more reason that may cause players to drop out: The Go Federations - in my experience - are either inactive or quite toxic,. I regret working for one and do not really like to participate any more
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Without disclosing private information, could you share more? I think this is important, as issues at the organizational level can easily affect the community level.
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I do not know which specific Go Federation the other user is talking about, but it is worth noting that most - if not all - people in there are volunteers and amateur players and amateur administrators. Mistakes and mismanagement? We hear about those in the most professional of settings, yet we hear the lofty phrase âGo Federationâ and we seem to think that somehow the people in there are highly professional in organising, administrating, marketing and promoting Go.
But that is not the case and we are having unrealistic expectations of them.
Here is the screenshot of a post of mine in Reddit:
It is as simple as that. Go is our hobby. So, we usually get hobby-level results. As it is logical. Expecting otherwise is what is unreasonable.
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Following the Chess world championship, while interesting, was also somewhat depressing when thinking that no such event exists in Go. And Iâm talking both about the notion of âa world championshipâ and about what it represents in terms of organization, showmanship, marketing and mediatisation around the world.
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Giancarlo - Google translate:
I try to have fun. I dinât want money in my game(professional playerâŚ). and of course GO is not a perfect game.
From the game federations: I quit.
I think it is important to note there are different levels of professionalism. The original comment by @einkleinerfalke mentioned that Federations can be âquite toxicâ. I donât know what exactly they are referring to, but I think it is totally reasonable to expect a volunteer community to be not be toxic.
On the other side of the spectrum, I do agree that we cannot expect volunteer leaders to have significant amounts of time or experience to dedicate. (Although cookie licking can still be a problem if there are other volunteers willing to do the same work)
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I have been involved in the Dutch go association from 2018 until 2021. Iâd say itâs more on the inactive side.
I think much of that comes from being volunteers and overestimating how much we can actually get done in our spare time, and also from a general difficulty in finding volunteers at all. The Dutch go association has been understaffed for many years on end.
I think the European go federation also has difficulty to find suitable applicants to replace staff that wishes to step down after many years of service.
As in any group of people, sometimes there willl be disagreements and sometimes volunteers donât get along on a personal level. In some unfortunate cases this may escalate and someone might end up walking away and not volunteer ever again, possibly even trying to disrupt the efforts of the people who are left in the group.
I am not aware of the latter happening in the Dutch go association in recent years, but I have seen it in other volunteer organisations (my local home owner association, the Dutch draughts association).
I donât know how to prevent such things from happening, especially when the organisation doesnât have the luxury of selecting a fitting person from a pool of suitable applicants for an organisational role. You just take whatever is on offer.
That may also be a factor. In a small group of volunteers, one person may have an idea for some project, but he cannot realise it by himself. So he needs other volunteers to help him, but the ones that are available would prefer for the rest of the group to folllow their own (slightly) different idea.
It is likely that in the end none of their ideas will be realised and they all walk away from the project frustrated and disappointed.
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Sure, but only a little bit, since my own Federation refused to financially discharge me without given any reason concerning my person but only another managing board member. Like stated before, we all did this as honorary work after our regular day and just to keep the system somehow running. And yes, I was/am young and unexperienced as hell, maybe I was even too unexperienced to reasonably be able to manage a federation. But it was not like, I tried to get into the position by force, but there was not just anybody else who was willing to take up the task. Still, some people made sure to give us hell, if we took a decision they disapproved with. This escalated even further that it had an impact on my health.
And yes, I know that probably nobody was ill-minded and had their reasons for acting like they did, but it still did not change, that they always attack those, who at least stepped up to do anything from their comfortable position of doing nothing except for criticizing. It still boggles my mind, how people can make the harshest sort of criticism but refuse to take the responsibility themself for doing it according to their views when asked. And all of this is still on the internet and on public display, if you know where to search. Embarrassing for me and enough for me to never again wanting to do anything for the federation directly? Yes.
This is the part of me, where I was really hurt. And for closing with a more positive vibe. I also travelled a bit for playing Go and met with people from the Danish and Swedish Go federation for example and I had only positive experiences with them but both of them were admitting that they somewhat lack personal. So yeah ⌠I dunno if the federations have in sum a positive effect at least in the way they are currently organised. Almost all work, like local tournaments or local go groups are managed by informal groups anyway, so the only (and maybe this is enough) other reasons I can currently think of are national championships (which are quite nice and usually get at least some funding from the national federation, but are still often organised by an informal local go group) and the EGC (which is often also organised by an informal local go group instead of a federation in the end, but yeah it helps to have a great label like European Go Federation for finding supporters and getting the attention from the East-Asian Go Associations).
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This is true, but I think that we can all agree that the most basic/required/important form of professionalism is the kind that goes âI do not like these people, but we have a job to do, so letâs focus on thatâ.
If people exhibit professionalism, toxicity stays on low levels where it barely matters or bothers people.
Now, people can be extremely good professionals in their fields - exactly because they think their career is important - but be loose cannons on their free time and hobbies.
When a modicum of profit/compensation/responsibility/liability comes along, something happens in the human mind.
You can see this if you try to play Texas Holdâem Poker with friends and you bet only chips or peanuts.
Everyone goes âall inâ or plays wild bets even while holding a 7-2 (the worst pair). If you ask them about it theyâll say âhey maybe a 2 or a 7 will drop, who knows?â so they bet, because it is not serious.
Put even a measly 0.02/0.04 euro blind on the table and suddenly everyone perks up and becomes a Doyle Brunson impersonator and they start looking around for cowboy hats and sunglasses so people wonât get hints from their eyes. 
The same person on different settings, with different stakes can, sometimes, be hardly recognisable.
Which is why I said that if we want professionalism accross the board, things on the organisational level should turn, well, actually professional.
@gennan and @einkleinerfalke â replies showed that this is far from the truth.
I have a lot of similar examples from many hobbies, from âtraditional dancing clubsâ to amateur football and basketball clubs to even the local free Church/Byzantine chanting school.
There is enough drama in those places to write a TV series and rake in good money, Iâll tell you that, and they are all âvolunteersâ, but, as I said, if it not their job and it is a hobby, a lot of people can be very quick to go ballistic.
These are the worst kind of people and this is why I am not very keen on jumping on the âwhat is the EGF doing??â bandwagon while I know that they are volunteers.
If someone is paid for a job and they are not doing it? Thatâs fair game.
If someone is a volunteer and is providing you a service and you are just complaining? Thatâs a very bad behaviour. If you have an idea, get off your couch and put your OWN time, where your idea is and letâs see how that works first, before you complain about what other people are actually doing.
Just that kind of crowd can make you go âhey, since you apparently know better you should sit in my chair and do all this work and Iâll go back to just enjoying the game. Byeee!â
When you actually do that it is very funny to watch how fast they backpedal and take their complaints back. 
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Iâm still thinking about other comments and responses on this thread, but I want to quickly jump in to respond to this quote. In my experience, âtoxicâ is a basic operation mode in volunteer organisations, so to speak. The reason is simple â no feedback loop to control âtoxicâ behaviour. In companies there are usually clear set of goals and monetary compensation. You are doing bad â you are out. In volunteer organisations people are usually controlled by guilt / responsibility (âoh, she is doing so much for the team, I will not confront her on her bad behaviourâ), which opens a whole can of worms related to manipulative behaviour. Volunteer organisations are perfect places to exercise (imaginary) power. In my eyes, this is truly a tragedy. I value very high any type of volunteering as a form of societal activity, yet it brings a lot of dark sides from people. Especially in people, who donât have lots of cash income from their jobs to provide a foudation to build this personal volunteering activity.
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We are derailing the conversation a little bit. Could we create a separate thread for it? Let me think a day or two, and I will create one. Iâm thinking about an approach via money: you have free $10,000 / $100,000 / $300,000 / $1,000,000 that you want to spend on Go, in what Go activitity / community / people / etc. do you invest in order to bring the best possible outcome for the Go community, in your opinion? Obviously, this also requires some thinking about what are the critical bottlenecks or opportunities there.
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