You just want the thing you want to be the way you want it. I don’t think we can reach an agreement, let’s drop this. 
For anyone interested, my proposal stands. Open to improvements.
Intended as a mini companion event to March Challenge.
You are of course still welcome, just in case there’s some confusion about it. Everyone is.
I just want the tourney to succeed. Last time was a failure (as Clossius said), I’m pointing out exactly why (as many people expressed previously, even the winner of past event made the suggestion). Many people express concern over this. Many people won’t join. It’s disappointing to see someone nailing it with the event, publicity, etc… Just dropping the ball massively on a key element to any event by not including a starting date
Btw, please don’t say things like “You just want the thing you want to be the way you want it”. Attacking the other people by giving them motive or describing them in any way, shape or form to reduce their arguments isn’t helpful.
If you can’t/don’t want to refute arguments, sure. But let’s refrain from personal attacks or assigning motive to someone 
Keeps the community and discussions healthier ^^
I was a participant last time, had a bad experience because of that lack of rule, was hoping it’d change this time around. It won’t and it’s ok. Just won’t participate and I wanted to make sure organizers would know exactly why. I could have just thought “nah, I won’t join” but I care so I tried to give the feedback… In retrospect, I shouldn’t have. My bad.
Ok, let me try it this way: organizer wants to do X. Y is a viable suggestion for improvement. Should be stated, discussion is good. Organizer states they prefer X. At some point, it’s useful and the nice thing to do to accept organizer’s choice and stop pushing for Y with all arsenal possible.
You don’t seem to accept any other outcome other than for it to be how you want it to be. I’m not saying you are wrong, I’m saying there’s a limit to keep pushing.
That’s how they envision it, I let it be.
Also, you get to play around with my idea, but you didn’t.
I went with what you said, streamers are best publicity, start date, prize, live, and open to suggestions. Before main event, for traction.
I’m not even C in Clossius, I’m nobody, but really, you can help shape an event to how you like it and don’t even bother? That’s why I’m saying you seem intent to change that event specifically, not help find a satisfying outlet.
(I’m surprised we haven’t gotten a split topic yet 
)
I’m just trying to help the event. As stated, I shouldn’t have tried to get the event to change, should have just ignored it, not posted and played in it. At no point did organizers say “Nah, thanks, but we’re doing X for Y reason”. I heart many “it’s not that bad to not have a starting line”.
As many players stated, the current rules hurt the event and make it so that less people will want to join. That’s why I tried to fight my hardest to help make their voices heard. Players who aren’t playing on OGS don’t have a voice on the forums so I tried my best at representing them. People want to join events on OGS. Please, listen to them.
On that note, I’ve made all the points me and others have mentioned in our discussions and I rest my case. You won’t find players from other servers joining the event. People have no incentive to try when you give them a disadvantage.
And no, you didn’t go with what I said. I said “encourage people from other servers to join, get streamers for publicity, make it as welcoming as possible for everyone to join”. You offered a streamer-only tournament of who can finish 50 games first. Those two things have nothing in common.
Anywho, that’s the point where I give up. Tried my best but I’ll stick on active servers where I can get live games ^^ Was hoping this would make OGS viable to play on, sadly, it won’t (just like last time)
I did it, sorry for the delay 
Yes, I think it should only count games which both start and end in March, but if the organizer would reply with a clear acknowledgement of the concerns and an explanation of why he feels his current format is better, then that’s that.
I signed up when I first read the announcement, having not thought of the loophole (I was actually under the impression that only live games were counted last year, and that the spirit of the challenge was to encourage live games, but I reread last year’s announcement after getting further into this thread, and I was mistaken there), but am now regretting it unless this simple change occurs. It’s not about winning prize money, I was doubtful I’d even go for 100 games, though the badge for doing so was tempting, but it doesn’t feel good to play in a competition which one doesn’t think is fair.
Just to clarify, this is not a clear acknowledgement of valid concerns and an explanation why the existing format is better because it does not address why also requiring correspondence games to begin in March would violate this motive.
Yep. It’s also not valid to move the entire discussion to a different thread called “Correspondence games in WSC” because not all concerns voiced here are about the correspondence part (and indeed my main concern, incentive, has very little to do with the game format).
I’ve only read through the thread/threads once, but I’m sure you’re correct. Moving everything to a second thread is the correct first step anyway, then relevant posts can be moved back.
Pedantry? Really @_Sofiam ? It’s fine to be biased, but do you have to actively denigrate people who voice their concerns?
I am not the one who changed the title, but I find this one more appropriate.
No that was me.
It doesn’t have a sentiment attached, it’s just shorthand for discussion over another thread, as usual.
Thanks for clarifying, I was worried for a second. I suggest “WSC Discussion” instead of that nonsense.
I feel that if you want to get people to play, the goal should try to get everyone to participate. Have people who offer game reviews if people reach x number of games, if you reach y number of games you have a chance to get a free lesson from someone like a lottery. When I did the WDC last year, I lost a lot of motivation seeing how I got through 200 games in the first 5 days and saw that wasnt enough to overtake Sofiam. I’m sure a lot of people who were trying to win were also disheartened at the massive amount of games that were being played by a few people, main corr players which is what people want to change for this challenge.
You want to try and make players compete against themselves and to play more, not make them face against everyone.
I’ll offer reviews to anyone who gets 50 games in by March 15th, (so anyone who is on track to reaching 100 by the end of the month)
(I’m not super strong though, it’s up to you if you want to accept it)
That’s a problem with the core idea.
[Most games wins] is effectively a “war of attrition” game (cf. game theory link above) and more or less translates into “whoever has the most free time wins”.
If you really want to bring more people to OGS, you have to highlight something that’s best on OGS. [Receive x for playing] is a tactic you want to employ if playing isn’t actually rewarding in itself.
The “Houses” for instance are an example of something that only exists on OGS (despite being largely defunct nowadays?). Strong players aren’t rewarded for creating a house. Weak players aren’t rewarded for joining. They reward each other by participating.
That kind of scheme (again, the general idea, not the specific implementation) can work.
Okay so I will try to address the topics brought up.
Firstly, I am sticking by my decision to allow correspondence games as OGS has a very large percentage of players who only play correspondence. Many players cannot play live games and they just don’t have time. I want them to be able to enjoy the event as well.
As for games finishing in March, I delayed elaborating on this because I wasn’t even sure if it was possible for Anoek to query when games started vs when they finished in the same query and we even discussed if the average time started/finished should be taken into consideration. But again, I needed to know if this was even possible before responding.
As such, it is possible but with more brainstorming, I still feel people who play correspondence will likely need the extra time since 30 days is not a lot of time for those who only played 1-3 moves per day per game. Thus I will not be changing the rule that we will just count games that finished in March.
With that being said, I do agree with many concerns, the main one of which is it seems to be most effective to combine correspondence with live games to achieve the highest results. I personally don’t see this as bad because more games are more games. But I can understand how many people will feel cheated if they only played live but others did something else that gave them an edge. With this information, I plan to add a separate category for correspondence and separate live from correspondence in the future as many people seemed upset at the way it is currently done. My reason for not doing it is with more divisions there is less prize money per person.
As for the point about the math, I’m fully aware that it is not worth someone’s time to get the prize. But I would like to ask you how many Go tournaments are? I’ve won tournaments and I’ve spent more money going that the prize was. It was just a nice bonus but I wouldn’t refuse to Go compete because I lost money. I enjoy playing Go. This is an unfortunate problem but Go just doesn’t have enough money. Teaching Go is my main source of income and it is not a 6 figure job where I can sponsor a ton of cash. I apologize if the prize is not incentivizing.
To be clear, the event is to encourage more games. I understand that some suggested taking the prize money out. I can almost guarantee though, if I had made the event without prize money many players would say that I won’t get people to join without offering a prize. I doubt I can please everyone so I plan to keep the prizes to reward those who go above and beyond.
I will repeat, this event is to encourage more games/activity on western servers. This year, specifically OGS. To respond to some of Bonesaw’s concerns. I believe you have a very understandable misunderstanding about this event. The previous year, the Western Dan Challenge was targeted at getting more Dan played to play on OGS instead of Tygem and Fox. Due to a lot of excitement and request, we included kyu players as well. When I say the event failed, I do not mean that it didn’t do well, it just didn’t achieve the specific result I wanted.
I set out to try to get more Dan players on OGS. While many did play for that month, almost none stuck around. However, if I remember these numbers correctly, we upped the games played in February from 2,000-3,000 live games played to something like 10,000 games. We also have over 300 people register for the event. (I don’t expect the same results this year as it is less promoted and less inclusive.)
Because it didn’t achieve what I wanted I didn’t plan to try again, however there was a lot of people excited to meet the challenge and wanted me to host the event again. With all of this, I decided to change to goal from getting more Dan players, to just making a fun event for everyone to participate in and create more activity for the community. Thus, the name change.
To expand on your point about Fox being the go to for Dan players. I agree completely. However, looking into this, LiChess has roughly 10,000 people online at the same time. I expect Fox to have similar numbers. OGS has about 2,000 people on at the same time. This event will NOT increase OGS users by 5 times. As for getting new players, while the event did get a lot of new accounts and people coming back to play, there wasn’t really any lasting effect that we could tell. So this event will not be able to solve that problem and thus, I change it from solving a problem to just making something for people to enjoy and increasing activity in the community.
I will also include that this is a challenge more than a competition. I will admit with prize money it does come off as a competition more than I expected/wanted it to. However, I really did try to make prizes for everyone who completed the challenge as well as reward those who took it even further and played the most in the month.
One more note on the correspondence before I forget to mention it, I do plan to change it next year to be it’s own category like Rengo. But I will not be doing it this year as I don’t want to make such a massive change right after announcing the event.
Please remember, this is a new event and I will be learning more about running it and making it better each year. I do take the feedback into consideration and I try my best to make an event that most will enjoy while accepting I can’t please everyone. However, please do not make the entire thread arguments about if I am running it correctly or not. If you have stated your view and responding with clarifications, just leave it at that. I don’t want to see arguments start over this event and I really don’t want my event to have a negative feeling in anyone’s head. I’m simply trying to make a fun event for everyone.
As for the streamer prize. I just didn’t have it in the budget this year. My wife and I are having a lot of medical bills to deal with and for our privacy I request that this thread not start a discussion about it.
For others offering to donate to the prize pool, there was a lot of issues managing money for many sources and it was a bit stressful to get it all right and not miss anything or lose much from transaction cost. I also feel that while it is great to have a bit bigger prize, it is not significant enough to make a huge impact to solve the problem of, it is not worth someone’s time mathematically because the hourly rate will still be low regardless. Additionally, being accused of stealing money from strangers is not fun. (I do have records of all transactions btw. So no I didn’t steal it.)
I hope this addresses all the issues pointed out above. To clarify, I do not expect this to solve every issue. But I will continue to run this event as best I can and try to improve it each year. Thank you all for the feedback, and let’s all try to remember that we are all Go players who are just trying to help our community.
~C
Thank you for explaining your reasoning. This makes me feel much better about participating and having a good time playing games.
Since it makes you uncomfortable, I’m removing my suggestion for an additional streamer event.
I fully support the event you are organizing, as you are organizing it.
I’m still happy to contribute this or another time, if I can.