User talk:HermanHiddema

Go Rules
Herman, I'm disappointed you reverted my tweaks. If you think someone made an error, fix it, improve what the Wikipedian did. But you reverted a number of fixes I made, including the text that the differences "very occasionally lead to different results". Not only is that poor English, it's wrong and contrary to what it later says in the article. To your "correction": my text said nothing about which is older. So go easy with the revert button, in misunderstanding text you restored a known error. --Reagle (talk) 22:58, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Your text contained several errors, and did in fact make claims about the age of the scoring systems. Your text: There are two basic scoring systems used to determine the winner at the end of a game. They nearly always give the same score but can differ in a few scenarios. In area scoring, used in China today, a player's score is the number of living stones and empty intersections they surround. Territory scoring, which is believed to have originated in China in the 15th century and is now used in Japan and Korea, also counts captured stones. Problems with this text: I do not think that we need to explain the difference between the scoring systems in this paragraph, that is what the next section is for. As for the other textual change, there is little difference between "They nearly always give the same score but can differ in a few scenarios" and "These very occasionally lead to different results", but I have no objection to your formulation. I fail to see why the original formulation is wrong, though. HermanHiddema (talk) 11:09, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It is area scoring that originated in the 15th century, not territory scoring.
 * it does not "also count captured stones", it "counts captured stones instead of stones on the board"

Well, I'm no expert (as is apparent) but I found it utterly confusing (as is apparent). "Very occasionally" is a nonsensical construction. I've changed the text. Two other points I was confused by, but haven't changed till we suss this out is:
 * I felt I was reading two paragraphs of history with references to scoring systems I didn't even understand.
 * The references were used inconsistently, are they called by their descriptive or geographical names.

I'll continue this on the article Talk page. --Reagle (talk) 12:41, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, lets try to improve the article on these points. I'll watch the article talk page. HermanHiddema (talk) 12:59, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Origins of Chess
Good work; thanks! J S Ayer 01:06, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

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Origins of Chess
I just want to say that this edit you made is appreciated. Nice work on hunting down a public access version for everyone to read ! Havelock the Dane Talk 15:12, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

A tag has been placed on, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done because the article appears to be a repost of material that was previously deleted following a. If you can indicate how Go software is different from the previously posted material, or if you can indicate why this article should not be deleted, I advise you to place the template hangon underneath the other template on the article, and also put a note on Talk:Go software saying why this article should stay. An admin should check for such edits before deleting the article. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Please read our criteria for speedy deletion, particularly item 4 under General criteria. If you believe the original discussion was unjustified, please feel free to use deletion review, but do not continue to repost the article if it is deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. We welcome your help in trying to improve Wikipedia, and we request you to follow these instructions.  Nate  · ( chatter ) 23:17, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Season's Greetings
May this season bring you success, good times and happiness. Looking forward to working with you in the future. Hαvεlok  беседа   мансарда  07:20, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

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Article size
Hello... I left a note on the article size talk page. I think you have a sockpuppet issue running through your discussion so I'm requesting a checkuser of the discussion page. I don't know if this is over the top but I've been dealing with a troll for about a year now and I'm terribly sick of it. Mrshaba (talk) 18:12, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure how to go about the checkuser request as I've never done one. The sockpuppets appear to be 199.125.109.xxx, Oakwillow and recently Apteva but there are probably many more. I've been dealing with a long term disruption issue from 199.125.109.xxx on the solar energy page. The article size logic is being used to chop off hunks of the page although the readable prose is reasonable. This is doubly annoying because the page is currently GA and working towards FA. I've scanned through 199's edit history a while back and found the a coincidence between the article size page and the Go page. This in and of itself is by no means a crime but the stubborn disruption of both pages seems characteristic of what I've dealt with and as I said, I'm terribly sick of it. If you have any ideas I'd like to hear them. Mrshaba (talk) 19:48, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Well the first thing to understand about checkuser is that it is a last resort confirmation of a sockpuppet, and the results are confidential. So you don't do a checkuser, you do a sockpuppet, however you have to understand that multiple usernames are permitted as long as they do not pretend to be separate users arguing one issue. So for example if you wish to do editing from home using Foo and from work using Bar, that is perfectly acceptable as long as you do not add Foo and Bar to the same poll, or try to make the same edit, making it look like two users are in favor of something or opposed to it, which would make them sockpuppets. The page you were asking about has several editors participating in the discussion, but if you do a user history you will quickly convince yourself that none are sockpuppets of another. Since I am the one that you have the most complaints about, it would be easier if you simply addressed them to me, instead of running all over the place. As an IP user, many if not most of my edits are using different accounts, but I am always careful not to vote twice on any issue, which would be what would happen were I using sockpuppets. Note, any discussion left on IP talk pages is rarely seen, so it will generally be moved to the userpage who left it so that the discussion can be carried on in a place where it can be found. This note may be moved to user talk:Mrshaba if you wish. Replies to user talk:199xxx are unlikely to be seen. 199.125.109.110 (talk) 22:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi Mrshaba. As far as I can tell, 199.125.109.xxx and Oakwillow are the same person, but this does not constitute sockpuppetry. I have not asked Oakwillow, but the account Oakwillow was only registered recently and seems to edit the same articles that 199.xxx did. However, there is nothing wrong with a user that first edits from an ip address without logging in and that later makes an account and logs in. Oakwillow has never claimed not to be 199.xxx and has never claimed that the user 199.xxx supported his point of view, or any such dishonest activity. As such, his editing may be annoying to you, and he may make edits that contradict your point of view, he sure makes edits that contradict mine, but that does not constitute vandalism.
 * Oakwillow has also, in the past, trimmed the Go (board game) article in the same way you experience with the solar energy article. With the same rationale of reducing article size. I and other editors have reverted this, and have engaged on discussion on the subject. He has not trimmed the article since. I would suggest that you seek the help of other regular editors of the solar energy article in reverting and warning the user. If several editors agree that the material should not be removed, and if you warn a user that you will ask for a block if they continue to go against the consensus of editors, then you have grounds to proceed with such a block if the user continues disruptively editing.
 * Also I have in the past worked constructively with 199.xxx, for example in the article go and mathematics, which he started and of which he wrote large parts. I personally have no experience with the checkuser procedure, but I think that in this case there is insufficient reason to go through with it. HermanHiddema (talk) 22:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the response and I appreciate your constructive comments. I had noticed the debate on the article size talk page seemed to be carried first by 199 then Oakwillow so that's where the sockpuppet thing comes in. I thought there was finally a chance of connecting the dots but you are right about the application of checkuser. I've set up a "moving and removing" section to discuss trimming on the solar energy talk page and it's worked for the most part. I'm the sole regular on the SE page so dealing with 199 has been complicated. It's getting close to the finish line though so that's nice. Good luck with Go. Mrshaba (talk) 23:36, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If you are not familiar with the dashboard, you can find out that while you have edited SE more than anyone else, there are (were) seven other frequent contributors. The definition of incestuous is having an insufficient gene pool, so I wouldn't be too proud of being the only contributor. It isn't a good thing to be. Go (board game) has a larger number of editors, at least twenty. I think that the reason why others don't wish to edit "your" article is that you are not very welcoming. There are other editors who also try to guard "their" articles. However it serves no useful purpose. 199.125.109.110 (talk) 00:10, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Fixing your citations
I'm fixing the Go article citations for you. I'll be editing the page shortly. — Wackymacs ( talk  ~  edits ) 10:04, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Wonderful, thanks! I was quite dreading doing it all by hand :-) HermanHiddema (talk) 11:03, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * No problem. The rest of the Further reading list needs formatting using the Citation template, as I have done to the historical books. Please use http://www.worldcat.org to find full information about books (author, title, year, publisher, ISBN/OCLC, edition). — Wackymacs ( talk  ~  edits ) 11:14, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * When adding access dates to the Citation templates, you need to put brackets around the full dates in order to link them, like: 2008-06-16, in order to get 2008-06-16. — Wackymacs ( talk  ~  edits ) 14:04, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I noticed that some current citations do that, and some don't. As it is good to be consistent, I think it would be a good idea to make them all the same. Is there a wikipedia preference on whether or not to link them, or can I just choose one and stick with it? HermanHiddema (talk) 14:07, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * They should all be linked really, I haven't seen an FA that doesn't have them linked. — Wackymacs ( talk  ~  edits ) 14:23, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll do that then, thanks! HermanHiddema (talk) 14:24, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Rules of Go
I've temporarily reverted your change, simply because a number of other things would have to change too. I prefer stones being connected to themselves, but am getting a feeling I'm in the minority. If people really want this, I can rewrite the various parts that need to change. Please see the discussion page of the article. 136.152.224.6 (talk) 21:39, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for sticking up for me on the language this editor is using to criticize my contributions. And thanks for your support on the substance of the disagreement, as well. 67.150.255.245 (talk) 01:52, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Herman,

About the definition of territory, most rule sets use the word "surrounded" and are useless here. (Just imagine a single stone in the middle of the board. The word "surrounded" certainly doesn't match our intuition.)

So we need to rely on more precise rules. Here is the definition of a player's territory from the Simplified Ing Rules:


 * "empty regions that are adjacent only to intersections with stones of his colour."

The way I read this, empty regions that are adjacent to no stones at all satisfy the condition.

The statement amounts to saying that a region belongs to, say, white territory if: for every stone adjacent to the region, that stone is black. This is a vacuous truth when the board is empty.

This still appears to me to be the appropriate interpretation with Tromp-Taylor rules, though there might be room for argument there.

67.150.247.28 (talk) 21:53, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't read it that way, if territory is adjacent to no stones, then it belongs to no color. Eg: What stones surround this territory? None. What is the color of those stones? They have none. To which player does the territory belong then? None of them. And although I agree that "surrounded" is not intuitive in the case of single stone, I have no trouble in seeing a single stone as surrounding territory in a mathematical sense.
 * But all of that is really besides the point, in my opinion. What is more important is that the definition you gave was different from those in the cited sources. Both sources use a definition that basically comes down to "adjacent only to stones of his own color". I do not dispute that your definition of "not adjacent to stones of the opponent's color" is a valid way one might describe territory, and that under that definition the empty board is an edge case in which all of it belongs to both players. The problem is that your definition is not backed up by the citations, they do not use that way to formulate the definition, and as such it falls in the domain of original research. HermanHiddema (talk) 15:44, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think that a single stone in the middle of the board really surrounds anything. And I believe that you are reinterpreting "adjacent only to stones of his color" as meaning "adjacent to stones of his color, and only to stones of his color". I think the previous definition was exactly synonymous with the one given by the Simplified Ing Rules. I think the score would be 361-361 with an empty board under Simplified Ing Rules.
 * I believe that the statement that territory can never belong to both players could equally be original research if it is understood to apply to an empty board as well. So far, we don't have any sources specifying whose interpretation of existing definitions of territory, yours or mine, is correct when the board is empty.
 * On the other hand, since this is beyond dispute when the board is not empty, and this is important for an understanding of territory, some statement to the effect that in normal cases a point cannot belong to both players is desirable. 67.150.247.241 (talk) 19:59, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

The authors commentary on the Simplified Ing rules specifically addresses this case, see the section "Simplified Ing Rules - Commentary", under "Region", point 5: So we do have a source specifying whose interpretation is correct. HermanHiddema (talk) 20:28, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * During scoring an empty region does not provide any points if a) it is adjacent to at least one black intersection and adjacent to at least one white intersection or b) the whole board is empty
 * All right. I hadn't noticed that. Thanks for finding that it. 67.150.247.241 (talk) 20:40, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that the quote you've given makes the intent of the Simplified Ing Rules indisputable. However, their actual wording is confusing, at least to me, because they appear to say the opposite of what they intend in the case of an empty board. I don't think it will be original research to give a definition of territory that matches the intent of the Simplified Ing Rules, but which is clearer. I've done that now. If you don't like it, or if you feel that removing this ambiguity in wording is original research, then please revert my edits and we'll discuss the issue further. 67.150.247.241 (talk) 21:16, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * On the side issue of what makes the most sense mathematically, the question is: is a certain point surrounded by the set of black stones on the board? To say yes in a way that retains some of the intuitive meaning of "surrounded" means that you can't get from that point to a white stone without hitting a black stone or going off the edge of the board. The edge of the board is there to help you surround the territory. Even when you have no stones on the board, it is still there to help you surround territory. That's why in my view, 0, 1 or 2 black stones in the middle of the board are equally capable of surrounding territory.67.150.246.190 (talk) 00:28, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the current version is fine, it is in line with the citations provided. Personally, I would choose to make the edge case of empty boards a footnote, as it is not very important. HermanHiddema (talk) 09:18, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

On the mathematical issue, I am not disputing that your interpretation is a valid one. I think that both interpretations can be valid, and that this is mostly a language issue on what the word "only" means in that context. Mathematically, saying "his and only his stones" is clearer than saying "only his stones", but I think that most people will interpret the second to be equivalent to the first in this situation. This is similar to how people can interpret the meaning of the word "or" in context as being exclusive or not. Eg, if a multiple choice test starts with the text "For each question, choose A, B or C", people will interpret this as an "xor" (ie, choosing A and B is invalid). But if a questionnaire has the question "Are you under 18 or female?", females under 18 will answer yes. It would've been clearer if the second question was phrased "under 18 and/or female", but people will interpret the question that way anyway. HermanHiddema (talk) 09:18, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll give some more thought to how to make the issue of an empty board less prominent while making only fully accurate statements. A footnote, as you suggest, may turn out to be the best idea. In any case, the fact that the issue is mentioned at all in one rule set (albeit in the commentary) means that we don't have to feel too bad about bringing it up.
 * Since this issue is so insignificant, it would perhaps not have been such an offence against the rule on original research to retain the definition that was there before while acknowledging that in one unusual case it's not equivalent to rule sets in use that are clear on the issue. 128.32.238.145 (talk) 23:50, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

The old text gave reasonably prominent mention of this edge case, putting it in the main text near the top of the "Territory" section. I removed it, because I considered it untrue as well as unimportant. You put it back, which lead me to find another way to try and fix it, so I tried to rewrite the definition of territory so that it agreed with existing rule sets and did not award the empty board to both players. Had you put it in a footnote—preferably of the form "under this definition, the empty board is an exceptional situation in which all territory belongs to both players"—I don't think I would've bothered with it further. I'll try and help with the footnoting/citing/referencing bit of the article in the coming days. HermanHiddema (talk) 07:56, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and for a better understanding of my thinking, it may be important to realize that mathematically, I consider go as a game played on a graph, not on a grid. In a graph, there is no concept of "edge of the board". Perhaps this makes my view on "surrounding" subtly different from yours (maybe not though). It means that mathematically, I would consider the phrase "without hitting a black stone or going off the edge of the board" as strange. HermanHiddema (talk) 08:03, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't think the word "surround" really makes any sense at all intuitively if you don't include the edge of the board. That's why 0 or 1 black stone doesn't make a difference to me. Also, territory could be surrounded by both Black and White, if you imagine a little white square inside a big black one. Obviously, go awards the territory in the middle to White, because you reach white first.
 * So we're pretty much left with the idea Tromp and Taylor call "reaching" black or white. For the most part, belonging to Black's territory = not reaching White. You're saying that an exception should be made when the point reaches neither. The justification I might see for this is a distaste for the possibility that a point could belong to both players, because it's something that nobody's ever seen, it's generally weird, and it makes no difference if the point is considered neutral territory instead. But mathematically, it's the simplest definition.67.150.245.147 (talk) 20:55, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not saying that an exception should be made, I'm saying that an exception is made by current rule sets. I have never disputed the fact that your definition is a concise and elegant way to describe territory mathematically. But that is beside the point. Wikipedia is not the place in introduce new definitions, only to document existing ones. So my only argument with regards to "surrounding" is that I think that the AGA rules intend for the empty board to be neutral, not shared. I guess the only way to be sure would be to contact the AGA and have them publish an official amendment on it. But given the fact that the writer of the EGF rules has made the intention in his rules clear, I'm not going to bother with all that. The EGF rules precedent is enough for me to go with the current definition. HermanHiddema (talk) 21:57, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I used the word should only because we'd gone on to talking about what made sense mathematically (for example, graphs, etc.). I understand that your arguments about what should go in the article relate mostly to what is done.
 * I agree that Wikipedia is not the place for things that are essentially new. But one can imagine situations in which, to explain things that are already known, one departs slightly from things that have been said exactly in a particular way. To take a trivial example, in an article about multiplication, one might multiply two numbers that have never been multiplied before. So everything depends on each person's appreciation of the significance of the departure in question.
 * The truth is, I don't think the previous definition would have been original research, so long as it was clearly used only for the purposes of the article, and made no claim to universality. However, given the discomfort that some people may feel with the result in the case of an empty board, as a matter of finding the best compromise, I'm happy to use a definition of territory that we're certain matches exactly the one used by another rule set. 128.32.238.145 (talk) 04:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Original research claim by Kibiusa
Hi Herman. Kibiusa believes that the example in the section "Territory" where the players pass too early constitutes original research. I'd appreciate comment at Talk:Rules of Go. 128.32.238.145 (talk) 04:38, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

The Joseki Page external reference discussion
Hi Herman,

You may have noticed some discussions on the Joseki page of wikipedia about external references. I was just wondering if you are aware of the discussion about the blacklisting of the brugo joseki dictionary. There's been some attempts to whitelist it again at the following page:. However it looks like they only care to listen to people with some wikipedia background such as you. I tried ... maybe you are interested in giving it a shot?

Well I certainly think the gobase link should stay too, but personally I think it's rather ironic how a big joseki dictionary (with a couple of 1000 diagrams) like brugo was banned for being 'spam'. While gobase describes itself there as being a 'joseki dictionary' while it features only about 20 diagrams. Quantity isn't everything of course, but still gobase isn't really a website "devoted" to joseki, it's an alround website about go, which should just be referenced at the Go page, if you ask me. While BruGo ONLY writes about Joseki. It's totally devoted to it.

Friendly Greetings B. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.136.183.12 (talk) 15:59, 15 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, I am aware of that discussion, and currently heavily involved in it. I am trying to get brugo.be unlisted, but I do not think we should add it back to the Joseki page. I do think that BruGo is an excellent piece of work, but the rules about wikipedia external links are fairly restrictive. For example, on the Internet Go server page, you will not find external links to KGS, IGS, DragonGoServer, etc. Instead, the article refers to Sensei's Library's "list of Go servers" (and similar lists). The same is true for Go software, where there are no links to specific software, only to lists of software at SL, AGA, BGA, etc. This situation is similar, as for Joseki there are several online resources (BruGo, GoBase, Kogo's/Eidogo, Sensei's Library, fuseki.info, etc), some commercial, some free. The most likely result at the Joseki article is thus that the article will refer to an external (probably Sensei's Library) list of Joseki References. HermanHiddema (talk) 16:18, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Sounds fair to me. You do have a good point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.177.242.93 (talk) 23:11, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Go vandal
Thanks for reverting the vandalism! JohnRussell (talk) 16:17, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Chess priject
Hello, you might want to consider joining WikiProject Chess. Bubba73 (talk), 20:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Re: Go (game)
I'm not going to relist Go when it clearly fails current GA criteria; the seven day limit is enforced because there are hundreds of other GAs that have to be swept; if significant efforts are made to improve the article, I generally hold for a longer period, but that wasn't the case. The article can be renominated through WP:GAN at any time, but I would encourage some fixes before then. Cheers, Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ( talk  ) 19:01, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of IGS Go server


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Capitalizing Go
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