I've finally signed up for the public beta, and I'm confused. I make no claims that it's anyone's fault but my own. I added one position to the queue and hit study.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c This is the joskei I entered.
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c This is the position that it gives when I go to study.
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . B . . . |
$$ | . . . B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . B . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . W . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

After playing the pincer, there seem to be a lot of choices available.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c Partial continuation.
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . 1 W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . 3 2 . . . . . , . . . . . B . . . |
$$ | . . 4 B 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . B . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . W . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

In particular, move doesn't seem forced, and I'm left wondering if I'm just supposed to guess in positions like this.

Looking at my question, I don't actually see any way the website is doing something wrong, but I just end up feeling confused. Am I using the website right? Do I need to change how I select joseki for study?

P.S. When you finish a variation, the position automatically shifts to the next one. I see why you do that, but it prevents you from looking at the completed joseki and thinking about the board position.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

Thanks for trying it, I really appreciate the feedback. I definitely need to write some stuff explaining how it works!

For now, here's a few bullet points.

* When you add a joseki from the select page, it will try to split out major variations into separate groups for your queue. You'll start off studying the first position from each group. Every two days (if you continue using the system) it will add an additional position from each group.

* In each group, it adds sub variations so that you won't get 15 examples of the same joseki all in a row. It bases things off of frequency, which means if pros really like to play something complicated in the position, you'll get complicated tests. I'm considering adding something to rate joseki by simplicity and offer to teach them in that order, but that is still in the "thinking" stage.

* If you're not sure what you want to learn, put in a position with few stones (like the position you showed). If you want to learn something specific, put in the specific thing, it will tell you how many example "test" positions contain it.

* Test positions always come from a game in which a pro played into the position you entered. They may get to that position with a move order other than the one you specified.

* Test positions have two purposes: 1) The first time you see it, it's a "guess the next pro move" whole board problem. 2) The rest of the times you see it, it's also memory problem. You always replay the joseki in the context of a whole board position where a pro actually played it, so you can learn when it is appropriate as well as what the moves are.

* You get three chances for each individual move, so don't be afraid to guess; the system will tell you what the move was after the third incorrect guess.

* If you make three wrong guesses for three separate moves, the system figures you don't know the joseki at all and will show you the rest of it. If this happens, you'll get a chance to try it again at some later point in the session.

* My usage seems to indicate that the above two points are enough to help you remember the joseki even in positions lacking external clues.

* After correctly getting through an entire joseki, it will ask you how easy it was. Your answer determines how soon you'll see it again (similar to Anki or SuperMemo, etcetera). When you see this screen, the left side will have two links, one to adjust the test (make it longer or shorter, and/or start earlier or later) and one to remove it entirely.

* The server collects (anonymous, of course) statistics on each joseki-- if enough people use the system, I will be able to both rate the average difficulty for each one and optimize the timing algorithm, so you'll learn the same amount but take fewer tests.

So, I hope that helps, please ask for clarification if something above needs it. Any confusion you may feel is entirely my own fault for not putting explanations anywhere!

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

Up till now, I had only used "browse," but today I registered and ended up reaching my daily limit in about 5 minutes before figuring out how to organize what I want to study. Well, tomorrow's another day, I guess.

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

Sorry! I made sure to err on the side of "too restrictive" because if I relax the limits later everyone will be happy but if I tighten them I will be a big villain... It's supposed to be a *little* annoying because I'd like this project to stop costing me money at some point in the future, but if everyone thinks it's too short, I could change it.

Actually, maybe I shouldn't limit the tests at all on the first day you sign up. Yeah, I like that idea.

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

Yes, I signed up today and was confused by that too. From reading the description I thought that I would choose 5 patterns that I wanted to see variations sprouting from, so I picked 4-4, low approach as my first, 4-4, high approach as my second... and then it told me that it was full. Are you supposed to put in the entire joseki that you want to be tested on?

Other things that you could tweak:

*i* On the very last move, the board jumps directly to "difficulty" without giving you a chance to see what the last move was.

*ii* The program will jump over twenty moves in another part of the board, say "white to move in upper left", and then once you find that move, jump over another thirty moves, ask you to find a move "on the right side", which actually means in the center... I really like the idea of learning the big follow-ups to a joseki while you learn the joseki, but I'd like to see two changes: (i) presumably you can make it so that move "X" only gets shown as a follow-up if it appears as the next big move in some percentage of the games (to get rid of things like the random black stone that spills into the upper right from the lower left on move 70), and (ii) personally I would learn more if twenty intervening moves were shown as a quick animated sequence, rather suddenly popping onto the board.

*ii* From the first five or six joseki I played through, it seems like the same joseki always shows up in the context of exactly the same game. From your description of how this works (i.e., the first joseki I see is the most commonly played, second is second most common), there should be hundreds of games where the joseki appeared, no? Would it be inordinately difficult for the program to call up a different board configuration each time it wants to test you on a given joseki?

I hope this doesn't seem like whining! Just suggestions from a first-time user. I've always thought the graphic design on Daily Joseki is (mostly) amazing, btw - did you do it yourself?

I was going to say, "Just put in a 4-4 stone; You should get examples of both," but I went and checked-- the low approach is nearly 50 times as frequent, so you probably would need to put in the high approach by itself (like you did) to get any/many examples of it.

My wording is probably not best and the system itself may not be final; at the moment it lets you add positions as long as there's five or fewer groups in your queue, but the thing that isn't obvious is that each position you add might end up creating more than one group (up to five if the variations are evenly distributed).



Others have noted this. I haven't yet thought of a good way to both ask "how hard was this" and show the final position. Suggestions are welcome though.



Fair points. (i) is actually part of the system already, unfortunately those random moves end up matching between games sometimes. By default, the tests end when there are no longer at least 3 (IIRC) pro games that agree on the next move. However, if you adjust the test and make it longer, I don't have a system to filter that sort of thing out. (ii) is something I might consider doing in the future if enough people agree with you.




Instead of answering directly, I think a little more explanation of what it's doing might be in order.

Let's say the distribution is AAAABBBCCDD, where each letter is an example of a variation. I add these to a group in your queue in the order ABCDABCDABA*. On the first two days, you'll only see the first thing in your queue, a single example of variation A. The next two days, you'll see the example of B, but not that example of A (unless it was very very difficult for you). Next C, and so on, until you finally get back to a separate example of variation A. In other words, the system wants you to "memorize" the particular examples of the variation(s) one at a time. After you've used it for a while, the variations will be all jumbled up (according to difficulty) and will appear to you in no particular order.

[*] That order is specifically so that you won't see the same thing over and over for days.

Now, the only way you should see the same thing over and over on the first day is:

* The system had to show you every move; if that happens, you'll get the same exact test again later in the session. If the system has to show you the answer a second time, you'll get the test a 3rd time and so on. It doesn't consider you to have really taken the test until you've gotten through it with minimal help. (You can tell if this happens-- it won't ask you how hard it was)

* You clicked "get another test from your queue" and there isn't a lot of variation in one of the groups in your queue, so all the tests are similar.



I really appreciate the comments, thank you for trying it! If nothing else it tells me what sort of things I will need to explain better. My wife did the graphics for the website, any less than amazing parts are probably my own additions.

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

So I decided to try to learn the avalanche... first variation has 40 moves. I may be in trouble.

Would it be difficult to set it so that it expects one more click anywhere as the "last move", and accepts any coordinate as the right answer?



Okay - so on subsequent days, when it tests me on the same variation it will take it from a different game?



Your wife has great taste, and you have good judgment. Before you officially launch DJ, you should ask her to play around with the fonts a little. (I like the courier-ish font you use on the navigation bar, but the sans-serif font that you use for the content is a little blah.)

Yes. Yes you might.

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

Not a bad idea. One thing to keep in mind is that I expect eventually you'll have rather a lot in your queue and will want to go through things rapidly, so I want to make the process as quick as possible.




What is in your queue are particular examples from pro games. So, you will continue to see the game you saw today, but with less frequency, and you will get other examples of the same variation as time goes on. If you've ever used Anki, imagine that I make a card for every pro game/joseki combination, and I add a new one to your stack periodically. If you say "5" a couple times in a row you won't see that particular game for more than a week (I forget the exact numbers).

I didn't want it to give you a random game for every joseki every time (I get the feeling that's what you were expecting) for a few reasons:
* Primarily, I want you to be able to pick up contextual cues from the game as an aid to remembering the sequence.
* The test positions are automatically generated and every game eventually diverges into a rare position, so there's a technical problem of how do I know that I'm actually really really showing the exact same variation?
* Not every position is common enough to have a large enough pool of games to do this with.

The sources I used when writing this code include:
http://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/sm2.htm
http://ichi2.net/anki/wiki/FrequentlyAs ... Ankiuse.3F



Thanks I think I probably picked the body text font, so... hehe. I'm planning on assembling the last few posts I've made here and asking her to turn them into a "real" about/faq page...

Alright, bed time... I hope that made some sort of sense, I'm pretty tired

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

I think I just fixed a math error that would cause the system to delay an extra day before giving you new material from your queue. If it seems like it's not giving you new stuff every two days like I said it should, please let me know...

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

A few comments:

1. As others have mentioned, when in Study mode, it would be nice if after finishing a Joseki, that we would be prompted with a "next" button to go the the next joseki instead of it automatically springing to the next one without giving one any time to view the end position.

2. The josekis in study mode don't seem to be rotated. This would be a nice feature.

3. The first hint isn't one. In my case, when I had selected the initial position for study (in select mode) I had entered a low approach to a 3-4 stone, and that is what is shown in the hint.

4. It would be nice if the board were resizable. As it is, the whole board doesn't fit on my screen, so I have to zoom out, which makes the text close to illegible.

5. The reset time for when I can do the tests again, does not specify a time zone. (in other words, it tells me the wrong time).

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

1. I'll be doing what jts suggested, most likely.

2. You mean games should be oriented differently each time you see them? I agree! I forgot to write that bit..

3. Hm, good point, this is a bug-- when I wrote that I don't think I ever tried it after putting just a stone or two in the select page. (At the time the select page was much more complicated and you had to put in the whole sequence you wanted to learn).

4. Thanks for reminding me, I have some screens that are just a little too small, also...

5. There's some js that's supposed to be figuring out what your computer thinks the time zone is, and displaying it in that. You'll notice I didn't paste that everywhere, so some pages show times in UTC. If it doesn't state a time zone, I believe it should be running the code to figure out what your time zone is. I need to make this consistent.

I think I address most of these next time I update the site, which may not be until after the weekend.

Thank you very much for the comments, they were very helpful!

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

Daniel, I'd prefer if the reset were on the next calendar day, instead of 24 hours later.

One other little comment. In study mode, sometimes it takes a while for the interface to react to a click, and sometimes I click on the same intersection twice thinking that my click hadn't been registered. If for example, I had tried to place a black stone and click twice, what happens is that the program thinks I also wanted to place a white stone on the same spot and responds by removing the black stone and marking the intersection with a white x. Maybe it would be better if in study mode a click on an occupied point did nothing.

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

Shhh, don't tell anyone, but it's supposed to be 16 hours, not 24. I'll double check the code, maybe there's a bug. But when I look at timezones, maybe I'll change this to once per calender day.



Yeah, I noticed that too, thanks for the reminder. It will be fixed next time I update the website.

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

I just published an update. Home page lists the changes. I didn't get everything discussed here done yet, but I haven't forgotten.

BTW, if you would like to see a different board size than I currently offer in the settings page, or would like a high-contrast board or something, and you're willing to put some graphics in the right format for me, it'd be pretty simple for me to add them.

Graphics would need to be formatted exactly like the following two images:

http://dailyjoseki.com/sprite/stoDEF18.png

http://dailyjoseki.com/sprite/brdDEF18.png

Of course, I can't promise you I'll add everything you send me. But if it looks decent I probably would.

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

I discovered a bug, which means you get another update-- which happens to include this:



In addition to this, you now have a chance to adjust or remove a test you just failed. I never like the fact that it made you successfully get all the way through a test before allowing you to remove or adjust it... So, two birds with one stone and all that.

As always, let me know if you find a problem...

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

Yes. I think this is pretty important. As it is, my main clue for remembering a joseki is the corner it's in and not the surrounding stones.

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

Good news: I wrote this last night. I was going to do a few other things before updating but maybe I'll just put it up tonight-- it is a large improvement.

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

OK, site updated.

It's pretty gratifying to look in the server logs and see people actually using it. Thank you!

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com