Forum Issue

[Guest Jlall]

The seperation of each forum such as "beginner/int" "adv/exp" "sayc/2/1" is supposed to facilitate having good discussions and getting the most out of the forums. Obviously if there was just one forum to post in it would be a mess, and harder to get what you are looking for in a discussion. So far so good.

 

However, the lines of the seperation have either become blurred or ignored. And nothing is done about it, so it becomes more widespread. I would like to appeal to the moderators to be more active on this (of course the moderators may disagree with me about the importance of this). The definition of the adv/exp forum is:

 

Forum designated for experienced and adept bridge players to discuss more advanced topics.

 

Recently a forum member who has clearly shown that he does not understand "more advanced" topics, and does not seem very adept at bridge, has derailed several interesting threads because he so stubbornly clung to his views despite being shown why he was wrong. This takes away a lot from other interesting questions such as "what percentage of the time do you think unknown opps are making mandatory falsecards in various levels of play?" because this poster does not even know what a mandatory falsecard is. This is similar to someone in a calculus discussion not knowing algebra, while at the same time there is an algebra discussion down the street.

 

I know this post will be perceived as mean, but in other forums I have participated in (twoplustwo being the most relevant) when someone posts in a forum like "high stakes no limit" and is a microstakes donk they are instantly banned. I don't know if there is a way to block someone posting in a specific forum, but it is really becoming ridiculous and adv/exp discussion is just filled with the same crap as every other forum, and has lost sight of the quote above. When it becomes obvious that someone does not belong posting there and they continue to do so and continue to lower the quality of the enitre forum, something should be done in my opinion.

 

This is not meant as a demand or anything (obv I could not) and you guys may disagree with me, it's just a suggestion and my opinion.

[inquiry]

I can stop someone from posting with ease. Most people are registered as members. I guess we could subdivide these into other categories. We have a yellow category and there is a forum just for yellow guys. We use to have a "gold star" forum, but not enough participation so that is gone. If we wanted to reclassify the members, creating say "newbie", "advanced" etc, we could in theory limit who could post in what forums. Is that what we want and who decides what level to give people?

[Elianna]

A slightly less "political" topic might be to remind people that the subforums exist for a reason. I especially see people abusing the general bridge subforum, and posting things that better belong in the standard bidding, or interesting bridge hand subforums.

 

The Beg/Int ones seem to be used appropriately (I see it as being both for theory/application), but I agree with Justin, that the Adv/Exp could use extra rigour. I don't think that there should be a requirement to post, however, as one can't categorize everyone, that's just too big of a task. And some people might be advanced/expert in one category (analyzing hands/play for example) and not in another (like bidding). I'd still like them to be able to post on the topic of which they're knowledgeable.

 

Maybe a general reminder of self-editing even outside the water cooler would suffice? For example, of not repeating your point over and over. If someone replies that they disagree, that means that you need to say something NEW to convince them, not just repeat yourself (which they can scroll up and read for themselves).

 

And a reminder to choose forums in which to start your topic carefully?

[matmat]

All we're seeing is the same effect as on bbo itself. people overestimating their playing/bidding ability. I did not know that the bridge world had such a high percentage of experts and world class players until I joined bbo. quite remarkable.

[jdonn]

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP.

[Trysalot]

First I would like to compliment JLall on the excellence of his post starting this thread. No, Justin, I do not think anything you said was mean-spirited. To the contrary, I think you bent over backwards trying to express your thoughts in a non-threatening, non-argumentative way and that you succeeded. Helmut and Jan certainly did a good job raising you to have good bridge table manners as well as a commanding presence and that has carried over into your writing most of the time.

 

Second I would like to say I agree 100% with the posts about people over-estimating their ability in expressing their self-ranking. I am a Silver Life Master with 1300+ masterpoints and would not consider calling myself an expert. In fact sometimes I think I am over-rating myself to say I am an advanced player. LOL. So it really gripes me when I pick up a partner whose profile says "advanced" and the person bids or plays very badly and I find out in private "getting acquainted" chat between rounds that the person is going to a regional tournament that weekend and hopes to pick up the last of her gold points to finish the life master title (300 masterpoints). That happened to me a few weeks ago. I might have asked that person if the classification had been intermediate, I often invite intermediates to play, but I certainly wouldn't have been surprised at the results that didn't live up to my expectations at the start of the game. And the same goes for the postings in the forums about hands, bidding systems, etc., just as JLall and others have said, where beginners and intermediates are proven wrong in what they are posting and keep insisting they are right. It detracts from the discussion of the topic of the thread and often wanders off in other directions. I often read those forums to LEARN from the experts posting their opinions but rarely do I participate in the discussions because I don't feel that I have much to contribute. Those experts are already saying what I would say and saying it much better than I could say it. (Compliments and thanks to all of you who take the time to write those posts!)

 

So I have to agree that there should be some way to limit the advanced/expert area's posts to advanced and expert players. Perhaps BBO could make that or those areas open to posting by players holding ACBL titles of a certain level (maybe ACBL gold life master and higher and the equivalents in WBF or individual countries having bridge titles of their own) and all of lower title status players could access those forums on a read-only basis. We should all be able to read these discussions to learn how experts approach bidding and playing problems but I don't think we should all be able to post in there.

 

Respectfully submitted,

[Codo]

I agree with the wish that newbys or idiots should not post in the adv./exp. forum.

 

But I do not want to see foolish repetions in the beginner (or other) forums either.

 

But I am not sure how to handle it. Shall we ask someone or a group of posters to be the judge? Shall the moderator be the judge?

Who will set the boderline?

 

We had have some "flames" between otherwise respected members of the BBF who did all the bad things which are foolish during these flame wars . But otoh they showed their ability to bring in good ideas at other parts of the discussion. Shall they be banned for a while?

 

I think the best way to handle these problem is to ignore the trolls. Mabye a simple: no, this is Fooish, or bulls**t to show the mortal readers that he was wrong is needed, but no other answers are required.

 

So, if I don´t get any answer anymore on my threats, I know you all agree. :)

[Guest Jlall]

I can stop someone from posting with ease. Most people are registered as members. I guess we could subdivide these into other categories. We have a yellow category and there is a forum just for yellow guys. We use to have a "gold star" forum, but not enough participation so that is gone. If we wanted to reclassify the members, creating say "newbie", "advanced" etc, we could in theory limit who could post in what forums. Is that what we want and who decides what level to give people?

Thanks for replying Ben. This is an interesting idea but it seems like it would be very time consuming for you, and if someone new were to join the forums you might not know which group they belonged to. I think the best policy would be to let anyone post wherever they want and keep it that way until there was a problem. If it became evident that a certain poster was not qualified to be posting in a certain forum, their access to posting in that forum could be removed (as seen fit by the moderating team). This would remove a lot of work for you guys and not cause unneccesary hard feelings.

 

All we're seeing is the same effect as on bbo itself. people overestimating their playing/bidding ability. I did not know that the bridge world had such a high percentage of experts and world class players until I joined bbo. quite remarkable.

 

Agree, but when it detracts from otherwise good threads and derails them I think that something needs to be done about it. On BBO it doesn't have much effect.

 

A slightly less "political" topic might be to remind people that the subforums exist for a reason. I especially see people abusing the general bridge subforum, and posting things that better belong in the standard bidding, or interesting bridge hand subforums.

 

Agree thought about mentioning this in my OP as well.

[helene_t]

For me the subdivision is no big deal. I just use the "find new posts" feature. I do think about where to put a new topic, but when replying it doesn't matter much, except for the distinction between BBO and off-line when ethics and tournaments are discussed.

 

What I would like is a thump-down feature as known from other fora, where you can vote bad posts out so that they will appear collapsed by default.

[jdonn]

I think the only possible way to do something like this without being too time and energy consuming is have one or several qualified volunteers, or perhaps a group that votes, and they only consider a case when one (or perhaps some arbitrary minimum number) forum participant requests it.

[Walddk]

So it really gripes me when I pick up a partner whose profile says "advanced" and the person bids or plays very badly and I find out in private "getting acquainted" chat between rounds that the person is going to a regional tournament that weekend and hopes to pick up the last of her gold points to finish the life master title (300 masterpoints).

 

<snip>

 

Perhaps BBO could make that or those areas open to posting by players holding ACBL titles of a certain level (maybe ACBL gold life master and higher and the equivalents in WBF or individual countries having bridge titles of their own)

You contradict yourself here. First you tell us that all people with high master titles are not necessarily great players (I agree), and then you want the same people to post in the advanced/expert forums.

 

Master titles are guidelines, but they do no always reflect the players' skill level. If you play long and often enough, you are almost able to reach the sky. I have a pretty good idea of how many expert players we have among the forum posters (master titles or not), so as far as advanced/expert topics are concerned I tend to pay more attention to what those people write.

 

I think this is the way forward. Time permitting, engage in a debate with views from your peers but don't forget to listen to other people too. Some lesser players do actually have excellent points now and again. And some are even better than they might think they are.

 

Sadly, the opposite is also the case, and way too frequently. Some rate themselves higher than they should; not only on BBO but also in the BBF. There is no law against that, but it would often be a good idea to look in the mirror first.

 

Roland

[Trumpace]

Not sure if this forum software supports it, but I have seen forums where it is possible to rate single posts and as an added benefit, the rating of the poster is correspondingly affected. One can now probably pay more attention/less attention to a new post by a given user based on his/her rating.

 

The moderators/people knowledgeable enough can probably help seed the ratings of some of the exisiting posters and let the mechanism handle the rest.

[mgoetze]

Certainly people tend to ignore the lines between the subforums, but it doesn't surprise me much when they are so badly thought out. Sure, many posts in the "general bridge" forum should actually be in "SAYC / 2/1 Discussion" ... but where are posts about ACOL supposed to go?

 

I know forums where moderators just move threads to another subforum if they feel it's not in the right subforum.

[1eyedjack]

I generally sympathise with the OP.

But I find it mildly ironic that whenever anyone posts anything in the Beg/Int forum that may be beyond the ability of somebody who just started to play that very day, you still tend to get posts (generally from experts, note, not from the beginners themselves) complaining that it is inappropriate to that forum. And yet now we are suggesting that posts in the Adv/Exp forum are inappropriate. What do all y'all want? Forums for 4 different levels? The terms, "cure" and "worse than the disease" spring to mind.

 

Just a thought.

[inquiry]

I am not sure we will every use it, but I have created a new category for users, called restricted. A "restricted" member is someone who can read and write to any normal forum EXCEPT for the Advanced/expert forum. A restricted member can READ the advanced/expert forum but not post in it.

 

I am not sure how or even if we (the moderators) will decide to put someone in the restricted category, nor how long they will stay there. I suspect it will be in response to thread hijackking and utter silly post. We could create other types of restricted categories as well, but I hope even the one I created now is never used -- instead I hope a warning and maybe selected deletion of offending post becomes the accepted way to deal with this problem. But now, at least, it is an option, maybe that in itself will be a deterent.