mikeh Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 Well, it's fairly moot now. But it depends on what you want from a forum. I personally don't just want somewhere to post questions and get answers. I want a place to discuss stuff among my peers, in a true multi-way conversation, not always a pupil-teacher session. For me, the B/I forum was more the latter than the former. Hopefully the N/B forum will be the reverse!I'm not sure I understand this, and as someone prone to posting answers as if I were the teacher in the pupil-teacher scenario, I'm interested in your ideas....the last thing any of us 'experts' want to do is to block or discourage discussion. When I was starting out in the game, I did a lot of reading but the other main source of knowledge was the post-game meets in the bar, where advancing players like me hung on every word from the handful of local experts who would discuss, often in a very animated way, their thoughts on the hands we had just played. While I lived in a small, remote area for much of that time, I was a regular visitor, on business, to Vancouver, which had some fine players who regularly played at the club. My experience, at least in B.C., is that experts rarely play in club games anymore....indeed management of our larger clubs here actively discourage experts from playing, since our presence intimidates some players and causes others to resent that their chance of winning has been impaired. But the internet has replaced that sort of post game environment, and there are better players posting here than were ever in the Jolly Alderman, which was the local pub near the Vancouver club in the late 70's and 80's. So is your goal to learn or to socialize? Discussions with others of equivalent knowledge isn't going to help you get better...at least not very quickly and maybe not at all. You and others of your level have, via this forum, incredible access to some truly advanced thinkers with a deep understanding of the game. Admittedly, the quality of the posts can be uneven, and it can be confusing when 'experts' disagree, but it won't take long to work out which 'experts' seem to engender more respect amongst their peers, and those are the ones from whom you should try to learn. You can of course do both socialize and learn, but I think you are going to find that almost all questions posted in the new B forum are going to engender 'teacher' type answers whether you like it or not. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustaDummy Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 Thanks Mike. I do appreciate your taking the time. I will be posting a question in the novices / beginners forum soon, once it starts to attract more folks like me. I know there is a chicken / egg situation here, but if I post this question now, I fear that there will be too much input from above! My question will be about what other rookies do to improve: what books, videos, etc. they find currently helps them. I know that this will be a very attractive topic for more advanced players to contribute to, but I actually want to know about current learning experiences. It's well known that, in any field, the difficulties and perspectives encountered when starting out are forgotten, or memory of the experience gets modified, once the beginner has moved on substantially. Just hearing someone say, "Yes, I have that problem too, and I'm currently trying this to see if it helps" is very supportive. Hearing someone say "You'll get over that" isn't so good. Current learning strategies include social constructivism, where learners work in groups to solve problems. It adds to the set of learning styles which can be adopted by the learner. Hopefully we'll see some of that happening in N/B. Learning can take place without teaching. So I have to reject your view of my hopes for this new forum as being a polarisation into "learn or socialise". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikeh Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 Fair enough, and thanks for replying so courteously Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mgoetze Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 On the other hand, no one as far as I have seen, is interested in the validity of any of the answers. That, as far as I can see, is a free-for-all. I am and there are at least 3 or 4 posters whom I would absolutely ban from posting in the beginner forum. So far it seems the moderators do not agree with me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrAce Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 I am and there are at least 3 or 4 posters whom I would absolutely ban from posting in the beginner forum. So far it seems the moderators do not agree with me. Deleted part (nonsense) Having the knowledge and having talent to transfer this knowledge to B/I/N level players is totally different thing imo. I know some worldclass players who has proven themselves but can not teach anything. Teaching is totally a different skill. Someone who is very good at bridge but not familiar working with beginners can be less helpful than someone who is not as good at bridge but knows how to get into the skin of beginners or any level players. Also same level people can actually help each other. I taught bridge for close to 20 years, worked with beginners in my own bridge club, over the time i saw that these people actually can help each other upto a certain point and that they all need to go through some phases during the learning process. Someone way better from them wants them not to waste their time with this phase eventhough he/she himself has gone through that phase also. You give a hungry man a piece of bread and he will be ok for the day. If you teach him how to make bread or how to earn money to buy bread he will feed himself eventually. I see all these convention discussions in former B/I forum like this. Justin and a very few others posts their logic and never their own conventions. And they dont do this only in B/I forums but also in Expert forums and thats why it is plessure to read them. When they post their methods (very rarely) they explain the logic behind it as well. Anyway, i am glad to see forums are rearranged. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HighLow21 Posted March 17, 2012 Report Share Posted March 17, 2012 Teaching is totally a different skill. Someone who is very good at bridge but not familiar working with beginners can be less helpful than someone who is not as good at bridge but knows how to get into the skin of beginners or any level players. Also same level people can actually help each other. Spoken like a true teacher. This is absolutely the case, and I can testify it from my 5 years as a teacher (not at bridge, but at a similar discipline: Math sections for standardized exams). Thank goodness it's not year-end yet, because if it were it would be tough to allocate my vote for poster of the year among MrAce, Phil, MikeH, and a slew of others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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