Club spams

[Fluffy]

First of all, congrats fo the new individual switching methid, I was told uday performed it, and works very good.

 

I have a problem whenever I go out for a week somewhere (not even tell you a month), when I come back I receive about 20/30 private messages from club managers, it takes about 3 minutes clicking on ok, ok, ok for each message.

 

The only solution I've found to that is putting them as Enemies to ignore their chat, ,but then I will not receive info when I am online, nor be able to hear the torunemanet director when I play!.

 

So.. if you could make club messages to only appear if you are online, but not to be received as private mails when logging in it would make me happy (or at least delete them after 1 day, when the tournament announced is more than likelly over).

[emelnl]

Maybe just logout? B)

or switch off the option: notigy when a friend logs on ? ;)

 

this clicking thing can be solved by displaying these, and other, messages in the chatbox instead of bubbles, so no click needed anymore.

[blahonga]

Hmmm... When i saw the topic i thought you were talking about the broadcasts regarding some of the paying tourneys... Is there anyway to stop this spam?

 

/Mattias

[fred]

Hmmm... When i saw the topic i thought you were talking about the broadcasts regarding some of the paying tourneys... Is there anyway to stop this spam?

 

/Mattias

Eventually we plan to have options that will allow members to block specific classes of chat messages (like sub requests or tourney ads).

 

In the mean time we are considering putting a ban on advertising for tourneys since we know these messages annoy a lot of our members.

 

However, pay tourneys have become a strong source of revenue for BBO and a lot of the money we are making from them will be invested into making BBO a better site. The pay tourneys are also allowing the people who have worked very hard to create and run BBO to actually get some reward for their efforts. As such, it could be argued that it is not unreasonable to ask our members to have to put up with these messages - it is not exactly a high price to pay to play on our free site.

 

Then again, it is far from clear that these ads actually result in more people playing in our pay tourneys. Our TDs think the ads work, but it is hard to know for sure if this is true.

 

In any case, nothing rates to change in this area in the immediate future (but it is possible that we will ban all tourney ads within the next couple of months - most likely we will do some "market research" first). Eventually software changes will allow our members to decide whether they want to see such messages or not (which is clearly the best possible solution).

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[luke warm]

yeah, it is irritating to have someone flood the lobby with 15 or 20 repeating lines, advertising their tourney (or sometimes just gibberish)... however, i think the pay tourneys should be allowed to advertise (*not* flood) as much as they want...

[bearmum]

I have no problems if directors (ESPECIALLY those of PAY tourneys) want to ask for players in the (maybe) 1 hour before T starts

 

BUT if you get "private" messages which flood your BBO screen when u log on ( NEVER happened to me but then I don't play PAY tourneys) I can understand how frustrating you would feel which is why I think it would be good if ALL "broadcast" messages "timed out" once the tourney for which they were broadcasting actually finished ;)

[cherdano]

I have the same problem as Fluffy. When I log on to BBO for the first time after a couple of weeks, I have to click away a lot of club messages. I really don't mind them while I am online, but they make no sense to be kept (as they only advertise the tourney starting in an hour etc.)

 

About the "tournament spam": Maybe s.th. like one message per 5 min would be enough, and at most 3-5 altogher for a tournament, would be low enough not to annoy anyone?

[hotShot]

Club broadcasts are usually connected with a specific date, after this date, it makes no sence to send it to a member at logon.

 

So give broadcast/mail messages an expiration date, and don't deliver them later.

[julie5607]

Fred,

 

Just wanted to make a quick remark about the possibility of removing pay tourney broadcast advertising. Personally it annoys me, but so what - if it leads to more revenue for your site, please continue to allow it. We all benefit from what you have put together here, and every member should be happy to put up with a little annoying advertising in exchange for continued free access to BBO and all that it offers. And believe me, tourney broadcast and other ads at BBO are nothing compared to the flashing ads, pop-ups, and click-throughs people have to wade through to get to free games on the commercial gaming sites like Yahoo and Pogo.

 

There is no way to please all of the people all of the time, and you have done a very good job of pleasing the majority. There will always be people who complain about this or that aspect of BBO that they don't care for, that's just the way people are. However, I think if you did some marketing research, you would find that 1. very few people will admit to being influenced by advertising, even tho the truth is that many actually are, and 2. most rational BBO members would prefer to have the broadcast advertising if there is a possibility that it is bringing in more revenue for you and contributing to your running, maintaining, and upgrading the site for free.

 

Just my two cents,

 

Julie

[hrothgar]

Here are my thoughts regarding "SPAM" for pay tournaments:

 

1. Like many people, I find the these messages some annoying. In particular, there are certain clubs that broadcast the same message every 10 minutes or so.

 

2. Personally, I doubt whether this SPAM is particularly effective. I don't think that I have ever made a decision to join a fee based tournament based on broadcast traffic. As I have noted before, the single most effective mechanism to get me to pay for tournaments is some kind of feedback system by which users can rate clubs. If I am going to pay money for an event, I want to make sure that the tournament/club has a good reputation.

 

3. I understand completely your desire to attempt to maximize revenue. The best solution is probably some kind of compromise. For example, I find tournament based SPAM the most annoying when I am playing in another tournament. This is when the SPAM is most distracting and least likely to be of any use. Potentially, you might want to consider allowing people to recieve messages at some points in time while blocking them at others.

 

As an alternative, I think that the MoTD (Message of The Day) / new window might be a superior mechanism for clubs to advertize. Consider adding a minor enhancement by which the BBO server tracked tracked the number of times that a particular MoTD was shown to users when they connect...

 

You could use this mechanism to allocate a certain number of page views. For example, you could allow organizers of fee based tournaments to get XYZ page views for free each month and then charge them $X for each extra 10,000 views. If you wanted to be complicated, you could use some of the state information saved on the server to customize the views. For example, BBO Italia might prefer to direct their views at players who indicate that their Nationality is Italian. The ACBL might prefer that its advertizements occur during the late afternoon in the North America...

 

4. I think that charging for the MoTD is the best way to go. SPAM is an enormous problem on the Internet because individuals who send SPAM don't bear the economic costs. As a result, there is a clear economic incentive to transmit enormous amounts of email even if they only generate a miniscule response rate. The BBO advertizements aren't nearly as invasive. For the most part, club organizers have been quite responsible. However, there is a potential for abuse.

 

Charging for the MoTD would allow BBO to capture more of the surplus while ensuring that people have an incentive to advertize responsibly...