Is it me, or has forum activity gone down?

[whereagles]

I've been away for a while, but finally got some time to have a look at the forums again. I seem to have the impression there are less people posting and less posts around.. is this so, or am I mistaken?

[TWO4BRIDGE]

I think you are right ... fewer posts & posters.

 

I guess Facebook and Twitter, etc... are competing for posting time .

[mikeh]

almost all of the most frequent posters of just a few years back are gone or rarely here anymore. Justin, Josh, Han, Phil Clayton spring to mind and I am sure there are many other valued contributors, but these 4 were in the forefront of my mind as soon as I read your post. Jillybean seems to be mia. Cascade rarely posts. Inquiry rarely posts. Cherdano is, I think , around but less often. Recently Andy seems to have cut back. And on and on.

 

No doubt as a result it seems to me that the quality of the posts seems to have dropped off somewhat, and in my view the value of the discussions has definitely diminished, notwithstanding the ongoing presence of some very good posters, and the recent flurry of activity by jallerton, who until recently rarely posted.

 

I hope it is just a cyclical thing, but it may be that after a while many of the topics posted get to be repetitive. It also seems that very few posters ever change their approach to the game, so we get predictable arguments that don't do much other than recycle stale views (I am not exempting myself from this).

[hrothgar]

I think you are right ... fewer posts & posters.

 

I guess Facebook and Twitter, etc... are competing for posting time .

 

Bridgewinners as well

 

However, I suspect that Al_U_Card will still be spouting nonsense long after the sun burns out.

[barmar]

Looks like activity has gone down. In 2013 we averaged 212 posts/day, in 2014 it has dropped to 163. It looks like a general downward trend, here are the monthly totals:

 

+------+-------+-------+
| year | month | posts |
+------+-------+-------+
| 2013 |     1 |  8705 |
| 2013 |     2 |  6707 |
| 2013 |     3 |  6271 |
| 2013 |     4 |  6418 |
| 2013 |     5 |  7040 |
| 2013 |     6 |  6333 |
| 2013 |     7 |  7789 |
| 2013 |     8 |  6719 |
| 2013 |     9 |  6520 |
| 2013 |    10 |  5987 |
| 2013 |    11 |  4773 |
| 2013 |    12 |  4102 |
| 2014 |     1 |  4836 |
| 2014 |     2 |  4608 |
| 2014 |     3 |  5431 |
| 2014 |     4 |  4720 |
+------+-------+-------+

[Antrax]

My guess is BridgeWinners because Facebook and Twitter have been around for a little longer than the experienced decline.

[MrAce]

My guess is BridgeWinners because Facebook and Twitter have been around for a little longer than the experienced decline.

 

Yes, I also started going to BW lately.

 

But I have to confess I like the folks in BBF much more http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif

[gwnn]

We like you too MrAce <3

[Phil]

I come back here occasionally but since I've had a 'normal' job since last summer I don't have the free time I used to.

 

Please don't hate me but I confess I'm relatively active at BW and so are a few other forumers. I much prefer the UI and you have a lot of solid commentary from the likes of Kit, Steve Bloom, Henry Bethe, etc. I now read Weinstein like I used to read JLall. Gavin's videos are insanely good.

 

It's not nearly as good as the forums were in say 2009. Not only did we have great participation from JLall, JDonn, Gnasher, Frances but there was this edge to it. On BW there isn't a lot of controversy or need for moderation.

 

How to make this place better? Start with a real A/E forum like many have been requesting for oh like 9 or 10 years now. Take the water cooler off my New Content posts because I don't care about the official hijacked thread.

 

And make the interface less like some Ask the Appliance Repairman from 2006.

[Antrax]

You seriously prefer the BW interface? it's atrocious.

[Phil]

You seriously prefer the BW interface? it's atrocious.

 

Fine. Stay for the interface or lack therof. The content still doesn't hold a candle to BW. I'm sorry but there's little user experience here, at least like there used to be.

 

I predicted a long tone ago BBF would eventually run it's course like RGB would. RGB used to have Pavlicek and some really good players. 20 years ago it was the ONLY online resource. I think it still exists and gets (I'm guessing here) 20 posts a day but I haven't visited in a long time.

 

It's a natural order of things but, Christ, ask yourself why BW even exists? BBO's market share is like 98% these days. And BBF gets frequently plugged on the news feed

 

And postings are going DOWN? LOL?

[glen]

To compare, Ben Lessard started the same thread both here and on BW (inverting 1H and 1S responses after a 1D opening)

 

On BW he got 16 comments, including those from Kit Woolsey and Barry Rigal

Here he got 7 replies

[MrAce]

 

 

And postings are going DOWN? LOL?

 

We got lot more folks here who has a life besides bridge http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif

[hrothgar]

You seriously prefer the BW interface? it's atrocious.

 

I prefer the BW interface

 

Individual discussions are threaded, which makes it much easier to see who is responding to what. Its not as nice as an old school news reader, but, a lot better than the flat format we have here.

 

I also think that the site has a much better format for presenting bidding and card play quizzes. (Embedding quizzes on the home page seems to work well)

[barmar]

I prefer the BW interface

 

Individual discussions are threaded, which makes it much easier to see who is responding to what. Its not as nice as an old school news reader, but, a lot better than the flat format we have here.

 

You can get a threaded view if you change your Topic Display Mode setting from Standard to Outline.

[hrothgar]

You can get a threaded view if you change your Topic Display Mode setting from Standard to Outline.

 

thanks!

[jfeld]

You seriously prefer the BW interface? it's atrocious.

What don't you like about the BW interface? How would you make it better?

[Antrax]

It's more of a case of that forums are not broken, in my view. Given that:

I really disliked having to sign up in order to be able to see the results of any poll or action. Having to vote in order to see what others voted likewise.

Their nesting level is 2 and there's no quote function, which makes most discussions difficult to follow.

It's impossible to see which discussions have changed since you last visited them from the homepage. It's difficult to see the new posts once you visit the article, since it only has an anchor for the topmost new comment.

I also dislike how cartoony their icons are. It's probably more suited for a mobile browsers though.

 

Do agree their Bridge material presentation is pretty.

 

Content-wise (and this is going to be more objectionable), the place is a lot more geared for people who know each other. It's nice when you're a part or even on the fringes of the Bridge-playing community. It's less nice when you have to figure out what "it's like when I played it with Barry in '96" means. Many discussions there go along similar lines.

Generally they put people in the center and that makes posters more egotistical.

They do have some excellent posters, I think some are on the staff there which is why it's unlikely they'll come here.

[benlessard]

Personnally its the way the problems/polls are presented on BW that made me switched to BW a bit more than here. I like to answer the problems quickly and the problems I find interesting I go read the comments and participate. So I get stuck there instead of here.

 

Kit W articles are always very interesting. M.Rosenberg comments are great. I wasnt really impressed by the others posters even if they are pros players.

 

For the mainstream stuff I guess I prefer the opinions of more players even if the level in unevent. So I prefer to poll there than here.

 

For the obscure stuff I prefer here. For the really great innovative stuff your chance are way better here than BW IMO.

 

 

I had a post that quickly turned to vinegar there where I surely wish I had posted here instead.

 

http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/fighting-agaisnt-cheating-the-highly-suspicious-priniciple/

 

At one point I was really pissed off by some of the completly clueless comments and the sniping with no valid arguments. There was a couple of arguments but most of them were really lame imo.

 

A thread that I find funny is this one ...http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/what-is-forcing-and-how-far/

 

1S-(2D)-2H-3D

??

 

people are suggesting that 2H should be GF (insane IMO)

They are suggesting that pass should be forcing (terrible IMO)

They think that 3S is forcing (I dont like it, it does make some sense, but its not standard, no way.)

[the hog]

Well Ben, the suggestion you made was a very poor one. The fact that you were not prepared to accept the overwhelming poll against it contributed to the antipathy of some of the responses.

 

One of the things that annoys me about this site is the comment "In my system (which is usually something weird) we would have bid blah blah". Who cares? There are a couple of posters in particular who are guilty of this.

[hotShot]

A forum is best suited for discussions, while bridgewinners is more like a blog with comments. You can answer to a comment, but one should stop there.

 

Have you seen wikiarguments? ( http://en.wikiarguments.net/ ) You can argument pros and cons and vote arguments up and down. Interesting approach.

 

Maybe I'm old fashioned but I prefer a forum. One click to get an overview about new posts,and enter relevant threads from there.

 

But I can understand that a forum is not the first choice for mobile devices.

[Zelandakh]

One of the things that annoys me about this site is the comment "In my system (which is usually something weird) we would have bid blah blah". Who cares? There are a couple of posters in particular who are guilty of this.

Guilty as charged. Hopefully I also contribute some useful stuff along the way too. Not sure who the second person you are thinking of is though - that sounds squarely like me. Believe it or not, there are a few posters here that do like seeing "something weird" on the bidding front.

[1eyedjack]

I expect that there are a few things that could revive the forum. They need not be pursued to the exclusion of other solutions.

 

One that I have been pressing for, for quite some time, is an upgrade to the forum software. I am informed that cost is not the issue. Presumably the issue is customising the forum, such as for ease of posting hand diagrams and so forth. That requires human time and effort, which may be in short supply. OK, so be it. Easy for me to say, having neither the time, capability or other resources to contribute to the solution, just as long as no-one is surprised at the consequence.

 

One thing that could make life just a little easier is to have closer integration between the main BBO site and the forums. I see some progress in this area, with certain forum threads getting publicity in the news section of BBO, but for me a great boon would be a one-click process in the "hand export" facility that starts a new thread in the forum and pastes the exported hand directly into the post in suitably adapted format.

 

By attrition I eventually worked out how to post hands from BBO into the forums. For all that there are instructions available it remains a non-trivial exercise, particularly for the thousands of members who are not used to doing it.

 

 

 

[whereagles]

I would also advise merging some of the less used forums. Ideally, the complete set of forums should fit into a maximized browser window of 1366x768.

[scarletv]

Take the water cooler off my New Content posts because I don't care about the official hijacked thread.

Maybe there is a technical solution for that when the filter option in the forum setup is enabled. At least I know that from another forum that seems to use the same forum software (maybe another release). There I can exclude forums or sub forums that I do not like to follow.