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Heads-up: New Forum Categories coming


diana_eva

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Have newcomers commented that they find the forums difficult to navigate?
Yes they sent emails to support, particularly since we started pushing interesting posts in the news on BBO.
IMO the aim should be forum categories which discriminate content usefully and unambiguously. For example, currently, a bidding problem could be found in several different forums (e.g. Interesting bridge-hands, Off-line bridge, Natural systems, Expert, Advanced, Beginner, Language ...). Perhaps the classification should be three dimensional e.g.

  1. Content:: e.g. Bidding, Declarer play, Defence, Complete deals, Systems, Reviews, Miscellaneous ...
  2. Level: e.g. Expert, Intermediate, Beginner... A new level - World-class - would encourage many more players to contribute :)
  3. Language: Chinese, Italian ....

Level and language, could be implemented as flags or key-words rather than separately named forums.

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Level and language, could be implemented as flags or key-words rather than separately named forums.

 

Well this is why it took so long till we decided to do something. We kept trying to upgrade the software to a version that allows tagging, but it seems it's way too complicated (Barry can tell more abt this if he feels like getting into tech details). So we gave up on attempting to upgrade, we're stuck with this version of forums software and we'll clean it up the best we can. No tagging or keywords for the time being.

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But this will make the posts harder to find. How much does the Offline Bridge forum cost, that it's being wasted is such a problem?

That's why I suggesting combine it with other low volume areas- it moves towards critical mass where a certain percentage of forum users go straight to it and it gets a constant stream of posts but still be easy to search through for those type of posts.

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We're planning to simplify the current forums structure, archive or merge some of the dead forums and eventually reduce everything to a less cluttered scheme as follows:

 

BBO Forum

 

-- Bidding Issues - Questions/articles about bidding unrelated to the use of a convention

--Conventions - Articles on new conventions or improvement to a convention, questions about how to use a convention.

--Playing a Hand -- Questions about how a hand should be played/defended.

--Novice/Beginner Articles and Discussion - articles aimed at this level player, along with question/discussions initiated for the benefit of this level player

--Expert Forum -- Content deemed worthy of expert level discussion. Threads deemed too broad in general scope and interest might be moved to another forum by a moderator/administrator.

--Bridge Material Review -- as is now

--BBO Specific Forum

**** subforums include

  • BBO Support
  • BBO Events
  • BBO Announcements
  • Find online teacher/partner
  • Report GIB Issues
  • Dealer Scripts

--Advanced/intermediate Articles and discussion - articles aimed at this level player, along with question/discussions initiated for the benefit of this level player

-- Non-English Forums - all the languages as sub-forums under this umbrella

--Non-Bridge forum - Water Cooler

 

International Laws Forum - As is currently

 

We plan to roll out the new structure pretty soon, unless the feedback is overwhelmingly negative.

BBO Tournament and BBO Tournament Director (this forum's content should be distilled to a document and given to every director) while not currently highly active have a lot of back activity so shouldn't they be kept going.

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They'll be merged into BBO Support.

That will be fun having a few threads complaining about directors (hopefully in general way) with directors also posting a few threads about problem players- lots of chances for it to get personal. Dealer Scripts is not popular enough to have its own forum just like "find a partner.." It has less activity than tournament players' and directors' forums. Why not merge Dealer Scripts with bidding forum?

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I really appreciate this sort of clean-up.

However, what would make a much bigger difference for myself (and I presume, many others) in practice would be an upgrade of the forums software that allows for a "New Content" with some subfora blocked out (in my case, Laws and Robots).

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I really appreciate this sort of clean-up.

However, what would make a much bigger difference for myself (and I presume, many others) in practice would be an upgrade of the forums software that allows for a "New Content" with some subfora blocked out (in my case, Laws and Robots).

Great idea. Perhaps too late? Hope not.

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