BBO Upgraded: ACBL IT, Friends/Followed/Ignored Players

[FM75]

I did not even notice the Friends/Followers until I saw this thread. Even then I had to look for it. My normal Who's Online is the Sort by category tab (Mentors, Authors, BIL, Family, Expert, Precision, and uncategorized friends).

 

Friends/Followers is on the Sort by name and Sort by status tabs. I guess it is nice. Frankly, I am not losing sleep over what other people think about me. So no drama here!

 

That said, one of my favorite non-fiction books was http://www.amazon.com/What-Care-Other-People-Think/dp/0393320928 .

 

Thanks to BBO for asking my opinion. It is nice to know that you care. Keep up the good work. More non-speedball ACBL, if you can. :)

[phoenix214]

Bug report:

When making a new table(maybe goes for Team matches and tournament invites as well) it does not show up people in your friends list when you want to type someones username, but shows up the people in your follow list. Maybe this is intentional as we should know the usernames of people in our friends list by heart, but who knows!

[johnu]

This is very simple... if you want to only play in tournaments involving the most recent GIBs, do not register for Instant Tournaments. It appears to me that every hour there are 16 BBO Robot Dupes (excluding the two free ones that fill up very quickly) plus 12 ACBL Robot Dupes.

 

Later in the night PST the ACBL games dwindle to next to nothing (and IIRC the BBO paid ones as well). Many tournaments don't have anybody signing up and the others only have a couple of tables so the rewards are drastically slashed due to low table count. So if you want to play in a full award game (e.g. 15+ tables) at these times, your only choice would be instant tournaments. I played in some some BBO instant tournaments last year, but gave up when my GIB opponents played substantially better than the GIBs in the original tournaments.

[Phil]

!. Smile at those that have validated me as friends.

 

2. Insta unfriend those rats that I am following. The nerve!

 

3. Friend/defriend those that might have listed me as friends. Dont want any hurt feelings.

 

If there are any forumers that are following me, let me know and I will add you... :rolleyes:

[mthalesh]

Instant tournament is bunch of garbage. Who ever designed bidding by robot must have their head examined

[diana_eva]

I found a new bug in the friends list sorted for categories. When more friends are online as can be showed at once there is a scroll bar at the right side but disappears when trying to use it. In the end only some of the friends are shown not all. That problem is simultaneously to the one with multiple view of friends.

 

Additional the number of categorized friends/followers is not correct. So I will not see if someone is online out of categories where only followers are online? Absolutely not helpful and misguiding as I use categories to identify some players where I watch their play or lessons. Now I will no longer see when they are online without opening the category. I would really appreciate when you add the number of friends and followers that are shown in categories.

 

Obviously the status of the friends/followers is not updated when shown in categories. I have a lot where the status says "online" but when I open the profile it says "offline".

 

Thanks Scarlet, this was noted and will be fixed with next upgrade.

[diana_eva]

Bug report:

When making a new table(maybe goes for Team matches and tournament invites as well) it does not show up people in your friends list when you want to type someones username, but shows up the people in your follow list. Maybe this is intentional as we should know the usernames of people in our friends list by heart, but who knows!

 

Thanks, it's a bug. It applies for other variations of reserving seats/inviting people and it was noted. Will be fixed with next upgrade.

[gillyfleur]

I think it is awful I do not want to know who considers me a friend/enemy etc and who I think of as a friend is MY business no one elses the old system was great why change it ?? I can work out for myself who I want to follow or ignore ~its unnecessarily complicated!! it wasn't "broken"so don't fix it!! when I look at my friends list that is what I want to see a list NO qualifications I will decide that! so please re-instate the old system ASAP

[barmar]

I don't think we were expecting anywhere near this level of reaction to the Friends feature, in these days of social networking. We thought we were the outlier, as most other services only have mutual friendship (e.g. on Facebook you send a friend request, but you don't become friends unless they accept it).

[Bbradley62]

Largely, the point to being friends on Facebook is that doing so gives you access to each other's detailed information, posts, etc. Same for LinkedIn, I believe. No such usefulness exists on BBO.

[barmar]

Largely, the point to being friends on Facebook is that doing so gives you access to each other's detailed information, posts, etc. Same for LinkedIn, I believe. No such usefulness exists on BBO.

We're planning on adding useful features for friends. This was just the first step towards that.

[Bbradley62]

We're planning on adding useful features for friends. This was just the first step towards that.

That would have been nice info to include in the announcement of the new feature.

[barmar]

That would have been nice info to include in the announcement of the new feature.

It was mentioned in the announcement before the upgrade.

 

http://webutil.bridgebase.com/v2/news_fetch.php?id=2447

So why did we bother? This is a stepping stone towards making the central news area more relevant to each of us. Let's figure out who our pals are, and who we're follow bec. we like to know when they login or play cards. Then let's fiddle around with being able to add comments directly into the newsfeed for the benefit of our friends and followers. Might be interesting.

Another possibility is tweaking "Help Me Find a Game" -- friends can be given preference over people you just follow.

 

Now that we have the feature, we'll welcome feedback on how to use it.

[helene_t]

We thought we were the outlier, as most other services only have mutual friendship (e.g. on Facebook you send a friend request, but you don't become friends unless they accept it).

On Facebook you can follow someone without their permission. Personally I prefer googles circle model to the friend model. In g+ you get noticed when someone adds you but you can't see if they have any content which they share with closer friends than with you.

 

One reason for the notifications in g+ is that Google wants networks to grow but I think there is no need to notify you when someone adds you in return.

 

I sometimes tell people on bbo that I added them but mostly I just say hi once in a while and then maybe they will add me in return or maybe not. I don't have to know.

[bridgegoth]

I don't think we were expecting anywhere near this level of reaction to the Friends feature, in these days of social networking. We thought we were the outlier, as most other services only have mutual friendship (e.g. on Facebook you send a friend request, but you don't become friends unless they accept it).

 

Speaking for myself and those I have talked to this about, I think the real issue is that if we wanted Facebook, we'd just use Facebook.

One of the things I like about BBO is that I don't have to deal with all the social networking nonsense like adding/removing people, accepting/rejecting requests, and the drama associated with.

I want BBO to stay a bridge site, not Facebook/Twitter with a bridge theme, and this is the first step towards that, then myself and those I have talked to would be strongly against this movement.

 

My other issue is that it's essentially being forced onto us. On Bridge Winners for example, I do not follow people, I choose not to participate in that. Others can follow me, which is fine, but I choose not follow anyone back. I am just not interested in having a public list of who my friends are. The way the setup is now, I am forced to participate since I can no longer have a private friends list, since anyone can see if they are on it or not. So my choices are: Erase all my friends, accept that people are going to be upset/hurt because I deleted them, or never added them to begin with, or simply refrain from using BBO except when invisible.

 

The friends list was not broken, we don't need to know who is friends with who, that's what Facebook is for. I don't need access to private details and contact info because we are "friends." Why do we need this at all? This is a site to play bridge, and we already have these other tools available to us if we want to use them.

 

If we could put 2 different lists together and could mark someone as friend/following ourselves, THAT would be a nice feature. I could put people I talk to regularly, and play with on friends lists, while putting people I kib and recruit for teams in the following list, this would help my friends list not be as cluttered.

 

I hope you find this feedback helpful

[shengabus]

I have one further suggestion (maybe along the lines of planned additions).

 

Currently, say you start a table, whether you are looking for a partner or opponents, you scroll through your friends list and ask if they would like to play. Or, you have the option of asking the Lobby.

 

I suggest a combination: ask idle-friends-in-lobby-or-kibbing.

[wynsten]

 

Another possibility is tweaking "Help Me Find a Game" -- friends can be given preference over people you just follow.

 

Now that we have the feature, we'll welcome feedback on how to use it.

Gee - I'd rather you gave preference to people I just "follow" - I'd love to play with any of them.

 

Actually it is not much of a feature. I'd rather you gave me more options that I can set (Chat: yes/no; Email: yes/no; Notification of log-on: yes/no; Preference when finding a game: positive/neutral/negative etc) rather than making assumptions about my preferences based on somebody else's selection.

[Phil]

I really don't see what the big deal is here. It's not like on FB where your friends see your naked baby pictures or that time your other friend tagged you during spring break 2005 in cancun when you were sucking on a beer bong.

 

I'd like see Followers added as well I think that would be cool.

[cw_scout1]

It seems that someone is really bored to have changed the "friends" concept. Why in the world did you make that change? I sm still trying to figure out the positive benefit of that. Can't you just put it back>

[barmar]

Gee - I'd rather you gave preference to people I just "follow" - I'd love to play with any of them.

That's what we currently do. But given a choice between people you follow and people who also follow you back, wouldn't the latter be preferable, since they also want to play with you? That will make both of you happy, not just one of you.

 

Of course, we can do this without distinguishing the two lists in the Friends list.

[jnetp]

I submitted this earlier but lost it, so it may be a duplication.

I do not like the new system. I liked "Friend" because (to me) it meant someone I would like to partner with. It didn't matter to me whether or not the person had "friended" me as well, so the Friend/Follow division in the "who's online" list could be eliminated.

 

Also: On the profiles I would prefer "Friend" to "Follow." Neutral is fine. "Ignore," however, doesn't do the trick. What we need in that space is the opportunity to indicate that we do not wish to partner with that person again. I don't see the need to indicate that we don't want chats from the person; however, there are many reasons why I would like for bbo to prevent my being assigned to partner again with a person with whom I do not have a good fit. The term "Enemy" is too strong, as my p and I may get along beautifully but just have a terrible mis-fit with respect to our bidding and play. Perhaps changing Enemy to another term---e.g., mismatch, negative, no play, . . . (I don't like any of those, but you get the idea) would work---as long as bbo blocks that match for the future.

 

Thanks for the opportunity to provide feedback!

[Shade]

I like the new version, it's a definite improvement and I can't understand what "invasion of privacy" are people complaining about. All that's changed is that now people can see when you're not following them back, so what? It's not like you cared that much about them to begin with, you wouldn't even see them being online unless you went looking for them, but now you worry that they can tell? :)

 

Thanks for the work you put into the new version, looking forward to future releases.

[diana_eva]

...

"Ignore," however, doesn't do the trick. What we need in that space is the opportunity to indicate that we do not wish to partner with that person again. I don't see the need to indicate that we don't want chats from the person; however, there are many reasons why I would like for bbo to prevent my being assigned to partner again with a person with whom I do not have a good fit. The term "Enemy" is too strong, as my p and I may get along beautifully but just have a terrible mis-fit with respect to our bidding and play. Perhaps changing Enemy to another term---e.g., mismatch, negative, no play, . . . (I don't like any of those, but you get the idea) would work---as long as bbo blocks that match for the future.

 

 

The ignore (enemy) function is meant to block chat, messages, invitations or requests from persons that you do not wish to be bothered by (usually for rudeness). That is what ignoring a player does, completely ignores anything coming from that player to you.

 

What you describe would be a different function, a way to mark a player as incompatible. But you can do that by assigning that player to a category created by you and named any way you wish. Unless you are using Help Me Find A Game to play, you will be able to see those players before joining a table, or in partnership desk for tourneys, while not blocking their chat too.

[wynsten]

That's what we currently do. But given a choice between people you follow and people who also follow you back, wouldn't the latter be preferable, since they also want to play with you? That will make both of you happy, not just one of you.

 

Of course, we can do this without distinguishing the two lists in the Friends list.

 

There you go again, making unwarranted inferences. They don't necessarily want to play with me. They just want me in the list of people that you have decided to label "friends".

[GreenMan]

There you go again, making unwarranted inferences. They don't necessarily want to play with me. They just want me in the list of people that you have decided to label "friends".

 

This is why social network operation is so unpredictable: The way designers intend a feature to be used and the way people actually use it are often quite different. Statements such as "But given a choice between people you follow and people who also follow you back, wouldn't the latter be preferable, since they also want to play with you? That will make both of you happy, not just one of you," which despite its good intention can come across as "You're doing it wrong," indicate an insufficient understanding of this dynamic. (FWIW this is one reason larger networks roll out features slowly to subsets of users, to see how they work in practice, but BBO is surely not structured for this to be possible.)

 

BBO is an odd duck, trying to find different ways for users to interact but having a strong philosophical bias against giving them options. The friend/follow arrangement may be a place where those tendencies can't be resolved.