How to tackle the 'rogue 7NT' bidder?

[silvr bull]

Out of curiosity, who do you think should pay for the resources required to achieve this? If you, how much are you willing to pay? If me, can I have an opt out if I don't perceive it as a problem on the same scale as you? If someone else, they can already insulate themselves from this and many other antisocial phenomena by coughing up $0.25 to play in a paid tournament that has a TD. So presumably $0.25 is already too high a price to pay. Except that most of the good players are doing that anyway is my guess.

Out of curiosity, how much more in resources do you think BBO would need to do more than nothing about problem players? Barmar said BBO can cancel the offending player accounts, so presumably BBO already has the resources to do that. It doesn't take a staff member long to read an abuse email (with attached screenshot evidence) and terminate a problem account. If BBO wants to have a pay section that costs a few dollars a year (in addition to the current free and wide open BBO format), and if that payment would help BBO to weed out the troublemakers from the pay and free sections, I will be happy to upgrade my membership to the paid section. If you prefer not to pay a few dollars a year for a better experience in BBO, then by all means you have my permission to not pay the membership fee and to play instead in the free section. Do you really think BBO should do NOTHING about obvious abusers of the site, because some users prefer to play in paid tournaments?

[hrothgar]

Do you really think BBO should do NOTHING about obvious abusers of the site, because some users prefer to play in paid tournaments?

 

Yes, I do

 

There are far more important things for BBO to focus its developers on.

 

At the end of the day, I don't care what what "score" BBO awards to me on any given hand.

 

Lets supposed that some idiot decides to bid 7NTXX on a hand.

As a result, I end up scoring 65% rather than 70%

 

So what? Who cares? Does any of this actually matter?

 

To me, the answer is a resounding no.

 

Real feature set improvements...

That's a whole different story and that's what I want to developers focusing on.

[sfi]

Out of curiosity, how much more in resources do you think BBO would need to do more than nothing about problem players? Barmar said BBO can cancel the offending player accounts, so presumably BBO already has the resources to do that. It doesn't take a staff member long to read an abuse email (with attached screenshot evidence) and terminate a problem account.

 

What are we talking - 10 minutes to review an incident, look at history and determine the appropriate response, and then take that response and log the action? At 300 a day, that's 50 hours of work each day. That's 7 people doing this every day, full-time. I don't know how BBO's finances work, but that's a lot of time, effort and money spent on really boring work.

[1eyedjack]

For the avoidance of doubt I have no problem with BBO offering flexible payment plans for enhanced services, possibly to include a "policed" MBC room. And maybe it is only by offering the service that you will ever know how popular it will be. I know that I would not be taking up the offer, because as I said before and in previous threads there already exists a range of paid-for activities on BBO which are policed. Whether a paid for elite MBC would prove sufficiently popular to be viable has to be speculation until it is tried. My personal guess is that it would not be very popular, simply because the free MBC remains popular, warts and all, despite the range of paid for activities already available.

[johnu]

Actually, a paid membership has some elements of a good idea. BBO could add an additional item to the profile that indicates a paid member. Even in the main club, you could use the paid member flag to filter out players. Scum players get booted from BBO and create new ID's because it is free and anonymous, but it is very unlikely they will pay anything to create a new ID if they can be booted for bad behavior.

[silvr bull]

What are we talking - 10 minutes to review an incident, look at history and determine the appropriate response, and then take that response and log the action? At 300 a day, that's 50 hours of work each day. That's 7 people doing this every day, full-time. I don't know how BBO's finances work, but that's a lot of time, effort and money spent on really boring work.

My guess is that a person could open an email and glance at the attached proof in less than one minute. If the proven offense is one of the "deadly sins" that are obviously unacceptable, then it would take less than another minute to cancel the offenders BBO account. If one BBO staffer takes 10 minutes a day to work on this problem, then a few problem children would get a clear message that BBO doesn't condone their actions. That may well be only a drop in the bucket, but it is better than doing nothing. BBO could reinforce the policy of zero tolerance by posting a message that ## of abusers were booted for bad behavior. Anything to help reduce the amount of very bad behavior would be better than doing nothing (which effectively condones that problem person's bad actions).

[1eyedjack]

Actually, a paid membership has some elements of a good idea. BBO could add an additional item to the profile that indicates a paid member. Even in the main club, you could use the paid member flag to filter out players. Scum players get booted from BBO and create new ID's because it is free and anonymous, but it is very unlikely they will pay anything to create a new ID if they can be booted for bad behavior.

We already have this. Anyone who has played in any exxisting paid events to any detectable degree will have amassed BBO master points and a commensurate ranking visible to all. The higher the ranking, the less he would want to start from scratch. Added benefit to the member (if not to BBO) is that having achieved a respectable level he would not have to keep paying, as the BBO master points, in common with most F2F master points, do not depreciate.

 

It may be that most such players, having sampled the improved experience, will not thereafter frequent the MBC much, the inhabitants of which will continue to wallow in frustration.

[johnu]

We already have this

 

I don't know the percentages, but I would guess that a pretty small percentage of players pay to play on BBO. Unless you are a Leo Lasota who wins his entry fees by playing in robot games where you can win (and lose) money, playing paid tournaments can add up to a lot of money.

 

A nominal fee of a dollar or some other small amount won't affect anybody's pocketbook.

[silvr bull]

We already have this. Anyone who has played in any existing paid events to any detectable degree will have amassed BBO master points

In my experience, this is a bit of an overstatement. I have not played in all of the pay tournaments, but I have played in several of the ones that offer cash prizes. Look up the list of participants in most of the cash prize tournaments. You will find that all of the players there have BBO master point numbers after their name, and most of the numbers will be high. Intermediate players just starting in BBO would be like goldfish swimming among sharks in one of those contests, and the cost to win enough to get even one master point would be much too high. My idea of a pay section in BBO that might cost a few dollars a year would let players of any skill level play in a better environment. BBO could even offer pay section members free tournaments where they could win BBO master points, and that would be a very popular feature. The cost of becoming a pay section member would be small compared to the benefit of playing without excessively rude events detracting from the BBO experience.

[mycroft]

It is said that any interruption in a concentration-heavy job (like most computer innards jobs) costs 15 minutes just in lost concentration.

 

Yes, you could probably get someone's real job to include "spend an hour or two going through the 'rogue 7x' report and banning people." But:

• you couldn't pay me enough to do that for 25% of my day. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
  
• Immediate ban for one offence is likely to be considered massively overboard. Also. people will then either worry about what other "one-offs" will have this treatment (and whether it's one of the habits they have!); or clamour for other things to be just as ban-worthy (I can think of three right off the top, that I'd *much* prefer to "someone not at my table 7NTxxed and flounced, and I got -2 IMPs because of that" (remember, half the time, I'm +2 IMPs because of that!))
  
• So, we'll need to do time-outs for first offences. That means an entirely new database of offenders, and a whole new set of rules. That's a fair bit of money, as well.
  
• Oh, and we'll have to somehow link the "got banned, made a new account, did it again" so that we can instaban *them*. Maybe instaban anyone who creates a new account while on ban.
  
• So, what do you do with the randoms on mobile "play anonymously"? Tournaments?
  
• This normally gets done by low-paid staff in the telemarketing or market research industry demographics. I note that when I worked in market research, turnover of less than 100% *per month* was considered good. That's fine if you're Blizzard and can afford to pay for a permanent game-ban recruiter position; BBO probably not so much. Also, you do need sufficient bridge skills to understand if it's reasonable or not; unlike some MMORPG, you can't learn that in an hour or two.
  

 

All I'd say is "if 'somebody' could do it, why not you? Yellow awaits!" But I sure don't.

[johnu]

[*]Oh, and we'll have to somehow link the "got banned, made a new account, did it again" so that we can instaban *them*. Maybe instaban anyone who creates a new account while on ban.

[*]So, what do you do with the randoms on mobile "play anonymously"? Tournaments?

 

You can't permanently ban anybody in the current "free" signup system. I suppose BBO could do something with IP addresses, but what about public wi-fi places? BBO has repeatedly said they can't do anything about banned players creating a new account. Paid accounts are different because you need to pay with a credit card/paypal/??? so you aren't anonymous.