An Impassioned Plea BBO Forums

[The_Badger]

I know there will be some reading this thinking "Oh no, it's that bloody Badger again!" I say humorously, but my view is, and it's only my view, is with all the bridge players out there on BBO, all the Star players, the +++ commentators, the ones with numbers or J,Q,K after their names, and even those without, and lastly not forgetting the active players on the BBO Points and ABCL Masterpoints Leaderboards, then why, oh why are there so few Forum posters and commentators? I have noticed in the last few months a few new names but, from my own personal perspective, the number of players writing on BBO Forums is dwindling, and it's not to do with the Bridgewinners website where players can discuss things either, in my view. It's to do with other factors.

 

I realise that a) language b) time c) typing skills d) inexperience e) disinterest f) apathy could be some of the factors, but especially on the time aspect many players make time to play bridge, so giving even just 15, even 5 minutes a week to comment on bridge, to actually give something back to BBO for providing the best bridge site in the world, where you can watch world championship and experienced international players, with expert commentary for free, is not asking a lot.

 

To give you an idea, I took a snapshot of Star Players about half-an-hour ago (5.30 pm British time) on BBO and there were just over 100. Obviously many more will be on when the evening arrives in the USA. Add to this the 250 plus who are on the BBO and ABCL Leaderboards, and here we have over 350 genuine expert players. But there are only a few names I recognised that post/comment on BBO Forums. I realise that some may post under a different name, and that language will be a barrier to some, but the expertise and potential that would enhance BBO Forums never sees the light of day. But that is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are plenty of other expert/advanced players on BBO, and not forgetting the players of intermediates/beginner/novice level who are equally welcome to post/comment too.

 

At this moment BBO has over 11,000 players using it - I've actually see over 100,000 when the Bermuda Bowl world championship is on - so even if just 0.1% were part of the Forums, not just viewing it but posting and commenting then that's 10+ more. I recognise that is a very simplistic statistical analysis of what and what is not happening, but I am sure the BBO Forum readers/posters/commentators would like to see not-the-same-old posters and commentators but some new blood, some new names, some different ideas and perspectives. I am actually getting bored seeing my own BBO Forum name on here :)

 

A thought occurred to me that BBO needed to offer something, say BBO dollars, to get players to post and comment - not that I'm personally interested in BBO dollars myself - but I'm sure there are players who would be, but whether this would work in practice is anyone's guess? In my view it would be awkward to manage, but there must be some incentive to try to get more people involved here.

 

I'll be interested to hear others' views on this. Are BBO Forums ok as they are, or do you think that the more people involved the better it will be? Over to you. Yes you! Please post a comment, even if you've never done previously. It's a start.

[TylerE]

Most of the serious bridge discussion has moved over to BridgeWinners.

[steve2005]

Nice but don't have any ideas how to increase traffic. Forum topics are posted on BBO playing site.

[nige1]

BBF experts like Justin Lall now post less frequently but BBF is OK, invigorated by successes in matches against JEC organised by Diana_Eva, and the Challenge tournaments run by Frank0 et al. Perusing match records by our experts is exciting and instructive.

 

Random suggestions from the past:

• Most new topics can be posted to any one of a number of forums. BBF was going to be organised into more orthogonal categories (e.g. Bidding, Play, Defence, Laws, and so on). That task seems to have been too daunting.
• Another idea to reduce duplication and make it easier to find a topic was to tag topics with carefully defined keywords (you could start with WBF meanings). Nothing seems to have come from that initiative.
• BBF is in danger of being swamped by GIB complaints. GIB is a better bridge-player than most BBO players. Nevertheless, GIB has unremedied basic flaws, high-lighted in many posts. Perhaps there should be a standard robot-interface that allows players to use other robots e.g. Jack, WBridge5. Perhaps GIB should rely more on a full-disclosure scripts. And be able to understand its opponents' FD scripts. (Aside: FD is a brilliant idea. N.B. You can prevent FD explaining your bids to your partner. Kungsgeten devised a tool that facilitates writing FD scripts. It could enhance the FD system)
• More polls. Especially public polls that allow you to appreciate the choices made by players whom you admire.
• Bridge-winners' moderators are more restrictive than BBF moderators. In general, moderator tolerance is desirable, encouraging freedom of speech and more interesting discussion. Unfortunately, however, some members take this as a licence to sidetrack rational discussion with virulent personal attacks. This can alienate and deter ordinary posters and encourage narrow cliques, reinforcing each others' prejudices.

[steve2005]

Gib - BBO has stated creating interface would be huge task for technical reasons.

Gib is so old and code described as "gibberish" Accurately making any change is hard. It needs to be replaced.

FD - good idea, didn't catch on. BBO won't support it.

[mikeh]

I was a frequent poster. However, personality issues have played a very large role in how posters interacted. I was one of the offenders, not something of which I was or am proud. I was hardly alone. Some frequent posters seemed to form a personal dislike of others, leading to some very ugly exchanges. Some frequent posters, who generally burned out after a year or two, were incredibly bad players who nevertheless made innumerable posts of appalling quality. Some excellent posters got so turned off by all the crap that they quit. Others quit without explanation. I quit because I didn't like the attacks back and forth (and I was sometimes the attacker).

 

It got to be an ugly forum in some ways, which was sad since it was also a wonderful forum in terms of bridge, with some truly first rate players who took time to explain their ideas.

 

My own take is that it was under-moderated. I now post at BW. BW wouldn't tolerate some of the stuff I used to write here, or some of the stuff that was written by others. The internet lacks many of the inherent social filters that regulate real life interactions, and it is way too easy to get annoyed at what one reads (especially since one may well read into it a meaning quite different than was intended), type a snarky response and press send. That is an easy way to create enmity where friendship should exist. Obviously most posters aren't like that, but for those of us who are, moderation by the forum could be very useful, and that would enhance the experience for all, I would expect.

 

BW has a higher overall quality of bridge questions, but one of the things I loved about BBF was precisely that many non-experts felt free to post questions, and usually got non-condescending, detailed answers from some pretty good players, to an extent that I don't see at BW.

[The_Badger]

Most of the serious bridge discussion has moved over to BridgeWinners.

 

There's probably more than a degree of truth to that, Tyler, but bridge is not all about experts; and there's plenty of talented players that probably don't post/comment on either site.

 

Actually having a site purely for just advanced/experts could be construed as elitist by some, necessary by others. Moderate/intermediate players wanting to improve their game might be daunted, even frightened, by some of the conventional/systemic gobbledygook. As for some novices/beginners, they probably think along the lines that it is like learning the hardest foreign language in the world: there's practically no chance of mastering it entirely as it changes on a daily basis, so we'll learn a few stock phrases to get us by.

 

The reason why I posted this is not to compare Bridgewinners with BBO Forums because they are separate entities in their own right: it is to discover why fewer players are posting/commenting on BBO Forums generally. And what can be done, if anything, to change this, to reverse this trend. You can't put it down to the fact that bridge was more popular in years gone by as BBO is only 12 years old, given that the earliest registration date for players is 2005.

[gwnn]

stop badgering us

[Rain]

I wonder if the first look of bbf is out of date. By which I mean:

 

Come to BBF, see a bunch of categories instead of actual posts. And especially for non experts, these categories look intimidating as they require you to presort your post before posting. Would/could/maybe be much better if first view was a list of topics like the panels on the right hand side (recent threads or watched content) but by default, even without login.

 

And maybe categories could be merged to have fewer. For instance, I would only separate out novice/beginner bridge (and target that as a place for novices to ask all kinds of bridge questions and maybe receive a good answer), but no special expert/intermediate categories. Maybe a declarer and a bidding category, but no more sorting into different systems before needing to post.

 

One of the sites I like to go to is this one:

https://www.bogleheads.org/

 

You can see how they first list all the recent/last updated topics, easy to read, then go into a non fancy forum with few categories compared to the vast topics they cover. I imagine BBF will be more popular if it was revamped this way too.

 

--------------

This software sucks too. Need to revamp, but migrating is a pain since this is so out of date.

[hrothgar]

Few thoughts

 

1. Communities are a lot like living organism.

 

They're born

They flourish for a while

They die out

 

rec.games.bridge used to be the best site on the Internet for bridge discussion

The mantle got tossed to the BBO Forums

At this point in time, BridgeWinners is probably the best place to go

 

Its unclear to me whether or not this is a bad thing. (Do we need yet another discussion on hand evaluation or three card raises or reverses?)

 

Yes, there have been some great discussion threads here in days gone by, but there is always the wayback machine.

 

2. If you really want to revitalize the community, I think that you need to update the site.

 

In particular, the best feature that BW has is rotating series of quizzes on the front page of the site. This is a great way to generate some really good bridge related conversation.

 

3. Related to this, it would be great if there were some way to get folks to post interesting content. I would love to see more / better write ups of the JEC matches and the like

 

4. You need to shut down the Watercooler. (Or, at the very least ban all discussions of politics, religion, global warming, and the like) I understand that folks hoped that having a some place to discussion music and movies and other such topics might help to strengthen the community. All it did was allow us to decide that we really really hate one another.

[The_Badger]

4. You need to shut down the Watercooler. (Or, at the very least ban all discussions of politics, religion, global warming, and the like) I understand that folks hoped that having a some place to discussion music and movies and other such topics might help to strengthen the community. All it did was allow us to decide that we really really hate one another.

 

Yes, I agree. The Water Cooler does need, I feel, some moderation, modifying or general consensus about what topics are relevant. That said, it can also be an interesting source of views from different types of people.

[nige1]

You need to shut down the Watercooler. (Or, at the very least ban all discussions of politics, religion, global warming, and the like) I understand that folks hoped that having a some place to discussion music and movies and other such topics might help to strengthen the community. All it did was allow us to decide that we really really hate one another.

The water-cooler is a major BBO asset. It's informative and generates lots of traffic. You might speculate on the psychopathology of some posters but hating them seems excessive. Abusive posts are a small minority and can be handled by more moderation -- preferably self-moderation.

[hrothgar]

The water-cooler is a major BBO asset. It's informative and generates lots of traffic.

 

If all we care about is generating traffic, lets just post a bunch of porn!

That will raise the page views mightly.

 

In what way does the Watercooler support the forums key mission?

How does it improve our ability to play bridge or to have intelligent discussions about bridge?

 

The only thing that the Watercooler does is attract trolls and encourage our worst behavior.

 

Case in point Nigel...

 

I always thought that you views about bridge regulations were somewhere between naive and clueless and viewed you as thick headed at best.

But I didn't really start despising you until I saw your posts in the Watercooler.

[RD350LC]

I know there will be some reading this thinking "Oh no, it's that bloody Badger again!" I say humorously, but my view is, and it's only my view, is with all the bridge players out there on BBO, all the Star players, the +++ commentators, the ones with numbers or J,Q,K after their names, and even those without, and lastly not forgetting the active players on the BBO Points and ABCL Masterpoints Leaderboards, then why, oh why are there so few Forum posters and commentators? I have noticed in the last few months a few new names but, from my own personal perspective, the number of players writing on BBO Forums is dwindling, and it's not to do with the Bridgewinners website where players can discuss things either, in my view. It's to do with other factors.

 

I realise that a) language b) time c) typing skills d) inexperience e) disinterest f) apathy could be some of the factors, but especially on the time aspect many players make time to play bridge, so giving even just 15, even 5 minutes a week to comment on bridge, to actually give something back to BBO for providing the best bridge site in the world, where you can watch world championship and experienced international players, with expert commentary for free, is not asking a lot.

 

To give you an idea, I took a snapshot of Star Players about half-an-hour ago (5.30 pm British time) on BBO and there were just over 100. Obviously many more will be on when the evening arrives in the USA. Add to this the 250 plus who are on the BBO and ABCL Leaderboards, and here we have over 350 genuine expert players. But there are only a few names I recognised that post/comment on BBO Forums. I realise that some may post under a different name, and that language will be a barrier to some, but the expertise and potential that would enhance BBO Forums never sees the light of day. But that is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are plenty of other expert/advanced players on BBO, and not forgetting the players of intermediates/beginner/novice level who are equally welcome to post/comment too.

 

At this moment BBO has over 11,000 players using it - I've actually see over 100,000 when the Bermuda Bowl world championship is on - so even if just 0.1% were part of the Forums, not just viewing it but posting and commenting then that's 10+ more. I recognise that is a very simplistic statistical analysis of what and what is not happening, but I am sure the BBO Forum readers/posters/commentators would like to see not-the-same-old posters and commentators but some new blood, some new names, some different ideas and perspectives. I am actually getting bored seeing my own BBO Forum name on here :)

 

A thought occurred to me that BBO needed to offer something, say BBO dollars, to get players to post and comment - not that I'm personally interested in BBO dollars myself - but I'm sure there are players who would be, but whether this would work in practice is anyone's guess? In my view it would be awkward to manage, but there must be some incentive to try to get more people involved here.

 

I'll be interested to hear others' views on this. Are BBO Forums ok as they are, or do you think that the more people involved the better it will be? Over to you. Yes you! Please post a comment, even if you've never done previously. It's a start.

Here are some of my comments.

1. The average member of the ACBL has less than 200 master points. I am glad that the ACBL recognizes this, in that there are a lot of games for these players.

2. Even though BBO is an international site, the vast majority of players that I see here do understand a bit of English. Though some people may not agree, it must be stated that English is the most widely spoken language in the world-though not the one spoken by most people (that is Chinese).

3. The quality of bridge players here is better than I have seen on other sites. I have seen some really BAD players on other sites. There are a few weak players here, but not many.

4. At the top of my profile, I have put "Zero Tolerance for behaviour". This is something that started in southern Ontario, Canada, (which is where I had done most of my playing), and has spread to throughout the ACBL. I am glad of this, and practice what I preach. I have seen people barred from bridge clubs as a result of zero tolerance, and I completely agree with this.

5. In keeping with point 4, I do not believe in insulting other people. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but I draw the line at insults. I may not agree with them, but I will fight to the death for their right to say it.

[barmar]

Here are some of my comments.

1. The average member of the ACBL has less than 200 master points. I am glad that the ACBL recognizes this, in that there are a lot of games for these players.

2. Even though BBO is an international site, the vast majority of players that I see here do understand a bit of English. Though some people may not agree, it must be stated that English is the most widely spoken language in the world-though not the one spoken by most people (that is Chinese).

3. The quality of bridge players here is better than I have seen on other sites. I have seen some really BAD players on other sites. There are a few weak players here, but not many.

4. At the top of my profile, I have put "Zero Tolerance for behaviour". This is something that started in southern Ontario, Canada, (which is where I had done most of my playing), and has spread to throughout the ACBL. I am glad of this, and practice what I preach. I have seen people barred from bridge clubs as a result of zero tolerance, and I completely agree with this.

5. In keeping with point 4, I do not believe in insulting other people. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but I draw the line at insults. I may not agree with them, but I will fight to the death for their right to say it.

What does any of this have to do with getting more people to post in the forums? It looks like it's all about playing on the bridge service.

[StevenG]

Come to BBF, see a bunch of categories instead of actual posts. And especially for non experts, these categories look intimidating as they require you to presort your post before posting. Would/could/maybe be much better if first view was a list of topics like the panels on the right hand side (recent threads or watched content) but by default, even without login.

 

And maybe categories could be merged to have fewer. For instance, I would only separate out novice/beginner bridge (and target that as a place for novices to ask all kinds of bridge questions and maybe receive a good answer), but no special expert/intermediate categories. Maybe a declarer and a bidding category, but no more sorting into different systems before needing to post.

I find the multitude of forums extremely helpful. I can hide the International Forums. I can see at a glance that if someting is in, say, Non-Natural System Discussion, then it's usually of no interest to me. I can skip all the Challenge Event posts in BBO Forum Events. And so on. Maybe it's because I come in through the main screen and mark all unwanted forums as read every time I come in. It's obvious that others have their own methods such as checking the new content; I find it irritating when experts post in the N/B Forum because they don't know what forum they are reading.

 

Bridgewinners is a nightmare. I just get a list of post titles ordered (usually) by the time/date of the first post (and not even updated by time of most recent post). I can't find the (relatively few) posts that are relevant to me just from the title, and I wouldn't want these forums to go down that route.

[The_Badger]

I find it irritating when experts post in the N/B Forum because they don't know what forum they are reading.

 

It isn't irritating if advanced/experts post in the Novice Beginner Forum in an accessible way. I actually feel I am personally giving back more to the game if I help newer players along the way. Obviously knowledge is important but the way it is communicated that matters.

 

The Novice Beginner Forum is a strange one as it gets posts daily for a while, maybe a week, and then no-one posts on it for weeks. Why that who knows?

[johnu]

I find it irritating when experts post in the N/B Forum because they don't know what forum they are reading.

 

Unless somebody has posted a quiz or poll specifically for N/B players, I think it is perfectly appropriate for experts to post replies (although some of the replies aren't really suitable for N/B players, sometimes not even suitable for other experts B-) ) If you are a N/B player, do you want answers from experts or from other N/B players who probably don't know.

 

In fact, it's a problem when N/B players post the most basic questions in the Expert forum because they want answers from experts. This clutters up the Expert forum with non-expert topics, although with the declining number of posts, it's not that big a problem these days.

[johnu]

This software sucks too. Need to revamp, but migrating is a pain since this is so out of date.

 

The Bridgewinners format is much more primitive so I don't think the software format affects user traffic very much. Bridgewinners added a couple of subforums which have very little activity, but the main forum is just a list sorted mostly by original posting date (they occasionally drop in some topics that were pinned to the top of the list) and only a limited number of posts are listed. You have to click on a button to get another limited number of posts to list. Depending on how many new topics are posted, old topics drop off the first (or 2nd, or 3rd, or... ) page. Everything is in a single list, bidding problems, play problemss, bridge law and rulings, tournament notices, etc. so it's very hard to scan old posts.

[gordontd]

The Bridgewinners format is much more primitive so I don't think the software format affects user traffic very much. Bridgewinners added a couple of subforums which have very little activity, but the main forum is just a list sorted mostly by original posting date (they occasionally drop in some topics that were pinned to the top of the list) and only a limited number of posts are listed. You have to click on a button to get another limited number of posts to list. Depending on how many new topics are posted, old topics drop off the first (or 2nd, or 3rd, or... ) page. Everything is in a single list, bidding problems, play problemss, bridge law and rulings, tournament notices, etc. so it's very hard to scan old posts.

Indeed. The format is the thing I find most annoying about Bridgewinners.

[GrahamJson]

I have commented quite frequently in the past, but it is not always easy to do. It’s ok whilst the thread is one of the one or two featured on “Messages”, but once it disappears from that the only way to follow the thread, at least using a iPad, is by opening another message then clicking on the “BBO discussion forums” link at the top of the page then opening further links in order to get to the thread that you are interested in. If that were not tedious enough, the latest version of the BBO app makes it even more difficult as it is no longer possible to expand the page to make it easier on the link you need. Also it now seems to take multiple clicks before you are actually taken to the thread that you are after. This seems to be yet another example of where the new version of BBO is far worse than the previous version.

 

This is the third version of BBO that I have used. The first version was fine. The second not so good. The latest appears to have no advantages over the previous versions and has obvious disadvantages, the most obvious being the lack of landscape view support. Unless they can make it far easier to comment on threads the lack of input will only get worse.

[The_Badger]

I have commented quite frequently in the past, but it is not always easy to do. It’s ok whilst the thread is one of the one or two featured on “Messages”, but once it disappears from that the only way to follow the thread, at least using a iPad, is by opening another message then clicking on the “BBO discussion forums” link at the top of the page then opening further links in order to get to the thread that you are interested in. If that were not tedious enough, the latest version of the BBO app makes it even more difficult as it is no longer possible to expand the page to make it easier on the link you need. Also it now seems to take multiple clicks before you are actually taken to the thread that you are after. This seems to be yet another example of where the new version of BBO is far worse than the previous version.

 

This is the third version of BBO that I have used. The first version was fine. The second not so good. The latest appears to have no advantages over the previous versions and has obvious disadvantages, the most obvious being the lack of landscape view support. Unless they can make it far easier to comment on threads the lack of input will only get worse.

 

That's interesting in itself, Graham. My bridge partner uses "Paddy" (her name for an iPad) regularly but changes to an desktop computer to play, and I get the impression that she has far more access to the Bridgebase site as a whole from her desktop than her iPad. I use a Windows 10 laptop and can be on the whole Forum site in seconds.

[gszes]

MANY (sigh) years ago I read a post that went something like this-- :That's what I like most about this forum (BBO), while most posters are passing at the 2 level, there are others thinking about the possibility of slam and explaining why:

 

IMHO there are far too many posts that answer a simple question with a simple answer even though the TOPIC is one of reasonable complexity. It is nice to note that a World Class player(s) chose a specific action BUT it is USELESS information for someone reading that answer because it does not provide the THINKING involved in the decision process. I see far too many simplistic replies and not enough EDUCATIONAL replies. That makes BBO a far less useful tool for someone trying to LEARN how to play bridge. I hope MIKEH comes back and provides more of his in depth type of analysis. I did not always agree but at least I would try to explain WHY.

 

The personal attack issue is important BECAUSE IT IS A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME FOR SOMEONE TRYING TO LEARN (damn caps lock). Stop wasting the readers time with ANY form of personal attack. Make your arguments in a quiet (ok go ahead and use caps lock for emphasis) logical fashion and let the facts of your argument speak for themselves. Quit worrying about WHERE a post belongs sheesh. New players do NOT KNOW ENOUGH to properly post things in the best spot. The last thing we need is a bunch of :experts: yammering on about why they have to read these improperly placed posts. Just get on with your life and move on to the next question if you have nothing useful to add to the discussion. This endless ranting discourages new players from posting questions and that -by definition- is a BAD thing for any forum that is trying to grow.

[GrahamJson]

As I previously mentioned, one problem is simply that the forums are difficult to access, at least with an iPad. Why not under Messages have News and Forum as separate categories? Then under Forums have all the topics under which posts have been made over the previous few days. If necessary you could scroll down if the number of topics exceeded the page length. That would make it far easier to see if there had been any new posts in any thread of interest.

[barmar]

As I previously mentioned, one problem is simply that the forums are difficult to access, at least with an iPad. Why not under Messages have News and Forum as separate categories? Then under Forums have all the topics under which posts have been made over the previous few days. If necessary you could scroll down if the number of topics exceeded the page length. That would make it far easier to see if there had been any new posts in any thread of interest.

The forum isn't really intended for mobile devices; there's a mobile face, but it's not designed well. The vendor has probably made substantial improvements in this area, but we're unfortunately running a version that's several revisions out of date. Our attempts to upgrade have run into snags because our customizations (like the hand diagram tool) aren't compatible with the new version, and they don't provide tech support for customizations. So we're sticking with this version.

 

So enhancing its availability in the mobile app will probably just lead to frustration.