beatrix45 Posted June 17, 2005 Report Share Posted June 17, 2005 :) I would like to thank BBO on behalf of those, like myself, who are geographically isolated and have limited means to interact with other bridge players. Being able to play bridge on the internet is great, but what I have also been missing was the pleasure of rehashing hands and discussing bridge with other players. The BBO forums fill this need. Many of the participants really know their stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted June 17, 2005 Report Share Posted June 17, 2005 I would like to thank BBO on behalf Myself, I would like to thank all the little people....Billy Barty, Hervé Villechaize, Tom Thumb, the Munchkins,...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inquiry Posted June 22, 2005 Report Share Posted June 22, 2005 I think this is much more active than I have ever seen it. Anybody know the reasons? I think it's awesome :P As I post this, we have set a new all-time high for number of monthly and we have more than week to go in this month. Our current monthly total for new post on the is 4,774 (counting this post), the old record was 4771 in March 2005 and 4740 in May 2005. A year ago in june we had a total of only 2,374 post. We will clearly blow past 5000 post this month. more than doubling that total. To answer Justin's question, I think the reason this forum is becoming so active has to do with "tipping-point". The more people use this site, the more USEFUL it becomes. The more it becomes useful, the more other people will come. I think it is users like you, justin, and other regulars who are helpful to people with questions that make this site useful. So thank you Justin. And yes, its the "little people" too (to use Winston's term, but for here I mean the occassional poster), who come here and read or post a question. We are approaching 1.5 million page views and 74,000 total post, and this site is still growing (see below), so far this month we have signed up 56 new members, and most of these new guys are POSTING. To show our sucess, in the history of rec.games.bridge, they passed 4000 post exactly once, and that was in 2004. We have passed it now, 7 times, including the last four months is a row, and 5 out of six months in 2005 (missing in Feb). As of now, rec.games.bridge has 2,236 post this month, and we have 4774. But the answer has to be a little deeper than mere "tipping point" or inflection point. After all, Rec.games.bridge was the "big dog" for ever in online bridge forums. But it seemed to stall out at about 3300 post per month. Who knows, we may stall too.. one can only read so much online stuff. But I think BBF has an advantage over rec.games.bridge. BBF has a couple of hooks to draw readers here. We offer beta versions of the gaming software, that drives new users here. We offer a place where you can make suggestions for improving the software or how tourneys are run, that drives new users here. We offer a place were the developers can read your questions about the software and that drives new users here. We divide the content up into sub-forums, making it much easier to find related material. And yes, I think Uday's and John's idea to have this forum moderated, helps too. No viagra ads, no porn links, no pleads for money for "worthy' or not so worthy cause. So while it is true that the moderators keep the post total down by deleting inappropriate post and preventing flame wars (a lot of the large post on rec.games.bridge deal with unmoderated conflicts, not bridge), and thus lose out on the high counts occuring during flame battles on rec.games.bridge, we more than make up for it with other material posted here more likely relevant for what people want to hear about. Ben Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrothgar Posted June 22, 2005 Report Share Posted June 22, 2005 Couple comments about the rise (and fall) of rec.games.bridge rec.games.bridge is a news group that its run using a protocol called NNTP. Accordingly, people need access to NNTP servers and specialized news readers to access rec.games.bridge (There are some web portals out there like google groups, however, these don't work nearly as well as a deadicated news reader). I think that a lot of the problems that news groups are encountering are related to the increasing difficulty of getting a good feed to NNTP servers. For example, I used to use a free server provided by the City of Berlin, however, they started charging. Plain and simple, web forums are able to reach a lot more people... (on a relaed topic, the ability to insert hands and suit symbols into a web based forum is another big plus) As Ben has pointed out, many newsgroups (including rec.games.bridge) are unmoderated. Accordingly, its often necessary to wade through an awful lot of crap to get to the good stuff... Between the delberate trolls and political fights news can get quite discouraging at times. Even so, I think that rec.games.bridge is well worth reading. No offense to the members of this forum, however, rec.games.bridge has a much high number of International players who frequent the newsgroup. I think that the level of analysis is often much stronger... In an ideal world, I'd love to see some mechanism by which a number of the regular posters on rec.games.bridge could be lured to the BBO forums... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inquiry Posted June 22, 2005 Report Share Posted June 22, 2005 Even so, I think that rec.games.brudge is well worth reading. No offense to the members of this forum, however, rec.games.bridge has a much high number of International players who frequent the newsgroup. I think that the level of analysis is often much stronger... No offense taken, at least not by me. I read r.g.b every single day. I even post there occassionally (no I don't have 6000 post over there, but I do have some on squeeze plays and on a few other issues, none as inquiry however). Ben Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cherdano Posted June 22, 2005 Report Share Posted June 22, 2005 In an ideal world, I'd love to see some mechanism by which a number of the regular posters on rc.games.bridge could be lured to the BBO forums... We have won Frances Hinden already :P I agree with all your post btw. Arend Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inquiry Posted October 5, 2005 Report Share Posted October 5, 2005 Just an update on the number of post on BBF. This is the data from the last two years. We had a record smashing month in September with nearly 7000 total post. And August and June of 2005 were the 3rd and 2nd highest post totals. As you can see there is a steady growth in the number of post on BBF. As you can see from the following table, BBO has been growing steadily. Rec games bridge posting totals are given for comparison. Month BBF #'s Rec.games.bridgeSep-05 6735 2391Aug-05 5881 3580Jul-05 4964 4088Jun-05 5910 3479May-05 4740 3127Apr-05 4771 2330Mar-05 4213 2329Feb-05 3391 2570Jan-05 4177 3206Dec-04 2799 2702Nov-04 4255 2300Oct-04 3851 3120Sep-04 3205 4429Aug-04 3851 2837Jul-04 4216 2770Jun-04 2374 2924May-04 2966 2916Apr-04 2827 2804Mar-04 2469 2637Feb-04 2066 2499Jan-04 1791 2761Dec-03 1606 2906Nov-03 1129 3348Oct-03 1354 2439Sep-03 918 2614Aug-03 979 2733Jul-03 805 2666 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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