[hotShot]

A forum is best suited for discussions, while bridgewinners is more like a blog with comments. You can answer to a comment, but one should stop there.

Have you seen wikiarguments? ( http://en.wikiarguments.net/ ) You can argument pros and cons and vote arguments up and down. Interesting approach.

Maybe I'm old fashioned but I prefer a forum. One click to get an overview about new posts,and enter relevant threads from there.

But I can understand that a forum is not the first choice for mobile devices.

[Zelandakh]

the hog, on 2014-May-05, 01:38, said:

One of the things that annoys me about this site is the comment "In my system (which is usually something weird) we would have bid blah blah". Who cares? There are a couple of posters in particular who are guilty of this.

Guilty as charged. Hopefully I also contribute some useful stuff along the way too. Not sure who the second person you are thinking of is though - that sounds squarely like me. Believe it or not, there are a few posters here that do like seeing "something weird" on the bidding front.

[1eyedjack]

I expect that there are a few things that could revive the forum. They need not be pursued to the exclusion of other solutions.

One that I have been pressing for, for quite some time, is an upgrade to the forum software. I am informed that cost is not the issue. Presumably the issue is customising the forum, such as for ease of posting hand diagrams and so forth. That requires human time and effort, which may be in short supply. OK, so be it. Easy for me to say, having neither the time, capability or other resources to contribute to the solution, just as long as no-one is surprised at the consequence.

One thing that could make life just a little easier is to have closer integration between the main BBO site and the forums. I see some progress in this area, with certain forum threads getting publicity in the news section of BBO, but for me a great boon would be a one-click process in the "hand export" facility that starts a new thread in the forum and pastes the exported hand directly into the post in suitably adapted format.

By attrition I eventually worked out how to post hands from BBO into the forums. For all that there are instructions available it remains a non-trivial exercise, particularly for the thousands of members who are not used to doing it.

[whereagles]

I would also advise merging some of the less used forums. Ideally, the complete set of forums should fit into a maximized browser window of 1366x768.

[scarletv]

Phil, on 2014-May-04, 05:35, said:

Take the water cooler off my New Content posts because I don't care about the official hijacked thread.

Maybe there is a technical solution for that when the filter option in the forum setup is enabled. At least I know that from another forum that seems to use the same forum software (maybe another release). There I can exclude forums or sub forums that I do not like to follow.

[jogs]

1eyedjack, on 2014-May-05, 06:50, said:

One thing that could make life just a little easier is to have closer integration between the main BBO site and the forums. I see some progress in this area, with certain forum threads getting publicity in the news section of BBO, but for me a great boon would be a one-click process in the "hand export" facility that starts a new thread in the forum and pastes the exported hand directly into the post in suitably adapted format.

By attrition I eventually worked out how to post hands from BBO into the forums. For all that there are instructions available it remains a non-trivial exercise, particularly for the thousands of members who are not used to doing it.

Do you mean 'cut and paste' directly from the movie of a hand record? If it could be done in 2 or 3 clicks, it would be nice.

[benlessard]

Quote

The fact that you were not prepared to accept the overwhelming poll against it contributed to the antipathy of some of the responses.

No, I knew it was a controversial idea that had no practical chance to be accepted, I know ACBL record when it come to rules changing. However its the ratio of moronic responses/valid arguments that really annoyed me. What your argument for thinking its a bad idea BTW ?

PS this idea came to me after the 4D+6C hand vs Jlall

(3S)-6D where 6D was making bit 6c went down. Advancer had 44 in each minor.

[aguahombre]

Zelandakh, on 2014-May-05, 06:23, said:

Guilty as charged. Hopefully I also contribute some useful stuff along the way too. Not sure who the second person you are thinking of is though - that sounds squarely like me. Believe it or not, there are a few posters here that do like seeing "something weird" on the bidding front.

Yeh, I like seeing and considering minority views about system/style in the bidding. However, some threads are open to those ideas at the outset, and some have conditions under which the OP wants to proceed. In the latter cases, I believe we should try to respond within the OP's framework before sharing our alternate methods.

[jeffford76]

Antrax, on 2014-May-04, 20:28, said:

It's impossible to see which discussions have changed since you last visited them from the homepage. It's difficult to see the new posts once you visit the article, since it only has an anchor for the topmost new comment.

Sounds like you haven't noticed that clicking the green arrow takes you to the next new comment. It's easy to read all the new ones clicking through that way. However you have to be careful that you start at the first one. I noticed that sometimes when you click your announcements of new comments you end up on a random one and need to go to the top of the page and click for the first new comment to see them all.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

after a short glance at BW, it seems to me, that most topics at BW are
only relevant for ADV+/EXP players, most topics at BBF are relevant for
players at the levels below.

If you want, you can say, the quality of the content at BW is higher, but
if the content is unsuitable for players below ADV+/EXP, than the content
quality at BW is lower for those players, compared to BBF.

BW seems also quite heavily frequented by North American players, i.e.
topics / view points have a certain North American bias, this was also are
the case at BBF, but at BBF this has changed a bit, we have several players
with an Acol / European background, that post at BBF, e.g. as part of the
IBLF integration into BBF.

At RGB, at the time, I was following it actively, you had a strong bias towards
Acol / British Standard, and some North American views were voiced there, but
those view points were outlier.

Finnally most posters at BBF seem to be amateurs, i.e. Bridge Players, that have
a job outside Bridge, i.e. Bridge is a hobby for them. At BW, most posters seem
to be professionals. This also explains partially the difference in topic content.

Regarding - What to improve:
Merging some forums makes sense, the N/B section was a good idea, but I usually
dont see a real difference to the I/A section, due to a lack of active monitoring.

And as long as we dont have active monitoring, creating a real A/E section is
useless.

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: I am not visiting BW often, so take my views about BW with some grain of salt.

[the hog]

benlessard, on 2014-May-05, 09:46, said:

No, I knew it was a controversial idea that had no practical chance to be accepted, I know ACBL record when it come to rules changing. However its the ratio of moronic responses/valid arguments that really annoyed me. What your argument for thinking its a bad idea BTW ?

PS this idea came to me after the 4D+6C hand vs Jlall

(3S)-6D where 6D was making bit 6c went down. Advancer had 44 in each minor.

Off topic, but -
If I make a weirdo decision for some reason and it works, I would be very unhappy about losing that result. The best example givemn was the lead of T9x of S against 3NT when you also had QJT9 of H. You thought that lead suspect. I thought it was normal.

[the hog]

Zelandakh, on 2014-May-05, 06:23, said:

Guilty as charged. Hopefully I also contribute some useful stuff along the way too. Not sure who the second person you are thinking of is though - that sounds squarely like me. Believe it or not, there are a few posters here that do like seeing "something weird" on the bidding front.

Believe me, you are not in the same league as the major protagonist I had in mind. I also play stuff that others might regard as weird, but I don't say, "well in my system....." unless the op asks for other ideas or other ideas are discussed in general.

[MrAce]

the hog, on 2014-May-05, 18:03, said:

Believe me, you are not in the same league as the major protagonist I had in mind. I also play stuff that others might regard as weird, but I don't say, "well in my system....." unless the op asks for other ideas or other ideas are discussed in general.

I auto skip these type of comments. I do not even bother to quote and show how they used another method in the past in another topic.

[Antrax]

P_Marlowe, on 2014-May-05, 14:32, said:

Merging some forums makes sense, the N/B section was a good idea, but I usually dont see a real difference to the I/A section, due to a lack of active monitoring.

Here I disagree. The I/A might need to be merged to "general bridge discussion" but N/B stands on its own and I think it's a resounding success.
I thought the A/E section also did okay but I see the self-enforced moderation there doesn't satisfy the participants. It might be a good idea to appoint an expert as a mod for purposes of moving threads out of there.

Agree with others that being able to ignore forums when showing new posts would really help.

Another advantage of BW interface: their Bridge problems (non-articles) are presented in a way that lets you know easily if you want to enter or not. Here you get a title and have to click and read through to understand whether it's a lead, bidding or play problem, and whether it's interesting to you. There you have a title telling you which, and immediately see the hand.

[benlessard]

Quote

Off topic, but -
If I make a weirdo decision for some reason and it works, I would be very unhappy about losing that result. The best example givemn was the lead of T9x of S against 3NT when you also had QJT9 of H. You thought that lead suspect. I thought it was normal.

I still think its a bad lead no matter what the DD sim might tell me but its not as bad as i would tought. But the fact that we have different opinion just confirm that the case that will be get overrided (voted unanimously by top level would be more than just weirdo.

[awm]

Honestly I feel like the quality of discussion on BW is terrible. There are some very nice "articles" by very good players (i.e. Kit Woolsey) but it doesn't have the feel of a discussion forum to me. Basically the problem is a high fraction of people who have no idea what they are talking about (including some outright trolls).

On the other hand, BBF as a community is sometimes overly aggressive at policing people like this, to the degree that it hurts participation from perfectly reasonable first-time posters. And I do think the recent quality of BBF threads has gone down quite a bit as well, with some of the best contributors no longer posting.

An awful lot of the topics feel like rehashes of the same issues, often with the same arguments presented by the same people. Perhaps this is just forum fatigue (there are only so many themes to discuss in bridge posts I guess) but I wonder if it's a common feeling causing people to post less after a few years.

[RunemPard]

I have never been an extremely active poster like some...but I used to post about 5-10 times a week for awhile. If anyone has noticed, I don't really post much any more other than the random hand from the club once a month. I would often like to try and think of something new that I wanted to try out on a table and ask for feedback on how to make it better or more playable in a system. Stopped doing that rather quickly after countless rude/troll posts. It's not the responses saying I don't really think this will work out, you should check this out instead, but the responses along the lines of..."Horrible, will never work" just make you feel bad.

When I post an idea I have for a bid, I am not trying to revolutionize the bridge world. I am just trying to get help to make it as good as possible so I can use it myself. System design has never been strong for me, and I practice it by thinking of crazy, wacky ideas. Deal with it.

But yea...that is the main reason I don't post on here a lot. I am pretty good player, but I do feel quite intimidated to post here or share my thoughts sometimes.

[aguahombre]

Yes, running a thought up the flagpole for input has not proved to be a great idea on these fora. This is for several reasons.

1) Some posters who do this end up trolling their own threads. This turns posters off contributiing.
2) You want input in context of your own methods, but people are all too willing to tell you how bad the idea is for their own style.
3) Even when someone suggests that something might work better in a particular scenario, doesn't advocate its use by others who have different overall styles, and is merely sharing a minority view for consideration --- that person gets venom or constructive comment depending merely upon whether he is respected by the one commenting.
4) Also, there are the canned responses without including any reasoning at all, to certain methods it is stylish to bash.

[Mbodell]

Antrax, on 2014-May-04, 09:03, said:

You seriously prefer the BW interface? it's atrocious.

It used to be atrocious, but they made some improvements and it now has a mix of some very nice features with some not as great ones. It used to accordion all over the place and be super slow. It still is a bit slow, but a lot of things got faster. I don't like the way some things that work on most web pages (center mouse button open in a new tab, for one) don't work on the thread list. Also the comment box doesn't allow a left click new tab menu for me in chrome (probably because it is a div instead of having an a tag).

But the integration of polling is nice. Being able to see who voted for what with the people ordered by who has the most followers (with the people you follow in bold) is pretty nice. As others have said the articles are nice. The ability to follow people who you know/respect/like is good too.

You can see if a thread has changed as the comment number will have a white box if there are new comments (although it doesn't tell you how many). When you open a new thread though it will tell you and you can go to the first new comment. The alert menu is a little too cute that it is an alert card, but it is useful to see updates to threads that you are interested in or people who have posted.

There was a terrible default that when you post to a thread you subscribe to it and get emails on each comment, but you can turn that "feature" off.

I agree that the conversation there isn't as good as the best bbf time periods, but it doesn't feel noticeably worse than bbf currently to me. A number of regulars/former regulars post there now or post at both places. I check BW several times a day and am moderately active there (15 posts but ~800 comments), I check bbf about once a week (maybe more during a national or world championship) and while I have nearly 2500 posts on bbf I imagine my BW posts+comments will probably surpass my bbf posts in about a little over a year from now.

I do dislike the bbf interface, and have for a fairly long time, but I do appreciate the bbf community and some of the nice forum things we've done/still do (JEC matches, forum bidding contests, forum tournamnents, etc.). I agree with Adam that the quality of forum posters is more uniform as on BW, although BW does get a lot more top players now with Kit + Steve + Michael R + others which can be quite good.