[keylime]

Bob, like I, firmly believe in giving back to the game. To read some of the absurd posts on here is frankly insulting.

So what if I agree or disagree with Bob (FWIW I have NOT read his notes)? The important princip is, he's trying to make it better. That alone trumps most of the nonsense being posted.

Adam simple exercised his right of free speech; surely it was not his intent to inadvertantly contribute to what is now another example of a hate-filled cynicism(that's EXACTLY what it is too).

If you want to better the game, get off your butt like Bob has and DO something about it instead of pissing and moaning about a perspective you may not agree with.

Bob, I salute you sir.

[Sigi_BC84]

This is ridiculous.

For the record:

This is an open forum and you are allowed to post in any thread you'd like to. If you post controversial articles, be prepared to get some flak.

Expecting that putting a note under each article will stop people from replying is very naive.

If a thread gets "sabotaged" (in my eyes a much too dramatic term for what actually happened), please stop whining about that. Maybe start disliking the person who did it but don't make a fuss about it here.

To Bob (this has been suggested before, and rightly so): if this so called sabotage pisses you off, go start a blog or a website or whatever and post your notes there. Turn off comments in the blog and live a peaceful live. You can put a pointer to your blog in your signature here (like Justin and Gerben) and give your students the link. It will work.

--Sigi

P.S.: As I said before I like Bob's articles and appreciate the effort he's making, therefore I think it was not very courteous to post in that one thread he tried to reserve for himself. That was bound to happen however, one should face this reality and not start mindless flame wars here.

[pbleighton]

"Adam simple exercised his right of free speech; surely it was not his intent to inadvertantly contribute to what is now another example of a hate-filled cynicism(that's EXACTLY what it is too)."

No. You are analyzing apples and applying the result to oranges.

"This is an open forum and you are allowed to post in any thread you'd like to. If you post controversial articles, be prepared to get some flak.

Expecting that putting a note under each article will stop people from replying is very naive.

If a thread gets "sabotaged" (in my eyes a much too dramatic term for what actually happened), please stop whining about that. Maybe start disliking the person who did it but don't make a fuss about it here."

Well put. Adam's opinion about matchpoints doesn't even come close to "sabotage" (FWIW, I am glad that both forms of scoring exist, and am agnostic about which is "better").

Peter

[david_c]

Agree with Peter et al. A blog would be a much better way of presenting Bob's lesson notes. Forums, on the other hand, are a place for discussion.

[jillybean]

Hi,

You could be right ‘sabotage’ is a dramatic response, maybe a different choice of words would sit better with people.

We specifically ask for people not to post in these threads so to keep them intact for lesson information. When replies are made to the threads how ever innocent the response may be, it acts as a green light for all.
The ensuing discussions are ‘not helpful’ in our quest to keep the threads intact and useable.

I don’t think a blog is the best way to go for I-ABC lesson information and notes, for many reasons that I’m happy to discuss if anyone is interested.

This is an open forum and you are free to quote anything in any of the I-ABC lesson threads and debate the content openly and freely. I completely fail to understand why is this unacceptable?

jb

[pbleighton]

"This is an open forum and you are free to quote anything in any of the I-ABC lesson threads and debate the content openly and freely. I completely fail to understand why is this unacceptable?"

What I found unacceptable was bobh's response to Adam's post.

Peter

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

I think the request, that a given thread is
reserved for special purposes should be
respected.

The hint, that one could easiy create a blog /
webpage of its own is just ... , well choose
your words.

The reason: It is much easier to write here
than to build a page, deal with provider, fight
with the style sheets and so on.
Most of us have other things to do, i.e. it may
be possible, that one finds the time for teaching,
but anything additional may be to much.

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: Maybe one could create a special area, similar
to "General Discussions", "Bridge Poll" and so on, but
I doubt, that there is enough material to justify such a
special area.

[Sigi_BC84]

P_Marlowe, on Mar 28 2006, 03:55 PM, said:

The hint, that one could easiy create a blog /
webpage of its own is just ... , well choose
your words.

The reason: It is much easier to write here
than to build a page, deal with provider, fight
with the style sheets and so on.
Most of us have other things to do, i.e. it may
be possible, that one finds the time for teaching,
but anything additional may be to much.

The effort to open a blog is minimal (hardly higher than to write an article here).

It has been suggested to Claus and to Bob several times that they rather post somewhere else. They prefered to not post at all (Claus) or spend their time defending their position why it is right to try to reserve a thread here (Jilly). I can only assume that it must be fun for them.

Laziness or lack of time is hardly an excuse, given that opening a blog is a five minute exercise for a community college class learning to use the world wide web.

--Sigi

P.S.: http://myfourtytwocents.blogspot.com/ (took me 3 minutes)

[uday]

The effort to open a blog is no greater than the courtesy required in order to occasionally honor a polite request to leave a thread alone.

[pbleighton]

"The effort to open a blog is no greater than the courtesy required in order to occasionally honor a polite request to leave a thread alone."

Would that the request had been polite....

Peter

[Chamaco]

There has been a considerable amount of sourness in this thread about Bobh's lessons.

Personally, while I disliked the aggressiveness of some of Bobh's replies, I disliked even more the attacks he received here.

I tend to think that the biggest mistake was BEFORE this thread, and was made, unfortunately, other BB Forum friends, who attacked him.

Especially, I think it was a mistake by Han to participate at Bobh's session as "student": Han's level is clearly superior to the I-ABC students (proof is that he often mentors), and it can be only embarrassing for a teacher (such as Bob here, but anyone else) to have another comparable level player to be sitting in the lessons, especially if such player starts a debate on some topic.

This does not justify th sourness by both sides, IMO... I just hope it all fades awy

[Elianna]

Chamaco, on Mar 28 2006, 08:31 AM, said:

Especially, I think it was a mistake by Han to participate at Bobh's session as "student": Han's level is clearly superior to the I-ABC students (proof is that he often mentors), and it can be only embarrassing for a teacher (such as Bob here, but anyone else) to have another comparable level player to be sitting in the lessons, especially if such player starts a debate on some topic.

In Hannie's defense, I-ABC was supposed to stand for "Intermediate-Advanced Bridge Club". I think that he originally thought that he was attending a lecture geared at level, hence the reason for asking questions.

I think that most of us would agree that BobH's lectures are not actually at the I-ABC level, hence the initial frustration we may have felt about the subject matter/tenor of his lectures.

However, Bob is doing something useful for bridge (teaching beginners) and so we should encourage him to continue doing so, as onerous as we may find starting a new thread to debate some specific topics.

[Chamaco]

Elianna, on Mar 28 2006, 11:33 PM, said:

Chamaco, on Mar 28 2006, 08:31 AM, said:

Especially, I think it was a mistake by Han to participate at Bobh's session as "student": Han's level is clearly superior to the I-ABC students (proof is that he often mentors), and it can be only embarrassing for a teacher (such as Bob here, but anyone else) to have another comparable level player to be sitting in the lessons, especially if such player starts a debate on some topic.

In Hannie's defense, I-ABC was supposed to stand for "Intermediate-Advanced Bridge Club". I think that he originally thought that he was attending a lecture geared at level, hence the reason for asking questions.

I think that most of us would agree that BobH's lectures are not actually at the I-ABC level, hence the initial frustration we may have felt about the subject matter/tenor of his lectures.

However, Bob is doing something useful for bridge (teaching beginners) and so we should encourage him to continue doing so, as onerous as we may find starting a new thread to debate some specific topics.

I cannot tell what is right or wrong, I can only state what I would do or not do under the same conditions.

Regardless of the level, I would hardly ever contest in public a lecturer.

If I think a lecturer is explaining something I disagree with, I might at first raise a question in public, because I might think it can be of utility to everybody.

But as soon as I realize there is a disagreement on the basis of the matter I would try to talk privately the topic, to avoid start a debate in front of other students.

Just my own opinion, for what it's worth.

Nothing personal, I think Han is really a cool guy, I just disagree with what happened, that's all, we all do sometimes things that other people would not do.

[luke warm]

sceptic, on Mar 28 2006, 11:42 AM, said:

Quote

Hi,

This is a new thread set up to accommodate Bobs comprehensive lesson notes (rambling was Bobs words, I would never say that).

This should make it easier for people who like to print and keep the notes, the lesson schedule thread will only be used for notification of upcoming lessons. You can subscribe to this thread for email notification as you did for the i-abc lesson and Bob will include a link here when he posts new lesson notifications.

Bob, thanks for all the time you are putting in to share your knowledge and experience with other BBO'ers. 

Whilst this does not exactly specify leave the thread alone. it is petty clear what the intention was, also it is extremely polite (IMHO)

i found it polite also... i also found claus' attempt at FD tutoring to be polite (in context of his not perfect grasp of certain subtleties of the english language)

i didn't find adam's post to be sabotage (if you notice, when i used that word it was in quotes, because someone else used it)... and i think adam was happy to see his remarks moved to another thread, once he learned the nature of the original

it's true that this is a public forum, but it doesn't seem a great burden to honor requests not to post in some threads if the posting only makes the thread look too 'busy', and makes points harder to locate... if i personally was offended by anyone's remarks, and if that person had asked that a certain thread be reserved for a specific reason, i'd just start a new thread and counter or explain

i also agree with mauro when it comes to someone trying to teach others... as i said before, when a person undertakes such a task s/he usually puts in a lot of time and effort on the 'lesson plan'... hoping to finish in an alotted time frame, too much comment from the gallery can often send the entire program into disarray

[jikl]

We all know how to do personal messages, if we disagree, PM them to Bob. All we are doing is undermining someone helping out newer players.

Sean

[han]

Mauro said:

Regardless of the level, I would hardly ever contest in public a lecturer.

I don't want to go into this once again, but I did not do this. I did not make any negative comments during the lesson, I consider that not done, just like you.