[inquiry]

enormouschicken, on May 4 2004, 06:36 AM, said:

inquiry, on May 2 2004, 04:25 AM, said:

First, I agree with Aisha that the purpose of the thread was taken over by others, for reason unknown. Perhpas to change themselves from novice to beginner posters by getting cheap post. Who knows? One poster who has joined recently has now gotten themsevles in the top 75 of all posters on the BBO and has only one post (so far) not in that thread. And I think this person was one of those hijacking the purpose of the thread. It is interesting that slothy, the starter of the thread, voted to delete it.

I suspect that I am 'that' poster. As it happens, I am a friend and colleague of slothy who, on joining the forum knew nothing about bridge whatsoever. (Apart from it being a card game.)

Indeed. since you pointed it out, yes, you were that poster.

For the record, uour current post total place you among the most prolific posters here, acheived in a week or so, while the others took a year to get their totals

cnszsun Members since 6-January 04 with 48
EarlPurple Members since 30-December 03 with 47
enormouschicken Members since 22-April 04 with 46
dogsbreath Members since 28-March 03 with 46
irdoz Members 3-August 03 45

The interesting thing about your post, other than a mention of Omar Sharif in your first or second one, your post did not come close to followng the rules of the story thread. They were not about bridge, and they never mentioned in red the players on the BBO. The reason for this is now clearer. The assumption of course if you were going to post in a story about bridge and BBO bridge players is that you were familiar with both, but couldn't be bothered to followed the "rules" of the thread. The reality, is quite different, you simply don't play bridge so don't know the people on the site or about bridge. I hope you can see why someone might draw the wrong conclusion about your reason for posting...... after all, I think a reasonable assumption given the rules layed out by your friend slothy would lead us to believe all posters would be familiar with either the people on the BBO or bridge or both.

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Having participated in the story thread and asked questions of slothy about bridge, I have learned a few things about bridge and the people on this forum. Can any of you say that this is not a good thing?

I seriously doubt you learned much about bridge from the thread, but slothy could certainly help you out with that. Also the Bridgebase has a great software program fred wrote the ACBL to teach people about bridge. If you have any curiosity at all, I would recommend you download it and work through it. You can get this on line at the BBO gaming site, or you can download it directly from the ACBL at:
http://web3.acbl.org/internet/websiteForms.../LTPB2?OpenPage

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I would have thought that encouraging new players/forum members to join in in any way they feel they can is an important function of this forum. If slothy had said to me before my posting here "do you fancy learning to play bridge?" I would have told him that it wasn't for me. Bridge seemed a little impenetrable as a hobby, but maybe as I participate more and more in this forum I will feel more able to contribute to discussions that ARE about bridge.

As for 'upping my post count', I couldn't care less about a number/rank next to my name. Many of the other forums I am a member of don't have this facility and I still post there just as much.

We try to encourage all new players to join. But there was simply no way of knowing anything about your experience. We do have an introductory thread where people can join this forum can introduce themselves. It hasn't been used much lately, but people who post there usually get some welcome Private messages and often helpful advice based upon their stated level. There is no way you or other new members should have known about this thread. The introduction thread can be found here, and I have now pinned it so it will be easier to find and use by new member...

Introductions and the Like

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As slothy and a few others have mentioned, one of the points of the thread was for people to have fun. I was, and I do agree with other people that it has run its course and was getting boring. It would probably have burned itself out anyway if slothy hadn't closed it.

Finally, it seems to me that some of you on here want to keep the discussions on this forum solely about bridge. Surely a vital part of any online community is that there is a facility for talking about other things. Unless you WANT to keep bridge impenetrable and alienate newbies. You don't, do you?

In fact, keeping the discussion on BRIDGE is exactly what this forum is all about. In fact rule number one of the "icky" stuff cleary states.. .

1. Keep posts on-topic and in the correct boards.

With that rule firmly entrenched in your mind, what would you think the topics in the seven forums under the general heading "Bridge-Related Discussion should be? How about the eight under Bridge Base Online Discussion be about?

If you check these two large divisions of this forum, you will find that ther is room for building the community atmosphere even outside of bridge under the subforum General BBO Discussion. In fact, this is where the "off topic" thread wanting to start a "fun" topic forum (I assume non-bridge, but then, I consider the bridge topics fun) is posted. In fact, my understanding of the General BBO sub forum, is that is the miscellanous one where such musing are allowed, as it is the forum that is not well definied as to what goes in it.

As for newbies and the impenetrable of bridge, I will be willing to suggest that the BBO (the gamig site) does more to help them understand bridge than anyother site on the web. The teaching tables, the lectures, the bridge library, the learn how to play bridge material, the ability to kibitz and ask questions, the gold stars, the Beginner intermeidate lounge, etc. Not to mention here, on this forum, the Beginner/intermediate discussion group. I am not sure how "newbies" will learn about bridge here if they come and have to wade through post like the bbo story thread, just like I don't think they will learn much coming here and reading the advanced/expert thread. But they can learn by posting their questions. A dozen regulars will post answers to their questions quite quickly. It is true theat you may get 12 different answers, and each of the regulars will be sure theirs is "the correct" answer, but the fact is, often (especially in bidding), there are huge difference of opinion on what is right and what is wrong. That is what makes bridge fun.

As a final point, I too wish there were no listing of the number of post. If for no reason that people now make fun of the number that I have. I could pretend my high number is because as moderator, I have to post more to reply to questions and the like. But that would be just an excuse. Before I was moderator I also posted way too much as well. In fact, the number of post is what got me recruited as a moderator. I try to be helpfu. I try to payback to the BBO for their great site by being as supportive as I can be. In the beginning, when few posters where here, tried to post interesiting (at least to me), questions and hands, to encourage people to come here and post. But as a moderator, the complaints I often get are similar to the ones I got about your post in the BBO Story thread... and about two other posters, whose post seem to have nothing to do with the thread and serve no purpose. People ask me to delete them or to talk with the poster. But as long as the post do not violate the rules of the site, such post, for whatever reason, are fine. If the count wasn't kept, at least people suspecious of the reason behind such post would not be emailing me. That will save my time. I get a lot of junk email on such topics (it is sooooo easy to click the "report to moderator" button. So trust me, no count of post would be just fine with me.

Ben

[enormouschicken]

inquiry, on May 4 2004, 02:13 PM, said:

For the record, uour current post total place you among the most prolific posters here, acheived in a week or so, while the others took a  year to get their totals.

The interesting thing about your post, other than a mention of Omar Sharif in your first or second one, your post did not come close to followng the rules of the story thread. They were not about bridge, and they never mentioned in red the players on the BBO. The reason for this is now clearer. The assumption of course if you were going to post in a story about bridge and BBO bridge players is that you were familiar with both, but couldn't be bothered to followed the "rules" of the thread. The reality, is quite different, you simply don't play bridge so don't know the people on the site or about bridge. I hope you can see why someone might draw the wrong conclusion about your reason for posting...... after all, I think a reasonable assumption given the rules layed out by your friend slothy would lead us to believe all posters would be familiar with either the people on the BBO or bridge or both.

Ben

For the most part, your reply was fair and accurate (thanks for the links.)

However, I must pick a couple of discrepancies out:

1. Yes, I am among the most 'prolific' posters here. Since neither I, you nor anyone else cares about this, why should it matter?

2. For the record, the bridge terms/nicks I used in the story thread were (in order of appearance) - pen, suit, partners, yellow, Omar Sharif and corn.

Yes, I 'broke the rules' of the thread, but there isn't a single person who posted on it that didn't. It all started getting confused on around the 5th/6th page when a few people, who didn't understand the rules, started posting without nicks/bridge terms and/or posting nonsensical/overlong messages.

After this, I wasn't sure whose turn it was to put a 'red word' in and neither did slothy, so we just put them in when we felt we could.

[inquiry]

enormouschicken, on May 5 2004, 04:17 AM, said:

1. Yes, I am among the most 'prolific' posters here. Since neither I, you nor anyone else cares about this, why should it matter?

Sadly, some people do very much care about it. Let me document just a little biit of the evidence for this, which I think will be sufficient to prove this point at least.

A good thread to review the topic on is the one started by bridge expert and overall great guy, John Goold (JRG), where he first recommended doing away with the POSTER LEVELS to reduce the noise (the noise here being people posting just to raise their level from novice to beginner, or some such). The thread can be found here….

reduce the noise

As you will see, I totally agreed with him, in what was for me, an attempt at humor. But actually, hrothgar had the best humorous reply to that thread, his reply is well worth the reading if you are an ACBL member. BTW, slothy's "ironic" reply of "right on" (all the message), generated one message to me that he was using the thread to pad his count... I will show similiar example. But I assure you, the reason that JRG started that thread was the general consensus that some posters where just typing utter nonsense to up their numbers.

That perception wasn't helped by people like your friend slothy, who for instances posted a reply to a thread about defensive bidding to 1NT, which said in its entiretly, “Adding this in my quest to become an intermediate poster - principal of 'fast arrival'”. Now I found that post particularly funny, given the context of a number of other post dealing with post that appear to be added just to pad posting numbers, and the very clever use of the term of “fast arrival” (some day, if you learn bridge chicken, that part will become clear to you, trust me it was funny). But I recieved numerous “email reports” about that post asking me to delete it. This reports of "please delete" a post make me have to stop and go look at what is being requested to be deleted and wasiting my time (I did not delete it, and you can still find it today if you like).

In addition, people openly worry/complain about the title “expert poster” or “novice poster” We have had a lot of post on this topic, an example being this one Poster levels,

Finally, if your really wanted to, you could search and find a lot of post were people specificallly mention trying to change themselves from novice to beginner or some such. Of course, all of these are meant (I think) to be funny, and nearly all of them within the context of a regular reply (added as an afterthought).

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2. For the record, the bridge terms/nicks I used in the story thread were (in order of appearance) - pen, suit, partners, yellow, Omar Sharif and corn.

Ok, I stand corrected. Reading all the 258 post in a thread that made no attempt to be logical, I guess I overlooked you did hit on more that I remembered. I finally gave up reading that thread regularly in the sense that if when I checked it, a new page had been created since I lead read the thread, I didn't go back to read earlier pages. I just scanned what was on the page when I clicked the newest. The good news for me, at least, no one is reporting that thread to me anymore.

Ben

[enormouschicken]

inquiry, on May 5 2004, 03:29 PM, said:

That perception wasn't helped by people like your friend slothy, who for instances posted a reply to a thread about defensive bidding to 1NT, which said in its entiretly, “Adding this in my quest to become an intermediate poster - principal of 'fast arrival'”.  But I recieved numerous “email reports” about that post asking me to delete it. This  reports of "please delete" a post make me have to stop and go look at what is being requested to be deleted and wasiting my time.

In addition, people openly worry/complain about the title “expert poster” or “novice poster” We have had a lot of post on this topic, an example being this one Poster levels,

Ben

Well, I can assure you that slothy isn't bothered about his post count either. It seems to me that it's just a few people. 'Nitpickers', I call them, who are annoyed by everything that doesn't suit them. They try to make trouble by asking for harmless posts/threads to be deleted, which is unfair as it creates unnecessary work for you and undermines other forum members who are just trying to get a point across in a slightly humorous or otherwise engaging manner.

It seems to me that most of the people who actually DO care about post counts in any way (bar the odd rogue element,) are the very people who are complaining about them. I know that on every forum under the sun you get spammers, who just post incongruous rubbish to raise their post count. However, every spammer that I've ever seen JUST posts spam. They never post anything intelligible or useful. The best thing to do with spammers is just to ignore them and they go away, if you ban them, they only sign up again from a different email / IP address.
Besides, as long as none of them are insulting anyone, is it really too much for JRG and others like him to ignore posts that say 'right on!' etc. and only read the interesting stuff?

I could understand if people were insulting others, swearing profusely or talking about graphic sx, but as far as I can tell, none of that goes on here. You're very lucky in that sense. Sure, there's the odd disagreement, but by and large everyone gets on and although argument's can get heated, they are never rude and abrasive.

[inquiry]

enormouschicken, on May 6 2004, 04:34 AM, said:

Besides, as long as none of them are insulting anyone, is it really too much for JRG and others like him to ignore posts that say 'right on!' etc. and only read the interesting stuff?

I could understand if people were insulting others, swearing profusely or talking about graphic sx, but as far as I can tell, none of that goes on here. You're very lucky in that sense. Sure, there's the odd disagreement, but by and large everyone gets on and although argument's can get heated, they are never rude and abrasive.

Of course, any spam here that is clearly just spam gets deleted quickly by one of several moderator/administrators. So when it show up, it is removed quickly.

As far as "ignoring" post that say "right on", one doesn't know what a post says until you open it. If you were to decide not to read, for instance my post, because most are like that, you still have trouble ignoring post from me. If you click on new post and see three new ones from me, if you don't open them, you could miss one or more earlier post that you would like to have read. So ignoring the posters is not a workable solution either, not really.

As far as being lucky about swearing and insulting others, and it is not going on here. That is not luck. When John set up the rules, of this site, it was made clear something would not be allowed. Anything that insults someone is removed automatically by the staff. That was going on for a year before I came a moderator, and will not doubt continue for as long as this forum is active. Sometimes some comes on here and suggest a player is a cheater for instance when they get angry at someone in the BBO. Those post disappear completely, and the poster is banned or at the least warned as well as reminded of the rules of both the bbo and bbf in this regard.

bEn

[enormouschicken]

inquiry, on May 6 2004, 12:33 PM, said:

As far as "ignoring" post that say "right on", one doesn't know what a post says until you open it. If you were to decide not to read, for instance my post, because most are like that, you still have trouble ignoring post from me. If you click on new post and see three new ones from me, if you don't open them, you could miss one or more earlier post that you would like to have read. So ignoring the posters is not a workable solution either, not really.

As far as being lucky about swearing and insulting others, and it is not going on here. That is not luck. When John set up the rules, of this site, it was made clear something would not be allowed. Anything that insults someone is removed automatically by the staff. That was going on for a year before I came a moderator, and will not doubt continue for as long as this forum is active. Sometimes some comes on here and suggest a player is a cheater for instance when they get angry at someone in the BBO. Those post disappear completely, and the poster is banned or at the least warned as well as reminded of the rules of both the bbo and bbf in this regard.

bEn

Ah, I think this is a difference in browsing styles then. You see, I usually browse the topics from the list with all posts open rather than simply viewing new posts, (I tend to remember more about the direction of the topic that way) but I see what you're getting at.

However, I still don't believe that there are many people who would post 'right on' just to increase their post count. Besides which, for some new members (in other forums certainly), posting such things is the only way they feel able to break in to the forum environment.

As for the rules, I have no doubt that they do not allow insults etc. I just meant that every forum I've been on seems to have these rules, but there are always a few idiots that disregard them completely. 'Trolls', they are usually called. Maybe it's more a mixture of luck, good judgement and the average age of your average Bridge player (being more mature than the puerile teenagers I've seen wreck many a topic elsewhere.)

[lexica]

Maybe the thread's title should be changed to Never Ending Story

Chicken, bridge is more interesting than this! Why not join the Club? There is a great Beginner/Intermediate novice-friendly club with regular free lessons; then thereare 2 absolutely fantastic self-study guides which you can download also for free from the www.bridgebase.com site (look for Learn to Play Bridge, part 1 and 2). Come and have fun

[Trpltrbl]

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Mike (Trpltrbl) and I seldom agree on things bridge-related. But his latest post in the BBO Story thread, he says something I think that has a lot of merit. He said, "completely irrelavant. This really su***".

We agree on ZARpoints too.

Mike

[NotButter]

yeah yeah - freedom of speech, land rights for whales etc and yada yada.

Let's put the Never Ending Story thread into perspective.

It was started and continued but a bunch of very bored people. It has little to do with bridge. I can't see the sense of cluttering up a worthwhile forum with off-topic discussion.

There are plenty of media available to those of you who want to play storyteller games.

In the meantime, dont forget Bridge Base Forums is about bridge.


NotButter