[ehhh]

I was making a personal observation that it appears that BBO posts are deceasing if not in number at least in the number of participants. (Errant host fingers do not help with the count either...LOL)

I do not post a lot but enjoy reading and on occassion responding. The forum does provide a useful service.

I do find it awkward navigating to the forum from BBO since Fred removed a direct link from the News and the lack of a link on the News page also deceases the awareness of the forum to BBO members especially new members!

[sceptic]

I found the best way to access this forum is with a short cut from the web page that stays on my desktop, use control alt to toggle between the two,

and you have increased the activity in the forum so keep it up ask questions and post interesting hands:)

[Rain]

haha , guilty.

I think forum was quiet while Ben was away. =P

Will get some basic stats on New year eve to see how we've been doing. But you are right in general ehh. Most of our posts are by a small number of posters. I think we can get a rough idea just by looking at the user ranks. The ones that say "I made a xx game!" or "I squeezed my way to a slam", etc.

Ranks are given for a certain no. of posts. I can look it up if anyone's interested. But a rough guide is

1st-> 0-10
2nd->10-50
3rd->50-100
4th->100-250
and so on.

The spacing between each level increases...

Between Ben and the next highest poster, there is actually another rank that nobody has achieved yet. Then many are grouped in the following 2 ranks.

If we have a large number of newbies, we'd see more variety in these ranks. Sadly, that's not the case........guess not everyone is bridge/bbo obsessed :>

I don't think it has anything to do with direct link from News section. The direct link was a lot of trouble to access. You have to flip through many pages of news before finally coming to the forum link. There is still a link to forum, under
explore bridge->bridgebase online tools -> BBO:tools and information .
I find this quite a chore too. Just memorising the URL or bookmarking it is a lot easier.

www.bridgebase.com/forum ---what can be easier?

:>

Rain

[nikos59]

I don't know about the number of posts (probably
there has been recently some slight decrease)
but the URL is pathetically obscure so I second
Rain's idea for an intuitive URL *and* also I suggest
reinstating the link that used to exist from the
main BB page
http://www.bridgebase.com/
A prominent link to the Forum from that page
would help a lot. As it is, the Forum's existence
is known to the initiated only -a sort of
clandestine existence so to speak.

But this is by the way, BBO is excellent
regardless!

[bearmum]

I have forum bookmarked on my "favorites" list - EASY to find that way

I too think there are fewer NEW posters who continue to post consistently - MAYBE because (IMHO) there are a few longtime posters who SEEM only to post to one another on most topics which may deter 'newbies' from continuing to contribute to discussions

[Rain]

www.bridgebase.com/forum is already a url that'll direct us to this site.



Rain

[rona_]

You can find forums from the newsbox in the lobby of bbo. Click till you get to useful webpages and then open forums in a new window. It isn't really hard to find or see Enough with the spoon-feeding If you don't want to leave your room on bbo then www.bridgebase.com/forums should do it or just save it in favourites as bearmum mentioned. I think people don't come here because they aren't interested in reading or posting, and that's all there is to it.

[yapuka]

You'll also find a link to this forum in the ODP Bridge Forums category.