[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2014-September-23, 19:26, said:

Well, there is a need to distinguish, because offline topics are about movements, regulations or clubs in various places; currently there is a roommate request... where would you put these?

These types of discussions don't come up very often. As a result, the Offline Bridge forum is very low volume and is mostly wasted. Putting these in a more general category won't be very disruptive, since they're infrequent.

[cloa513]

gnasher, on 2014-September-24, 01:48, said:

I think "How do you play this sequence?" or "What do you think of this method?" are quite different from "What would you bid with this?", and they interest different people. Hence I would keep those two separate. I agree with everything else Justin said.


In particular, the "Other bridge" forum is essential, because we need somewhere to discuss:
- Forum members playing real-life bridge
- Predictions and postmortems for major events
- Offline cheating and other scandals
- Bridge organisation
- Bridge technology (simulation software, dealing machines, scoring software, etc)
- Partner and teammate requests for offline events
- Accommodation at events
- Requests for information about bridge clubs

I'd move find a partner outside of BBO area- its too quiet to be a separate subforum- then it could cover all sort of partner and event and bridge club discussions. Human elements in bridge.


Bridge technology fits well in Bridge Material Review.

[Vampyr]

barmar, on 2014-September-24, 09:21, said:

These types of discussions don't come up very often. As a result, the Offline Bridge forum is very low volume and is mostly wasted. Putting these in a more general category won't be very disruptive, since they're infrequent.

But this will make the posts harder to find. How much does the Offline Bridge forum cost, that it's being wasted is such a problem?

[diana_eva]

Vampyr, on 2014-September-26, 11:03, said:

But this will make the posts harder to find. How much does the Offline Bridge forum cost, that it's being wasted is such a problem?

This isn't all set in stone, I posted here before touching the forums exactly for this, to find out what forums everyone likes and adjust

It's not a matter of cost, we feel for newcomers it's hard to find their way around with all the categories. Plus some of the forums are completely dead, why keep them if no one posts there.

[Vampyr]

diana_eva, on 2014-September-26, 11:06, said:

It's not a matter of cost,

Yes, I was just making fun.

Have newcomers commented that they find the forums difficult to navigate?

[diana_eva]

Vampyr, on 2014-September-26, 11:15, said:

Yes, I was just making fun.

Have newcomers commented that they find the forums difficult to navigate?

Yes they sent emails to support, particularly since we started pushing interesting posts in the news on BBO.

[nige1]

Vampyr, on 2014-September-26, 11:15, said:

Have newcomers commented that they find the forums difficult to navigate?

diana_eva, on 2014-September-26, 11:17, said:

Yes they sent emails to support, particularly since we started pushing interesting posts in the news on BBO.

IMO the aim should be forum categories which discriminate content usefully and unambiguously. For example, currently, a bidding problem could be found in several different forums (e.g. Interesting bridge-hands, Off-line bridge, Natural systems, Expert, Advanced, Beginner, Language ...). Perhaps the classification should be three dimensional e.g.

• Content:: e.g. Bidding, Declarer play, Defence, Complete deals, Systems, Reviews, Miscellaneous ...
• Level: e.g. Expert, Intermediate, Beginner... A new level - World-class - would encourage many more players to contribute
• Language: Chinese, Italian ....

Level and language, could be implemented as flags or key-words rather than separately named forums.

[diana_eva]

nige1, on 2014-September-26, 16:09, said:

Level and language, could be implemented as flags or key-words rather than separately named forums.

Well this is why it took so long till we decided to do something. We kept trying to upgrade the software to a version that allows tagging, but it seems it's way too complicated (Barry can tell more abt this if he feels like getting into tech details). So we gave up on attempting to upgrade, we're stuck with this version of forums software and we'll clean it up the best we can. No tagging or keywords for the time being.

[cloa513]

Vampyr, on 2014-September-26, 11:03, said:

But this will make the posts harder to find. How much does the Offline Bridge forum cost, that it's being wasted is such a problem?

That's why I suggesting combine it with other low volume areas- it moves towards critical mass where a certain percentage of forum users go straight to it and it gets a constant stream of posts but still be easy to search through for those type of posts.

[cloa513]

diana_eva, on 2014-September-23, 04:23, said:

We're planning to simplify the current forums structure, archive or merge some of the dead forums and eventually reduce everything to a less cluttered scheme as follows:

BBO Forum

-- Bidding Issues - Questions/articles about bidding unrelated to the use of a convention
--Conventions - Articles on new conventions or improvement to a convention, questions about how to use a convention.
--Playing a Hand -- Questions about how a hand should be played/defended.
--Novice/Beginner Articles and Discussion - articles aimed at this level player, along with question/discussions initiated for the benefit of this level player
--Expert Forum -- Content deemed worthy of expert level discussion. Threads deemed too broad in general scope and interest might be moved to another forum by a moderator/administrator.
--Bridge Material Review -- as is now
--BBO Specific Forum
**** subforums include

• BBO Support
• BBO Events
• BBO Announcements
• Find online teacher/partner
• Report GIB Issues
• Dealer Scripts

--Advanced/intermediate Articles and discussion - articles aimed at this level player, along with question/discussions initiated for the benefit of this level player
-- Non-English Forums - all the languages as sub-forums under this umbrella
--Non-Bridge forum - Water Cooler

International Laws Forum - As is currently

We plan to roll out the new structure pretty soon, unless the feedback is overwhelmingly negative.

BBO Tournament and BBO Tournament Director (this forum's content should be distilled to a document and given to every director) while not currently highly active have a lot of back activity so shouldn't they be kept going.

[barmar]

cloa513, on 2014-September-28, 17:03, said:

BBO Tournament and BBO Tournament Director (this forum's content should be distilled to a document and given to every director) while not currently highly active have a lot of back activity so shouldn't they be kept going.

They'll be merged into BBO Support.

[cloa513]

barmar, on 2014-September-28, 19:55, said:

They'll be merged into BBO Support.

That will be fun having a few threads complaining about directors (hopefully in general way) with directors also posting a few threads about problem players- lots of chances for it to get personal. Dealer Scripts is not popular enough to have its own forum just like "find a partner.." It has less activity than tournament players' and directors' forums. Why not merge Dealer Scripts with bidding forum?

[diana_eva]

Looks like we'll have to take the forums down for a few hours to get this done, sorry. Barry is trying to handle, but it's probably best to do it offline. I'll post here when we decide a time interval.

[cherdano]

I really appreciate this sort of clean-up.
However, what would make a much bigger difference for myself (and I presume, many others) in practice would be an upgrade of the forums software that allows for a "New Content" with some subfora blocked out (in my case, Laws and Robots).

[aguahombre]

cherdano, on 2014-October-07, 09:46, said:

I really appreciate this sort of clean-up.
However, what would make a much bigger difference for myself (and I presume, many others) in practice would be an upgrade of the forums software that allows for a "New Content" with some subfora blocked out (in my case, Laws and Robots).

Great idea. Perhaps too late? Hope not.