[cherdano]

Whenever I don't have that much time, I am not so interested in the bidding discussions here on BBF. However, I hate missing the odd exciting play problem.
Can we maybe have a separate forum for play/defense problems? I wouldn't mind if one of the other forums (Advanced/Expert, Interesting Bridge Hands) would get lost in exchange.

Arend

P.S.:
In fact, I find the current structure quite confusing. What if I happen to have an interesting advanced/expert level bridge hand from offline? There seems to be no consensus where to put it... If I were BBF dictator, I would just have "General", "B/I", "Bidding Systems and Conventions", "Bidding Judgement Problems", "Play and Defense" (so that I can just read B/I and the last two).

[Winstonm]

This makes sense to me as well.

[inquiry]

I have been thinking about this request. First, there clearly seems to be too many major headings, and adding news ones is not something I want to do. Take problem hands for example. Would we need problem hand thread for beginners and one for advanced players?

Having said that, we might consider a consolidation. This forum software allows subthreads. For instance, Instead of Natural Bidding and Non-Natural Bidding, we could have "Bidding" thread, and underneath that 2/1, Sayc, polish club, precision, whatever. And we could keep Advanced and Beginner threads, but have sub topics... Declare, Defend, general topics, etc. This will require an extra click to find the threads you are interested in. For example. If you wanted to find defensive problems suitable for beginners, you would click on "beginners and interemediates" and a new window opens with three forums at the top of the new page... "Play Problems", "Defensive Problems", "General discussion".

The question becomes is this worth it. The problem with this appoach is there will be many additional threads. I think most of the regulars use teh "view new posts" button and scroll through the topics. To be honest, 90% of the time I have no idea what forum group I am in when I am reading a thread this way. So I don't know, it wouldn't bother me one way or the other. I wonder what the users think?

[rbforster]

Fewer forums rather than more seems right. As others have said, it seems like there's more forums here than real differences - the beginner/intermediate, SAYC and 2/1, and general discussion seem like they could be combined.

I don't know if it's possible to tag each thread somehow ("play" vs "defend", "natural" vs "non-natural" system, or similar distinctions), but then you could put similar things in the same forum and have users search for only one if that was their preference.

[mgoetze]

It seems that with the current structure, people aren't putting in too much effort to get their post into the "right" forum... see all the threads titled "How would you bid this hand?" in either "General Bridge Discussion" or "Advanced/Expert Class Bridge" which start with "Playing SAYC..."

[hrothgar]

inquiry, on Aug 7 2006, 10:29 PM, said:

The question becomes is this worth it. The problem with this appoach is there will be many additional threads. I think most of the regulars use teh "view new posts" button and scroll through the topics. To be honest, 90% of the time I have no idea what forum group I am in when I am reading a thread this way. So I don't know, it wouldn't bother me one way or the other. I wonder what the users think?

Its useful to distinquish between two different ways of manuevering the forums:

9 times out of 10, I do exactly what Ben suggests: I click on the "View New Posts" button, see what comes up, and lauch a stream of vitriol at the target d'jour... The folder systems doesn't add much to this.

However, every once and a while, I want to go back and review a thread (occasionally, some that are quite old). In these cases, having some kind of organizational structure is useful.

Not sure how I would organize things:

For example, I like the suggestion of having separate folders for bididng and play, however, we see a lot of threads that contain quizzes with both types of problems...

[jocdelevat]

I agree 100% with cherdano about forum structure.

For me all others bridge related forums except B/I are for level higher than B/I so I restrict myself to post there even I read it and sometimes I would like to reply or post a question.

best regards
jocdelevat

[cherdano]

I don't like subforums at all, since it means more clicking.

I think the point of having different forums at all should be to enable those who are interested in some topics but not in others to just follow these topics. The current structure doesnt help that very much.

Arend