[Rado]

Hi all friends,
In my honest view one of the best achievements of BBO is the live broadcast from the world top bridge events. Many of us spent endless+sleepless nights of watching Bermuda, NABC, major tourneys all over the world. We all had the pleasure seeing reasonable and nice comments of volunteers sharing their time with us as commentators (Fred, Roland, Richard, Tommy, Bob, Marek, Wayne, Chris, .........., and many many friends...............) (the pure math shows more than 132 people involved in love with the bridge commenting).
Much to our surprise when we tryed to ask our simple bridge questions to the commentators we received the automated message:" not available to private chat" ( or similar). What's happening?

Regards
Rado

[csdenmark]

You are informed here Rado - by Uday!

http://bridgebase.lunarpages.com/~bridge2/...iew=getlastpost

[uday]

This change was installed recently - oh, all right, yesterday! - in response to complaints from commentators that the volume of private chat msgs from specs was making it difficult to do their primary job ( commentary )

A spec who has a Q should contact a yellow , who can in turn fwd the Q to a commentator .

[luis]

I bet the only person who complains about messages is [edited by uday] ,maybe another one. Why not just ignore the private messages if someone doesn't want them? [ui],[ui], and many others are always open to questions and comments.
It's a pity because many times a spec has a good question or something interesting to comment.
Now it's like listening to a radio broadcast.

[inquiry]

Uday has given the commentators the ability to receive private chat if they want. All they need do is put +++ in their profile. While watching the team play yesterday, I found that most of the commentators had +++ in their profiles, so you could chat with them (not all of course).

As an aside, if people start "relaying" questions through yellows, one of a few things will happen. 1) The commentators get the same number of questions, just relayed by a yellow and the yellows become overworked (for some strange reason I am much more sympathetic for the work load of yellows than in the past). 2) Yellows will be swamped by request to relay questions and will simply not relay them, 3) yellows will not be able to keep up with the demands to relay questions as well as handle complaints about rude behaviors, unexplained table bootings, complaints about TD not correcting scores, etc.

Maybe kibitizers can do what I do... first look for commentators with +++ in their profile. You can send questions to them. Second, find a player you respect who is also kibitzing but not commentating and send them questions, and discuss the hand with them. About half the time or so, between you and your friend, you will figure out what is going on just fine without help from the commentators. And in fact, when RADO is not an official commentator (sometimes he is), he would be just such a person I would seek out to ask what is going on... :-)

Ben

[uday]

Some of the time, a spec indeed has a good question or an interesting comment.

The vast majority of the time, it is "Whats the score", "I like your book", "Hi", "How do I mark someone as a friend" , "Who is Meckstroth"

By making a spec offer his comments via a yellow, we protect the commentators from these inanities, and allow them to focus on the hands, and on maintaining an interesting thread of conversatation.

Further, any commentator can choose to allow these messages. Let us see how many do this.

If you just think about it for a second, you'll see the sense in what we're doing. Are you arguing that even if there are ( say ) 2 messages/sec coming in to each commentator, that commentator should carefully glean through the messages in search of nuggets of wisdom from the audience?

Obviously not. At some point, the commentator cannot do his job properly while being peppered with questions.


Vugraphs are not an interactive stage play, with each audience member getting to say a few lines. They are more like a radio broadcast. Maybe TV, since there is something to watch.

Someday, maybe, you'll be able to select from channels of commentators, and select only whose who allow comments. But not anytime soon

[csdenmark]

luis, on May 7 2004, 02:46 PM, said:

I bet the only person who complains about messages is [edited by uday] ,maybe another one.  Why not just ignore the private messages if someone doesn't want them? [ui],[ui], and many others are always open to questions and comments.
It's a pity because many times a spec has a good question or something interesting to comment.
Now it's like listening to a radio broadcast.

You cannot be serious Luis. Those with '+++' no change at all.

If Roland have problems with many private messages I understand as he has become central not only in the event in focus but also for info about schedule. And Roland is one of those persons with good knowledge of systems and he is providing that kind of info very often to explain strange sequences.

I think some more informative text than just '+++' on ID's of those who will be willing to accept messages will be appropriate. Fx a text like 'Comments welcome'.

[luis]

csdenmark, on May 7 2004, 01:13 PM, said:

luis, on May 7 2004, 02:46 PM, said:

I bet the only person who complains about messages is [edited by uday] ,maybe another one.  Why not just ignore the private messages if someone doesn't want them? [ui],[ui], and many others are always open to questions and comments.
It's a pity because many times a spec has a good question or something interesting to comment.
Now it's like listening to a radio broadcast.

You cannot be serious Luis. Those with '+++' no change at all.

If Roland have problems with many private messages I understand as he has become central not only in the event in focus but also for info about schedule. And Roland is one of those persons with good knowledge of systems and he is providing that kind of info very often to explain strange sequences.

I think some more informative text than just '+++' on ID's of those who will be willing to accept messages will be appropriate. Fx a text like 'Comments welcome'.

Not wanting to make a big issue from this I think is better to allow all messages and if a commentator doesn't want them make him put "---" in his profile or something.
I think this is logical if only 1 or 2 commentators complained about messages. I suspect this number is 1.

Back in the days I used to comment I was really overjoyed by the many interesting comments and suggestions that were coming from the specs. And I was happy to answer questions about the bidding and signals to beginners or Ints as they arrived.

[EarlPurple]

I'd like to see an "open chat" vu-graph room where any spec may chat.
You can also have "closed chat" vu-graph rooms for those who prefer to hear commentary only from the select commentators.

Most of the broadcasts have 2 rooms so why not give us both options?

[uday]

There are plenty of things we could (should) do in this area. Things I've heard are channels, allowing players to chat out loud ( alongside the commentators) but making players decide whether they want to see user-commentary and the like.

All in due course

[paulg]

With the increasing popularity of Vugraph -- there were over 1,000 watching the Cavendish yesterday, 600+ watching the Polish finals last weekend -- I have a lot sympathy with commentators who are receiving a huge number of private chats.

The standard of commentating is improving with every event and I'd like to keep encouraging the stars of the game to join in - however the more events they do, the more popular they will become and the more chats they'll receive which, if nothing is done, will just force them away.

Quote

Some of the time, a spec indeed has a good question or an interesting comment.

I believe this would apply to all of us who have posted on this thread.

Quote

The vast majority of the time, it is "Whats the score", "I like your book", "Hi", "How do I mark someone as a friend" , "Who is Meckstroth"

Perhaps it is difficult for us to understand the volume and reason for this!

So I fully support the initiative to improve this area. The current solution is not perfect but is important in developing the great pool of commentators we like to see.

My group of friends tend to run an offworld chat room so that we can discuss the hands effectively during Vugraph - any sort of support for this type of channel would be interesting.

Paul

[mishovnbg]

EarlPurple, on May 9 2004, 02:06 AM, said:

I'd like to see an "open chat" vu-graph room where any spec may chat.
You can also have "closed chat" vu-graph rooms for those who prefer to hear commentary only from the select commentators.

Most of the broadcasts have 2 rooms so why not give us both options?

Because in such case great risk exist selected commentators to stay alone in their room and continue ask each other: "Do you know what 3♥ means by Fantoni-Nunes system?"
Misho

[EarlPurple]

So you are saying that most of us would prefer a room where we can join in the chat.

So if that happens all the time, abandon the "select" commentators and let us all chat.

I HATE not being able to comment in the vugraph room. I have been a commentator in spec since the early days of okbridge in 1994.