[gwnn]

I never said that I thought the thread should be unlocked. I just said it's pointless to document small, insignificant changes but forget to write about bigger decisions (i.e. locking threads). If I give you an inventory of our pet shop and I told you there were 13 rats, 3 cats, 5 dogs, 23 canaries, and 5 budgies, would you not be surprised if we were also selling tigers and sharks, completely unmentioned on the inventory? Of course, that, too, is a moot point by now since inquiry posted the reasons and that he's sorry, more than enough for me.

[32519]

inquiry, on 2014-April-24, 22:07, said:

For what it is worth, my middle name is Fisher and I have German jewish great great grand parents who moved to the US and became, of all things, Baptist. So clearly people and groups can move from one religion to others so blending of religious ideas in a global society taking the best of different views is certainly possible. Too bad the discussion couldn't have stayed on that topic.

I too have Jewish blood in me going back to the 1,800s when a distant relative moved first to Ireland, and from there another distant relative moved to South Africa. The Jewishness in the family tree has steadily got less and less from there. I was brought up as a Presbyterian but today regard myself as a Messianic Jew. I know little about how the Jews see their God and their religion and was truly fascinated by some of what Art and Antrax started posting. It’s a pity the thread was locked. I would have loved to find out more from the likes of them.

[inquiry]

cherdano, on 2014-April-25, 00:00, said:

Ben, with all respect, I think you have the priorities wrong. You care whether a watercooler thread is getting off-topic, whether it has run out of useful discussions, whether it generates "insert silly cartoon responses". Yet there is a completely non-sensical thread in the "Expert-Class Bridge" forum with 53 posts.

I am not certain which thread you are talking about, but for the sake of argument let's assume for decision making that you are talking about the thread for calculating distribution values of a hand. No need to let me know if this is the one or not, but let me give you an example of my thinking about this thread. First, let me start by saying I haven't read past the first few paragraphs of the original post in that thread. I am not interested in the topic nor do I care to study it to see if it is an improvement of how I evaluate a bridge hand. This is probably more a reflection of my personal view than an evaluation of the content of the ideas expressed (as I said, I stopped reading it, so it maybe the greatest thing since sliced-bread and I am missing out). Nor do I think an expert would care to plod through the content of that post. I doubt that experts bother with anything like what was being proposed in the thread or Blinky points or Zar points for that matter. They use experience, honor placement, and construction of partnership hands from the bidding to visualize each others hands and how the play might go as they bid.

But the question is, let's say for some reason, despite all the apparent effort the author put into building an idea and taking the time to share it with the world, I thought that thread was unsuited for the Expert thread where experts share ideas and delve into deep advanced or better situations, where should I move such a thread? That is, where should it go, is an essential part of moving a topic, and is even more important than it is in the wrong place. To move it, there must clearly be an APPROPRIATE place to put it.

So where would I move the hand evaluation thread if I was unhappy with it in the Expert forum? Certainly not to novice, intermediate or advanced threads. Plays have enough trouble counting to 13. . Certainly not to "general bridge discussion" because it wasn't general. And of course, it has nothing to do with the general off line bridge, natural or unnatural bidding, youth bridge, etc categories.

And unlike all of my post and many post by others, the author did appear to have put a lot of thought into his idea before posting it. So I would go with the assumption that he was looking for some kind of vetting of his idea of hand evaluation, so he put it in the expert forum. Hopefully, someone here was able to tell him either, "hey this is a great idea but it could be improved if you take into account x and y," or someone was able to point out that "it is overcomplicated and here is specifically why, with examples." Perhaps I should have read the whole thing and answered it myself, but quite frankly, I read as much as I needed to know I really didn't care about the topic. But as for moving it, lets assume that I am 100% certain it is not suitable for EXPERT forum, I would need a clear idea of where it should go, and for this topic with this much effort in it, I just don't see a place to move it.

As noted this might not be the topic you are hinting at, I used this thread as an example to illustrate because it is one that is probably not a great fit for any particular forum. I could easily have missed the thread you were hinting at, since while years ago I read every post on the forum, the last couple of years I only read post that A) interest me from the title, or B) get flagged by someone and Barmar or some other administrator has not removed the flag before I see it. So feel free to flag the thread you think is poorly placed.

[cherdano]

My point was just that for this thread (which basically amounts to "how can i count number of losers if I only know the length of my two longest suits"), it was immediately obvious that it would not lead to any useful discussion. I.e. from post 1 it was clear that the discussion had "run out of useful discussion" etc.

[Vampyr]

cherdano, on 2014-April-25, 08:47, said:

My point was just that for this thread (which basically amounts to "how can i count number of losers if I only know the length of my two longest suits"), it was immediately obvious that it would not lead to any useful discussion. I.e. from post 1 it was clear that the discussion had "run out of useful discussion" etc.

Yes and the OP is not interested in anything anyone else has to say.

[hrothgar]

FWIW, I think that its ridiculous to lock individual threads without addressing the root problem.
There is an active community of individuals who do nothing but troll this site.

They do not participate in any bridge related discussions.
They do nothing but post inflammatory *****, trying to get a rise out of people.

If you banned a half dozen people, you solve 90% of your problems.

If you established some decent standards for the moderators, you'd solve 99% of the problems and might even have a decent site where folks could discuss bridge.

[Vampyr]

Duplicate

[barmar]

hrothgar, on 2014-April-25, 09:01, said:

FWIW, I think that its ridiculous to lock individual threads without addressing the root problem.
There is an active community of individuals who do nothing but troll this site.
...
If you banned a half dozen people, you solve 90% of your problems.

Careful, Richard. I'll bet I could find several others who would nominate you to be among them.

I'm not a big believer in pre-censoring people. Yes, we have some trolls, that's the nature of Internet discussion boards.

We don't have anyone whose full-time job is moderating the forum, we're not that interested in actively monitoring everything that goes on to keep it squeaky clean. We mainly take notice only when something is eggregious enough that someone complains, and even then we're pretty conservative about blocking posters and shutting down threads.

Yeah, the trolls mostly post drivel, but it's also mostly harmless. It only gets a rise out of people if they take it too seriously.

[Vampyr]

Obviously if someone complains the mods should look at the thread and decide whether the complaint is valid, but it seems that often the complaint comes from someone who is not a participant in the thread, is not himself being insulted, and who could simply not read the thread instead of trying to control what others may write and read.

[inquiry]

A topic in the Non-natural system forum began something like "Playing SAYC with a random partner the bidding went..." was moved to the natural bidding forum. In addition, a bunch of random duplicate post were deleted due to whatever is going wrong with the posting the two days.

[MrAce]

inquiry, on 2014-April-25, 15:23, said:

A topic in the Non-natural system forum began something like "Playing SAYC with a random partner the bidding went..." was moved to the natural bidding forum. In addition, a bunch of random duplicate post were deleted due to whatever is going wrong with the posting the two days.

What is happening is, when we reply and then hit the submit button, it seems like it did not register. I guess people are hitting the "submit" button while the page is being slow. I got my lesson the hard way for this in the past so I simply click on the title of the post again which then I see the post I was trying to submit is already submitted.

For some reason the forums have been slow in submitting the posts lately.

EDIT: See this happened again when I hit the submit button as I was replying to you. Seems like it is happening once every 2-3 replies I make. Not sure this is only me or it does to everyone.

[mycroft]

I would like to thank the moderators for their work. I may not agree with all of it, but I don't have to do it!
In particular, their effort de-duping is an unblemished plus, except for them - Bravi! In particular particular, for my part in the needing de-duped, my sincere thanks.

[cherdano]

I probably should also add that what I wrote above is not such a big deal. In fact, I wouldn't have a problem with just banning religion and global warming threads from the watercooler....

[nige1]

hrothgar, on 2014-April-25, 09:01, said:

FWIW, I think that its ridiculous to lock individual threads without addressing the root problem. There is an active community of individuals who do nothing but troll this site.
They do not participate in any bridge related discussions.
They do nothing but post inflammatory *****, trying to get a rise out of people.
If you banned a half dozen people, you solve 90% of your problems.
If you established some decent standards for the moderators, you'd solve 99% of the problems and might even have a decent site where folks could discuss bridge.

Be careful what you wish for

mycroft, on 2014-April-25, 17:00, said:

I would like to thank the moderators for their work. I may not agree with all of it, but I don't have to do it!
In particular, their effort de-duping is an unblemished plus, except for them - Bravi! In particular particular, for my part in the needing de-duped, my sincere thanks.

Sometimes, when I posted a reply ...

BBF said:

504 Gateway Time-out
The server didn't respond in time.

... I thought the reply had been aborted and re-clicked submit. IMO, that is what causes duplicate replies.

[Antrax]

inquiry, on 2014-April-25, 08:19, said:

So where would I move the hand evaluation thread if I was unhappy with it in the Expert forum? Certainly not to novice, intermediate or advanced threads. Plays have enough trouble counting to 13. . Certainly not to "general bridge discussion" because it wasn't general.

So a new method to evaluate the strength of any given Bridge hand is not generally about Bridge?

Re: trolls, only three and a half names come to mind, and of those one and a half do post Bridge content. So, unless we expand it to all posters who have a tendency to be offensive when disagreeing with someone, I really don't think it's such a huge problem.

[diana_eva]

inquiry, on 2014-April-25, 08:19, said:

....

But the question is, let's say for some reason, despite all the apparent effort the author put into building an idea and taking the time to share it with the world, I thought that thread was unsuited for the Expert thread where experts share ideas and delve into deep advanced or better situations, where should I move such a thread? That is, where should it go, is an essential part of moving a topic, and is even more important than it is in the wrong place. To move it, there must clearly be an APPROPRIATE place to put it.

So where would I move the hand evaluation thread if I was unhappy with it in the Expert forum? Certainly not to novice, intermediate or advanced threads. Plays have enough trouble counting to 13. . Certainly not to "general bridge discussion" because it wasn't general. And of course, it has nothing to do with the general off line bridge, natural or unnatural bidding, youth bridge, etc categories.
....

I think it could have been safely moved to General Bridge Discussion. Also, the thread started off as a spammish-looking post. It was one link that wouldn't work posted in several Forums. One of the admins deleted the duplicate posts and left only one in Expert Forums. Then OP came back and edited post #1 to explain what she meant, after being told that the link isn't working. Now it looks like forum regulars were all over OP despite all the effort she put into sharing her idea with the world - but it's only because she edited OP There was zero effort originally.

Which is why - if the forum software allows - it would be a good idea to make it mandatory to show the "edited" mark after the thread got several replies.

[mgoetze]

inquiry, on 2014-April-25, 08:19, said:

So where would I move the hand evaluation thread if I was unhappy with it in the Expert forum? Certainly not to novice, intermediate or advanced threads. Plays have enough trouble counting to 13. . Certainly not to "general bridge discussion" because it wasn't general. And of course, it has nothing to do with the general off line bridge, natural or unnatural bidding, youth bridge, etc categories.

Oh wow, so experts are those who are so good who have transcended all sorts of point count and can visualise everything whereas advanced players can barely count to 13? What is that huge mass of bridge players whose skills lie in between those two reference points called then?

Also I would love it if "General Bridge Discussion" was limited to truly general things, and threads starting with I'm in a youth bridge tournament and I pick up this hand. West could not answer for the 1NT opening range and partner and I did not play balancing. What would you bid? were all moved to another forum such as I/A or Interesting Bridge Hands. But that would be a huge change in moderation policy. By your actions so far you have been allowing "General Bridge Discussion" to be "the huge bin where everything else goes", so the thread mentioned by you would certainly fit.

I happen to think it is pretty clear where almost any post should go (though I can't for the life of me figure out why there is a "Youth Bridge" and a "BBO Juniors" forum). If you think otherwise, well, you are one of the few people in a position to change the structure.

[inquiry]

mgoetze, on 2014-April-26, 04:17, said:

Oh wow, so experts are those who are so good who have transcended all sorts of point count and can visualise everything whereas advanced players can barely count to 13? What is that huge mass of bridge players whose skills lie in between those two reference points called then?

Also I would love it if "General Bridge Discussion" was limited to truly general things, and threads starting with I'm in a youth bridge tournament and I pick up this hand. West could not answer for the 1NT opening range and partner and I did not play balancing. What would you bid? were all moved to another forum such as I/A or Interesting Bridge Hands. But that would be a huge change in moderation policy. By your actions so far you have been allowing "General Bridge Discussion" to be "the huge bin where everything else goes", so the thread mentioned by you would certainly fit.

I happen to think it is pretty clear where almost any post should go (though I can't for the life of me figure out why there is a "Youth Bridge" and a "BBO Juniors" forum). If you think otherwise, well, you are one of the few people in a position to change the structure.

The problem of keeping count was of course meant to refer to the novice/beginner section, sorry if somehow that offended you. I am no expert, so if counting applies to advanced or intermediate group, it would include me... but I do think I count the cards and manage to visualize the unseen hands reasonably well.

The reason the post doesn't belong in GENERAL BRIDGE DISCUSSION is that the mathematical approach (be it right or be it wrong) certainly wouldn't fall into a general type discussion. The fact is, there is no place the topic is a great fit for. If the original poster had posted it in the general bridge discussion I would have left it there. If he had posted it in the advanced/intermediate, I would have left it there. If he had posted it in natural or non-natural bidding system, or in novice/beginner I would have had to move it. From novice I would have moved it to intermediate/advanced. From either of the bidding methods, I guess I would have moved it to General bridge discussion. Not sure if the decision for those moves make sense to you, but I don't particularly care if they would or would not. Such moves makes sense to me. For what it is worth here would be my personal logic.

1) no appropriate forum exist, so tend to go with authors choice
2) when authors choice is clearly wrong, try to match his idea for where to post a thread
3) If posted in a skill level, try to match the skill level (yes, I do move some post from Expert to advanced, and some advanced to beginner)
4) If posted in a system forum and not a system, move to general discussion
5) if posted in a general and it relates to off line bridge move to often line bridge
6) if posted in BBO forum and not bbo specific, move to general bridge forum
7) if posted in offline bridge but relates to both bbo and offline bridge, move to general bridge forum.

Obviously, however, I rarely move topics. Barmar seems to move more than I do, but probably because he finds them quicker than I do.

[barmar]

MrAce, on 2014-April-25, 16:46, said:

What is happening is, when we reply and then hit the submit button, it seems like it did not register. I guess people are hitting the "submit" button while the page is being slow. I got my lesson the hard way for this in the past so I simply click on the title of the post again which then I see the post I was trying to submit is already submitted.

For some reason the forums have been slow in submitting the posts lately.

EDIT: See this happened again when I hit the submit button as I was replying to you. Seems like it is happening once every 2-3 replies I make. Not sure this is only me or it does to everyone.

For the past 4-5 days there's been some kind of problem with the forum that causes these frequent "Gateway timeout" errors, only when posting. We haven't been able to figure out what's causing it, so we can't fix it.

But when it happens, the post has always gone through. So if the poster refreshes and chooses the option to re-submit, it ends up creating a duplicate. If this one also gets an error and they re-submit again, we get 3. So far, the worst one I've cleaned up had 6 copies.

So if you get this error, please DO NOT resubmit. Just re-open the forum.

[barmar]

A question about "autoplay of non-singletons" was posted twice in BBO Support (I assume the duplicate was due to the gateway timeout problem) and also in Suggestions for the Software. I removed the duplicate and the one in Suggestions.