[inquiry]

I never thought that BridgeBase Forum would be able to compete with rec.games.bridge for posting, but in fact, the quality and frequency of posting here is now better than r.g.b. The statistics for frequency of posting is undeniable. For instance, so far in june 2005, r.g.b has 80 new threads. while BBF has 276 new threads (~ 2 dozen of these new threads are only viewable by system administrators and yellows). Still the number of new post here is much greater than on r.g.b. In addition, we have had as of now, a total of 3252 total post so far in june. IT is much harder to figure out how many total post are on r.g.b., but I doubt it is more than that, as we are averaging 216 new post a day for june!!!

While the statistics on the number of post can be evaluated fairly, the quality of post is much more difficult. But on r.g.b, they have post about online casinos, jesus, viagra, and the like (problem of not having moderators). Further, a surprising large number of their post deal with flame wars, who is banned from what sites, who is cheating, and rather "craig" is "topflight" (we found out over there he "was" but is "not" now). Here on BBF, we do occassionally wander off the beaten bridge track with post wishing "happy birthday" to someone, or with a group of limericks, but for the most part this is about bridge (for what it is worth, eventually the birthday wish threads will get deleted and not archieved). We also have the forums that allow you to make suggestion for software improvement, or to get your questions about the software answered. You can even find beta software here to download. WE even divide our forum into useful topics, with a section just for beginners and intermediates, a section for non-standard bidding systems, a section for interesting hands, etc.

I think it is this quality of the posting here, and now the increasing quantity, that is making the BBF much more active. Good job to the regulars, and welcome newcomers....

Ben

[Al_U_Card]

Aside from enjoying the sidebars, the content and comments as they relate to bridge are generally edifying and quite educational. Seeing the "delphic" response to a question or problem helps to identify the human face of the game. Contemplating the immensities of the universe is something that man was designed for, so bridge and enlightenment go (bridge)hand in (bridge)hand. btw, if a gearhead is someone who is all about things mechanical what are the nicks for those who stress out over bids, bidding techniques and methods? (cardhead?)

[pclayton]

Yes - I echo what Ben says - rgb has really hit the skids while bbf has taken off.

There are still a lot of top ranked players that post there, but the frequency isn't what it used to be. The core group over at RGB isn't even close to our regulars in terms of ability either.

The biggest difference is the tone of the posts. We can discuss things intelligently without getting into flame wars. Google "ACBL fumbles" if you want an example.

[david_c]

inquiry, on Jun 15 2005, 02:10 PM, said:

In addition, we have had as of now, a total of 3252 total post so far in june. IT is much harder to figure out how many total post are on r.g.b.,

According to google, currently 1538 ...

[inquiry]

david_c, on Jun 15 2005, 11:11 AM, said:

inquiry, on Jun 15 2005, 02:10 PM, said:

In addition, we have had as of now, a total of 3252 total post so far in june. IT is much harder to figure out how many total post are on r.g.b.,

According to google, currently 1538 ...

How did you find that out? To get new post, I ranked them by initial posting dating and physically counted them. Even if I could do that with total post, I don't want to count that high. Are you using some index post number?

Ben

[david_c]

inquiry, on Jun 15 2005, 03:15 PM, said:

david_c, on Jun 15 2005, 11:11 AM, said:

inquiry, on Jun 15 2005, 02:10 PM, said:

In addition, we have had as of now, a total of 3252 total post so far in june. IT is much harder to figure out how many total post are on r.g.b.,

According to google, currently 1538 ...

How did you find that out? To get new post, I ranked them by initial posting dating and physically counted them. Even if I could do that with total post, I don't want to count that high. Are you using some index post number?

Assuming you're in the "new" version of google groups, you can find some statistics under "About this group"

[inquiry]

david_c, on Jun 15 2005, 11:17 AM, said:

inquiry, on Jun 15 2005, 03:15 PM, said:

david_c, on Jun 15 2005, 11:11 AM, said:

inquiry, on Jun 15 2005, 02:10 PM, said:

In addition, we have had as of now, a total of 3252 total post so far in june. IT is much harder to figure out how many total post are on r.g.b.,

According to google, currently 1538 ...

How did you find that out? To get new post, I ranked them by initial posting dating and physically counted them. Even if I could do that with total post, I don't want to count that high. Are you using some index post number?

Assuming you're in the "new" version of google groups, you can find some statistics under "About this group"

Ah.. thanks. In the meanwhile, I found you could date search all of one goggle group under "Advanced search" and put in just the one rec.game.bridge and it shows the posting. The number was a little lower (1460), but I think that means some of the posting were time limited and are no longer there.

Thanks again,

Ben

[inquiry]

Using goggle tools, and tools here, this is what I found about posting from
Jan 1 2004 to June 31 2004 and Jan 1 2005 to June 15 2005 (thsi time of day)

-------Total Post -------
            rgb         BBF
2004    16,541   14,493
2005    15.104   24,510

From this we see, that in 2004, BBF posting lagged behind RBG (by 12%), but in 2005, BBF has 63% more postings.

A further trend appears. There was a decrease of 9% in the number of posting on rgb (but 15 more days used in calculations for 2004, so by the end of the month, the numbers should be close, as each month averages about 2700 post). While on BBF, the number of post have jumped by 69%. and each new post between now and teh end of the month will increase the size of this increase.

[inquiry]

As furhter evidence of increased activety, so far in june (15 days accounted for), we have 7 of the top 10 days for most post every, including the top six on the list. May had two more of the more on the top ten list. It is interesting that none of these dates were the weekend, and most were monday and tuesdays. Here are the top ten days all time on BBF for most post

Most post per day
1. June 14th 2005 362
2. June 6th 2005 351
3. June 7th 2005 346
4. June 8th 2005 291
5. June 9th 2005 287
6. June 2nd 2005 283
7. May 16th 2005 277
8. November 16th 2004 273
9. May 5th 2005 269
10. June 13th 2005 242

Point of interest, November 2004 was a very busy time here as the Bermuda Bowl was gong on, and we had a lot of post in the high 100's and low 200's from the 10th to the 20th of that month.

[inquiry]

Another statistic you can pull out is the number of post by month. Rec.games.bridge has the most post of any bridge site, it goes back to 1989 for goodness sake.

But I looked at total number of post per month for BBF and rgb, and ranked them by the top ten months by total post by each site. The numbers were interesting, so I will share this stat with out readers.

For Rec.games.bridge, the top ten months (by post) were:
Sep-04 4429
Mar-02 3988
Apr-02 3693
May-02 3559
Nov-04 3348
Mar-02 3316
Jan-01 3214
Feb-03 3211
Jan-05 3206
Feb-02 3193

From this list, you will see they have only one month with more than 4000 post (although mar 2002 came close). They have only one month from 2005 and two from 2004 on the top 10 list. Year 2002 was the best overall year for most post on rec.games.bridge, as indicated by five of the top ten spots coming in 2002.

For BBF, the states show a different trend. All Five months so far in 2005 are in the top 10 of months based upon total post. We are on a pace right now to break 7000 post this month (lofty number, I still think we will get to low 6000's however). We have broken the 4000 post barrier six times, and four times in the last five months. (One reason there was more post in April than May 2005 was that I couldn't post for 14 days... hehehe).

Apr-05 4771
May-05 4740
Nov-04 4255
Jul-04 4216
Mar-05 4213
Jan-05 4177
Aug-04 3851
Oct-04 3851
Feb-05 3391
Sep-04 3205

With teleride coming up then the Bermuda bowl and other vugraphs, not to mention BPO-polls, no doubt we will have some more record setting numbers in the next few months ahead.

Ben

[beatrix45]

I would like to thank BBO on behalf of those, like myself, who are geographically isolated and have limited means to interact with other bridge players. Being able to play bridge on the internet is great, but what I have also been missing was the pleasure of rehashing hands and discussing bridge with other players. The BBO forums fill this need. Many of the participants really know their stuff.

[Winstonm]

[/QUOTE]I would like to thank BBO on behalf

Myself, I would like to thank all the little people....Billy Barty, Hervé Villechaize, Tom Thumb, the Munchkins,......

[inquiry]

Jlall, on Jun 6 2005, 05:42 PM, said:

I think this is much more active than I have ever seen it. Anybody know the reasons? I think it's awesome

As I post this, we have set a new all-time high for number of monthly and we have more than week to go in this month. Our current monthly total for new post on the is 4,774 (counting this post), the old record was 4771 in March 2005 and 4740 in May 2005. A year ago in june we had a total of only 2,374 post. We will clearly blow past 5000 post this month. more than doubling that total.

To answer Justin's question, I think the reason this forum is becoming so active has to do with "tipping-point". The more people use this site, the more USEFUL it becomes. The more it becomes useful, the more other people will come. I think it is users like you, justin, and other regulars who are helpful to people with questions that make this site useful. So thank you Justin. And yes, its the "little people" too (to use Winston's term, but for here I mean the occassional poster), who come here and read or post a question. We are approaching 1.5 million page views and 74,000 total post, and this site is still growing (see below), so far this month we have signed up 56 new members, and most of these new guys are POSTING.

To show our sucess, in the history of rec.games.bridge, they passed 4000 post exactly once, and that was in 2004. We have passed it now, 7 times, including the last four months is a row, and 5 out of six months in 2005 (missing in Feb). As of now, rec.games.bridge has 2,236 post this month, and we have 4774.

But the answer has to be a little deeper than mere "tipping point" or inflection point. After all, Rec.games.bridge was the "big dog" for ever in online bridge forums. But it seemed to stall out at about 3300 post per month. Who knows, we may stall too.. one can only read so much online stuff. But I think BBF has an advantage over rec.games.bridge. BBF has a couple of hooks to draw readers here. We offer beta versions of the gaming software, that drives new users here. We offer a place where you can make suggestions for improving the software or how tourneys are run, that drives new users here. We offer a place were the developers can read your questions about the software and that drives new users here. We divide the content up into sub-forums, making it much easier to find related material. And yes, I think Uday's and John's idea to have this forum moderated, helps too. No viagra ads, no porn links, no pleads for money for "worthy' or not so worthy cause. So while it is true that the moderators keep the post total down by deleting inappropriate post and preventing flame wars (a lot of the large post on rec.games.bridge deal with unmoderated conflicts, not bridge), and thus lose out on the high counts occuring during flame battles on rec.games.bridge, we more than make up for it with other material posted here more likely relevant for what people want to hear about.

Ben

[hrothgar]

Couple comments about the rise (and fall) of rec.games.bridge

rec.games.bridge is a news group that its run using a protocol called NNTP. Accordingly, people need access to NNTP servers and specialized news readers to access rec.games.bridge (There are some web portals out there like google groups, however, these don't work nearly as well as a deadicated news reader). I think that a lot of the problems that news groups are encountering are related to the increasing difficulty of getting a good feed to NNTP servers. For example, I used to use a free server provided by the City of Berlin, however, they started charging. Plain and simple, web forums are able to reach a lot more people... (on a relaed topic, the ability to insert hands and suit symbols into a web based forum is another big plus)

As Ben has pointed out, many newsgroups (including rec.games.bridge) are unmoderated. Accordingly, its often necessary to wade through an awful lot of crap to get to the good stuff... Between the delberate trolls and political fights news can get quite discouraging at times. Even so, I think that rec.games.bridge is well worth reading. No offense to the members of this forum, however, rec.games.bridge has a much high number of International players who frequent the newsgroup. I think that the level of analysis is often much stronger...

In an ideal world, I'd love to see some mechanism by which a number of the regular posters on rec.games.bridge could be lured to the BBO forums...

[inquiry]

hrothgar, on Jun 22 2005, 04:41 PM, said:

Even so, I think that rec.games.brudge is well worth reading. No offense to the members of this forum, however, rec.games.bridge has a much high number of International players who frequent the newsgroup. I think that the level of analysis is often much stronger...

No offense taken, at least not by me. I read r.g.b every single day. I even post there occassionally (no I don't have 6000 post over there, but I do have some on squeeze plays and on a few other issues, none as inquiry however).

Ben

[cherdano]

hrothgar, on Jun 22 2005, 09:41 PM, said:

In an ideal world, I'd love to see some mechanism by which a number of the regular posters on rc.games.bridge could be lured to the BBO forums...

We have won Frances Hinden already I agree with all your post btw.

Arend

[inquiry]

Just an update on the number of post on BBF. This is the data from the last two years. We had a record smashing month in September with nearly 7000 total post. And August and June of 2005 were the 3rd and 2nd highest post totals. As you can see there is a steady growth in the number of post on BBF. As you can see from the following table, BBO has been growing steadily. Rec games bridge posting totals are given for comparison.

Month      BBF #'s      Rec.games.bridge
Sep-05      6735      2391
Aug-05      5881      3580
Jul-05      4964      4088
Jun-05      5910      3479
May-05      4740      3127
Apr-05      4771      2330
Mar-05      4213      2329
Feb-05      3391      2570
Jan-05      4177      3206
Dec-04      2799      2702
Nov-04      4255      2300
Oct-04      3851      3120
Sep-04      3205      4429
Aug-04      3851      2837
Jul-04      4216      2770
Jun-04      2374      2924
May-04      2966      2916
Apr-04      2827      2804
Mar-04      2469      2637
Feb-04      2066      2499
Jan-04      1791      2761
Dec-03      1606      2906
Nov-03      1129      3348
Oct-03      1354      2439
Sep-03      918      2614
Aug-03      979      2733
Jul-03      805      2666