[mike777]

As has been pointed out, if there are any true beginners out there who find the existing content a bit offputting, the solution is for more beginners to ask questions



You made the best point......I have no doubt bbo forums/Ben/Rain/Fred/etc would love to respond to that complaint.

In other words BBO/forums would in an instant respond to a demand for more Beg. level content.

If the demand/interest is not there they can adjust again. My guess is the cost is pretty low for giving this a try.

[wyman]

squealydan, on 2012-March-15, 20:50, said:

As has been pointed out, if there are any true beginners out there who find the existing content a bit offputting, the solution is for more beginners to ask questions.

I'm not convinced that there would ever be enough of a market for a true beginner only forum (all beginners I know learn at clubs, and so have a place to ask questions - they also progress at a proscribed pace with little incentive to go any quicker...).

Two points: First, semantics, but I think a solution is for more beginners to ask questions in the existing fora, not necessarily the solution. Second, I think there are fair arguments against a B-only forum. For example, players playing online and then posting on this forum are likely to move beyond a B forum extremely quickly, so its use might be infrequent. This is even (especially?) if the player isn't "learning" at clubs. Of course, it's good that beginners would learn quickly. Just saying that the forum might not get a heck of a lot of traffic -- or worse, intermediates not confident enough to "move up" would effectively make it an intermediate forum. All in all, I think the plusses outweigh the minuses.

In any case, until a change happens, it's good to encourage beginners to not be afraid to post in B/I; that's what it's there for.

[Statto]

JustaDummy, on 2012-March-15, 20:25, said:

On the other hand, no one as far as I have seen, is interested in the validity of any of the answers. That, as far as I can see, is a free-for-all.

If poor answers are posted you can be sure they will be contended.

Quote

My astonishment was (assuming that beginner questions would prevail) that any top level player could find the time, given the low level of queries that I'd expect of a true beginners forum.

If you joined a computer tips forum as a lUDDITE, wouldn't you rather someone knowledgeable replied to your posts? If all you got was other Luddites, wouldn't you go somewhere else?

[Cthulhu D]

JustaDummy, on 2012-March-15, 20:25, said:

My astonishment was (assuming that beginner questions would prevail) that any top level player could find the time, given the low level of queries that I'd expect of a true beginners forum.

which prompted me to think that B/I is really not a beginners' forum at all.

This is what I love about this forum. Francis, Gnasher, the J.Lall/Donn borg etc chipping in is a generally unprecedented level of access to world class players.

[JustaDummy]

Statto, on 2012-March-15, 21:02, said:

If poor answers are posted you can be sure they will be contended.

Yes, they are. I see that happening in most posts here. And I see that the contentions simply serve to confuse me further.

Quote

If you joined a computer tips forum as a lUDDITE, wouldn't you rather someone knowledgeable replied to your posts? If all you got was other Luddites, wouldn't you go somewhere else?

I do of course understand your point. But to take your analogy to the extremes that I find here on B/I, you're suggesting that the following exchange in a computing forum is useful to the OP:

OP: " I have a Pentium 4 processor with 2 GB memory and an 80GB 7200 RPM HDD but I find that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 can't render my scenes at anything approaching 15FPS. What can I do to improve this?

Responder 1: "Upgrade to FSX."

Responder 2: "Install more memory."

Responder 3: "What graphics card do you use?"

Responder 2 (again): "Ignore Responder 1! Do NOT upgrade to FSX with that machine!"

Responder 4: "Go away. You cannot use that software with your hardware."

Responder 5: "Your processor is too slow for MSFS. Upgrade your processor to a quad."

Responder 6: "Do NOT believe Responder 5! MSFS 2004 is NOT multiple processor savvy. You will just waste money.

---The trouble here is that all the responders (apart from #1) are all partly correct, but none are helpful except for #3, which contains the germ of a solution, but that gets swamped by the other stuff.

My point is that there will absolutely be contention regarding poor, and sometimes even good, responses, but I, as a beginner, am simply not equipped to tell the difference. I can do that in a computing forum (you guessed) but not here. Not yet.

So, OK. I can go elsewhere, but then I see the gap between Fred's "Learn to Play Bridge" and this starter forum, and I just wonder what the agenda is for BBO.

[JustaDummy]

Cthulhu D, on 2012-March-15, 21:19, said:

This is what I love about this forum. Francis, Gnasher, the J.Lall/Donn borg etc chipping in is a generally unprecedented level of access to world class players.

It is indeed gratifying. But I don't need that, yet. Once I get to the Intermediate level (if I ever do), I'll truly welcome their input. But right now, it's the firehose syndrome. And I'm not able at this stage to do any filtering at all. My back is against the wall as it is. Maybe it's just me, but as one poster said, 67% of all BBO members have never posted anything on any of these forums…

I'm maybe beginning to see why.

[Cthulhu D]

JustaDummy, on 2012-March-15, 21:44, said:

---The trouble here is that all the responders (apart from #1) are all partly correct, but none are helpful except for #3, which contains the germ of a solution, but that gets swamped by the other stuff.

I see you've been to an IT forum before. The reality is most forums suffer from this issue, because there is no central authority kicking around to moderate the debate (except from a compliance perspective). The issue of a diversity of opinion with no real guidance or moderation is always going to occur no matter how you recut the forum structure itself. Up/Down voting is an attempt to address this issue by removing the noise, but has other problems.

It's a bit less bad here because there are a tight group of posters who's responses I will automatically take very seriously, because they have won Big Events in the Real World, and I can safely ignore myself as I have not won anything ever.

To get what you want you need to have an applications process and a penned in newbie area where a newbie can post his question and only 'newbie helpers' can reply to the thread. I am not sure this a good idea more generally as it impacts discussion, but it does lend a 'quality assured by FG' stamp to all discussions.

When participating in a lightly moderated discussion forum you're essentially swinging up at a random conversation at your bridge club and saying 'So what about X.' This is going to give you a mix of good and bad advice, some great thoughts, some '1S WTP' and someone who wants to talk about their local sporting team or how much they hate the political party of your choice. Given that there are no standard answers there, there are not going to be standard answers here. It's just a bigger club.

[Antrax]

JustaDummy, can you explain why you're worrying about what might be instead of just posting a question or several questions and seeing what happens?

[gwnn]

JustaDummy, I think Antrax is right. I think -no guarantees, but on the balance of probabilities- if you ask a basic question it usually yields wide consensus from the non-B (or in your notation non-R) contributors. That will help both you and us - there are some ugly flamewars and general disagreements in a lot of threads, so everyone agreeing will help us bond as a community. I think your questions (about what Michaels etc are) have been answered patiently and accurately by Mike H. It was probably also stuff you could follow, although if parts were hazy, you could ask for clarification and you bet someone would help. I'm not sure what exactly you're saying. I think you should stick around and see what happens.

[JustaDummy]

Antrax, on 2012-March-16, 00:41, said:

JustaDummy, can you explain why you're worrying about what might be instead of just posting a question or several questions and seeing what happens?

Well, it's fairly moot now. But it depends on what you want from a forum. I personally don't just want somewhere to post questions and get answers. I want a place to discuss stuff among my peers, in a true multi-way conversation, not always a pupil-teacher session. For me, the B/I forum was more the latter than the former. Hopefully the N/B forum will be the reverse!

[mikeh]

JustaDummy, on 2012-March-16, 11:56, said:

Well, it's fairly moot now. But it depends on what you want from a forum. I personally don't just want somewhere to post questions and get answers. I want a place to discuss stuff among my peers, in a true multi-way conversation, not always a pupil-teacher session. For me, the B/I forum was more the latter than the former. Hopefully the N/B forum will be the reverse!

I'm not sure I understand this, and as someone prone to posting answers as if I were the teacher in the pupil-teacher scenario, I'm interested in your ideas....the last thing any of us 'experts' want to do is to block or discourage discussion.

When I was starting out in the game, I did a lot of reading but the other main source of knowledge was the post-game meets in the bar, where advancing players like me hung on every word from the handful of local experts who would discuss, often in a very animated way, their thoughts on the hands we had just played. While I lived in a small, remote area for much of that time, I was a regular visitor, on business, to Vancouver, which had some fine players who regularly played at the club.


My experience, at least in B.C., is that experts rarely play in club games anymore....indeed management of our larger clubs here actively discourage experts from playing, since our presence intimidates some players and causes others to resent that their chance of winning has been impaired.

But the internet has replaced that sort of post game environment, and there are better players posting here than were ever in the Jolly Alderman, which was the local pub near the Vancouver club in the late 70's and 80's.

So is your goal to learn or to socialize?

Discussions with others of equivalent knowledge isn't going to help you get better...at least not very quickly and maybe not at all. You and others of your level have, via this forum, incredible access to some truly advanced thinkers with a deep understanding of the game. Admittedly, the quality of the posts can be uneven, and it can be confusing when 'experts' disagree, but it won't take long to work out which 'experts' seem to engender more respect amongst their peers, and those are the ones from whom you should try to learn.

You can of course do both socialize and learn, but I think you are going to find that almost all questions posted in the new B forum are going to engender 'teacher' type answers whether you like it or not.

[JustaDummy]

Thanks Mike. I do appreciate your taking the time. I will be posting a question in the novices / beginners forum soon, once it starts to attract more folks like me. I know there is a chicken / egg situation here, but if I post this question now, I fear that there will be too much input from above! My question will be about what other rookies do to improve: what books, videos, etc. they find currently helps them.

I know that this will be a very attractive topic for more advanced players to contribute to, but I actually want to know about current learning experiences. It's well known that, in any field, the difficulties and perspectives encountered when starting out are forgotten, or memory of the experience gets modified, once the beginner has moved on substantially. Just hearing someone say, "Yes, I have that problem too, and I'm currently trying this to see if it helps" is very supportive. Hearing someone say "You'll get over that" isn't so good.

Current learning strategies include social constructivism, where learners work in groups to solve problems. It adds to the set of learning styles which can be adopted by the learner. Hopefully we'll see some of that happening in N/B.

Learning can take place without teaching. So I have to reject your view of my hopes for this new forum as being a polarisation into "learn or socialise".

[mikeh]

Fair enough, and thanks for replying so courteously

[mgoetze]

JustaDummy, on 2012-March-15, 20:25, said:

On the other hand, no one as far as I have seen, is interested in the validity of any of the answers. That, as far as I can see, is a free-for-all.

I am and there are at least 3 or 4 posters whom I would absolutely ban from posting in the beginner forum. So far it seems the moderators do not agree with me.

[MrAce]

mgoetze, on 2012-March-16, 13:34, said:

I am and there are at least 3 or 4 posters whom I would absolutely ban from posting in the beginner forum. So far it seems the moderators do not agree with me.

Deleted part (nonsense)

Having the knowledge and having talent to transfer this knowledge to B/I/N level players is totally different thing imo. I know some worldclass players who has proven themselves but can not teach anything. Teaching is totally a different skill. Someone who is very good at bridge but not familiar working with beginners can be less helpful than someone who is not as good at bridge but knows how to get into the skin of beginners or any level players. Also same level people can actually help each other. I taught bridge for close to 20 years, worked with beginners in my own bridge club, over the time i saw that these people actually can help each other upto a certain point and that they all need to go through some phases during the learning process. Someone way better from them wants them not to waste their time with this phase eventhough he/she himself has gone through that phase also.

You give a hungry man a piece of bread and he will be ok for the day. If you teach him how to make bread or how to earn money to buy bread he will feed himself eventually. I see all these convention discussions in former B/I forum like this. Justin and a very few others posts their logic and never their own conventions. And they dont do this only in B/I forums but also in Expert forums and thats why it is plessure to read them. When they post their methods (very rarely) they explain the logic behind it as well.

Anyway, i am glad to see forums are rearranged.

[HighLow21]

MrAce, on 2012-March-16, 15:09, said:

Teaching is totally a different skill. Someone who is very good at bridge but not familiar working with beginners can be less helpful than someone who is not as good at bridge but knows how to get into the skin of beginners or any level players. Also same level people can actually help each other.

Spoken like a true teacher. This is absolutely the case, and I can testify it from my 5 years as a teacher (not at bridge, but at a similar discipline: Math sections for standardized exams).

Thank goodness it's not year-end yet, because if it were it would be tough to allocate my vote for poster of the year among MrAce, Phil, MikeH, and a slew of others.