[barmar]

I've updated the approved commentator list to include everyone who has commented in a Vugraph in the past 2 months or so.

If you're still not on the list, email Jacki and we'll add you.

[paulg]

I'm sure the real reason for automation is the complete collapse of typed commentator organisation since Roland moved to voice. With Roland ceasing his organisation of the voice commentary, I think that BBO will have to do more than provide an automated registration facility if it wants to maintain the quality of broadcasts moving forward.

There were many key aspects of Roland's role that seem to be missing:

• pushing the information to the commentator community: getting a reminder in your inbox of upcoming events with request to respond will always be more successful than a pull model when I need to go to a website that is difficult to read (given the volume of information).
• signing up for specific tables: for large events with multiple tables I want to commentate on specific tables, for example the Camrose, Europeans, Lille. It probably needs more sophistication on the web site to enable this.
• managing the gaps: when there are insufficient commentators signed up for an event, who is going to cajole and bully more to participate. Roland's success was largely due to his ability to do this over a long time without becoming a cyber-bully.
• managing the workload: the commentator community is very diverse. There are people I do not wish to commentate with and others I really like working with. Roland either understood this or was continuously lucky with his assignments. Now, if there appears to be less control, I am less likely to commentate.
• balancing the workload: Roland ensured that all the tables had an appropriate number of commentators. Now everyone is likely to rush to Monaco vs USA leaving Scotland vs Denmark with just me. How will you achieve balance and tell Larry Cohen to join me?
• as a tournament organiser I would be concerned that I appear to have no mechanism to increase the number of commentators. As a commentator I do not want dozens of emails from event organisers who are looking for commentators, especially if they start one month before the event and email me persistently. Managing this conflict must have been a thankless task but one that Roland, for some reason, was pleased to do and did effectively.

This is not part of a campaign to get Roland or BBO to reconsider their positions, but concerns that I think need to be considered for BBO to continue to provide quality vugraph commentary.

[uday]

Yes, absolutely - organizing and maintaining quality commentary, chat or spoken, is difficult for a number of reasons.

However, the minor automation we're trying is only a bit of it. What we've done so far has two main components

1. Allow tournament owners to enter the details of their pending event ( as opposed to emailing us with the details )

This is relatively minor, tho I think many owners will prefer it. They can always email us instead.

2. Allow commentators to sign up for events for (chat) commentary

This is experimental in a sense, and we don't know yet whether this will work out well.


But regardless, I assume we're going to need someone to glue it all together .

[mrdct]

A few years ago I proposed a form of automation for vugraph commentary which I still think has merit. I can't find the original post I made about it, but in a nutshell:

- there would be a panel of pre-approved commentators, perhaps denoted by a microphone next to their name if they don't have a star;
- similar to the way tournamant TDs procure substitute players, anybody (pre-approved or otherwise) can sign-up within BBO as being available to commentate;
- when a vugraph operator or a host notes that a table is short of commentators they can bring up a "request commentator" box with filter options such as, Stars, Pre-Approved, Country and Skill Level and then a list of available commentators appears from which they can generate system-issue invitations;
- upon acceptance of an invitation the commentator is immediately ungagged and transported to the correct table;
- if there are insufficient commentators who have signed-up as being available, periodic broadcast messages could be automatically issued encouraging people to make themselves available to commentate.

I have nothing but admiration for all of the work that Roland has done over the past decade, but with there being so much vugraph on these days with a dozen or more tables running a lot of the time, I don't think commentator assignment is a process that can sensibly remain manual.

[Walddk]

paulg, on 2012-August-07, 04:15, said:

I'm sure the real reason for automation is the complete collapse of typed commentator organisation since Roland moved to voice. With Roland ceasing his organisation of the voice commentary, I think that BBO will have to do more than provide an automated registration facility if it wants to maintain the quality of broadcasts moving forward.

I think one of the biggest challenges for BBO will be that the new system seems to be passive (wait for commentators to sign up) rather than active (a human sends emails and gentle reminders to get commentators to sign up). I fear BBO will suffer a decline in both the quantity and quality of commentators unless/until they can sort that out.

[MolvaM]

we used to agree with Roland that in some matches where the turkish national team plays, the CR was reserved for Turkish commentary and the OR was for english language.
This was highly appreciated by hundreds of turkish members who liked to watch their countrymen in international competitions and enjoy commentary in their own language.
now I dont see how this system will work.

[Rain]

Vugraph organizers can (and really are encouraged to) sign up their own commentators. They can add and remove commentators anytime after login.

[barmar]

Just added a few enhancements and fixes that were submitted by users:

1. Added the day of week to the date display (if you looked at the schedule during the past hour it thought today was Monday, but that's fixed now).
2. Rounds that you're scheduled to comment on are highlighted.
3. When checking whether you're already a commentator or event organizer, it's case-insensitive.

[Lurpoa]

♥ ♥ ♥

My reason to join a table, is to try to learn something.... and that is a very big part of my BBO-experience.....

And I do not go in the first place to tables were Meckwell or Fantoni or Hamman-Zia, .... are playing, but I look were the outstanding commentators are, and I surely must have missed a few, sorry: Roland, Peter Lund, Henri Bethe, David Bird; Larry Cohen, Kit Woolsey (mostly written), Andrew Gumperz, Dan Neill, Al Hollander, Bill Jacobs, George Holland, Graham Osborne,Jack Oest, John Swanson,.... and a few (only a few) more, the scrable guy, another aussie, and... sorry I cannot remember all names... But the ones I named are really outstanding,and I want to thank them very much.

And indeed, written commenting, very, very often, very, very poor...... just noise...

♥ ♥ ♥

This post has been edited by Lurpoa: 2012-August-19, 13:36

[pirate22]

Well reading this with due respect.the written commentators are catered for.
But what are the arrangements for Voice commentator's?
having said that,I have written a seperate article from the Spectators point of view.
not wishing to Hi jack this Topic.and Barmar's approval

[barmar]

Voice commentators sign up the same way as written commentators.

[jallerton]

Sometimes an event is listed as broadcasting from more than one table. For example, four people have currently signed up for an event with two tables. Does the software tell the commentators who should be at which table, or are the commentators expected to sort this out at the time themselves?

[barmar]

Currently they sort it out themselves, perhaps under instructions from the event organizer or BBO staff.

When I designed it, I purposely didn't put table assignments into it, because I wanted to allow commentators to switch tables as necessary. For instance, when the first table finishes, the commentators can go to the other table and join in the commentary.

[barmar]

One issue that came up with the World Bridge Games, though, was that the organizer didn't even distinguish the different events. They created a single segment for all the simultaneous events, titled something like "Open, Women, Seniors SF". If they'd created 3 separate segments, that just happened to have the same start/end times, this would have allowed commentators to sign up for the specific event.

Another thing: we currently don't enforce any of this. We're still using the old manual gag/ungag mechanism. An ungagged commentator can chat at any vugraph table in any event. Automating this in the server is coming in the next phase.

[MolvaM]

The new http://www.bridgebas...request_new.php page neds a couple of improvements I think:

- There must be options to enter info in other languages. I already volunteered to Diana Eva to translate the page to Turkish.
- The "Description (optional)" field is unnecessary
- Must avoid using expressions like "URL". Why not simply call it the "Event Webpage" ?
- The time zone alternatives are inadequate. The GMT+2 alternatives are particularly interesting: South africa and Kaliningrad!!! I suggest the following:
GMT+1: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Pairs, etc
GMT+2: Istanbul, Ankara, Athens, Talinn, Helsinki, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Amman, Beirut, Sofia, Nairobi, Bucharest, Kiev

[barmar]

I just grabbed the time zone list from someplace I got by googling, I didn't really examine the cities it listed.

[mycroft]

tz_data seems to be the classic - and probably is what you're using for the zones as it is :-). Unfortunately, it has, for -7 in North America, Boise and Denver (I'm mildly patriotic, so that's out) and...that other city up the road. Imagine living in Boston and your computer telling you you have to be on America/New York City time...

[jallerton]

MolvaM, on 2012-August-29, 16:24, said:

- The time zone alternatives are inadequate. The GMT+2 alternatives are particularly interesting: South africa and Kaliningrad!!! I suggest the following:
GMT+1: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Pairs, etc
GMT+2: Istanbul, Ankara, Athens, Talinn, Helsinki, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Amman, Beirut, Sofia, Nairobi, Bucharest, Kiev

Yes, lumping together South Africa with Kallingrad is particularly interesting as the latter is now GMT+3 all year round, always one hour ahead of the former. Equally, Nairobi is not in the same time zone as Turkey, even though they may share the same time currently!

I would suggest that each time zone is split into places which use Summer Time for part of the year and those which do not.

[RMB1]

jallerton, on 2012-August-30, 16:04, said:

...

I would suggest that each time zone is split into places which use Summer Time for part of the year and those which do not.

Sorry that this is getting off topic. I think you would need to split time zones into places that use daylight saving in the (northern hemisphere) summer, those that use daylight saving in the southern hemisphere summer, and places with no daylight saving.

[barmar]

mycroft, on 2012-August-30, 10:45, said:

tz_data seems to be the classic - and probably is what you're using for the zones as it is :-). Unfortunately, it has, for -7 in North America, Boise and Denver (I'm mildly patriotic, so that's out) and...that other city up the road. Imagine living in Boston and your computer telling you you have to be on America/New York City time...

I don't remember where I got it. Someone posted somewhere "this is what I use for selecting time zones", and I just copied it.

I guess you haven't looked at the actual menu, since it doesn't have Boise or Denver. The US timezones don't bother mentioning any specific US cities, they just name the zones. E.g. -6 says "Central Time (US & Canada), Mexico City".

As far as DST goes, there's a separate checkbox on the form for that. If you're in a location that doesn't use it, don't check it.