[kenberg]

I have no idea what to make of the question. It is hard for me to see how the existence of the Water Cooler could affect the quality of, say, the Adv and Expert Class Bridge Thread. And if the deterioration is the existence of WC threads that were deemed uninteresting, then they can just be ignored. I have no interest in golf, so I don't follow golf threads. I don't regard the existence of golf threads as a deterioration, or an advance, in bbo forums.

So the point is?

[helene_t]

I think the point is that people like luke_warm, al_u_card, mike777, hrothgar and yourself were much valued contributors to the bridge topics before the water cooler. OK some of you are still active in the bridge discussions but might have had more time for it without the water cooler distractions. And maybe a few weirdoes even miss the days when I was more active in the bridge discussions.

But I would like to vote for the observation that BBF has deterioated since Dwayne got a relationship and Ron became a father.

[cherdano]

The quality of BBF has decreased immensely IMO but this has nothing to do with the watercooler.

[hotShot]

I agree with cherdano, this has / had nothing to do with the water cooler.

When I joined the forum 2003 the community consisted of only a few active posters and most of them had very high standards in behavior and bridge.
The community has grown since than and it seems logical that a larger community will have a wider range of standards.
IIRC this thread was started when a few active and established poster left because they felt mobbed.

[luke warm]

helene_t, on 2011-August-22, 11:26, said:

I think the point is that people like luke_warm, al_u_card, mike777, hrothgar and yourself were much valued contributors to the bridge topics before the water cooler.

in my case, it's coincidental... i became interested in online poker and my partner of many years remembered she was married *sob*... i simply lost a lot of the fire i once had

[PassedOut]

luke warm, on 2011-August-22, 15:32, said:

in my case, it's coincidental... i became interested in online poker and my partner of many years remembered she was married *sob*... i simply lost a lot of the fire i once had

[luke warm]

i'd like to think that's true, but it'll take some convincing

[kenberg]

luke warm, on 2011-August-22, 15:32, said:

i became interested in online poker and my partner of many years remembered she was married

A lesson for us all!

[hrothgar]

helene_t, on 2011-August-22, 11:26, said:

I think the point is that people like luke_warm, al_u_card, mike777, hrothgar and yourself were much valued contributors to the bridge topics before the water cooler. OK some of you are still active in the bridge discussions but might have had more time for it without the water cooler distractions. And maybe a few weirdoes even miss the days when I was more active in the bridge discussions.

In general, internet forums have a life cycle.
At a certain point in time, many of the topics get exhausted. People aren't nearly as interested in discussing them (yet again)

I do think that the Watercooler had an impact on the general tone on the boards.

Prior to the introduction of the watercooler there were individuals that I didn't respect, but none that I actively despised.

[Winstonm]

I know in my own case I have often drifted away from the game of bridge for long periods of time, but have always enjoyed the minds of bridge players and thus the Water Cooler has probably kept me more in touch with the game that I normally would be during a time such as this.

[Free]

As far as I remember, when I joined the forums there were a lot more bidding problems. The most valuable contributors played some form of MOSCITO or forcing pass. Each and every bidding problem was solved by these systems, so it attracted my attention. It was exotic and exciting, and everyone played a different version. We had Luis, Hog, Richard and some others, all playing relay systems, all giving different auctions to the perfect spot.
Also the atmosphere was quite different, I can't remember any flame wars during that time. Where's the time, we didn't even have hand diagrams yet!

These days, we see more play/defense problems and ATB's. We have a lot less bidding problems, while the most valuable contributors all play some form of 2/1. Rarely do we see exotic systems. But does that drag down the quality of the forums? Imo it doesn't. We now have new MVC's who act differently than the previous MVC's. They are younger and don't always hold back to insult someone. We had a period with lots of flame wars, but these have been reduced quite a lot, luckily.

What does drag down the quality is imo the fact that the forums are a lot more advertised these days. It attracts way more new forum members than ever before. Many of them ask questions that have already been answered 100 times, some think they've found a perfect solution to something which isn't even a problem, some want to brag with some silly convention,... We also have newcomers annoying people in every possible way: thinking they're smart, random upvotes, suit symbol abuse, annoying fonts, ordering people around, caps lock, you name it. Many of the regular posters (me included, I admit) react to these things, instead of discussing bridge. It's not a bad thing to attract new members, but perhaps some guidance and a good search function would be helpful.

EDIT: another simple example of why guidance or an introduction is necessary: we get lots of questions about vulnerability in hand diagrams when it's equal vulnerability. Apparently many people don't know/realise that pretty much everything in a hand diagram has a meaning.

[Zelandakh]

I hate to see posts like those from cherdano and hotshot. I have seen such posts in many online communities over the years and this kind of attitude is purely destructive. "Of course you newbies can never live up to the standards of the originals". Blah and rubbish. I know most of you in this "old circle" are friends now or at least friendly aquaintances. It is seen in the nature of the posts, in the voting system (which imho only helps to cement such ties), and seeing it openly expressed in this way, even in such a low-volume forum, makes my teeth grind.

In most of the online communities where I have seen this I was one of the "old guard". I made it clear then that I thought such views were bad for the community and served only to create divisions. I will say that here too, even when my posts carry no such weight of "experience" in this community. My personal impression is that many of the newer posters (Adam for example [Edit: I meant awm here]) are more polite, more tolerant and provide more useful material than some of the older ones who are often quite short with those who they think are "below" them.

[babalu1997]

she's my sister
she's my daughter
she's my sister
she's my daughter
she's my sister
she's my daughter
she's my sister
she's my daughter

[luke warm]

kenberg, on 2011-August-22, 16:25, said:

A lesson for us all!

oh i didn't say i learned a lesson from it... i don't regret a minute of the 3+ years

[JLOGIC]

Zelandakh, on 2011-August-23, 03:42, said:

My personal impression is that many of the newer posters (Adam for example) are more polite, more tolerant and provide more useful material than some of the older ones who are often quite short with those who they think are "below" them.

Adam Meyerson? He is not very new, surely he's been posting here for like 5 years. Or perhaps you meant Adam Kaplan, but he is not very polite

I tend to think that people glorify the older days, in every forum I have ever been a part of this has been true. This also seems true when people talk about older generations of sports or games players (even bridge!). I think it is natural to remember the good things and forget the bad ones. I was not one of the originals on BBF, but I came within a year I think, and I do not remember everyone being polite and nice to each other. I mean, hrothgar and the hog were regular posters already

I do think the quality of posting was substantially higher as a whole, but perhaps I am guilty of what I said in the previous paragraph. I think when a forum is less well known it is generally going to have higher quality posts because it will be hardcore members who are likely very into the game and very into discussing it since it was hard to find. Those people will also post more often to keep the forum alive. Eventually, it becomes more well known and there are more casual users. This is of course good for a forum, but it causes there to be more fights, lower quality posts (but more volume), etc. Unfortunately I think all of this caused a lot of the posters to leave and not that many people have come to replace them. For a small forum, high volume posters make up a large portion of the posts. I could be wrong but I think there are LESS posts now on BBF than a few years ago (but far more than in the beginning). I think this is an anomaly of what people would play bridge and what people would posts on an internet forum (usually those are conflicting demographics).

A lot of the high volume posters did become largely water cooler only posters when it was created, which also impacted the bridge forums.

[JLOGIC]

And just on a theoretical level, it is quite possible that a smaller/non adverstised forum will be "better" depending on how you define better. Hopefully when it gets bigger, even though there is more noise to filter through, there will be more high quality posts as well. But if the mass influx of noise/flame wars/good off topic forums/whatever causes the good posters to leave and there are not enough people to replace them, then that will lead to a worse forum. It is always impossible to tell what will happen... 2+2 was an interesting case because it was super small before the poker boom then all of the sudden it became one of the biggest forums on the internet, but the strategy sections really suffered a lot (the off topic forums became really good though).

[Free]

Good point, it depends on how you define "better". If it is attracting attention, then the forums haven't gone downhill at all. However, the quality in posts diminishes when you get large groups of people contributing. Although it's true that the more posters you have, the more chance there is to have some good posts (this is basically an application of the law of large numbers), it brings a lot more noise and the average quality decreases to an average level.

[BunnyGo]

All I know is that it went down hill when I joined.

[matmat]

I feel there is much more emphasis on resulting now than there was in the past.

[y66]

I thought it started going down hill when Michael Jackson died. I'm pretty sure jdonn split shortly after that. Those guys were amazing.