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.
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