[helene_t]

 Zelandakh, on 2016-October-21, 05:02, said:

I think you will find that your gender is more of an advantage than a disadvantage. Certainly my female account never had any trouble at all in finding acceptance and was always warmly received, more so than either of my main accounts.

Anyone up for a randomized trial? Everyone will be assigned either a male or female id by random allocation, and also a random country. Put a few of you favourite conventions on your profile if you like but make that decision prior to randomization. Do not put anything else on their profile.

They promise to use HMFAG 100 times during the following week, and play say four boards (or until someone is stalling or the table has two empty seats) at each table where they are accepted. Log all chat.

Send your chat log to an acessor (together with counts of how many partners left during or between hands). We will test the hypotheses that the following outcomes are unrelated to gender and flag:

- Acceptance rate
- Leave rate of partners
- bridge-related compliments by partner and opp
- bridge-related complaints and "lessons" by partner and opps
- "sorry p my fault" and similar by partner
- sexual harassment
- other nasty comments

[diana_eva]

 helene_t, on 2016-October-21, 08:12, said:

Anyone up for a randomized trial? Everyone will be assigned either a male or female id by random allocation, and also a random country. Put a few of you favourite conventions on your profile if you like but make that decision prior to randomization. Do not put anything else on their profile.

They promise to use HMFAG 100 times during the following week, and play say four boards (or until someone is stalling or the table has two empty seats) at each table where they are accepted. Log all chat.

Send your chat log to an acessor (together with counts of how many partners left during or between hands). We will test the hypotheses that the following outcomes are unrelated to gender and flag:

- Acceptance rate
- Leave rate of partners
- bridge-related compliments by partner and opp
- bridge-related complaints and "lessons" by partner and opps
- "sorry p my fault" and similar by partner
- sexual harassment
- other nasty comments

I'm in.

[scarletv]

Me too

[Kaitlyn S]

I feel like I've already done the trial; but things may have changed dramatically in the last ten years.

And if you use HMFAG, you won't get to see if a locked person lets you in. I presume that all the players will put a level on their profile consistent with their own suspected skill level as implied by what is expected from that level at BBO.

Incidentally, I can tell you that while I get a lot of non-acceptances, those that do accept me tend to me much nicer on average than those who I played with 10 years ago. While I don't think I was "not nice" anywhere but the forums 10 years ago with my non-female username, it's possible that I'm nicer at the table now so noticing my partners being nicer may be biased. So it is possible that people are treating me better because of my gender.

[nige1]

Seems like fun! How do you "log chat" with the web client?

[diana_eva]

 nige1, on 2016-October-21, 16:38, said:

Seems like fun! How do you "log chat" with the web client?

Copy/paste in notepad. There's no log chat function on web.

[diana_eva]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-October-21, 16:16, said:

I feel like I've already done the trial; but things may have changed dramatically in the last ten years.

And if you use HMFAG, you won't get to see if a locked person lets you in. I presume that all the players will put a level on their profile consistent with their own suspected skill level as implied by what is expected from that level at BBO.

Incidentally, I can tell you that while I get a lot of non-acceptances, those that do accept me tend to me much nicer on average than those who I played with 10 years ago. While I don't think I was "not nice" anywhere but the forums 10 years ago with my non-female username, it's possible that I'm nicer at the table now so noticing my partners being nicer may be biased. So it is possible that people are treating me better because of my gender.

My impression is that people are nicer nowadays than they used to be. When I first joined BBO (as a very very beginner player, so that probably counts a lot) I got a lot more abuse and sexual harassment than a couple years ago when I tried to run a test like what helene describes. I created a female username and used HMFAG to see how people treat me. They were almost all nice and welcoming and friendly. Arguably I wasn't playing as bad as before, and was also more accustomed to the site which I suppose made a difference. I didn't try to use a male account though, I was simply trying to check whether people are still harassing women like I remembered. They weren't.

[661_Pete]

I probably wouldn't be up for this - although I've had some things to say about less-than-friendly players, and would be willing to help if I could. If I used HMFAG as it stands, I believe I'd be placed in either the MBC or the RBC, and in either case I'd be up against systems I'm not familiar with. Which wouldn't be fair on the others. Also, playing 400 boards in a single week would be quite an effort for me! Perhaps you could consider a lower threshold - or allow more time?