Re: Forum software (was: Proposed "Gold" Convention Chart)

[Adam Wildavsky]

Kit, the Slack group messaging system might be more to your liking. With Jeff's approval I'd be happy to set it up on an experimental basis. I haven't used it much but it is popular and seems promising. As far as I know they do not charge for the kind of use we'd make of it.

On Wed, Dec 28, 2016 at 8:58 PM, Jan Martel <mart...@gmail.com> wrote:

I was actually hoping that we would discuss this on the BridgeWinners bulletin board. I can tell you that when I tried to do a USBF bulletin board, it just got a whole lot of spam registrations to the site.

On Dec 28, 2016, at 11:49 AM, Kit Woolsey <kwoo...@fibs.com> wrote:

These emails have become a mess.  It is very difficult to follow the thread of who has said what with each email copying all
of the previous emails.  I have pretty much given up on reading them carefully.

I think it would make much more sense to communicate our thoughts via a bulletin board, as is done on many web sites.  This
way it would be easy to see who is responding to what via the threads, and everything wouldn't have to keep being repeated.

I do not have the knowledge to set up such a bulletin board.  But I'm sure that somebody on this mailing list does, or at
least knows somebody who does.  I would think that for a person with web site development experience it would be a trivial
matter.

  Jan Martel

mart...@gmail.com

[Jeff Aker]

Fine with me.

Jeff

Sent from my iPad

The information contained in this electronic message is confidential, for information and/or discussion purposes only and does not constitute advice about, or an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase, any security, investment product or service. Offers of securities may only be made by means of delivery of an approved confidential offering memorandum or prospectus, may be legally privileged and confidential under applicable law, and are intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. We do not, and will not, effect or attempt to effect transactions in securities, or render personalized advice for compensation, through this email. We make no representation or warranty with respect to the accuracy or completeness of this material, nor are we obligated to update any information contained herein. Certain information has been obtained from various third party sources believed to be reliable but we cannot guarantee its accuracy or completeness. Our investment products involve risk and no assurance can be given that your investment objectives will be achieved. Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results. Any review, retransmission, dissemination, or taking of any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer. Email transmissions are not secure, and we accept no liability for errors in transmission, delayed transmission, or other transmission-related issues. This message may contain confidential, proprietary or legally privileged information. Neither confidentiality nor any privilege is intended to be waived or lost by any error in transmission.

[Jason Feldman]

If helpful, we could create a separate forum on BW for USBF discussions. http://bridgewinners.com/forums/
This way all of the USBF discussions would be better organized and separated out from the main feed. By default posts/articles would just appear on the forum page, but we could manually have a specific article appear on the front page as well if needed.

Obviously, if Slack or something else works better use that instead, but I wanted to let you guys know that this option is available.

-Jason Feldman

[Jeff Aker]

Thanks, Jason. That sounds like a possible option. Is it possible to limit posting access to ITTC members? (although we allow almost anyone to join, I don’t think we want it open to the world at large).

 

Jeff

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "International Team Trials Committee" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usbf-ittc+...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Jan Martel]

Thanks, Jason. What does everyone think about that? You wouldn’t get email with new posts unless you opt to “follow” a discussion and receive email notifications when someone posts. Although the discussions would be available to more people than just ITTC members, they would be better organized and easily available.

I  looked briefly at Slack and didn’t see an advantage over Google Groups.

  Jan Martel

mart...@gmail.com

[Greg Humphreys]

Bw forums can be invitation only, they can be visible or not to non members, read-only or not to non members, and forums can be moderated by designated administrators. Forums can optionally have an application process for non members to join (if the forum is visible to non members at all)

[Jan Martel]

Thanks, Greg. I didn’t realize that there was so much flexibility. So it sounds like a good approach - make the ITTC forum invitation only (invite everyone who is now on the Google Group), with an application to join. Whether it should be read-only to non-members or completely invisible isn’t clear to me, what do the rest of you think? I’m also not sure about moderating - what would that involve?

  Jan Martel

mart...@gmail.com

[Greg Humphreys]

There's also the small matter of any interested parties who may be banned from BridgeWinners, or who prefer to distance themselves from the platform / community. I'm happy to set up the forum if you want, but probably worth keeping in mind.  

If we needed to provide limited access (to forums only, e.g.) for banned members that will take a bit of programming. 

[Chris Compton]

I think the "working papers" or discussions of a committee are generally confidential. Decisions and reports are public. Having said that, I am willing to have the conversations be visible, but this will lead to the by product of "fan clubs" and "peanut gallery" comments, which will be a distraction, at best. 

Chris 

[Jan Martel]

Visibility and posting are two different things. I don’t know what’s right about visibility, but so long as only ITTC members can post, having the discussions visible isn’t going to cause any inappropriate comments that wouldn’t otherwise be there.

  Jan Martel

mart...@gmail.com

[Danny Sprung]

Visible but not available for comment makes it look 'elite', something you might want to avoid

Danny

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usbf-ittc+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "International Team Trials Committee" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usbf-ittc+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

  Jan Martel

mart...@gmail.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "International Team Trials Committee" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usbf-ittc+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Howard Weinstein]

I think you should start as ITTC visible only.   Later on you can revisit that decision, but much harder to go back the other way.

Also if someone is banned, I don’t care if they are banned from the ITTC discussions.  If they have a point they really need to make, they can send it to another ITTC member and have them post it for them.  Not worth redoing BW software to accommodate.

[Frank Nickell]

I agree with Howard.

Sent from my iPhone

[Kit Woolsey]

Definitely ITTC visible only. When I made my original suggestion I hadn't thought about using BW for the bulletin board, but
that is fine if the technology is already in place. But we don't want a million voices talking about things we are
discussing. Ours is not a commitee open to the public. This isn't a close decision.


>
> I think you should start as ITTC visible only. Later on you can revisit t=

[Greg Humphreys]

We can make the forum completely invisible to all but specific invited individuals. Happy to set that up as soon as I'm done getting my ass kicked in this Swiss. 

[Chris Compton]

I am ok with that Jan, I personally am happy to have my comments public. However, the reason the working papers and discussions are private is that public disclosure of people working through disagreement, (differing on issues) may be inhibited by public disclosure. Finally, when I lose a vote, it is hard for me to get behind the decision of the committee (as I generally should) when my disagreement is public knowledge. Again, I am personally fearless about my writings being public, but others may want the process of working through problems kept confidential. I respect that concept totally. Anyone else? 

Chris 

[Jan Martel]

Greg has set the forum up. It’s limited to invited people (both for viewing and posting for the moment). I’ll be inviting all of the current members of the ITTC Google Group. If anyone wants me to invite people who aren’t members of the Google Group, let me know. I’ll try to get you all invited tonight. I assume you’ll get some sort of email telling you you’ve been invited to join.

  Jan Martel

mart...@gmail.com