[thearb]

 Jinksy, on 2015-January-01, 20:06, said:

Since many players (pro and otherwise) lament the white noise from non-experts, and since it'd be genuinely useful to forum newcomers (and, come to that, to me), to know who the strongest posters are on BBF, I thought it might be worth making a public list. The idea is that these are the people whose opinions carry the most evidential weight, and whose arguments are (hopefully) most likely to be on target.

To avoid politicking over who's good enough to be on it though, I figure the inclusion criteria should be simple, something like this:

1) Current pros (defined loosely as making a decent though not necessarily primary income from bridge)
2) Former pros
3) People who're non-pro, but have competed (as adults) at the world level
4) People who aren't any of the above, but who two or more people who are nominate

(and they should have contributed at least 50 posts to the forums, at least one of which is in the last year)

So to my knowledge, the current list would look something like this (prob incomplete)

mikeh
PhilKing
PhantomSac
MickyB
wank
FrancesHinden
Fluffy
jallerton

Some I don't know about sure about, but who I get the impression might qualify:

cherdano
Phil
lamford
sfi
KenRexford
Gerben

Who did I miss? Should I remove anyone? (oops!) Should the inclusion criteria change? Is this a worthwhile exercise?

Am I the only one to find 'wank' an offensive login? Where are the guidelines on this. What's to stop me creating f*** or even c***. Where is the line drawn on this, is BBO sending the wrong message on what is acceptable behaviour to the younger generation?

[Vampyr]

 thearb, on 2015-January-03, 19:03, said:

Am I the only one to find 'wank' an offensive login?

No.

[mikeh]

 thearb, on 2015-January-03, 19:03, said:

Am I the only one to find 'wank' an offensive login? Where are the guidelines on this. What's to stop me creating f*** or even c***. Where is the line drawn on this, is BBO sending the wrong message on what is acceptable behaviour to the younger generation?

wank is, I think, not understood in NA to quite the same effect as I gather it is in the UK. For instance, I have never heard any Canadian or American use the term 'wanker' as an insult, altho I know from watching BBC Canada that it is

That may account in part for the name not being on any not-permitted list, altho I obviously don't speak for BBO/F.

[Vampyr]

 mikeh, on 2015-January-03, 22:00, said:

That may account in part for the name not being on any not-permitted list, altho I obviously don't speak for BBO/F.

The choice is really odd though.

[FrancesHinden]

Wank and Wanker are perfectly good germanic surnames.

[MrAce]

With the risk of helping to those, who are attempting to hijack the thread, I suggest they spend more time reading the content of his posts, rather than why had he chosen a name which happens to mean something else to the reader. Then they would realize that they should be happy a very good player is sharing his experiences with them, for free.

Having said that, I do not know whether the name "Wank" is appropriate or inappropriate. I don't know what it means to different people from different countries. Should be allowed or not allowed. But I damn well know that constant attempts to hijack the topics is inappropriate. And is not allowed up to "BBF Terms of Service". I also damn well know, by common sense, that complaining about a name that another member has chosen, in more than one occasion, and questioning the motivation behind it, publicly, is inappropriate.

BBF TOS Here clearly states that you should write to them if you come across something inappropriate. A new or rare BBF user may not know this, but at least those of us who are seasoned here should know better and respect the OP and the rest of us and take their totally irrelevant issue to the BBF mods and let the topic stay on its own course.

[diana_eva]

 MrAce, on 2015-January-04, 06:51, said:

With the risk of helping to those, who are attempting to hijack the thread, I suggest they spend more time reading the content of his posts, rather than why had he chosen a name which happens to mean something else to the reader. Then they would realize that they should be happy a very good player is sharing his experiences with them, for free.

...

This

[thearb]

 FrancesHinden, on 2015-January-04, 04:39, said:

Wank and Wanker are perfectly good germanic surnames.

Well so is Hitler. But I wouldn't choose to adopt that login as it's insensitive to others and crass.

[mikeh]

 thearb, on 2015-January-04, 10:09, said:

Well so is Hitler. But I wouldn't choose to adopt that login as it's insensitive to others and crass.

That is the worst post yet on this thread. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Anyone who godwin's the thread has lost the debate

[Zelandakh]

 thearb, on 2015-January-04, 10:09, said:

Well so is Hitler. But I wouldn't choose to adopt that login as it's insensitive to others and crass.

If my name were Steve Hitler, why should I not be allowed to use the login shitler? which could be seen as insensitive on 2 levels. On a similar vain, I put arb into google and came up with arbs = breasts and ARB = anally raped butthole. So one could easily find your name at least as offensive. That is before getting onto the possibility of the word accidentally having an alternative meaning in another language (google says it means piece in some Scandinavian languages, for example, but that could just as easily be something offensive).

[diana_eva]

To my mind deciding whether a username is offensive or not should be mostly about user's intention. I doubt wank chose his username as a tribute to his viking ancestors. I am pretty sure he chose it knowing very well what it means, and intending it as offensive. So finding excuses for wank is silly. OTOH, given the quality of his posts, I am more than willing to accept it's just an unfortunate coincidence and look no further

[MrAce]

 diana_eva, on 2015-January-04, 11:32, said:

To my mind deciding whether a username is offensive or not should be mostly about user's intention. I doubt wank chose his username as a tribute to his viking ancestors. I am pretty sure he chose it knowing very well what it means, and intending it as offensive. So finding excuses for wank is silly. OTOH, given the quality of his posts, I am more than willing to accept it's just an unfortunate coincidence and look no further

With all due respect, if you are so sure , then you should have applied the rules. Or you should not have said that you are so sure. It is not about what is acceptable for you and/or about who can step on the rules due to their quality posts. Otherwise you are putting yourself into much deeper hole. For example next time when someone uses a name or uses a word that you edit/delete, then it will also mean that you do not find them good enough to step on rules. I also think you should at least split this thread, which was about BBO pros once, and take out all the irrelevant subject, which is about a member's name, who did not even reply to this topic.

If you are not willing to do any of these, you can at least totally delete the "Terms of Service" sticky, or rewrite it yourself.

[kuhchung]

best thread

[Vampyr]

 MrAce, on 2015-January-04, 13:42, said:

With all due respect, if you are so sure , then you should have applied the rules. Or you should not have said that you are so sure.

I think Diana can be sure. But she was not a mod when he signed up.

[kenberg]

Long long ago Klaus, an exchange student from Germany (we were both about 16 then) explained the fuss over Vicks Vapor Rub being introduced into Germany.
See http://www.learnengl...orMistakes.html
Of course no insult was intended.

Sort of an early variant of Ich bin ein Berliner.

Anyway, I noted the bbo name long ago. We are instructed in life to be proud of who we are. I figure that's it. Or maybe it means "Uncle" in Dutch or something, I dunno.

[Vampyr]

 kenberg, on 2015-January-04, 19:48, said:

Anyway, I noted the bbo name long ago. We are instructed in life to be proud of who we are. I figure that's it.

Love it.

[helene_t]

I will never understand how anyone can take offense from someone using a word that among other things refers to masturbation. Which other verbs are offensive? To breath, to eat and to sleep maybe? Otoh it is apparently fair game to call other posters racists, bad bridge players or loathsome diseased cunts.

[barmar]

Is mrace short for "master race"? Or am I misreading it?

[jillybean]

I note "TheRandyMan" is celebrating his 60th birthday today.
I wonder of Randall and all other variations of the name were taken or he has found BBO from a link on a different type of website.

I can't imagine joining a table with TheRandyMan as my partner.

[mikeh]

 helene_t, on 2015-January-05, 08:22, said:

I will never understand how anyone can take offense from someone using a word that among other things refers to masturbation. Which other verbs are offensive? To breath, to eat and to sleep maybe? Otoh it is apparently fair game to call other posters racists, bad bridge players or loathsome diseased cunts.

I think it is fair game to call someone a racist or a bad bridge player, provided that one can point to reasonably clear evidence, from posts made by the subject of the criticism, demonstrating the accuracy of the criticisms.

Sometimes people are racist or say things that are racist without even being aware of it. My parents are bigots as far as east Asians are concerned...they routinely made derogatory comments that, looking back, were appalling in their insensitivity but they were creatures of their time and place, imbued with attitudes that were commonplace. I think they would have been offended by being called racist, even tho they definitely were. Even today, I suspect that there are people who don't even realize how sexist/racist etc their comments would appear to be to others, and calling them out would be beneficial, if done with some element of politeness. For those who are knowingly bigoted, and proud of it, they deserve to be called out, imo.

This should be confined to commenting on posts: references to real life matters should play no role. We can rarely check on such things, but we can all read the post said to display racism and can form our own views.

As for bad bridge players, well we all frequent here because we enjoy the game and most of us, I suspect, think we are better at it than we really are, or are seen to be by others. I don't think we should call anybody a bad player (I know I have broken that rule and I shouldn't have) but we can and should call out faulty or bad bridge reasoning or logic, since the main purpose of the forum is to discuss bridge. Anyone who posts an idea, other than in the B/N forum, should be ready to receive some pointed criticism of the idea. Anyone who consistently posts bad ideas should be ready to be told that they don't know the game very well: aka they are bad players.

However, attributing such descriptions to a poster should be done based on forum posts made by the person, not by references to real life or BBO performances. That way, we can all judge for ourselves how true the description appears to be. This is similar to the racism topic.

As for the gratuitous, sexist insult, and I think I know the reference, that imo is intolerable and ought to be met by a combination of a suspension coupled with the requirement for a full and acceptable apology before reinstatement.

I do think that those are all separate issues btw.

FWIW, I see the choice of an offensive name to be akin to (but far less serious than) the bigotry issue. I suspect that there will sometimes be some element of being unaware of either the offensive interpretation at all, or an unawareness that being offensive is not funny in anything more than a juvenile way. I have no clue as to how that applies, if at all, to the subject of concern