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#31
12-12-2005, 09:01 AM
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Re: Stats, Downswings, and Whatnot
[ QUOTE ]
What do you guys want us to be doing? [/ QUOTE ] I've already expressed my view that there needs to be a place for stats posts, as they can trigger substantive discussion. Note, that one driving reason for the HUSH split is that many upper-level players were tired of stats posts, especially those that were actually whining posts. I say create a designated stats area, with some simple instructions emphasizing that this is not a place to whine, noting the need for a certain minimum threshhold of hands before the analysis can be relevant, and perhaps with some good links to prior threads. 
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#32
12-12-2005, 10:06 AM
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Re: Stats, Downswings, and Whatnot
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] With all due respect [/ QUOTE ]Meaning of course that you intend to show no respect whatsoever. You really could have made your valid constructive points without paragraphs of gratuitous insults. [/ QUOTE ] Stellar, My comments above sounded harsh but were not intended to be personal or insulting. Had I had the luxury of more time to rewrite and refine them I could have better achieved that goal. MODERATORS ARE USUALLY NICE GUYS I think most moderators, and I know this about MrWookie because he is the moderator of the forums I participate in most, are nice guys. They generally want to be helpful, they give freely of their time, they obviously care about the forums, and they contribute a considerable bit to them. I can say that about MrWookie in particular - for instance, he has contributed some well thought out and written FAQ type posts. MODERATION SKEWS A FORUM Notwithstanding that, I stand by the points I tried to make. This thread itself shows why perfectly. Some people want stat posts. Some people do not. If a moderator decides to change something about the stat posts, some people will like it, some people will not. No matter what a moderator does, many people will consider it a detriment rather than an enhancement to the forum. Therefore, there is virtually no decision any moderator can make that is a good one for everybody. The more things a moderator moderates, the more a forum is artificially skewed from representing the true interests of the participants. For example, perhaps 50% of the people want to read stat posts, 40% want to read downswing threads, 35% want to read x, 30% want to read y, and 25% want to read z. If the moderator removes stats, downswings, and x, y, and z, chances are that almost everybody have will have had one or more things removed that they would have preferred weren't. THE BENEFITS OF DOING NOTHING Now if a moderator does nothing, those that like stat posts can enjoy and benefit from them. Those that don't like them can address their criticism directly to the OP or they can refrain from opening and reading them. This is a simple solution that is good for everybody and requires no tinkering. This allows the forum to self moderate, similar to capitalism in an open market. Supply and demand forces will tend to make the forum conform to the types of posts people want in proportion to the extent that they want them. THERE IS BEAUTY IN AN OPEN FORUM It is a beautiful thing to watch a forum self-moderate. To the extent that a post is liked or disliked, or someone is seen as getting out of line, other posters will like clockwork almost auto-respond in appropriate measure. There is freedom of speech and open debate. Opinions are exchanged freely. Diversity is honored, respected, or learned about. People grow. There is nothing a moderator can do to improve that. By definition, it is the absence of a forced hand that allows it to happen. Regards, Tom
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#33
12-12-2005, 03:11 PM
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Re: Stats, Downswings, and Whatnot
[ QUOTE ]
With all due respect, Forum Moderators are a lot like Politicians. [/ QUOTE ] I stopped reading there. Forum moderators are tasked by the owners of this private site with maintaining order and enforcing the rules. By posting here, you explicitly agree to both the rules and the moderation. That they frequently ask our opinion is wonderful, but not mandatory. It is not a country, it is not a democracy. It is, for lack of a better political metaphor, a benevolent dictatorship. Furthermore, the rules as stated (and as previously enforced via designated NC/stat threads) ARE clearly acceptable to the vast majority, as evidenced by the continued growth of these forums. There is now a specific, special place to post on downswings. It makes sense. Downswing posts are generally well-read not because they are valuable, but because people here like to make smart-ass comments, while others like to read the smart-ass comments. That should not be confused with value. In summation, I leave you with this... <sigh>
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#34
12-12-2005, 05:01 PM
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Re: Stats, Downswings, and Whatnot
This second post is thoughtful and looks with an eye towards the betterment of the forum. The first attempt was far too disrespectful, but I thank StellarWind for chiming in with a good response to the first. I'll take on the second, because I don't like to let well thought out posts go unanswered.
I disagree with many points you raise. To start, I'll actually take a snippet from your first post - that only 10% of my moderator actions are unnecessary. I'd estimate that about 1/4-1/3 of all my moderator actions involve dealing with spam. Those sorts of things are absolutely necessary, and I will be so bold as to suggest that everyone agrees with my reasoning for doing it (except the spammer). Now, if you want to revise your claim to say that 90% of the threads I lock were locked unnecessarily, that's fine. I'll cover that later. Secondly, you contend that I must cater not only to the needs of those who are vocal, but also to those that aren't when I choose what threads to lock, move, delete, or whatever I do to sculpt the forum. Even if we assume that I can magically know the desires (and numbers) of these people, I disagree with you. I contend that it's only the people who post that I need to cater to. See, a forum with nothing but lurkers does not a forum make. We need posters, or else we won't even have lurkers. Thus, I consider it my job to make the experience of the posters here as good as possible, however that may be. If I accomplish that abstract goal, then I maximize the traffic here with good posts, and by doing that, I come close to maximizing the experience of the lurkers. If some leave because they don't like what I do (or don't do), their utility to this web site is minimal compared to the utility of the regular posters who freely post excellent strategy that keeps people (lurkers or other posters) coming back to read more. The next thing I want to take on is the myth of the unopened thread. Even if a poster makes a thread with a title that is obviously something a number of people aren't interested in, a good fraction of those people are going to open it anyway. Their reasons for this vary. Some may want to mock the OP. Some open it out of boredom. Some want to just check and see if it's as bad as they think it is. All of the people in this hypothetical group would be much happier reading something else, but many will still open AND REPLY to a thread in spite of not liking it. Now, I will anticipate your answer to that point. You may suggest, "See, these people posted and read that thread which you said had no value. Clearly that thread did indeed have some value, even to them." This is a fair criticism. However, my argument still stands. Instead of basing the value of a thread on its readership, a better means of evaluating a thread's worth is on the jollies (units of happiness) that people get from reading it. A thread that 200 people read, each getting 1 jolly out of it is inferior, in my opinion, to a thread which 100 people read and each get 10 jollies. If we don't have people getting a large number of jollies from this site, they'll get their jollies elsewhere on the internet. Consequently, if 25% of the readership of this site gets, say, 5 jollies from reading your "z" content, and the remainder all get one jolly, the forum is better of if "z" is replaced with something that gives everyone 10 jollies. It is the nature of this forum that removing some content does not leave a zero jolly void where there were jollies before (for the purposes of this argument, I'm using the front page of the forum as the "universe," or whatever). Instead, the removal of one post is instantly filled by another. Now, not everyone has the same preferences. A bad beat post may give some segment of the forum 100 jollies each, while the remainder only get 1 or 2. This is the beauty of BBV. People in this segment can migrate to BBV and get such a jolly rush that their head explodes, and people here can read content that gives them more jollies. OTOH, if people here really did get an immense amount of jollies from beats, it'd be logical for me to adjust and allow the beats to roll in. How do I know which is which? Well, as above, I listen to those who post. And the bulk of the voices say they get more jollies from strategy than from beats. Now, the last point I'll address is how you suggest that the forum, if left on its own, will reflect the preferences of its members. This cannot be the case. I'll lay out an approximate set of preferences for me, but I suspect they agree with a fairly large number of posters. Let's say that I get 1 jolly from the average bad beat post, 5 jollies from a 10k stats post, 25 jollies from a relatively boring hand post, 100 jollies from the average post that makes the weekly digest, and 1000 jollies from an epic strategy post (NPA's Biggest Leak, for example). Now, if these preferences, which I believe are shared (approximately) by a very large number of posters, and the posting reflected this, the front page of the forum would be filled with epic strategy posts. One doesn't have to look very hard to see this is not the case. We don't even have a huge influx of digest-worthy posts. Instead, we have some boring to decent hand posts, a few good ones, a stats post, and this. Why? Because people don't always know how to post the best material. This is a forum for learning, so we expect some basic questions as people get up to speed. Furthermore, let's even assume that people post in a manner proportional to their skill and their preferences. I prefer the epic posts, but I'm not good enough to always post them. So I try to start threads about hands that will be digest worthy. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don't. A hypothetical newer poster with the same preferences may only be good at posting standard hand posts, while Ed Miller churns out epics and doesn't even think twice about it. Another poster with a strong preference for beats post a bunch of them. However, since this poster is not in anyway forced to conform to the posting frequency of the group (reflected by their preferences), and I'm not interfering (yet), he makes his posts and gets mocked, but that doesn't change the fact that his one post frequently put a 1 jolly post (for the vocal portion of the forum) where a 25 jolly post used to be. Consequently, the important fraction of the forum is worse off, and by the above, the whole forum is worse off. Now, you can make a marginal utility argument that the first epic strategy post is more valuable than the second, etc. However, beats have a long ways to go before they get up over that huge barrier. I'm sitting here now thinking this is pretty useless. It's extremely long winded, and it's not going to do many people any good, really. I'm going to post it anyway, though. I'd feel really stupid if I typed all that crap out just to delete it. In conclusion, I think biggest fraction of the most people are better off if I just move beats to BBV. If something good breaks out in them before I catch them, they stay. Stats posts, eh, I'm not so sure. Maybe I'll make a designated thread for people who want to post <20k samples or people who just want the forum to take a general look at their stats. If you think you have something good (100k+ sample or something unusual), then there's no sense in discouraging a new thread.
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#36
12-13-2005, 04:18 AM
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Re: Stats, Downswings, and Whatnot
I always seem to come in on the tail end of the good threads.
I don't particularly care for the stat posts. I do occasionally enjoy reading them. But when they got buried in a single thread in micros I completely lost interest in them. I dislike them being lumped all together. That's all I have to say about that. I do have one other topic to broach tho. I agree with a lot of the things Tom said, I just don't agree with how he said them. But, I believe he was taken out of context as to one point. Tom said [ QUOTE ] At the same time, while some people won't like a particular post or thread, there will be many others that do. They will often not be heard from. It is the complainers who tend to get heard the most. [/ QUOTE ] I believe Wookie responded with [ QUOTE ] Secondly, you contend that I must cater not only to the needs of those who are vocal, but also to those that aren't when I choose what threads to lock, move, delete, or whatever I do to sculpt the forum. Even if we assume that I can magically know the desires (and numbers) of these people, I disagree with you. I contend that it's only the people who post that I need to cater to. See, a forum with nothing but lurkers does not a forum make. We need posters, or else we won't even have lurkers. [/ QUOTE ] Now I may have my contexts mixed up here, in which case I apologize. However, I don't think Tom was referring to lurkers when he made his statement. Or, maybe because I don't voice my displeasure when I see something happening that I don't particularly agree with (but not to the point of really upsetting me enuf to say something)....I'm considered a lurker. But I think there are others, who do contribute quit a bit to these forums, that do not make noise just because they believe an unproductive action is being taken. And I didn't get any jollies from reading the rest of the reply so I didn't. Sorry if I missed something important. But that's how it is when I run across any other post I feel is irrelevant or useless....I ignore it. It'll get locked or deleted or moved or simply fall off the first few pages when the rest of the forum gets sick of it. And the really good ones keep getting bumped anyway. It's a fine citizens patrol we have here. (Upon proof reading my post I think I have come off a little rude and unproductive myself. My apologies again. It's late and I'm tired and I don't want to redo it. I don't mean any disrespect. If fact I have the utmost respect for most all the members of this community.)
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#37
12-13-2005, 05:10 AM
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Re: Stats, Downswings, and Whatnot
"short handed is unique for downswings so it has its place in a forum about short handed"
This is what i was thinking. Discussing the kind of downswings one can have specifically at shorthanded is a valid subject. There's a reason it's been discussed multiple times. And I don't think that the fact that it's been disucssed more than once is a reason to just ban it. If that was the case then you could take every single hand that is based on a previously covered strategy and ban them too. "Sorry. It should be obvious from previous threads that the concept of iso-3-betting a LAG PF is something you should be doing. Since we've already covered it then from now on we are going to lock all threads that try to discuss this simple idea for the zillionth time." For the same reason I think the stats post should continue. Some people look at their stats and don't realize that their numbers are off because they've played a bit more 3 and 4-handed than others. Some people are just new to 6-max and are looking for a place to start. To that end, I don't have too much of a problem with the noob's posting after 5k hands just to see what they are doing right and wrong. Their win-rate won't mean anything after that amount...but certainly their other stats will. If they are 35/12/1 then it becomes pretty pointless for them to continue playing that way until they reach 20k hands. Yes, they should get a better idea of how to play correctly if they read through some strategy posts too (which is typically going to be recommended) but sometimes they STILL think they are pretty much doing what they are supposed to and are just looking for some guidance (and to be told that they are likely WAY wrong if they are playing 35/12 on a 6-handed table). This is the Small Stakes short-handed forum which means we will be getting PLENTY of noob's in here (coming in from ML and SS) and many of those noob's will be weak-tightish full-ring, bonus-chasers who are really going to struggle at first to learn correct aggression (and will continue to struggle to learn that correct aggression in my case at least). The downswing posts are kind of tough. Because we don't want total whining. But the concept that 100BB+ downswings are fairly common is worth addressing (and continuing to discuss...again for the noobs who don't know about this). As I and others have mentioned before...many 'downswing-whining' type posters really need to be corrected and informed that there is a very good chances that it's not JUST variance but that they are just playing badly. Or, in PBob's case, some reassurance that he is likely NOT playing a losing game. I'm really not sure what else to say about the various downswing posts...but I don't think that they are cluttering the forum THAT much. And if people don't want to discuss these issues then they would just get bumped off the page anyway.
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#40
12-13-2005, 03:51 PM
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Re: Stats, Downswings, and Whatnot
I want to repeat that I consider stats posts to be on-topic legitimate poker threads and I am not against them.
[ QUOTE ] THE BENEFITS OF DOING NOTHING Now if a moderator does nothing, those that like stat posts can enjoy and benefit from them. Those that don't like them can address their criticism directly to the OP or they can refrain from opening and reading them. This is a simple solution that is good for everybody and requires no tinkering. This allows the forum to self moderate, similar to capitalism in an open market. Supply and demand forces will tend to make the forum conform to the types of posts people want in proportion to the extent that they want them. [/ QUOTE ] This sounds very good. HUSH/SSSH really is a nice forum and it got that way without invasive moderation. That's a real credit to you guys who helped make it that way. It doesn't always work that way. One problem with the capitalism analogy is that some people gain benefits from posting a lot even though few people benefit from reading those posts. For example some people post excessive numbers of hand threads and manage to get a couple of replies on each. This hurts the forum but it's "profitable" enough for the poster that they can get away with it. If you want to talk economics this is the ruin of the commons effect. Let me share a personal experience concerning another 2+2 forum that I won't name because I don't want to hurt anyone. I know a few of you might be able to guess which forum I'm talking about but I ask you to please refrain from speculating out loud. I used to read this forum on a pretty regular basis. It was interesting and it helped me with my game. I contributed quite a few significant posts and was a part-time member of their community. I rarely read the forum anymore and I now post there almost never. The forum became clogged with 1) whining posts and 2) flagrantly off-topic threads. It became impractical for me to find the things I wanted in a reasonable amount of time. The end result is they lost a regular reader who contributed on-topic material. Of course this only makes things worse for those whom I left behind and I'm sorry for that. It's easy for a forum to plunge into a death spiral as bad material forces out good material and eventually the only players left are the junk merchants. So I don't agree that forums automatically do well if left alone. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. Like poker, it depends.
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