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BBO Discussion Forums: another web site - BBO Discussion Forums

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another web site

#1patroclo

• Group: Full Members
• Posts: 311
• Joined: 2003-April-30

Posted 2013-August-20, 14:48

http://akqbridge.com
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#2Lord Molyb

• Slightly less bad player
• Group: Full Members
• Posts: 964
• Joined: 2012-October-16
• Gender:Female
• Interests:Bridge

Posted 2013-August-20, 15:22

cool
Become yourself.
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#3A2003

• Group: Full Members
• Posts: 312
• Joined: 2005-December-16

Posted 2013-August-30, 07:07

Is the link working?
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#4diana_eva

• Posts: 4,664
• Joined: 2009-July-26
• Gender:Female
• Location:bucharest / romania

Posted 2013-August-30, 08:18

A2003, on 2013-August-30, 07:07, said:

Is the link working?

worked for me...

http://akqbridge.com/

#5mycroft

• Secretary Bird
• Group: Advanced Members
• Posts: 6,135
• Joined: 2003-July-12
• Gender:Male

Posted 2013-August-30, 13:26

good - it wasn't for a while yesterday.
When I go to sea, don't fear for me, Fear For The Storm -- Birdie and the Swansong (tSCoSI)
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#6chasetb

• Group: Full Members
• Posts: 877
• Joined: 2009-December-20
• Gender:Male
• Location:Podunk, backwater USA

Posted 2013-August-30, 13:33

It's a good idea, but I wonder about the algorithms. For example, they gave me this hand. I don't know anyone who would ever be in 6NT; 6, on the other hand, is feasible until you see that ghastly 5-0 break. Also, I know this isn't probably aimed at me, but I can't take it seriously when I go down 2, and it says "Almost made it!". -2 is not almost, and it gives a false sense of accomplishment, especially when you misplay it.

EDIT - link doesn't seem to work, so here they are:

"It's not enough to win the tricks that belong to you. Try also for some that belong to the opponents."

"Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself."

"One advantage of bad bidding is that you get practice at playing atrocious contracts."

-Alfred Sheinwold
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#7diana_eva

• Posts: 4,664
• Joined: 2009-July-26
• Gender:Female
• Location:bucharest / romania

Posted 2013-August-30, 13:36

chasetb, on 2013-August-30, 13:33, said:

It's a good idea, but I wonder about the algorithms. For example, they gave me this hand. I don't know anyone who would ever be in 6NT; 6, on the other hand, is feasible until you see that ghastly 5-0 break. Also, I know this isn't probably aimed at me, but I can't take it seriously when I go down 2, and it says "Almost made it!". -2 is not almost, and it gives a false sense of accomplishment.

Always says "Almost made it!" even if you go down more I checked

#8fromageGB

• Group: Advanced Members
• Posts: 2,664
• Joined: 2008-April-06

Posted 2013-September-09, 05:33

I like it, I'm getting good at "almost made it".
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# Why are metals used to make electric wire and electrical goods?

Aug 7, 2018

Metals have THREE characteristic properties...

#### Explanation:

$\left(i\right)$ $\text{Metals are malleable.}$ They can be beaten into a sheet (cf. Latin, malleus , hammer).

$\left(i i\right)$ $\text{Metals are ductile.}$ They can be drawn out into a wire.

$\left(i i i\right)$ $\text{Metals are conductive to heat and electricity.}$

These properties are conceived to arise from the common description of metals: positive ions in a sea of electrons, the which allows movement of metal atoms with respect to each other WITHOUT disrupting the metallic bond. Ask your teacher for a SMALL bit of sodium. If you put this in a plastic bag you can roll it out with a bottle as you would with a sheet of pastry. Of course, you got to dispose of the sodium afterwards, but your teacher will know how to do this....

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# Why is there a penalty for downvoting answers?

I understand that for question asking, if quality is low or it looks like there was not sufficient effort or time put into asking a question it can be downvoted.

My question is: why is there a penalty for downvoting answers? Shouldn't they be under the same scrutiny and review of the community at large? I feel like sometimes people answer questions which either do not fully address the question or are misleading or inaccurate. In this case, once an answer has already been provided, the question is less likely to receive a different answer to improve upon it.

I feel like by penalizing downvotes we are discouraging people from holding answers to higher standards. Also, why can comments not be downvoted?

Interested to hear you guys thoughts on this.

Edit:

What about allowing downvotes without any penalty to both the issuer and the person who answered the question? Would just seeing a downvote discourage users to post answers?

One of the reasons for the cost to down vote answers, is to discourage answer-er's from down voting other answers, simply to move their answer to the top.

Data Science does not have so much traffic that competitive answering is a problem that really needs addressing, (wouldn't that be great?) But on Stack Overflow, the FGITW & SCITE can be a problem.

Comments, on the other hand, are a different animal. They are meant to be ephemeral. The up voting can be useful for when there a lot of comments on a post and the lower voted comments start to be hidden by default. The way to remove an inappropriate or out of date comment is to raise a flag on the comment.

• Thank you, these are two very good points. Jun 9 '19 at 15:54

The logic (outlined a bit in this blog post) is basically as follows:

SE values answers more than questions. That's why there is no penalty for downvoting questions (and less reputation gain for question upvotes than answers).

A bad question is considered more harmful than a bad answer because it diminishes the overall appeal of the site. Similarly a good answer is valued more than a good question because it is easier to ask a good question than to give a good answer.

The small penalty is meant to make you consider carefully which answers to downvote in order not to discourage other people from answering.

Nonetheless, you are encouraged to downvote in some cases, in particular:

Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect.

But more importantly:

What are the alternatives to downvoting?

The upvote privilege comes first because that's what you should focus on: pushing great content to the top. Downvoting should be reserved for extreme cases. It's not meant as a substitute for communication and editing.

Generally speaking, we would like to see more answers and that the good/great ones raise to the top via upvotes. The worse ones should be improved by the community if possible through edits (and, more limited, comments). Downvotes are reserved for the hopefully few remaining answers.

Comments are not meant for answering questions and therefore there is not much need for downvoting. Instead you can flag comments that are rude or spam (as you are encouraged to flag answers that don't meet our standards).

• Thank you for this explanation, this clears this up. However, I still think that it is unrealistic to expect people to willingly sacrifice their own reputation for the betterment of the community, just look at how infrequent bounties are. Jun 9 '19 at 15:55

I feel like by penalizing downvotes we are discouraging people from holding answers to higher standards.

Not at all. If you vote well you get your reputation back.

It's only if there's not enough agreement with you, or the answer isn't deleted, that you pay a small penalty to express a negative opinion; it costs the receiver double - and you're free to upvote competing answers and hold your peace.

See: "How does Reputation Work?":

You gain reputation when:

• A downvote on one of your questions or answers is removed: +2
• You remove a downvote from an answer: +1 *
• An answer you downvoted is removed: +1
• ...

You lose reputation when:

• One of your questions or answers is voted down/not useful: −2
• You vote an answer down/not useful: −1 *
• You unaccept an answer written by someone else to one of your own questions: −2
• ...

Notice that while downvoting an answer costs you one reputation it's double for person whom wrote the answer; if the answer gets deleted your lost reputation is refunded.

Also, why can comments not be downvoted?

Most people agree: If you disagree with a comment post a constructive comment or upvote an existing one. Adding downvotes on comments has been declined. Downvotes on comments are more ambiguous than they are on Q&As and while they've much less effect on the sorting they are first to be hidden if there are too many and others are more recent or upvoted.

If a comment is particularly bad it can be flagged.

• Thank you for taking the time to make this post. This added some additional interesting insight. Jun 20 '19 at 22:34

I Have just a suggestion, I am not against down-voting neither in support, I just feel initially if a person down-votes someone, the person should be penalised (currently -1), but if in some time the post receives more down-vote and crosses a certain threshold (decided by community and can be dynamic and can vary with many factors) the (-1) reputation which are initially taken away should be given back (of a part of it could be given back). This is just a suggestion, I know this can create some problems like if a post is down-voted, then it will be more likely to receive more down votes in future, but something like this could be implemented to make the system more logical.