[finally17]

I'm kind of surprised that I finally bothered to sign up for the forums in order to make this complaint; but whatever.

Recently I've seen a couple of commentators on the VuGraph who have "private" listed for name. I object, seriously. If bridgebase is clearing these people to give "expert analysis," (I'm not even going to comment on that), we vugraph vuers should be able to know who they are.

It might seem small and nitpicky to you, but I don't think it is. Hiding bad analysis behind anonymity is annoying.

[Walddk]

We don't want any commentator to hide behind anonymity and we do indeed require full name in their profiles. Commentators who are scheduled by me know that and oblige. Occasionally, I must send a private chat message to a user and ask him/her to put full name up before commentating and that has never caused a problem.

However, sometimes the organisers get their own commentators, and although they should know about our rules, it can happen that those commentators are "ungagged" (enabled for commentary) by the operator. Even if we wanted to, we can't control everything.

But the BBO policy is clear: vugraph commentators must have full name in their profiles. Spectators are entitled to know who says what during vugraph broadcasts.

Roland

[uday]

I don't think we have any rules about 'must have names in profile if you are a commentator' . It appears that Roland does (for events where BBO finds commentators) but I don't believe we care in the cases where an event finds its own commentators.


Roland tells me that FG & Roland did agree on this a while ago, so I might be wrong

[Walddk]

uday, on Nov 13 2006, 12:20 AM, said:

I don't think we have any rules about 'must have names in profile if you are a commentator' .  It appears that Roland does (for  events where BBO finds commentators)  but I don't believe we care in the cases where an event finds its own commentators.


Roland tells me that FG & Roland did agree on this a while ago, so I might be wrong

Well, let's put it this way: we are both right and wrong . Yes, we require full name for broadcasts where the organisers want us to get commentators. We do not accept commentators with no or incomplete name for broadcasts we are "responsible" for (at least not when I'm around).

However, we do *not* interfere if the organisers prefer to find their own commentators. They are entitled to get own commentators and we even encourage them to do just that, especially for "minor" events and on weekends where we have multiple overlapping broadcasts.

That was exactly what happened this weekend with SIX of them!

Roland

[geller]

Here in Japan the JCBL (Japan Contract Bridge League) has a policy that Japanese language commentators need to have their name displayed in their profile while they're commentating. (Obviously we have to assemble the Japanese language commentary team ourselves, as Roland can't do this, superhuman as he is.)

-Bob Geller