[lipi]

I've read something like this somewhere, but it went without response, so I'll put it here again.

Some club managers tend to send an overwhelming amount of messages (5/day) to club members. When you are not logged in, this turns into a mail message you get at next login.

Now suppose you're away for a week, or just haven't logged in for a few days.
Suppose further that you are a member of 3 clubs (that doesn't seem too much, does it?). Now just do a little arithmetic, that when you next login, you will get 5*3*7 = 105(!!!!) mail messages. And you have to read and acknowledge them all before you can do anything else. That seems quite ridiculous. Not to talk about the time it takes with a not so fast connection. And somehow usually there is some delay between the messages you get, so it takes easily 10 minutes to get to the real thing.

Oh, and I forgot to say, that most of these messages are invitations and warnings for tourneys that have already took place.

A few ways to improve on this would be

1) Create an option to completely disable mail messages. (not the best)
2) Disallow mail from enemies and put your club managers on the enemy list (surely not the best).
3) Put an expiration date to mails sent, which could be set by the sender. So at least one wouldn't have to read all the expired invitations. (this would be cool if people used it actually)

Any other ideas?

[Rain]

Unjoin the club, or plead with your club manager not to send too many bbo mails.

[scoob]

I don't think it's unreasonable to request functionality to unsubscribe from the mailings of a club without actually unjoining the club.

[jillybean]

Unfortunately, mail messages are linked to membership so you cannot have one without the other.
A club does have the option of ‘sending a message’ rather than ‘leaving mail’; the first option sends a message to all club members logged on, the second both sends a message and delivers mail to all offline members.

[cherdano]

It would be really nice to be able to block the mail without leaving the club. (Maybe an option to block all club mail.)

[scoob]

well, this is after all the software suggestions forum

[helene_t]

You can also put something heavy on your alt-key and your f4-key. Then go take a shower, or let the dog out, or whatever. When you're back to the computer the 105+ messages will have been acknowledged. (I once worked in a call center. A collegue dropped a book on the Enter key for an hour, resulting in a text document with 65535 empty lines (the maximum capacity of the word procesor). Said document was sent as a telex to a customer. The customer called us an asked us to cancel the telex because it was eating all their paper. I had to call the telecom company to have them stop the telex).

[fred]

Although it is hard for me to be objective about this, I think it is fair to say that throughout the 5+ year history of BBO:

- Our software has changed and improved more quickly and more dramatically than the software of other online bridge services
- That we are more receptive to suggestions for changes than the companies that run other online bridge services
- That we actually implement a much larger % of suggestions than the companies that run other online bridge services
- That when we refuse to implement what seems like a good suggestion we generally have what we think are good reasons and we try to share these reasons with our members (and that most software companies do not do this)

Even if you buy all of this, if you have been paying attention you will have noticed that it has been several months since we have released a new version of BBO. For most online bridge companies that would not be unusual (most tend to go for several years without any major changes), but for BBO this has been an unusual time.

The reason is that we are working on something entirely new. The existing BBO software has essentially been put "on hold" while we work on this new project. I am sorry about this, but in order to get the new software written in any reasonable time frame, this policy is a practical necessity.

Please keep making suggestions - they all get read. But please do not be disappointed if we don't respond to every suggestion or if the rate of change of the existing BBO software continues to be slow.

I am hopeful that most of you will be happy when you see what we are working on. Sorry that I can't provide any more details now - hopefully the wait won't be too much longer.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Rain]

If it's any other company, fred's post would be taken as vapourware =P

[uday]

We do erase older (unread) bbo-mails daily but at 5/day per club I suppose they can add up.

[fred]

The groups that run $1 tournaments on BBO have been given private clubs so that it is easier for them to make announcements to their regular players.

We have made it clear to these groups that they must not abuse this facility. If you are feeling overwhelmed by spam from these particular private clubs, please ask them to take you off their membership lists. There is no real downside to doing this as games are never played within these particular private clubs.

If your request to be removed from such lists is ignored, please let me know by e-mail (fred@bridgebase.com).

The groups that run pay tournaments have been informed that their private clubs will be closed if they do not respect the wishes of our members in this area.

Of course all private club managers are expected to behave responsibly so you might as well let me know if other clubs (besides the ones that run pay tournaments I mean) ignore your removal requests. I will then make sure that the club manager(s) in question understand that this is not acceptable.

Please give club managers a day or so to remove you before you complain to me and please send all such complaints via e-mail (as opposed to posting the details in Forums).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[bid_em_up]

You can always mark the person or club ID as enemy, and check "ignore messages from enemy". Granted, you may miss some "important" club announcement by doing so, but it would prevent all the messages upon your return. When you return, you unmark them.

Not an ideal solution, but......

[inquiry]

bid_em_up, on May 30 2007, 12:43 PM, said:

You can always mark the person or club ID as enemy, and check "ignore messages from enemy". Granted, you may miss some "important" club announcement by doing so, but it would prevent all the messages upon your return. When you return, you unmark them.

Not an ideal solution, but......

I don't think marking a club or a person as an enemy blocks mail messages from them. As I yellow I never block messages from anyone, friends or enemies, so that I can respond to members concerns, so I am not sure what I just said is true. But I have been told that mail messages from people marked as enemies does come through.

[bid_em_up]

inquiry, on May 30 2007, 12:51 PM, said:

bid_em_up, on May 30 2007, 12:43 PM, said:

You can always mark the person or club ID as enemy, and check "ignore messages from enemy".  Granted, you may miss some "important" club announcement by doing so, but it would prevent all the messages upon your return.  When you return, you unmark them.

Not an ideal solution, but......

I don't think marking a club or a person as an enemy blocks mail messages from them. As I yellow I never block messages from anyone, friends or enemies, so that I can respond to members concerns, so I am not sure what I just said is true. But I have been told that mail messages from people marked as enemies does come through.

Well, I don't know for an absolute certainty that it blocks "mail" from enemies either. I do know that I have never received mail from anyone that I have marked as an enemy. It could just be a fluke.

But....considering the number of people on my enemy list, I would be highly surprised that none of them had not attempted to leave me a nastygram at some point in time.

I also use this technique to filter out unneeded chat from clubs while logged in. If I am playing elsewhere, personally, I don't care to see "Individual in 15 minutes", "Individual in 10 minutes", etc. as in a countdown. Other people may wish to see this, so I just block it for myself.

[Rain]

mail from enemy is not currently blocked afaik.


I think it should. Ben is a conscience and examplery yellow. I block every annoying person I can. I think this makes me happier and calmer, and hence, I'm nicer to someone, and he "-------suddenly feels just
a little bit better without even knowing why. That same
person passes a perfect stranger and smiles - who in turn...
reaches down and picks up, perhaps, a piece of trash; plants
a garden, volunteers at a soup kitchen? Like little ripples
on a still pond, the happiness spreads" (frasier, 97)

[dogsbreath]

Hi

I have a similar dissatisfaction with the flood of messages from some clubs/tds regarding the start-times of their tourneys. I do not wish to prevent them advertising their events (many of which i play in) but i would like the option of blocking such messages when i am at a table and in particular when playing a team game. Setting 'ignore all chat' does not block these messages.
Considering Fred's comments on future BBO releases, i guess this is not going to happen in current version.

Rgds Dog bb