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From: braams@MFDD2.CIMS.NYU.EDU (Bastiaan Braams)
Newsgroups: rec.games.bridge,news.answers
Subject: rec.games.bridge style guide
Summary: This posting provides advice on style for contributions to
 the rec.games.bridge newsgroup.
Message-ID: <9301022124.AA00878@MFDD2.CIMS.NYU.EDU>
Date: 2 Jan 93 11:24:56 GMT
Sender: daemon@cmcl2.nyu.edu (Mr Background)
Reply-To: braams@cims.nyu.edu (Bas Braams)
Followup-To: rec.games.bridge
Organization: New York University
Lines: 141
Approved: news-answers-request@mit.edu

Archive-name: games/bridge/style-guide
Last-modified: 1993/01/02

The quality of a newsgroup will benefit if its community adheres to
certain conventions in presentation and style.  In this posting we
provide some suggestions concerning contributions to rec.games.bridge.
We claim no authority, but merely hope that contributors to r.g.b. will
be able to use these suggestions to their advantage.

  [ The newsgroup news.announce.newusers provides every two months or
    so an introduction to the general rules and etiquette of net use;
    much frustrating discussion can be avoided if netters are familiar
    with this material.  You will find there a discussion of the
    disease of mushrooming meta-discussions, suggestions about when to
    use private email rather than the net, suggestions about ignoring
    or dealing with postings that are deemed inappropriate, obnoxious
    or silly, advice about proper procedure in quoting previous posts
    and private email, advice about keeping your line length down to
    72-74 characters, and much else. ]

It is helpful to your readers if you adhere to a minimal standard format
when posting a hand or a deal.  Count the cards!  List the suits in the
order S, H, D, C.  In a diagram of four hands, place South at the
bottom, and rearrange the directions to make South declarer unless there
is a special reason not to.  Do not use the tab key to compose a
diagram, as the diagram may become misaligned on other people's screens
and is very likely to become misaligned if your text is quoted and
indented.  If only two hands are shown it may be better to place them
side by side as West and East, and a single hand can be specified
inline.  Please do not use xx's to represent small cards when discussing
a play problem, and in a bidding problem, use xx's only when they may
truly be understood to represent the smallest cards in the suit.

When recapping the auction, make sure that East's bids are to the right
of West's, else readers may associate the bids with the wrong hand.  The
recommended format is to list the bids in four columns in the order
W-N-E-S.  Note all alertable bids and explain the bid in context.  Do
not explain a bid by convention name if it is not one of the standard
bids or if you play some variation that is not standard.  You can avoid
confusion by describing a bid rather than naming it.

When describing the play, take care to specify the type of defensive
carding that is being used where this information is relevant.

When you post a bidding problem, supply the method of scoring, the
vulnerability and the position of the dealer.  Do this even if you think
the information is superfluous; it seldom is, and takes up very little
space.

When you post a play problem, again, as a matter of routine, mention the
method of scoring and the vulnerability.  It is normally right to
provide the bidding too.  Whenever possible, please give the level of
the event.

When asking for a director's ruling on a particular deal, describe the
level of the event and any relevant circumstances, specify all four
hands, and describe the bidding and play completely.  (In cases
involving unauthorized information, you can alternatively provide only
the authorized information and ask what are the logical options.)

Many postings on r.g.b. are in the "What went wrong?" category.  A good
original posting of that type describes a deal and bidding or play that
is, in the poster's humble opinion, reasonable and without obvious
error, but that has led to an unsatisfactory result.  The poster asks
whether some particular action is to blame, or whether the result is
just unfortunate.  Deals in which the poster already recognizes that
some error has been committed normally do not provide good material for
discussion.  Please do not pose problems of which one component is
partnership misunderstanding, partnership mistrust, or flouting of
partnership agreements.  The net can't help with those problems except
by impressing upon you that partnership understanding and partnership
trust are preconditions for a good game of bridge.

Please try to research your problem a bit before asking a potentially
common question.  Good American and British sources for generic bidding
problems include Bill Root's "Commonsense Bidding", Eddie Kantar's
"Modern Bridge Conventions", Alfred Sheinwold's "5 Weeks to Winning
Bridge", Dorothy Truscott's "Bid Better, Play Better", and Terence
Reese's "Learn Bridge with Reese".  These books will often give a better
and more complete description than you are likely to obtain from the
net.

If you are seeking advice or help, consider requesting replies by email,
and if your question is of some general interest, be prepared to post a
summary of comments received.  If you did not announce beforehand that
you intended to summarize replies then it is proper to ask permission
before quoting from private email.

Before posting a reply to a problem, think it through.  Reply only if
you believe you are qualified and have an informed opinion, and compose
your answer carefully--the time spent on doing so will save your readers
much more time in the aggregate.  Remember that it is only the careful
reasoning that you supply, that makes your answer of any interest to the
r.g.b. readers.  If you are addressing a bidding problem, explain why
your chosen bid is superior to the likely alternatives.  If it is a play
problem, try to provide percentages.  If it is a director's problem,
state the legal basis for your ruling.  Please appreciate that a
question that appears trivial to you was not trivial to the original
poster, and may not be trivial to many other readers.  Be polite,
succinct and to the point.  Quote from the original posting no more than
is needed to make your answer clear; attribute your quote properly, but
never quote a signature.

It is not normally a good idea to make successive postings referring to
the same problem or issue, although a discussion may introduce a new
topic that merits a second contribution.  If you decide you've not made
yourself clear in your first contribution, resolve to do better when you
comment on another problem.  If you decide that your original answer to
a problem was wrong and meanwhile someone else has posted a better
answer, don't feel that you now must post a correction to your previous
answer.  Perhaps you should not have replied in the first place, and
anyway, the correction has already appeared.  Forget about it and
resolve to do better the next time.  If you've posted an answer to a
problem and you read a subsequent answer by someone else that you think
is wrong, don't reiterate what you've said before.  You've made your
point, and the readers can make up their own mind.

If you see a posting that is plainly wrong or silly, wait a day or two
before following up.  If you can't stand to wait, send email to the
author rather than a follow-up.  Chances are other people have noticed
too, and an excessive number of follow-ups are already on the way.  If
you see a posting that is rude or inappropriate, an email message should
be preferred to replying over the net; replying by follow-up on the net
tends to generate flame wars instead of discussion.  If you post a hand
on this newsgroup you should be willing to accept that some players will
strongly disagree with your bidding or play.  Please understand that the
nature of a public electronic network does not allow you the same degree
of social control that you may have in your local bridge club; for that
very practical reason you should try hard not to let a style of posting
of which you disapprove interfere with your enjoyment of this newsgroup.

Articles in rec.games.bridge should normally receive worldwide
distribution.  If your posting software inserts some restrictive
"Distribution: ..." line, please remove it.

Thanks to Bharat Rao, David DesJardins, Doug Newlands, Paul Jackson, Mark
Brader and Hans van Staveren for their contributions to this style guide.

    Bas Braams        braams@cims.nyu.edu (address for follow-up email)
    Steve Willner     willner@cfa183.harvard.edu
    Ted Ying          ted@rosserv.gsfc.nasa.gov