A note on Ouflopped - poker Q&A forum

Mr. Flibble

Hi all. I haven't been posting in the boards.ie poker forums in a while, but I wanted to drop in to tell you about Outflopped.com, a new poker Q&A forum which was set up recently.

Outflopped is very different than the normal PHP/vBulletin style forums that we are all used to. Among many other things, it has a Wiki style interface which will allow anyone to edit and improve posts, and a voting system. These features are designed to generate high quality posts easily accessible content.

Instead of giving a full description myself, here is a great blog post on Coding the Wheel which tells you a few things about it.

Outflopped is in the very early stages of its life, and it really needs people to come along and post some questions if it is going to survive. I invite you all to drop by and become part of the fledgling commuinity there.

Samba

Do they provide free sunglasses for viewing purposes?

Man, what an eyesore.

KoolKid

Ouch!!!
Not mad about the software your running either.

Mr. Flibble

koolkid wrote: »

Not mad about the software your running either.

It is certainly different from the typical forum. It uses the same software as used by StackOverflow, a programming website which, within only 18 months of launch, as become the worlds most popular software Q&A forum with over a million hits per day - no mean feat. The software is certainly doing something right if it can do that.

Some of the benefits of the software are outlined on the about page
http://www.outflopped.com/about

KoolKid

Maybe but its different than most & people may find it arkward

Is it like every other poker forum?
They differ like day and night my friend! The typical vBulletin/phpBB style forum suffers from many problems.

WOW thats news. We been having lots of problems??
Better give VB the door. :rolleyes:

Mr. Flibble

koolkid wrote: »

Maybe but its different than most & people may find it arkward
WOW thats news. We been having lots of problems??
Better give VB the door. :rolleyes:

I would not consider it news. It does, as will Outflopped. Outflopped is not trying to be or replace this type of discussion forum. It hopes to tend to different needs.
vB forums are very strong at creating a community where discussion flows freely, and boards.ie is no different in this respect.

Outflopped is not designed to create free flowing discussion. It is intended to create a place where good answers to poker related questions can be found with ease.

One obvious difference is that replies are not shown (by default) in chronological order. Instead an answer with the most votes will be shown first. This will allow future readers of a thread to find the best answer easily - instead of having to wade through a long list of replies.
The voting system means that 'threads' will not be brought off topic - arguably a problem on vB style forums.

KoolKid

Mr. Flibble wrote: »

I would not consider it news. It does, as will Outflopped. Outflopped is not trying to be or replace this type of discussion forum. It hopes to tend to different needs.
vB forums are very strong at creating a community where discussion flows freely, and boards.ie is no different in this respect.

Outflopped is not designed to create free flowing discussion. It is intended to create a place where good answers to poker related questions can be found with ease.

One obvious difference is that replies are not shown (by default) in chronological order. Instead an answer with the most votes will be shown first. This will allow future readers of a thread to find the best answer easily - instead of having to wade through a long list of replies.
The voting system means that 'threads' will not be brought off topic - arguably a problem on vB style forums.

Speaking of getting off topic..:D
But to suggest the forum software is at fault is wrong. That is the fault of whoever is controlling the forum.
Anyway just to sum up my opinion & leave it at that.
Its a bit hard on the eyes & not easy to use.
Just my few cents worth.
Anyway best of luck with it.:D

Mr. Flibble

koolkid wrote: »

Speaking of getting off topic..:D
But to suggest the forum software is at fault is wrong. That is the fault of whoever is controlling the forum.
Anyway just to sum up my opinion & leave it at that.
Its a bit hard on the eyes & not easy to use.
Just my few cents worth.
Anyway best of luck with it.:D

Certainly, it is only at fault in that it is sometimes asked/expected to do things that it is not designed to do.
Eg. people use post count as a reputation system - people tend to trust people with 1k posts more than those with 10 posts. The system is faulty in that the post count can be artificially inflated my posting many meaningless posts.
The vB software isn't at fault in that it does what it was designed to do. But it is at fault in that it fails for things that it is used for.

I'm a bit surprised at the 'not easy to use' comment. I can't think how it could be made simpler to use. It doesn't even require signing in to create a post. But it's a bit hard for me to see the forest for the trees at this stage, given I've used it so much recently!

tricky D

I think like the idea, but the implementation is really bad in too many areas.

Bad use of colour theory, information architecture, typography, layout and a load of other basic web design principles.

Mellor

I'm sure the software is fine, but the colour scheme, font style and sizes make it painful to watch.

also, most of the content is nonsense. The problem with giving power to the masses is that, most of the time, the masses are a bunch of droolers

AdMMM

Systems like this are fine for Computing questions where there is a logical answer to most questions. A correct answer to a poker theory question is usually only reached through debate among many users though and in order to learn anything from them, it's necessary to read through the discussion chronologically.