~~~   2009/09/19 Update .... Snaike fails his own challenge with a barrage of unprovoked boilerplate replies sent to numerous quitters threads on this day. Examples: here, here, here.   ~~~

BOILERPLATE NONSENSE CHALLENGE

From the No. 1 Boilerplate Vendor* in this site's discussion forums came the following challenge:

When the next "New Player" or "New Forum Participant" posts on the topic of quitting, I challenge you to ignore it.  Not answer.  Not even direct them to the Search Box on the right.  There are many many participants on these forums who can, and will, direct any new inquiries to the existing threads. If you so accept, I will not respond to any quitting post, as described above, either.

That is the new Boilerplate Oath, and we shall be interested to observe how long The Boilerplate Man* can stick to self-inflicted silence on one of his favourite subjects of repetitive elaboration.   

Boilerplate Nonsense Awards

*Thus known and adored by legions of his fans, after having won all of these awards in one fell swoop, to enumerate:

Congratulations!

[permalink] For proposed solutions on how to deal with quitters, see this forum post.

SUCCESS / FAILURE RATE
for completed random multi-player games as launched:
0 / 13 (0%)

• Everyone disconnected: 39%
• All but 1 player disconnected: 47%
• All but 2 players disconnected: 14%
• No one disconnected: 0%

• 20090809: 4-some launched; one person apparently disconnected after the Tee Off button was pressed, pulling everyone else into a prolonged time-out of several minutes. The game did not start at all & everyone disconnected without playing a single shot.

• 20090809: 4-some launched; 1 player recognized as a quitter from a previous round; let's see how long he/she can last this time!    Update on hole 4: one player got into multiple bunkers & disconnected without saying anything, despite having chatted previously. Prior to tee-off on hole 5: the remaining 2 players disconnected as well, including (without saying good-bye) the player formerly recognized as a quitter; the other person mumbled something about connection problems & quickly disconnected without waiting for an answer from the only remaining co-player, despite having engaged in profuse chatting previously. Faterson, left alone on hole 5, duly disconnects as well, because it wasn't a single-play round he wanted to play. So, that's 2 attempts at a multi-player game, and both of them failed. Is Faterson likely to attempt another multi-player game? Not so! And if he does, it's very likely that the games will fail just like the 2 previous ones...

• 20090809: 4-some launched; one of the players, having double-bogeyed hole 1 & left with a 10 ft putt for par on hole 2, lets his 90 seconds for the putt pass, then disconnects, crashing the game for everyone else. The error message Please close this window and try again later appears & the game is over before it really began.

• 20090809: 4-some launched; 3 Pros & 1 Master. Hole 2 update: the Master, after a par putt on hole 1 and missing a birdie putt on hole 2, promptly disconnects without a word (having chatted previously). Hole 5 update: player 2 leaves without a word. The remaining 2 players complete the round.

• 20090809: 4-some launched; Hole 1 update: a player disconnects after his drive. The remaining 3 players complete the round. 

• 20090809: 3-some launched; prior to launching the game, the host asked the other 2 players whether they're likely to quit, and they both denied it. On hole 6, lying +5 over par, trailing the other 2 players by 4 shots, one of the players disconnected. The remaining 2 players completed the round.

• 20090812: 4-some launched; one of the players, the only Hack among Pros, disconnected prior to his drive. Why don't you do that while still on the players selection screen?!    The game host had made sure not to click the Tee Off button immediately; he gave everyone the chance to cancel their participation in the round. Once the game host presses the Tee Off button, it's too late and you've spoiled everyone else a foursome round due to cancelling after the game was already launched!   Update on hole 9: a player disconnected on the green of the final hole without saying good-bye (his bad score would have inscresed his average score), pulling the other 2 players into a 4-minute time-out before they could finish their rounds. 2 players completed this round.

• 20090812: 4-some launched; one of the players, waiting for his turn to tee off, disconnected, thus wrecking another intended foursome before it began. If there was a penalty for doing this, he probably wouldn't dare to do this!   On the green of hole 1, a second player, the only “Master” in the group, left with a bogey putt, disconnected wordlessly. The other 2 remaining players agreed to cancel the round and everyone disconnected.

• 20090812: 4-some launched; prior to teeing off on hole 9, one of the players apologized, saying that a football game was just starting on TV, and disconnected. Well, that's tolerable. On the green of hole 9, another player disconnected without saying a word. That's perhaps less tolerable, and while it's no big deal, it will still serve to skew the player's average score. 2 players completed the round.

• 20090813: premier 18-hole 4-some launched (at Kiawah); the first player disconnected on hole 5, the second player on hole 7, and the third player after hole 11. Faterson, left alone on the course, disconnected as well.

• 20090816: 18-hole 4-some launched (Bethpage Black); the first player disconnected after the game host pressed the Tee Off button, reducing the 4-some to a 3-some before it even started. Another player, left with a bogey putt on the first green, disconnected without a word. Faterson, obliged to work & play, which is not practicable in a pair, apologized to the remaining player and, with his consent, disconnected as well.

• 20090816: 18-hole 4-some launched (Bethpage Black); one player left wordlessly on hole 11; the remaining 3 players completed the round.

• 20090904: 9-hole 4-some launched (Kiawah Island); first player apologized on hole 3, citing family emergency, and quit. On hole 7, another player, having fallen behind the other 2 players, left wordlessly. The remaining 2 players completed the game.

As of today (July 2009), WGT's interface does not make it possible for you to reply directly to a Wall Post published on your profile page by another golfer. This is although the email notification containing the wall post features a link described as You can reply to this message with the following Link:. Yet clicking on that link simply transfers you to your profile page, and you can't make any direct reply to the wall post.

To do that, you need to go to the sender's own profile page and leave a wall post of your own. Of course, maintaining a sense of conversation under such circumstances is next to impossible. You can't quote the other person's wall post; there's no hyperlink between the 2 posts, etc.

For this reason, here's my conversation with Tibbets (from yesterday, 25 July 2009) in a more legible form. The posts are shown chronologically as they originally appeared on the two users' profile pages. Should you only read Tibbets's or my wall posts in isolation, you'd probably end up wondering what the deuce each of these folks is talking about. Only in conjunction and correct sequence do the 5 wall posts make sense and, perhaps, amount to an enjoyable conversation to read.

And why make so much fuss about a particular conversation between 2 users of a website? Well, it ain't just two ordinary users, you know, by which I am not referring to myself, obviously. The fact is an achingly mediocre golfer  isn't frequently likely to get approached by the (virtual) world's no. 1 golfer the way it occurred here; that's like seeing Frank Sinatra or Madonna picking a common guy from a crowd to say, "Hey, aren't you so-and-so?"

In that spirit, enjoy the archive of the conversation below...

Curiosity by Tibbets

I was wondering, are you Alex Avenarius? It sure seems like it by your writing style :)

I'll be damned, Tibbets! by Faterson

AA would certainly feel flattered to be recognized by WGT's best virtual golfer only on the basis of his (a foreigner's) writing style; although one might perhaps equally recognize him due to his obstinacy, synonymous with obnoxiousness for some. Or, it could just be the national flag, not frequently seen on English-speaking sites. I'm sure AA would have by now conducted a thorough search (for the term "tibbets") of his email archives, going back many years, and, having come up empty-handed, would have wondered where his and Tibbets's paths may have crossed before, and whether it was under agreeable or disagreeable circumstances; it couldn't have been on a golf course, virtual or otherwise! Perhaps Tibbets would be willing to help him out of his predicament, although he can be surly enough in his own right (see forum altercations).  

No worries, sir! by Tibbets

Your secret is safe with me, though by choosing such a user name for yourself I hardly think you meant to keep it all that secretive. Our paths have not crossed before, a cursory search of the user name and some follow up reading directed me to ask in the first place. Your fascination with quotes gives you away! Mr. Wolfe would be proud!

If indeed that's who you are, then I applaud your literary acheivements and your passion for the peoples of your region. It's a fascinating area of the globe that I have yet to visit.

Best wishes and good fortunes in the game to you.

Thanks! by Faterson

Every line of your reasoning is as precise as I'm sure your putts are.   The first folder to look at was, indeed, the Nero Wolfe mailing list folder, and there actually used to be a (male!) person named Tabby on that list (sufficiently surly, too). Why was it the first folder to look at? Well, I'm sure Mr. Wolfe would have chuckled with appreciation if he could see the level of (written) eloquence exhibited by the no. 1 virtual golfer. It crushes some stupid but still prevalent prejudices in the line of, "computer games fanatics can't really be literate people".  

PS: As is well-known, the opening volume of the Nero Wolfe saga, Fer-de-Lance (1934), deals with murder on a golf course, by means of a devious poisoning mechanism installed in the victim's driver (was it?)!    And Mr. Wolfe, despite his monumental girth, did not feel totally disinterested in the game of golf; he examined the various golf clubs on his office desk, if I remember correctly, and had a prolonged conversation with the victim's caddy.

PPS: As is your custom, feel free to delete these comments of mine from your Profile Page. I'm sufficiently vain to have made an off-site back-up of them and, in case they vanish there, I'll be posting them to my blog. That's another bug on WGT's part, where people are only capable of posting comments on each other's Profile Pages, but there's no sense of conversation and it's not made clear which comment is meant as a reaction to which other comment. (The link You can reply to this message with the following Link: in the email notifications we receive is, likewise, incorrect both grammatically and factually.)

Thanks to you as well! by Tibbets

Were it not for my disdain for language, I might be able to keep up with you, in the literary world. That being said, if one is to bother to speak out at all, one might as well wield the language with both hands, so to speak.

You are correct about the lack of thread-communication between players. Often times comments end up getting lost in the proverbial sea, and context gets lost in retrospect. This happens most frequently with someone such as myself, who ends up deleting the comments from the wall!

WGT laid the groundwork for a great many things here last year, and it's been a slow process of tying up all the various loose ends that exist. Just the game in itself takes quite a bit of effort to get right on their part, nevermind the social networking, website design, and forum moderation. It will be some time before all the gaps are filled in.

• al1404 / 20090729
• arnar94 / 20090716
• BigDawg18 / 20090729
• blcrow33 / 20090715, 20090721
• ch1ef / 20090816
• clarky13 / 20090725
• crispy68 / 20090713
• dorey / 20090816
• explosifjosif / 20090629
• gato28 / 20090809
• Gerrard8 / 20090812
• Goodii / 20090722
• hilder / 20090713
• hotboy0533 / 20090720
• jake16 / 20090728
• JCarrier / 20090816
• johndinman / 20090709
• johnohutch / 20090719
• JonnyBuckets / 20090729
• jshimmield / 20090723
• julioma / 20090714
• Lawman48 / 20090904
• lmay / 20090729, 20090809
• MADE4GOLF2 / 20090712
• marcglewis / 20090809
• Mircofait / 20090809
• MJCA / 20090719
• notbalanced / 20090721
• NubsMcNubberson / 20090729
• OverMark / 20090809
• paultreacy / 20090710
• pekk24 / 20090719
• prbernitt / 20090716
• RCFox / 20090812
• ripper3030 / 20090709
• Stumpstaa / 20090713
• Talc / 20090812
• tarheelbaby / 20090724
• texas1971 / 20090721
• Toddone / 20090729
• usmra / 20090716
• varcetty21 / 20090716