Freedom of speech
Brian
I posted two diaries "Reason for so many injuries", "Improving athletic performance", which were well received and generated a great amount of informed opinion from comments which people made. I emphasized the importance of having a cordial conversation even when we disagree.
My reason for taking the time to do this is because, as a professional, I know there are better ways to prevent injuries and increase athletic performance than what is being done in our current S&C program. Then I posted a third diary "Why our Strength and Conditioning program is failing" and I immediately received inaccurate negative comments from BiSB and his clones. I responded with patient, thoughtful, courteous replies.
Then BiSB made a comment about "Concern trolls gonna' troll", and the diary was removed. It can be viewed on Google as an "unpublished post". I polished and reposted the diary, and it was removed again. Why?
I've followed MGoBlog regularly. I'm not heavily invested in getting points, but I am truly concerned about the welfare of our team. What motivated me to speak up was a great diary by m1jjb00 "Analysis of football injuries in the Big Ten".
Arbitrarily removing thoughtful diaries that generate intelligent conversation does not lead to making MGoBlog a more substantial outlet for real news. Such censorship contributes to relegating this blog to the realm of inconsequential chatter. The direction this takes is your choice to make.
Peace
BIGBLUEWORLD
November 11th, 2014 at 1:10 PM ^
November 11th, 2014 at 6:09 PM ^
...actually know what it means.
November 11th, 2014 at 1:10 PM ^
Start your own blog. This is Brian's livelyhood, and while I don't always agree with everything he writes, it's his and the mods decision as to what goes up here.
November 11th, 2014 at 2:23 PM ^
BigBlueWorld, I am firmly in your camp on the S&C dept. of the football team, but the third diary was redundant and didn't add much. Two diaries analyzing your hypothesis was enough.
Would have been nice to see you dive into Hoke's SDSU and BSU squads. What were injury rates, etc., under Wellman there? Did performance there indicate that athletes were trained similarly or differently?
All this said: Sometimes this blog does indeed have a trait of stifling people who disagree or doesn't conform to a certain expectation of "quality." If its users don't beat dissenters down first, the staff makes sure to.
No, I'm not saying every idea deserves a medal (but thanks for that argument, white men who are over 60). But people who say abhorrent things about players or coaches (Ex. Hoke is a moron, DG isn't a good QB, etc) are given a much greater leniency than people who assert the general competence of the coaching staff. Even a user like Space Coyote, who is incredibly football-smart, and who will make a dissenting comment and have the football know-how to back it up, will routinely be disparaged either on the front page or by commenters. I recall one time last year where SC--who has actually coached football--said technique X is actually harder than technique Y for OL, which ran against what Brian said, and Brian's response on the front page was, "I've watched a lot of football and I don't care what you say. Technique X looks easier."
I don't agree with BBW's specific point, but I also won't miss the forest for this particular tree.
November 11th, 2014 at 2:57 PM ^
You replied to Moe without actually replying to Moe. I get it, though; you want people to see your post before others, so that is why you did what you did.
November 11th, 2014 at 4:33 PM ^
I don't recall any significant injuries at SDSU in 2010--all the significant skill-position players on offense played every game and I pulled a couple of box scores from early and late in the season and the o-line starters were unchanged. There were a couple of defensive changes but I can't find anything that indicates whether they were due to injury.
Vincent Brown badly sprained his right thumb and missed the last five games of 2009, the only significant injury I noticed there.
Googling SDSU football injuries turned up a series of articles about the team's horrific run of bad injury luck in 2008, the year before Hoke arrived. They've also lost their starting QB in each of the last three seasons.
I think what would be really useful, if anyone had a mind, is to have a baseline study of the typical injury rate for an FBS program. I don't even have a clear sense of how unusual Michigan's experience this year has been.
November 11th, 2014 at 4:37 PM ^
November 11th, 2014 at 4:45 PM ^
Someone more skilled at parsing through and presenting relevant statistics than I am should make an analysis of this study a post or diary.
Basically football players get injured (seek medical attention and are out for at least one day following) at a rate of 37.9/1000 exposures (games participated in). There are also numbers for 14 other sports and practices included, with data from 1988-2004.
November 11th, 2014 at 5:22 PM ^
November 11th, 2014 at 5:06 PM ^
The earlier stuff suffered from the same problem as my SDSU observations just now--"missed starts" aren't a good proxy for injuries. This one looks a little better, with at least the missing QB's researched.
November 11th, 2014 at 6:34 PM ^
It is my livelyhood too. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), it is not my livelihood.
November 11th, 2014 at 1:11 PM ^
November 11th, 2014 at 1:13 PM ^
Popcorn ready
November 11th, 2014 at 1:13 PM ^
I was waiting for this thread.
Let's see where it goes.
November 11th, 2014 at 1:54 PM ^
So how many clones do you have and where can I get a clone of myself?
November 11th, 2014 at 1:56 PM ^
I cloned them. At the clonery.
November 11th, 2014 at 5:29 PM ^
Which clone of a clone are you?
November 11th, 2014 at 3:13 PM ^
Hopefully this Clone War will be better than the shitty movie of the same name. Relese the clones!
November 11th, 2014 at 1:13 PM ^
BRB i'm going to go make some popcorn... i want to see how this ends up...
November 11th, 2014 at 3:04 PM ^
WordPress ----->
November 11th, 2014 at 1:14 PM ^
You're not afraid of controversy.
Peace
November 11th, 2014 at 1:21 PM ^
You are posting on here because you want the rest of us to comment on the fairness / unfairness of removing your post.
OK, that's fine. Sometimes the Mods do get a little trigger-happy. And sometimes "thoughtful" posts are really just thoughtless rants. I won't pre-judge which one in your case. I don't have a dog in the hunt.
It would help if you posted a clear link to your removed post so we can judge for ourselves.
November 11th, 2014 at 1:25 PM ^
November 11th, 2014 at 1:32 PM ^
Yeah, my bad. Probably not the best choice of words.
I actually think the Mods do a good job of not over-Modding. There are things that are left up that I would have thought would be taken down. I think they do a good job of trying to ensure diveristy of disussion and not let group-think win the day, even when some posts are obviously contraian.
Also, I like that sometimes the Mods make mistakes and will admit it and change the decision or put an edit in the post that walks you through the thought-process of why they did what they did.
November 11th, 2014 at 1:34 PM ^
Sometimes we'll unpublish something (like a rumor that doesn't seem to have much substantiation yet), and then re-publish once more info comes out.
In this case, I re-read the diary, and I feel pretty confident about it.
November 11th, 2014 at 1:39 PM ^
I agree about the point that Diaries are rarely taken down. That's a pretty unusual occasion.
What is the synopsis of why it was taken down for those of us that have not been following this sequence of events? If you don't think it's appropriate to get into it, that's fine too.
November 11th, 2014 at 1:43 PM ^
But the gist was that Michigan's S&C staff has failed. The problem was that he offered none of that "support" stuff that is all the rage.
November 11th, 2014 at 1:55 PM ^
Yeah, I would say that diaries have a higher standard of support then the Board.
The Board is the place to say stuff like "I think our S&C staff sucks" or "I think that Nick Saban is our next coach" or that kind of stuff, without much support. Then everyone argues about it, the post gets Pos'd or Neg'd, and we move on to the next post.
But you do expect that stuff put in the Diaries that makes assertions, expecially controversial ones, has some research and suppor behind it. That's kind of what defines the Diaries.
November 11th, 2014 at 2:01 PM ^
Especially when there are only five diaries displayed. I hate to see something substantive and well-researched bumped off the page because someone else likes the sound of his own voice.
November 11th, 2014 at 2:29 PM ^
I hadn't thought about that, but that's a really good point. The Diaries age out so slowly that I don't think I ever go back and look at previous pages. Once it's off page 1, which only shows five, a Diary is seldom likely to be read.
The standard for what goes up there and stays there has to be much higher than for the Board. People need to understand that.
It could be that there is nothing really wrong with a post, it's just that it's not good enough to take up 20% of the front page.
November 11th, 2014 at 4:11 PM ^
Yeah, it took me a long time to find those animated GIFs of dogs and Bart Simpson.
But honestly, you guys do a great job keeping this place sane. I wouldn't have minded had the post been put as a board topic, but yeah, it felt like the post had a point but didn't have enough support to be a diary.
November 11th, 2014 at 8:22 PM ^
Like the auto-corrrect vinegar diary? that should have got removed immediately.
November 11th, 2014 at 2:38 PM ^
I'm pretty sure you don't think I was but just in case, I wasn't trying to call you out or anything, just trying to build on what you had already posted.
November 11th, 2014 at 1:17 PM ^
I doubt this this thread will last very long. But accusing others (who are expressing their genuinely held beliefs) of concern trolling is a favorite pass time of many established posters here. You would think the current state of the football program would put an end to the hostility toward anything that isn't eternal optimism and positivity, but for the most part it hasn't outside of a few approved topics.
November 11th, 2014 at 4:14 PM ^
As a counter, I read the first post and the issue wasn't that it was "concern trolling" as much as it lacked much in the way of follow-up to the OP's claims. There were links and allusions to previous posts, but every time I thought there was going to be some suggestions on improvements ot changes to S&C, they were lacking. It had merit, but it was so open-ended it did feel a bit like "won't someone think about the children?"
November 11th, 2014 at 1:16 PM ^
I'll avoid the snarky response, and simply recommend that you rethink what you are really trying to accomplish with the title of your thread and that nature of your claim.
November 11th, 2014 at 1:21 PM ^
Good point. Most people really don't know what "freedom of speech" means. It does not mean that you have a right to say or post whatever you want as this is a private blog. There is no "government action," thus, no 1st Amendment rights apply. Simply put, Brian can do whatever he wants whenever he wants on this blog and nobody can do anything about it. Those are just the facts.
November 11th, 2014 at 5:48 PM ^
They can take their business elsewhere. They can throw a hissy-fit on the board about "free speech". They can try to mobilize board sentiment against what they perceive as aggressive moderation with the idea/hope that Brian probably doesn't want to antagonize the bulk of his audience and if they can demonstrate that he's risking that, moderator behavior might change. They can try rational argument with the mods, appealing to their generally reasonable characters. They can even sue the blog owner and get laughed out of court.
November 11th, 2014 at 1:23 PM ^
Believe it or not, there was a time when Mel Gibson made great movies. This is one of them. I could watch this all day. In fact, I think I will.
November 11th, 2014 at 1:48 PM ^
The patriot, one of the first to feature slow motion gun fights. WITH FRONT LOADING GUNS to make it even slower
November 11th, 2014 at 4:15 PM ^
Any movie that has a final scene in which Mel Gibson impales a British horse with the American Flag is okay in my book.
November 11th, 2014 at 5:06 PM ^