Jumping the Shark: Why the MGoBoard is Unreadable

On a positive note, this post has brought back old posters I haven't seen in a long time.  I too have stopped posting on this board because of how negative it has become.  I hope Brian will bring back self-moderation in the near future.  Until then, I will just skim the board and never get anything of substance out of it.

The malware attack, loss of negging.

After Hoke was hired the constant bitching back and forth between people who felt aggrieved that Hoke was not as readily embraced here as Rodriguez was and the people who defended Rodriguez til the end and beyond **cough** Section1 **cough** no, but seriously there were others too.

Dear mods:

Just delete shit.  Do it!  It will feel so good!  We don't need an explanation - just delete shit.  And by shit, I mean that: shit.  Trolling and emo trashing after a loss.

Bomb the shit out of people who make shitty, repetitive threads after losses.  Personally attack anyone: delete.  No explanation necessary.

Who cares if people get pissed, the board will be better for it and their traffic will be replaced by guys like me who used to post a lot and now just skim and search for something substantive.

Lurked for quite a while, posted a bit, but now just lurk and have no wish to post (except now of course - oh the hypocrisy!). The PSU game reactions really struck me for their infantile absurdity and utter lack of thought, though it had been trending that way.

The RR end could be pretty nasty but the conversations generally came around to something looking like a quasi-reasonable debate, even if it ended in agreeing to disagree. It was interesting to read about other people's points of view; plus you could count on enough light-hearted stuff to keep perspective.

Now every thread seems to be reduced to a 'My-dad-can-beat-up-your-dad' level of argument, regardless of the topic. The message board is rapidly becoming maize and blue mirror of RCMB.

I read the articles here, Magnus' blog and Space Coyote's coaching threads at M&B, but after looking at a few message board posts to some of the topics am turned off by the mindless descent into thuggishness they become. I wish I could offer up a solution but don't know enough about it. 

This is the only topic I've felt worthwhile commenting in for some time now. There's always been some quality posters on this board: HisDudeness, clarkiefromcanada, Space Coyote, TIMAAAAAY, Don, DGDestroys, WolverineinLA2. Not to mention Magnus. There's definitiely a few more I'm forgetting. Props to these guys for actually contributing worthwhile commentary over the years. If only we had more sane posters like you folk.

I feel like most of the newcomers are absolute bullshit and dont contribute fuck all to this board. I truly believe these are the type of people that really don't have much else going on in their lives except for bitching on a sports blog. It's absolutely pathetic. You spend your days on this site pretending you know whats best for a bunch of 18-23 year olds as it pertains to the sport of football. You listen to people like Mike Mayock talk about players that are "quicker than fast" or "good gap responsibility" and think these wordings are somehow relevant to our team? This makes you an expert in disecting what's wrong with our offensive line, pass rushing, and whatever else you feel like bitching and moaning about.

Frankly, I'm not affiliated with this school in any way, shape, or form. I'm your classic 'Walmart Wolverine' supporter. I fucking love this school and the tradition that goes along with it. I'm not on here pretending to be knowledgeable in any sort of way like most of you asshats. Most of my comments pretain to the famous catchphrase my username so often uses.

As much as I would despise this, it's gotten to the point where there needs to be some sort of weeding our process with some of you degenerates. If I were Brian, I'd start making some sort of effort to get you all to pay a monthly charge. 

Fact is: the kids that play football for the University of Michigan were worthy enough to earn a scholarship. The coaches have enough credentials to be employed as part of the coaching staff. They've accomplished more than most of you ever will. That's the hilarious part of all this 'bad posting' going around. None of those that are affiliated with the University of Michigan football program give a shit about what you think. They don't have to. At the end of the day, you're the ones dedicating your time to watch them perform on the field, follow recruiting, etc.

inconsistency, but all the bitching is getting ridiculous.  

Thiings we do know:

1. Coach Hoke is a quality individual who LOVES this school and is working his tail off to try and bring this program back to the desired level.  He's still dealing with a mix of 2 totally different personel - RR's and his.  His first recruits are only sophmores. Most sophmores don't have a significant impact, yet. Nobody is taking this harder then him.

2. Coach is recruiting not only quality players but quality young men, as well.  I, for one, do not  want to see this program pimp itself out in order to beat sparty or ohio.  The Stanford model should be our ultimate goal.  It can be done, but I think we need more time in order to accomplish that goal.  

3.  These coaches, kids and administration folks WANT to win.  It's not like they aren't working they're ass off to win.  I really liked the paralell someone posted yesterday to Coach B.  It's taken him 5 plus years, but look at where we are now.

If you let a college game bring you so far down that you have to be that unhappy, then you have a problem.  If you want to btich at players, do it to the pros who get paid to suck.  These kids are trying to work in a load of classes, as well.  

Relax.  it's all good.  You are part of a high quality program - be proud.

MGoBlog jumped that shark when Magnus got his Michael Cox tattoo.

I even went so far as to actually say the board had jumped the shark for me.

This was in Brian's board post where there was an issue with mgobloggers tweeting about a recruit (http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/apparently-i-have-say-treat-recruits-respect).  The fact that Brian was fighting bloggers and they were fighting back and users who didn't deserve it were being Bolivia'd was beyond ridiculous.  The board's been getting out of hand since it fractured into the Pro-RR and anti-RR sects a few years ago, but what happened on Sept. 24th was the breaking point for me.  I'm still here, and will continue to stay here, but I no longer believe anyone has any control over this board anymore.

I started to get tired of reading the board when most of my comments started to get grayed out because there are some chuckleheads who negged all of them, regardless of content.

I have continued to tire of the board now that there's no modification system whatsoever.

I stopped going into game threads after the UConn game but still visit the site. I just really can't stand the negativity, but worse to me is the complete lack of perspective. All offseason was talk about how Devin could win the Heisman and be gone after this year, how Derrick Green was going to be the starter (I even remember reading people talk about how likely it would be for him to be gone after his junior year), and then at the first whiff of trouble there are 30+ FIRE BORGES threads.

I'm not saying the board is all roses lately, but the days when the WLA ran roughshod around here were dark, terrifying times. You'd get killed for saying literally anything, but you'd never know if it was tongue in cheek sarcasm or blatant miliant communism.

For me, a long time (pre-Horror) reader of the blog but only a poster here since last August, I noticed that I cut way back on participating in the comments ever since the moderation went away earlier this fall. At one point there's a month or so gap in my commenting, because the boards had gotten so toxic, where before I was commenting several times a day. I've found that I far more enjoy the conversations I have on Twitter with other mgousers there, as opposed to here on the boards, and as the season has progressed I've been spending more time talking about Michigan there than here.

I think things will be better after the season once they are able to fix the site upgrade and get user moderation back. Until then things are going to continue to be messy, and I don't envy our mods one bit with all the crap they've had to deal with this season.

I can't pinpoint the date of shark jumping, but it was definitely this season. It just seems that the negativity has gone from simple grumbling about sports to srs bsness, mean-spirited anger. It's turned into MGoLive. The only thing missing are the Ron Paul comments. I really only read the board at times to look for certain commenters, like the OP, BISB, Space Coyote and some of the other long-timers. But even then, I follow most of them on Twitter so the incentive isn't really there for that either.

As far as self-moderation systems go, I didn't think the old one worked that well anyway. Much like Magnus described, God forbid you angered someone by having an opinion opposite of their's, Brian's (not that Brian was negging everyone, but his opinion carried more weight with the readership than it seems to today) or the mob's because you'd be negged into the ground. This was really apparent during RR's final season, when it was pretty clear it wasn't working, and was never going work. 

Perhaps a system where a certain "select" class of commenters were given voting privileges (points, time served, karma, whatever) would keep from simply squelching dissenters for the hell of it. 

See, I am  positive there will be no key coaching changes next year. (i.e., Hoke, Mattison, Borges.) Actually, I don't think there will be any coaching changes at all. And I'm one of the idiots who don't think there SHOULD be any changes. I believe the current coaching staff should get next year. I'm a broken record, but I expected this debacle given the RR OL recruiting.

The other thing is the negativity, courseness, crudeness, crassness, and snarkiness mean the board is no longer right for me to spend much time in, at least the posts.

I'm happy to read headlines, and know a bit of the latest news, but I can't stand to read posts from those raging and ripping on everything, from Brandon to the coaching staff to the players to the recruiting. I just can't do it.

Brian has often said that it is hardest to predict how OL recruits will turn out. They all know they're under the gun, but it won't start to turn around til next year, and won't really be right til the year after that. I really hope that Brandon and Hoke don't listen to AA Torch & Pitchfork.

of the many failures over the last ten years or so.    It started with Tressel's dominance over Carr, which spread to bowl losses, then to the Horror, then to Martin's botched hiring, then it was the embarassing transition from Carr to RR, then Toledo and 3-9, then Stretch-gate, then the rise of Sparty, then Brandon's process and getting turned down again by the top coaching candidates.  That is a lot of crap for a fanbase to endure.

But then Hoke came along and said the right things and looked the part and he had a great first season so a lot of us thought that things were finally back to they way they were in the 70's-90's when most of us started watching Michigan football. 

Now that things appear to be going south again it is like we are all just clenched up waiting for the next dong shot and it is  frustating as hell. 

...reading articles, posts, and comments.  I didn't create an account until recently and don't post that often.  That being said, I really miss the old pos/neg system and would be willing to take my chances w/ a low point count in order to see a higher grade of comments to articles.

I live in New Orleans now and the fans down here are lethal for a win that they don't like much less a single loss.  I said for years that I couldn't believe how upset LSU fans were week after week, win after win.  They would be so upset about winning, but not they way they wanted to win.  Then they would have a meltdown losing to a very good team.  I was glad that Michigan wasn't the same way for me but being out of state now all I have to go by is the comments on various sites and it looks like things are turning into how they are down here.  It's getting hard to stand.

When you come to the blog to check the afternoon or evening games open thread and literally every post is comparing a team to Michigan and how, "oh my god Illinois is beating Penn State and we couldn't even beat them (therefore Illinois > Michigan)." 

This literally happens every week and it just makes Saturday's almost unbearable because people want to be overly negative about our team at every possible opportunity, instead of just enjoying the games. 

it was one of either 1) the end of Haloscan 2) the WLA leaving or 3) the great malware attack. 

Definitely jumped the shark for me sometime after Hoke was hired. I think losing the point system was a big turning point. Maybe this place got too popular as well. I started reading shortly before Rich Rod was hired. I felt like I was almost part of a close knit community where everyone wanted to have level headed discussions about things, or share really funny stories. Most people got along just fine and it was totally different than any other message board site I had ever seen. It just doesn't feel that way anymore. I used to post almost daily. Now it is almost never.