Meta: Changes with mgoblog as we head into season?
At first, I was going to put this in the OT thread, but my interest is meta, not ot. I have two questions:
- What changes are coming to the board with the beginning of the season?
- What changes would you like to see come to the board going forward?
I'm wondering if there will be any server tweaks to accomodate increased traffic. Is there any redesign of the banner and the board layout planned? Will speed increase? Will the feature to page down the mgoboard finally come back? (I know there are ways around this, but it still doesn't work right.) What should we expect from Brian, Seth, Ace, and others in terms of content? I like some of what Seth writes (about understanding formations, etc.), and would love to hear more from coaching types about what is going on (Magnus, Space Coyote, Steve Sharik come to mind. It is possible that Sten Carlson and Brown Bear might know something about football?)
Those questions have to do with what plans Brian et al are ready to put in place. Of less importance but still interesting would be to know how much traffic the board gets, how the business plan is working, etc.
Mgoblog continues to be my favorite blog, period. I don't post or comment as often as I used to, and am glad to see younger and newer members (I'm thinking of you, WD) post often.
As for changes going forward, well, I'm actually pretty happy. Adding in the ability to upvote and downvote was a plus, simply to allow the commentariat the ability to help in moderating posts that are out of line. I suppose I would like an Android App for my Samsung, but that's about it. It is hard work to maintain a website like this, and I think that Brian and crew are doing a great job with it.
August 19th, 2014 at 2:51 PM ^
I have been wanting to see this for a while --
I would really like to see Brian go back through the backlog of games without a UFR and get those games on record. I think that we have only two UFRs in the past six OSU games, and no real UFRs for the bowl games. These are really good evaluation tools. You take the four or five really big games that we have played every year for 5+ years and we have never gotten a UFR for about half of them. Even games that are old enough that all of the players are gone I think would make for interesting reading and good reference material. I'd love to see a UFR of Carr's last game.
August 19th, 2014 at 3:20 PM ^
August 19th, 2014 at 8:43 PM ^
A lot of good ideas so far. I'm a relative new guy, so take my input FWIW, which is probably not much. Some of this might repeat what others have said, but perhaps that will just underscore an issue for the moderaters. I understand some of this may be impossible with the software or platform that the site is on, but here we go:
- New banner would be nice. Like, once per year either capturing just a sweet shot or signature positive moment from the previous season.
- The layout could be cleaned up a bit. It strikes me as a bit dated/busy. The App is fantastic in terms of it's clean layout. I understand that's a different software platform, but tidying up the place a bit wouldn't hurt.
- Update the links to other blogs. As others have mentioend, a few competitor blog cites are not linked, and conversely, a few of our fellow UofM blog cites have basically stopped operating at this point and probably should not be linked.
- Ditto on the "next" button issue.
- Private Messaging would be nice.
- The ability to delete or remove double-posts.
- Ditto on the user profiles so people could know who other posters really are.
- If you are looking for more original content, especially in the off season, I'd like to see a "Where Are They Now" or "Thoughts From Football Alumni" articles where the staff interviews former football players--maybe just a personal 'catching up with' but also asking their thoughts on the current state of the program--who do they watch? Who are their favorite players? Any advice for the current guys? Old stories from their day that might never have been told before? Maybe team/school politics will still muzzle former athletes, and I'm not asking for extensive exclusive sit-down interviews with Tom Brady or Charles Woodson necessarily. But it'd be nice to get some candid interviews with Elvis Grbac, Dhani Jones, or Jumbo Elliott. I am looking forward to Dierdorf and Brandstatter chew the fat a little bit about the old days under Bo, the program in general, etc. The players from the '80's, 90's, and 00's I'm sure could have interesting insights to share as well.
- Ditto on doing "Goodbye" posts for players who are transfering, graduating, or leaving the program. We spend so much time obsessing over the newest recruits, I feel like the guys really deserve our attention AFTER they've spent hours of work on the field and in the weight room for our beloved team as well. I feel like we already do this on a semi-regular basis with the fan favorites already, but the average guy who languishes 3rd on the depth chart I think still deserves some consideration from us. Without those guys, there is not scout or practice squad, etc.
- An updated glossary of terms in the FAQ MGoFAQ section, with perhaps an expanded version as a sticky up in the FAQ section of the message board section of the blog. As a relative newcomer, I am still finding it tough to learn the rules of the road. An updated and more prominant glossary of terms or concepts that are unique to this blog culture would help new people who *want* to add to the community in a constructive manner would help speed up the learning curve.
August 19th, 2014 at 8:45 PM ^
August 19th, 2014 at 8:46 PM ^
be added to the staff as Fashion Editor so he can officially be in charge of Uniformz updates.
August 19th, 2014 at 9:59 PM ^
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
August 19th, 2014 at 10:10 PM ^
But I have to say I agree . . . time for a new tag line. And I've never really gotten into the Draftageddon. Maybe it floats someone's boat, but it has never done anything for me. I just assume that there must be some readers who really love it, or the site owners, so they do it. Since I don't do fantasy, and don't follow other teams extensively, a lot of it is lost on me.
August 19th, 2014 at 10:22 PM ^
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August 19th, 2014 at 10:26 PM ^
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
August 21st, 2014 at 6:36 AM ^
Surprised this doesn't have a ton of upvotes. Trying to sift through threads and find any conversations you were in is a major pain, particularly in longer threads.
August 20th, 2014 at 12:01 AM ^
*from another thread
August 20th, 2014 at 10:57 AM ^
I'd like to see the thread layout go more toward a vBulletin layout. Mainly because it seems to be the forum layout of the world and easily transferrable in terms of functionality. If that's not possible, make it easier to look at old posts. If it's not on the first page for me, It's gone. Going to pages beyond number 1 nets me a useless page that has no flow or methodology to it.
August 20th, 2014 at 3:58 PM ^
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Entirely new look and new site. ETA now pushed back to early 2015.
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MGoFilms (copyrighted name). Like 30 minute documentaries on awesome things. We have the first under production right now.
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Statistics sub-site. We're building a depository of all stastistical knowledge we posses, on the front-end as readily accessible stuff (so you can, e.g. go to the OSU page and quickly see their sack-adjusted YPC and YPA, etc. On the back-end, we're going to make all of our data and databases and spreadsheets built for Hokepoints, etc. free for download to the public so those readers who know how to work a spreadsheet can make their own stats.
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More t-shirts (accepting ideas). One of these is a tshirt I've been wanting forever, based on that Kipling poem in the locker room that all defensive players at MIchigan have been chanting since 1995.
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Weekly enewsletter with highlights from that week's coverage on the main page, aimed at readers who don't read the site every day but would like to know when to check in.
- This will be announced soon: we're partnering with a ticket reseller to have a free, Facebook-login-based ticket exchange. The spreadsheet can get abused.
Some other stuff too but where we have contract negotiations going on
August 21st, 2014 at 5:15 AM ^
As regards t-shirts, I assume there are basic copyright infringement rules that don't allow you to use a bunch of things, i.e., the words "Michigan," "University of Michigan," U of M," "Michigan Football," "Go Blue," etc. Can you link to what is allowed and what isn't allowed? There is no point in coming up with ideas only to find out that you can't use them.
I guess the one shirt I'd wear is a Navy shirt with a Maize "Mgoblog" emblem on the chest. (The block "M" with the script banner across the base of the M.)
I'm just personally not going to wear many of the t-shirts. My wife is from Cleveland, and I'm not going to wear a bunch of the Ohio centric shirts. Shirts that are about Bo or about Carr don't work for me, nor am I going to wear a Woodson shirt or a photobomb Brian shirt. (even though thrown in with HTTV.) Is "Leaders and Best" copyrighted? "Hail?" "Victors Valiant?" "Champions of the West?" "Maize and Blue?"
How about
- Michigan Football:
- 910 wins
- 42 titles
- 131 seasons (however many)
- est. 1879
This shirt would be instantly dated, but I could live with that, especially as an HTTV add in.
August 22nd, 2014 at 9:42 AM ^
Can't use Michigan, can't use anything that involves a player or anything Michigan might think belongs to them.
The CLC's rules are arbitrary and really come down to "I might want to make that t-shirt so you can't" or "that might offend Notre Dame because everything offends Notre Dame." The standard isn't what's copyrighted; it's what a bunch of rich, litigious hypocrites might want to be copyrighted in their wildest dreams because they can push a button any time and ruin us if we don't play by their rules.
August 22nd, 2014 at 10:55 AM ^
The other day I decided to look at the site without my AdBlocker ennabled and there was just too much going on. I buy HTTV each year to try and support the site but I am so used to ad free internet now that animated ad's piss me off. If we went to still image ad's ide be willing to turn off my block (TED.com is a great example of this). Or with the addition of a tip jar of some kind i'd be willing to chip in to keep things running smoothly/keep content providers paid.
August 22nd, 2014 at 11:53 AM ^
If you want to find a tip jar, click on the "Beveled Guilt" at the top right of the page.