META: A surrender in the battle for nice things

Think about what this board would be like if we lost to Northwestern.

Hate to see you go and all, but, listen, since you're on the way out ...

Yesterday at 5 PM Mass, the priest told the story of how, during a World's Fair in the 1930s, it was possible to spend 25 cents to touch a pile of 1,000,000 one dollar bills. In the other thread, you offered to "go all Oprah on our asses", so in that spirit, please, please give me 1,000,000 points before you go, even if only briefly. I may never again get to touch that kind of useless greatness again.

But, in all seriousness, I've appreciated your levity most of all. Going to miss not having you to kick around anymore, Mr. Nixon.

All the best,

Njia

Sorry to see you go BISB and good luck with the baby.

I find this position UNACCEPTABLE! I WILL NOT ACCEPT IT!

Seriously though, enjoy retirement. 

I'm not sure what can be done about message boards in general. There's a pretty fine line between bringing up criticisms and bitching unnecessarily, and everyone has a different idea of where it is. That means every time there's a legitimate critique, the thread gets clogged up with people telling them to STFU, and whining posts just serve to clog the board up.

I honestly think that bringing back post voting that means something and higher thresholds to create posts would go a long way, but who knows.

Thank you for your service to our community

To honor you, here is a pic of a just married cow.

You might be the most consistantly funny poster on the site, and seem like good peope generally.

Also, thanks to you and your work moderating, as well as Seth, Ace, Heiko, profitgoblue and Zone Left. Sorry if I've ever made your time here more difficult than it needed to be.

My initial reaction is: quit being a pansy

My second reaction is: why do we need a post about why you can't handle it anymore?

My third reaction is: this isn't a giant urinal. It's still the premier site to get In-depth info on Michigan athletics and I don't appreciate you disparaging it with your remarks

My fourth reaction is: why do I care enough to respond? I enjoy reading your posts and consider you an intelligent contributor

Finally: See ya.

Thanks for your dedication and serious time commitment to the blog. And congrats on the future addition to your family.

I hope that you become a martyr in the good fight for rational discussions.  Your exit can help shed light on the immaturity so many of us exhibit.  

Thanks for the work you put in.  Hopefully you still post here, but I understand you will be busy now.

Hopefully we can find a good mod to replace you.  If I were a mod, I would be giving out so many neg bombs.

Thanks for your service, BiSB.  Congrats on the baby.  I nominate LSA Class of 2000 for mod.

Sorry to see you go, especially on such a sour note. Good luck with the baby

Thanks for sharing...

BiSB, you became my favorite mod in your time here. I personally will miss you greatly.

Best of luck with fatherhood.

Will you give me a pile of unearned points?  Think of it like a Presidential pardon.  Yeah, those guys are totally guilty but they gave a bunch of money to the campaign and you aren't running again anyway.

PS.  Bringing back the old point system might prevent a future moderator meltdown.  Let us police each other.  We won't abuse it...I swear.  

Congrats and good health towards your future newborn, you've always been a valuable member of this site and I'll miss your contributions.

This wouldn't have happened if Rich Rod were still the coach...

seriously though, thanks for everything.  Always enjoyed you're mod'ing.  good luck with the little one.

Good luck with the baby. Sorry and thanks for the crap you had to put up with to make it a better experience for us.

I'm sorry, but things have not enough come close to taking an MLive turn. 

BiSB,
You've consistently been one of my favorite posters on the board since I've started coming here a couple years back. I'm sad to see you go, but at the same time, I absolutely understand where you're coming from (especially with a kid on the way). The board has been infuriating in the last few days, and I'm sure that's been hell for the Mods. I hope you still comment here/maintain some sort of presence, rather than doing a full TomVH-esque disappearance. I just wanted to thank you for all you've done for the community in your time here. Best of luck, Bisbiño.

As mgoblog becomes more popular, you have to expect more idiots to register and post. Obviously it's annoying as shit, especially after games, but that is the beauty of the forum. I kind of enjoy stupid posts and their OPs getting ripped to shreds. It deters future stupid posts. (You would think, right?) So my question is why do those posts get locked? Do they consume way too much bandwidth for a very unnecessary reason?

Whatever the case, thank you for your moderating and wish you the best.

Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to shamelessly plug my Ultra-MGoBoard Chrome Extension. It's linked in my signature, and will let you hide any posters you want so you never have to see their ridiculous comments. Works pretty well if I do say so myself, I haven't seen anything from about 30 posters for quite a while.

Sorry to read this. You were an asset to this board and I will miss your moderating ways.
Good night, and good luck.

Don't blame you.

I've started visiting less and less over the season.  But that's equal part other members and Brian worried about music, matching away jerseys, and the "why don't we try Bellomy" meme early in the season.

It's Brady's second season and he's 18-5.  I'll take that without all the bitching.

I hope you do, I'm pretty sure that I laugh at just about everything that you post. If not, I hope you reconsider, but best of luck to you and your family and your lawyering ways.

Congrats on the kid. Sorry to see you go. The mods in general do a fantastic job. I don't think the board is what it used to be, but it still sure beats the Scout free board.

It looks like you picked the wrong week to stop sniffin glue.  .

You fought the good fight, BiSB.   Thanks for your efforts.

To be honest I am a new member so I have no clue who you are.  But, I really enjoy being on this board and having the chance to communicate with other Michigan fans.  It sucks being a UM fan living in CT....all I hear about are the Jets, Giants, and Patriots...they don't even like the college version here...it's awful.  Anyways, I hate to see anyone go because of the negative attitudes of the board.  One the one hand, it's terribly difficult to watch the team you love struggle repeatedly and not voice that frustration.  It takes a lot of patience and maturity not to let your emotions speak.  However, I like most, have allowed that to happen many times.  I can only imagine that has taken place more in the last 5 years than in the previous 20 (not sure how long this board has been up).  But, I would just ask that you try to have a positive attitude while remembering that often times when people do stupid stuff, it's often the same thing we'd do in their situation.  That doesn't make it any better, but it does make us human.  We all show love, pride, and support as well as frustration, dissapointment, and hatred.

So are leaving the board all together or just not going to mod anymore? Your well-timed wit would leave a large void.

it seems like an uphill battle when 100 points is the cutoff for posting.

Tell me you at least banned that asshat on the way out

I am Legend

Sorry to see you go I think that you have preformed admirably in your time as a mod.  Congrats on the kud and enjoy the freedom.

Hopefully, you'll still post insta-classic zingers. And your avatar beats all.

Seppuku BISB.

Good call BiSB. I still read the blog, but have not posted as much since my first was born a year ago. The time commitment truly does change. I couldn't even imagine what it must be like when you actually have to care about what gets posted.

BTW - have always loved your avatar.

First kids are awesome, and life-altering (mine is 4 now). Hope you enjoy it half as much as we have!

Thanks for the efforts and congrats on the new family.

and thanks for all the fish!

In all seriousness, congrats to you and Mrs. BiSB on the baby! And thanks for scooping poop for so long - it's a crap job, we all know.

I feel like I'm the spice girls and BiSB is Ginger Spice, minus the drug usage. Goodbye my mod.

I have ALL THE SOLUTION: return to the simple up and down vote, bring back the negbangs. The kind that actually influence the meaningless number underneath a user's name.

When we had these things, believe it or not, it improved the community's collective moderation powers and was surprisingly effective. Now that 20% of any thread is sitting at the -1 threshold, and none of it has any impact on your High Score Bro, the moderators have to pick up the slack once shouldered by the community.

Sad to see you go.  I agree that the board has turned a little in the past couple of weeks, but I still think the nadir was during the latter part of the RR era when people just lost their minds every day.

This place can have civil discussions, and most people do.  The couple of nimrods who learned about this site from someone at work and thought their MLive personalities would play well here are idiots, and I'll throw my entire tough-guy Internet reputation behind that.  We have enough sports radio stations for people to be goobers at, but MGoBlog is supposed to be a cut above.

Again, sad to see BiSB leave as a mod.  Hopefully you'll keep posting.

BTW:  Congrats on the soon-to-be new Wolverine.

Congratulations to you and your family!

Thank you for all you have done for this place.  I hope you don't disappear from here forever.  The board is better when you're around.

Crap, you might be my favorite poster here.

Your frustration is understandable, though I think this is what happens when a blog breaks through as clearly the go-to place for Michigan sports.  You no longer just get people with a certain sense of humor, style, brain, etc. -- you get a much larger and more representative portion of the internet-active Michigan fan base.  As much as everyone dumps on MLive, I hope that site thrives, if only to provide two very different Michigan sites for attracting different types of Michigan fans.

Good luck with the family, and I hope that you continue to post in your new role as a non-mod normie.

You will participate in nothing for the rest of your life that will have as much fundamental human importance.

As for the issues on the site, I think it's far, far, far from being MLive. However, it is closer to that hellhole than it used to be, and I think the decline stems from two factors:

1). MGoBlog is an amazing internet success, and therefore falls prey to the fact that the internet is flypaper for morons. You can't avoid it entirely if you have message boards.

2). The change several months ago to a system wherein idiot comments are not truly dealt with via community policing. On occasion it could be cruel, but in general the idiots received quick punishment via negbanging. One problem with MGoBlog that has never been dealt with is gratuitious negging, wherein some routinely neg other commenters, regardless of what the nature of the comment is. IMHO There should be an individual cost to negging, and should include the temporary loss of posting privileges if it's abused beyond a certain stage. Points themselves should not be important except as a measure of the ability to post and comment.

It's probably worth emphasizing that although we all love freedom of speech, an individual website that allows complete freedom to its denizens stops being a place for reasonable people to hang out as soon as it gains a modicum of popularity. The internet breeds assholes. It's not "censorship" to keep such trash from overrunning one's community. Mods are the janitors of the internet. There are plenty of internet sites that don't have janitors, so it's not like there's nowhere to throw your shit just because you can't do it here.

We will always have the Monkey Rodeo memories at least.

Can I have a million points too!? Hate to see ya go BiSB, you've been one of my favorite mods BC you're so involved in all the discussions. Hope you reconsider after so much deserved down time. And congrats in advance!!!

First TomVH, now BiSB. I haz a sad.

Sooo... Can I have your Mgopoints?

/s   Congrats and good luck!

Godspeed, BiSB.

You've been one of the best for a long time.



Until we get real voting back, the mods will have a near-impossible job.

Finally, I don't need to act sensible anymore. Whew, that's a load off

I dont get how whining and being critical about the coaches gets you banned, but calling people asshats is somehow okay? If someone is offbase on their opinion, the board will let them know.

Thank you BiSB for your contribution to this blog. I have a greater appreciation for the time the mgoblog employees/contributors and the mods spend here now.  I was inspired at one point to provide a weekly contribution to this blog, but have found time to be too short as of late.  High quality, well informed, and humorous posters make this blog one of the best out there.  You are one of those that make this a better place.

I wish you the best with your new baby and leave you with this final thought -

Babies are SRS BSNS so that more than justifies a change in duties.  

I appreciare the explanation and am sorry you reached the breaking point.  The problem  is that the people who are going to care about this thread are not the ones who are causing the problems.  The jerks are not going to read it, or they are going to interpret it as a huffy flounce, or they are simply going to be pleased that there is one less jackbooted thug mod around here. 

But hey, I am not one of them.

I'm confused, what does a mod normally do beside act tough and complain?

Thank you for all of your work around here.  I tended to agree with you about 99.4% of the time.  Hope to see you on the board still from time to time.  You are appreciated...by me at least.

Congrats also!

I know I might have been an a hole in the past, but I want to thank you for your service towards making this a great blog. don't let the morons ruin it for you. good luck with your future kid.

Congrats and good luck on the little one. Honestly, I don't think the board is getting worse, I think it just goes through phases. I remember a couple years ago, I told a friend not to waste his time going on MGoBlog, because it had turned into a bunch of whining bitches. Eventually, I came back, the board seemed better and all was good. If you can't mod, so be it. But trust me, you will spend some late nights checking MGoBlog once the little one gets here. The wife and I are expecting one this month (#2) so I look forward to the late night reading.

Get a goddam pardon? I keed I keed. So long BiSB!

Maybe you're just following guidelines or some sort of protocol for this site, but I do think the Moderators go too far.

I think Brady Hoke has done a lot of great things for this program.  I have been pleasantly surprised with him...

But should it make him immuned from criticism?  Absolutely not.

I know that everybody makes mistakes, there is no perfect coach.  I just disagree with censorship of unpopular opinion.

Definite groupthink issues on this board

As a Moderator on one of the largest GM Camaro sites and as a former Admin/Mod on the largest Turbo Buick site I can relate to what you are feeling and are going through.



Sometimes things will drive you mad and other times you will do the same to others. Either way, life goes on and at some point you'll realize that none of this means much in the grand scheme of things.



Go Blue :)

Taking your talents to South Beach?

/s

Seriously though congrats Bisb on the baby. Good luck and hope to see you around.

If people would follow the Golden Rule and treat others how they would like to be treated then lots of issues would be solved.

Goodbye BISB. You'll be missed.

Make sure you teach the MGoBaby about the good things in life. The Victors, the M Club Banner, Michigan Stadium, Brady Hoke, Bo Schembechler, ham sandwiches. Stuff like that.

I was drawn to this site because the level of discourse, general intelligence, and overall fairness far exceeded any other college board I've visited. And there's some excellent non-sports content posted as well.

I try to post and give a "different perspective" when possible and it seems like as long as I can back up what I say, with the exception of a few taboo topics, my opinion is generally respected. I've even had Michigan fans defend my opinion, you never see that on other boards.

I've been registered for 2 1/2 years, maybe things were better before then, but Michigan football went through a pretty tough transition (I can relate, some of the posts I've read here were identical to Nebraska's during our problems), I think that explains much of the bad behavior when it occurs.

Sure, there are bad days when too many people overreact and say crazy stuff, naturally people will vent at certain times, but you guys have a great board, the smart and thoughtful posts far outweigh the stupid ones. Most of the time you get it right.

Long time lurker, first time poster (I forgot the password for my [long since used] email, so I had to make a new one).

Sorry to hear that the daily wear and tear of being a mod has brought you down, but I just wanted to let you know that many people here really appreciated your work here.

On behalf of lurkers everywhere, we respected and appreciated the unique viewpoints you provided for this site. Hopefully you can continue to contribute to this site despite resigning from your post. If you can't find it in yourself to continue to be an active member of the MGoBlog Community, live long and prosper!

And of course, Hail to the Victors!

Make me a MOD and I will clean this place up! 

Thank you for everything you've done here. I've always enjoyed your posts. Sorry to see you go. Why people refuse to understand that this is Brian's site and he can do what ever the hell he wants to (including deleting posts and comments he disagrees with, either himself or through the mods) is something I will never understand. It's his site. Don't like it? Find another site or start your own. I'm betting that the failure to understand that simple point contributes to 99% of the headaches you've had whole doing your job here. Good luck with the little one and hope to still see you around as "normal" poster.

I have been coming to mgoblog long enough, lurking for a couple years and joining a while back, to see posters and readers and protocol change significantly. There are many formerly active board members who have moved on, or who have made peace with just staying in the background. I understand, and have cut way back on posting myself.

It isn't easy being a moderator. Sometime, a long time ago, I posted a thankyou to ALL the mods who do such a good job. I don't think everyone here understands what a pain it must be to be a moderator. You guys have to read through every stinking post on every stinking thread. If you say anything in the least construed as negative, people get their shorts in a wad.

I've sometimes wondered about what makes mgoblog "good," and what would cause it to dengenerate. Of course, everyone has a different opinion. The points thing is a two edged sword. As Brian and mods have said, who really cares about points?

Having said that, I'm beginning to wonder if a return to "points" in the old days before the board melted down from some kind of attack would be a good thing. I don't completely like the "group think" aspect of points, but if the board community speaks, well, wouldn't that make things easier for moderators?

Maybe if the old system points came back, mods could focus on giving bonus chunks of points to thoughtful and well argued posts which espouse an unpopular position? I dunno.

I also think that more personal accountability is a good thing. When people have to stand behind what they say instead of this anonymous internet tough guy stuff, it makes people a bit more civil.

Regardless, thanks for your service to the board, your wit, your contributions. They will be missed.

amen

I think the mods all work hard at an utterly thankless job. Sorry to see you go but I totally get it. As much as we all love MGoBlog, raising your kid(s) is fantastically more important, fun and rewarding. Like others, I agree that letting the MGoCommunity moderate this site will be effective. Power to the people and all that.

Good luck with Little BiSB.

you say you can't deal with the immaturity and insistence on acting like children....yet you support people posting random pictures of cats

Thanks for all your work BISB - especially in the (ever chaotic) liveblog!

lurker and infrequent poster (as evidenced by my low point total) i too have cut back on posting and reading this site.

It wears on you after awhile.

Good luck on the little one BiSB.   I thought you did a helluva job and you will be missed.

I always appreciated your sense of humor, and your MOD work.  You will be missed.  Good luck with the baby.  I hope you at least pop in to say hello to the board once in a while, and deliver one of your nice quick-witted jabs.

No fanbase can treat a thrilling win worse than a loss like us. 

raise the points to post period...

Understandable especially since it seems you have much more important stuff going on. With that said, seems like a pretty childish way to go out

Sorry to see you go, BiSB.  It gets tough modding when so many unujustifiably assert that any moderation is "censorship of unpopular dieas" and "groupthink," but that's the internet for you.  I am of the opinion that everyone should be forced to be a discussion group moderator for a year somewhere, and no one should be asked to do it longer than that.

Thanks for your contributions, and I hjope you stay as an ex-mod.  You have paid your dues, and have more than earned your ex-mod-dom.

I'll even go through the verification process to post this!  :)

MGoBlog is different, and for the better.  Having said that, I do think the mods need to chill a bit and let people post.  As long as there is no obscenties or overt trolling/flamebaiting, let people post, man.

I like BiSB.  I'm sure it has not helped with all the Notre Dame fans in South Bend driving him crazy.  They probably sent him over the edge.... 

That being said, as a Mom, I totally need to hear what kind of baby he has and what he names said baby.  At least let us know that....

Sorry to see that you are putting down the moderator's internet point thingy, I seldom found fault with your decisions, and that is amazing in and of itself.

As a former moderator of the site,I sympathize with and agree with what you say.

But may I suggest, to any mod, that this thread get locked at this point? A 200 post thread debating the merits of BiSB, and the status of the boards devolution doesn't seem, to me, to serve any purpose. Best case is that it becomes a sort of obnoxious hagiography of BiSB and the more cynical posters can accuse him of martyring himself (I'm not saying this was his intent)

Honestly thank you for your mostly thankless job.  But also, I'm glad to see you moving on (not trying to be a dick, though I suppose I am being one).  I like a moderating hand, but not a controlling, snarky, its'about-me moderator - which at times I felt that you were.  I say that fully knowing that I could *not* do the job you have done.  I get that.  But I'm also being honest b/c I think this opinion is healthy for the board to discuss - how do we want our mods moderating?