Mgoblog: Your Modest Proposals

Submitted by MGlobules on

I'm willing to bow to board opinion if no one agrees, but I feel that mgoblog is not in real healthy shape right now. There was some serious excitement and brainpower at work here in the early going which I wouldn't assume can be recaptured--Brian's early diaries were magic, and with a small pool of exited member-posters the quality of thinking, and humor, was often really great. 

Some of the decline, I think, must be pinned on the founders and site managers. There is still plenty of good reporting here (Ace has improved markedly with the bball, Brian still brings a wealth of insight and occasional genius word play). The place is stale looking, to my eye, but a redesign is--reportedly--coming and will no doubt breathe life.

But now that we are into the post-season and can mull it, I'd like to offer a forum for constructive comments--not just complaints, but maybe only going to the look of the blog if that involves how discourse can flow better, too. 

My two suggestions: So many threads get hijacked by a silly side-conversation at the very outset/top that--repeatedly--you have to scroll miles down the page to get to commentary on the actual subject. (You know--one guy says funny, the next guy says ha ha, the next guy says good one or upvote and 30 seconds later you are still scrolling down for anything of value.) I think the mods need to go in and clean some of these up. Or--let me put it another way--lately I have been weary enough of it personally that I have started to bail when there's too much of it. Dylan has gotten very good at just stepping in when this happens at umhoops and asking people to get back on track; I think there has to be more attentiveness to the threads by mods in this regard. 

Second: I'm much more tolerant of off-topic threads, crazy opinions, and even interesting mildly sociological takes than most (not party political ones, but ones that point out the unfairness or fairness of how things work at a deeper level, that show insight about how things work). I welcome Brian's commentary, for example on getting players paid even when I don't agree with some of the underlying principles. 

But too many threads consist of just one or two poorly thought-out lines, replete with misspellings and--too often--are not even linked to factual supporting evidence. (I'm looking at you 'Penn Statte Fraternity Hazing Death," still up a day after it went up, and a one-liner lauding bowl season that didn't even bother to note what games were ON.)

Closer examination suggests that most are NOT from brand-new posters but people working into the thousands of points. So demanding that people get to X number of points before they post may not fix much. The answer, in my view: gotta have just a little more moderation.

Crap thread sitting on the sidebar for hours just isn't a healthy feel or look. 

How about other posters? Let's put together some serious proposals here; who knows, maybe a few will get adopted. Posted in a spirit of love and respect for this place.

 

mzdmv

December 16th, 2017 at 3:08 PM ^

I pretty much agree with the blog being a little sad lately. I'm not a big poster at all, I'll just usually chime in here and there on a post but this board has been filled with toxic negativity this year (2017 as a whole, not just football season).

I don't think it's a mod problem, those guys are unpaid volunteers that do a pretty good job of getting rid of the trolls and such, but there isn't much to be done about off-topic discussion. This isn't reddit where you can upvote and downvote comments and the good rises to the top. Now, maybe that's part of the redesign? If so, that sort of thing would be nice, or at least a way to follow threads more easily.

I think the point minimum needs to be raised for sure, it's awfully easy to get 100 points nowadays compared to the "+1 Informative" days. Other than that, I don't really know what can be done. It seems like it's mostly a fanbase problem. Harbaugh probably brought in more casual fans into the mix that aren't rational and will complain about everything, some warranted, some not.

 

Brian, Ace, Seth and the rest, y'all are doing fine

bamf16

December 17th, 2017 at 8:29 AM ^

Can't blame the mods that it's so easy to be a bitch on the internet and it's virtually impossible to be held to account.

 

And lately we've had a lot of bitches on here throwing stupid shit that has no chance of sticking on the wall.

 

 

LSAClassOf2000

December 16th, 2017 at 3:04 PM ^

I think the mods need to go in and clean some of these up. Or--let me put it another way--lately I have been weary enough of it personally that I have started to bail when there's too much of it. Dylan has gotten very good at just stepping in when this happens at umhoops and asking people to get back on track; I think there has to be more attentiveness to the threads by mods in this regard.

Let's just keep this in mind - I do the mod thing for free, as do the others with such powers around here, and you get what you pay for. 

I can only speak for me, but I do not read every thread unless the title strikes me as suspicious or I've been asked to investigate something. There's simply not enough time to can all of these side discussions. If a user does it famously and repeatedly, we can deal with that pretty easily, but there is some reliance on users to report this if they so choose. 

I am going to be very blunt here and if this in the eyes of some disqualifies me, that's fine, but if the ask here is to read every thread and police the irrelevancy, even if it fairly benign, I am not doing that.