Jumping the Shark: Why the MGoBoard is Unreadable

2013 for me.

Bring back the old system, voting on various posts.   IMO that will solve quite a bit.

I think what makes the blog unreadable is all the bitching about the blog. Especially the replies stating that this post has been posted before.  Redundant posts are going to happen, get over it. Posts that you don't like are going to happen, get over it. All the carping about what you don't like about the board is useless and unnecessary.

....I can't be the only one here who misses the Haloscan days!

XD

At some point this year it jumped.  There is just way too much hatred, vitriol, and personal attacks made against coaches and players.  These are human beings that are out there giving their best (for the most part) and are trying to win for the University of Michigan.  Sometimes their best just isn't enough and sometimes we may not agree with the strategy employed -- but that is no reason to lash out at a 18 - 22 yr old kid that pours his heart out for Michigan football.  This doesn't mean that we can't advocate for firing / benching a coach or player, but there is just no need for personal attacks.  I was disgusted to read all the awful comments during the last few weeks that suggest that our players are weak, lack toughness, aren't trying hard, etc.  

We all need a general rule of thumb before posting that is as follows -- if you can't say it to someone's face, you shouldn't say it about them anonymously through the internet.  (As an aside, we should all employ this strategy with respect to what we say to other drivers on the road -- think about it)

It ebbs and flows for me. This board gets angry and stupid a lot. There aren't single instances, I just realize (usually too late, after a couple of prolonged stupid arguments) that things haven gotten idiotic and it's time to abandon ship. I'll keep an eye on things and wade back into posting as things calm down a bit.

I'm guessing it's going to be more go than touch the rest of the season.

(How many mixed metaphors did I manage to squeeze in there? Like three in as many sentences?)

Or does the Saban look like the Fonze.

For me it was in the aftermath of the Process, Part II. There was absolutely no tolerance for even a slightly different viewpoint / criticism valid or not was smothered with terrible rhetoric. Even good posters were serious assholes at that time. You can see it today.

Negbangs need to come back like whoa. I understand the need/desrie to limit their magnitude becuase some reasonable comments get sent to Bolivia for no reason other than the fact that they are not mainstream opinions.

Posbangs should be unlimited.

i really don't know what i expect from the commentors coming here. a few posters bring good solid analysis, a few bring a light hearted, irreverant or emotional light to things, some people have relevant stories from their days as a student or player. currently, it seems like there is an over-abudance of commenters who are here only to throw around bombastic statements with no room for grey areas, any pause or contemplation gets a scree of definitive comments.

i know that it is frustrating when our team does poorly, it is almost worse than it is good when they do well. but there is no way that venting and ranting here on the internet with a bunch of strangers is going to do. i think a little perspective would help a lot of posters, i also thing a stronger, user-based moderation system would push down on a lot of strife and possibly make the mods' jobs a bit easier.

Right now MGoBlog is like Detroit with a police force—mods—the size of Saline's police department, with about the same temperament to boot.

Once the general populace was disarmed by taking away negbangs, their is literally no brake on criminal posting activity.

Once you outlaw negbanging of comments by idiots, eventually only idiots will be commenting. It's really an iron law of the internet. Websites that don't have either heavy moderation of comments or don't enable strong self-policing by commenters are literally online versions of Mad Max. I know that there were some technical reasons for not bringing back negbanging, but it's not clear to me that Brian truly thinks there's any problem.

The lack of self-moderation towards the end of the summer was the tipping point, since you can't just automatically hide the stupid comments and the trolling anymore. Being able to scroll past a hidden comment that had been negged got rid of a lot of the stuff that bums most people out. Now, that stuff stays up and instead of quickly goind away, it inspires its own line of discussion that is almost always just people flaming back and forth. It turns what was once easy to ignore into an echo chamber of negativity. It's Reddit versus 4chan. The former is hardly perfect, but the latter is a horror show. That's largely due to users being able to self-moderate.

I've also thought as time has gone on that the whole points system (when it was functional) needs an overhaul. The points threshhold for posting board topics is way too low (it's what, 50?), all once has to do is comment a few times and then you can fill the board up with all the inane crap you want until the mods send you to a landlocked South American country. That needs to be a couple hundred at least.

tl;dr We need the mod system back, and when it's back it needs further improvements.

anymore. Logging on to the board used to be fun and entertaining but the general influx of terrible posters has made me much less inclined to participate.