State Of The Site, Late 2013 Comment Count

Brian

keyboard_bash[1]This is obviously meta.

I may or may not do something like this again, but UMHoops does 'em and they seem like a good idea. Since I've mentioned my general dissatisfaction with the way things have been going around here in a couple of different formats, I figure a fuller explanation is due to everyone who doesn't listen to the podcast or care about Twitter, and Twitter was about six sentences anyway.

I've gotten a lot of emails and tweets in support and while I appreciate them a great deal, I feel like it's not really all that bad and perhaps I haven't expressed any of this clearly enough. So here's an attempt.

THE BAD THING

one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest-11[1]

We moved servers just before the season, and for some reason this imploded the Drupal module we were using that did the voting/comment-graying. Don't get me started on that unless you want the animated gif above to be my fate.

The new server is a champ, and was direly needed. We only blew up during the Hand commitment aftermath, and I guarantee you that the blog would have been crushed four or five other times during the year if we had not moved. At times this has been a mixed blessing—it probably would have been nice to be down after Penn State—but having your internet site on the internet is a goal.

The cost was steep, as without the obvious disapproval provided by your comment shrinking into a gray box, dumb comments multiplied and fights about those comments multiplied since there was not an obvious indicator that other people had already dismissed it. I felt this would happen but had very little time to do anything about it since this event happened smack-dab in the middle of me pounding out the 50k-word season preview.

Flaming went up, signal got obscured, and things veritably roiled.

THE BLOWUP

We brought Brandon on board to be a recruiting reporter and he posted an interview with a 2016 kid; he gave us a picture in which he looked pretty young. I thought nothing of it because I follow hockey closely and there kids who don't have to shave commit all the time. (A kid born in 1998(!) just committed. The OHL speeds up their timelines.) Michigan just took a 2016 commit in football, and has a half-dozen offers out. But this resulted in a comment thread in which a lot of people made jokes about the kid not having to shave; others put on their Serious Issue faces and wondered if this was ethical. Then the prospect posted a screenshot of people making fun of him on twitter. SMH, man.

By this point we'd had a lot of crap on the board and this was a seeing-red moment. I posted a thread about how this was unacceptable, etc., whereupon there was a huge comment thread in which concern trolling featured heavily. The ethics of talking to high school kids about where they might go to college was frequent topic.

This was and is ridiculous. We're not about to Rosenberg these kids, both because we're not [REDACTED] 5'2" [REDACTED] goobers who'll do someone dirty to get ahead in the world and that going Rosenberg on someone would completely crush us with our readers, deservedly.

We're going to ask them softball questions and publish them after correcting any spelling mistakes, and you, the reader, are going to post comments like "Good luck wherever you go!" because that's the social contract we have here. That's how this works. You are going to assume that high school kids are going to read anything they can about themselves online, and we're going to throw Charmin at them in slow motion. This is not hard-hitting journalism here.

Anyway. The primary concern troll was a guy who'd been around since the very beginning of the site, chitownblue. He quit in a huff once, then came back as chitownblue2, and almost never appeared except to chide someone about something. At some point virtually everyone who writes for the site complained to me about him. The rest of the people who had posted things that broke the social contract in that thread quickly apologized; he dug in to fight the battle of the Somme. Another complaint about him happened in the midst of that thread, during which my dander was up and finger already hovering over the button. So I banned him, and various compatriots. And I've had an itchy trigger finger since.

They'd been around forever. I regret nothing, except that I waited so long. I hated that guy.

THE ISSUE

A friend sent me this post from 4chan's founder in response to similar issues he'd had, in which he cites another post from Steve Pavlina about why he shut his popular forums down. Pavlina talks a lot about entitlement of longtime users and standards that he felt weren't being met, both of which I kind of feel. But moot's thing is the thing:

Something that’s always surprised me is how often people seem to forget how large the overall 4chan community is outside of their own respective interaction with it. Some simply don’t care, but I think others plain don’t realize they’re just one of millions of people who post and browse 4chan on a monthly basis. …

My view is that it simply isn’t possible nor prudent to attempt to please everyone, and so I don’t. This can be misinterpreted as not caring, but it’s far from it—it’s just a reflection of my belief that the needs of the community outweigh the needs of individuals. Which is an ideal I think most would agree with, but when emotions run wild and tensions run high, we often lose sight of it.

The general rule of thumb is that 10% of your readers will read the comments/forums and 1% will leave most of them. I believe our numbers are quite a bit higher than that, but even so that the the primary thing that happens in the comments is lurkers reading them. From the perspective of the commenters these people do not exist. From my perspective, they're the majority of the readerbase.

Most of these people seem to like the site. They visit it. That majority has not been reflected in the comments. Of late when people recognize me I wince a bit, because I'm not sure how this interaction is going to go. I'm kind of waiting for someone to unload on me. This never happens.

As the season's gone along this disconnect has become apparent. And I'm finding the complaints harder to deal with because with the demise of voting so many of them have become personal attacks hardly sheathed in anything resembling logic. Brandon just took a lot of crap for posting that usually when recruits are open with him that means they're excited about Michigan and Malik McDowell was tight-lipped, which may not bode well. This exploded into controversy for some reason: that reason is there are a bunch of people who just complain about everything about the site.

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME

Why these people can't let go and do something else, I don't know. They're locked in a prison of their own devising, being miserable about the state of the blog while they make it worse by constantly complaining about it.

I am going to help both these folks and myself escape from purgatory by hitting the eject button on them. Like this guy who has 41,000 points, most of which seem to be accumulated complaining about the site. And this guy. Great news for everyone: they're banned. Now they are free to explore the rest of the internet, perhaps to find something they don't hate.

This represents a policy change. In short, that is: if the people who write for this site hate you we will ban you. That is the upshot of the twitter burst and the podcast thing. This is not really a change for most people since we did that for anyone with a few points who came in guns blazing. This mostly applies to folks like guy I just banned who'd accumulated the third-most points on the site. I hated that guy! For three years! And out of some idea about respecting the community I let him fart all over it.

To respect the community, we should ban jerks, even if they've been around so long that it seems that there must be some redeeming value in having them around.

If you don't like the way the comments are laid out, or you think there should be more jumps, or fewer jumps, or have a substantive disagreement with what I think, or even have argument-free opinions I roll my eyes at every six months or so, fine. I have to get to know you to loathe you. All you people are good. In fact, here are protips to not get banned under this new regime:

  1. Don't have an avatar. You're less likely to get noticed.
  2. Don't be a jerk to people who write for the site. Much more difficult that #1, but still doable if you try.
  3. Don't constantly complain about the people I hire. If you want to send me an email, fine. Publicly crapping on the other guys who write for us is filed under jerk.
  4. Don't get mad at me for having a particular emotional state. This happened constantly throughout the season, as if the internet tough guys who were taking the bullets the season threw at them could somehow improve my mood by berating me.

I can understand how the last few years have put people in a place where they find me irritating after once enjoying the site, but all the comments in the world aren't going to be able to change what is primarily a sports blog about what it feels like to be a Michigan fan. If you feel differently, okay! I accept that you feel differently. If you want me to feel like you, that is an argument you are welcome to have anywhere else.

It's been a trying year for everyone, and I'm about to go figure out how to get the damned voting back on comments, so hopefully things will recede from this, their irritating zenith. Thank you to everyone who did not expect me to be an emotional clone of themselves this year, which is like 99% of you. I enjoy you.

-Brian

Comments

ST3

December 6th, 2013 at 6:42 PM ^

I went back and reviewed that post. M-Wolverine made just a couple posts (at least ones that were left up.) One compared Brandon Brown to RDT. So he broke the new rule about publicly trashing a writer of  this site. The other appealed to the Athletic Department as a higher authority. He ought to have known better than that, given Brian's contempt for Dave Brandon. Two straws that apparently broke the camel's back.

JMK

December 7th, 2013 at 12:33 PM ^

I always got the sense that M-Wolverine worked for the Athletic Department or was somehow affiliated with the program.  He implied insider knowledge and was definitely a pro-Lloyd, pro-Hoke, "Michigan Man" (in the bad sense) kind of guy.  He reminded me of an AD employee who personally called me after I had a letter published in the Daily critical of Lloyd Carr to tell me I was a jerk and didn't know what I was talking about.  I rarely comment, and have only commented twice in ANGAR, but one of those posts was in response to M-W's flaming dickishness.  The only negative I can see in banning him is we won't get to enjoy the irony of him making the same defenses of Borges and Hoke that he criticized when offered up for Rich Rod.

MGoStrength

December 6th, 2013 at 8:45 PM ^

That makes me feel a little better now after having had a disagreement with M-Wolverine in the past.  His style of "argument" rubbed me the wrong way.  Also, I feel like he had a heck of a lot of posts in a relatively short time.  I think his start date was pretty similar to mine, but he had like five times the number of posts.

Blue in Yarmouth

December 9th, 2013 at 8:40 AM ^

I agree with Brian's ban of CTB2 and junglechop and can certainly see how posters (and Brian) would have issues with M-Wolverine (especially Brian, since he was constantly attacking him) but I found him to be alright if you could get past his crouchiness. 

Chitown ONLY ever commented when he was calling someone stupid or otherwise berating posters. Junglechop wasn't quite that bad, but was more oftne than not fighting with someone everytime he posted. M-Wolverine did have his share of those issues, but I felt like he at least made some positive contributions to the site as well. 

At the end of the day I certainly think the site will be a better place without the other two and I won't lose sleep over M-Wolverine not being around either. I just wish (as a poster said above) we could all remember that we're here because of our mutual love of Michigan. That doesn't mean we always have to agree on everything, but we should at least endeavour to disagree politely and debate in the same manner. Trust me, it can be done. Through years of trying I can now sit down at a dinner table with my in-laws and we don't even raise our voice or hurl insults once...If I can manage that with people I have absolutely nothing in common with, then we can do it here. 

I love this site and enjoy pretty much all the posters on it, not to mention the owner and his employee's (all of which I enjoy). Let's hope this is the start of things getting back on track. 

GoBlueBalls

December 6th, 2013 at 3:17 PM ^

M-Wolverine sucked.  Glad to see him go.  I'm a frequent reader for many years, but I don't comment often.  I'd specifically avoid commenting on threads where M-Wolverine was involved.  He would really be suffocating to discourse.  I was frankly suprised to see him banned, but kudos to Brian for pulling the trigger.

Cope

December 6th, 2013 at 7:07 PM ^

M-Wolverine was my favorite poster. His posts were consistently rational and well-thought out. Honestly, in most issues I thought he had great points. Now, clearly Brian felt he was a detriment to the blog, and he has the right to do whatever he wants on his site. He deserves his vision to be respected on his site.

But M-Wolve wasn't a troll, even if he may have not posted consistent with the vision here. A lot of people really respected him, and if we must part ways, I will at least wish him well in Mgoheaven.

Shop Smart Sho…

December 6th, 2013 at 1:41 PM ^

I agree with 99% of what you just wrote, and yearn for the voting system to make a triumphant return.

The 1% I don't agree with is this:

"that reason is there are a bunch of people who just complain about everything about the site."



I tried to email you about it.  As my early New Year's resolution I will simply resolve to not click on that content.

In exchange can we get an audio of you watching Funchess hurdle a dude?  I think that sounds like a lovely Christmas present for us.

DonAZ

December 6th, 2013 at 2:52 PM ^

Years ago I recall watching a NOVA program on PBS where some physicist was talking about dropping a stone, which would fall half way, then half again, etc., etc.  I recall him saying something about the time increments becoming so small that it would form a black hole and suck in everything around it.

So yeah ... BiSB banning himself has that potential. 

BiSB, keep your finger off the banhammer button, please.

Space Coyote

December 6th, 2013 at 3:02 PM ^

That was used by CERN scientists as evidence that a black hole would form upon them attempting to find "God's Particle".

But there was credible physics that proved it might, just like there was credible physics that showed that an atomic bomb would propegate throughout the whole environment and we'd all die. Sometimes we kind of get lucky that our math and physics isn't always as clear and correct as it sometimes seems.

mfan_in_ohio

December 6th, 2013 at 3:31 PM ^

If you made a black hole with a beam of particles, it would have the mass of -- the beam of particles.  Even you had a full kilogram of mass (which seems like a lot for a beam of hadrons), it would still make a black hole with a radius a trillionth the size of a proton.  The chances that other particles would even interact with, let alone be sucked into, such a tiny black hole are miniscule.  Plus, Hawking radiation would make the black hole evaporate before it could absorb anything.  So those black holes might as well be made, but they'd be gone before it mattered. (Ha! "mattered".)

 

Also, thanks to Brian for bringing to the world a website where I can be incredibly nerdy about both Michigan sports and experimental physics.  Mgoblog is at the microscopic center of a very unusual Venn diagram.

Space Coyote

December 6th, 2013 at 4:08 PM ^

But that requires the belief that the Hawking Radiation theory is absolutely correct rather than the idea that even a small black hole could potential pull in other particles and become a growing black hole.

As an engineer, I for one think physics and mathematics are great and that theory has brought us a long ways. But I'm also of the believe that all our physics and theory is close approximations of what we know or understand based on a finite knowledge base that includes the extremely close (by cosmic standards) and our likely flawed instrumentation and measuring system. I find it way too coincidental that so many things can be wrapped up so nicely within our highly constrained and likely over-constrained understanding of the universe.

So some of this stuff is kind of scary, and I can get why when you start getting into the debate of very complex and specific physics. At the same time, if we don't take risks with some of these things, we never learn. As a huge advocate for space exploration, risk is an essential part. Weighing the appropriate risk based on what we know is always the touchy subject.

Space Coyote

December 6th, 2013 at 4:39 PM ^

They probably are. But I think there are lots of things physicists are confident about that in a half-century they'll say "well that wasn't right". I feel like "why did the dinosaurs die" or "how was the universe created" kind of fall in line with this.

I'm skeptical by nature I think. But things like dark matter - where I understand the theory behind it and why physicists believe in it so strongly - leave me thinking "maybe our equations are just wrong." It screams to me that something isn't matching what we consider must be correct, so we are putting faith into something we can't see or detect outside of the fact that our equations aren't right. Not to get this into a religious debate, but the two start to intertwine a bit.

So maybe their right to many degrees, maybe it's a close approximation of what is happening, or maybe they are completely wrong. But for physicists to believe in it is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby they can continue down a certain path to better understand their highly reliable approximations. I guess I'm just saying I think more physicists should be skeptical of the base argument, because if they aren't we'll never have Einsteins again. 

[Aside: It's the fact that we can't establish a unified field theory that leaves me skeptical that black matter is the solution to our problems. If we can't unify things that we can detect and measure with our resourses (particles and let's say, a basketball) how can we expect to properly unify something that makes our galaxy the size of a particle relative to galaxy's version of the basketball? And now there is another debate. YAY OFFSEASON! Maybe we need to create a threat this weekend debating the theories of the universe so we can get heated about non-football related things and have a better understanding of how we all work; and we'll probably all learn a lot more than would ever be useful in a setting where instead of debating the theory of the universe on a football blog, we actually went out and did things]

Monocle Smile

December 6th, 2013 at 4:50 PM ^

It's not so much putting faith in something we can't measure or detect. I agree some physicists like to get a little too bold about this stuff (like "this exists" as opposed to "this is what our current understanding leads us to believe"), but in the case of dark matter, we're in a spot where despite having a chunk of ignorance, there are phenomena that can be tied to this chunk, such as gravitational lensing. Thus, whatever exists in that ignorance must possess properties that cause these phenomena.

Space Coyote

December 6th, 2013 at 6:01 PM ^

Gravitational lensing is the most commonly used evidence for such, as it's the easiest to understand. But we hardly understand how light travels (is it a wave, a particle, something else completely), and what makes it so we understand how gravity affects light on such a massive scale? Just because light appears to bend in a similar way in relatively near cases, how do we know it also follows that same approximation on extremely massive scales? How do we know that our understanding for the amount of mass in galaxies are correct?

Note: I'm not saying it doesn't exists, I'm only skeptical. The gravitational lensing is the genesis of that skepticism. It is very difficult to prove or disprove either idea, and I understand most physicist don't claim it as certainty, but many seem to disregard any other theory or any concept that maybe the equations are approximations, or even incomplete (which is very, very likely giving our understanding and advancement in equations and theory here on Earth in recent decades/centuries).

Anyway, I think it's pretty obvious by now that I tend to think things are pretty much always more complex than they appear. I disagree with Einstein in that idea. I don't think there is a clean unification of all physics. I do believe there is one, but my guess is it's extremely complex. That's just my personal, somewhat uneducated but relatively educated belief.

Michigan Arrogance

December 6th, 2013 at 7:13 PM ^

I have seen papers that try to explain the observational evidence for Dark matter as resulting from a change in the inverse sqaure law when the masses are greater than, oh about 10^6 solar mass (IIRC). something like this:

Normal Gravitational Force: F=Gmm/(r^2)

 

Gravitational Force for M> 10^6 soalr masses: F=Gmm/(r^(2+h))

where h is a small correction to the square part of the inverse square law. nothing much comes of it b/c it cannot provide explanations for other observations.

 

re: science and belief. everyone has some kind of belief. the difference b/t scientific and , er... not-so-scientific beliefs is the one is based in evidence (objective, verifiable and repeatable evidence such that one can make reliable PREDICTIONS based on their hypotheses).

I'm not sure there any many scientists would be doubtfull of the gravitational effects matter has on light. the reason is that Einstein's GenRel theory was able to PREDICT the apparent position of Mercury's orbit and that prediction matched exactly what was observed.

additionally, based on the theory of the gravitaional effects on light (spacetime, really), scientists could calculate (read: predict) what it would look like for a galaxy to be gravitaionally lensed due to a central massive object. and low, those predictions matched precisely the observed lensing images. anyway, the worth of a theory only goes as far as it's utility to explain as many observations as possible (well enough to make predictions). A great quote I heard a few years ago was from Richard Feynman, IIRC. It goes something like this:

The theory of the electron is quite a remarkable one. It would be even more remarkable if the electron really did exist.

the point being, whether the electron actually exists or not is inconsequential- the fact remains that the theory we have developed provides such accurate predictions that it's validity is all but unimpeachable.

 

Gameboy

December 6th, 2013 at 5:27 PM ^

Actually, the scientific lack of worry is much simpler than that.

What we do with CERN collider us something that happens constantly in the universe. We are doing it a controlled fashion so that we can measure it, but collisions like this happens literally everywhere you look. And the fact that our universe still exists with all that happening gave the scientists pretty good confidence that nothing drastic like black hole growth was going to occur.

Search4Meaning

December 6th, 2013 at 2:13 PM ^

In factI would echo them almost exactly.  

Obviosly, I need to get an avitar.  Thank you for the tip.

Keep up the OUTSTANDING work.

EDIT:  Upon re-reading this, I will perhaps not get an avitar.