META: End Of OT Season - IT HAS ARRIVED

EDIT - bumped to keep pushing this point - LSA

NOTE: I got a few questions about this overnight - Friday is indeed the last day, so at 12 AM on 8-26, your fabulous OT thread....well, you may need to keep it to yourself or try to cleverly dress it as a sports thread.

I know a few people will be thrilled, and for others, apologies for the short notice...

The OT Season officially comes to an end at midnight on the 26^th  of August (the very first tick of Saturday, because there will be football on and you now have better things to do), or one week before the first game as per tradition. There will be some cleanup of a preliminary nature starting before then, but it will be mainly background items and removing recent threads with, for example, numerous downvotes – basically subtle strategies to attempt to maximize the amount of football content before the actual deadline comes.

What does that mean for you? Veterans will know the answer, but for newer folks or infrequent visitors, here is your yearly reminder.

To start the ramp-down, however, at midnight on Friday, you may no longer post threads about your favorite shows, movies, books, music and so forth.  Friday can be a transitional day for OT, giving people an opportunity to get their final OT threads in.

One further point, when we say “end of OT season”, it is more a “significant narrowing of scope” – in other words, not every single OT thread will be removed outright. What you must do, if you plan on posting such a thread, is provide a pretty damn good explanation of why it should stay (or the reason may be self-evident) – and yes, frivolous ones will be removed as always.

As usual, there are usually narrow exceptions made for major breaking news of regional or national importance and a few other things and that’s what we mean here. Those are just a few examples of “allowable OT”. I realize some people would prefer a hard stop, but this is a community and we’ll consider things that might be of note to the community, even during the “non-OT” months. Such threads should be an EXCEPTION, and the onus is on the blogger to justify it.

A few things of note (non-comprehensive, of course – we reserve the right to throw other stuff out there too):

1)      The Snowflake Rule will apply after games, but we will weigh threads individually and those which provide, for example, detailed analysis of a single series or play or video analysis will probably stay. Those threads which are mere hot takes that could easily fit into a snowflake thread will likely go. I understand why the Snowflake threads are not popular in many segments of the MGoPopulation, but there has to be a way to mitigate hot takes and make sure they don’t bury more worthwhile content. The whole point is to make sure the better user-generated content remains – we have some excellent football minds on the board and I really don’t want their contributions to be buried by your two paragraphs which amount to “that was awesome” or “that sucked” or what-have-you.

2) Having seen #1, please take care in general to consider carefully what you want to say if you’re going to create a thread. Search the first three pages of threads or so for similar threads – that’s typically what I use as a measuring stick for “redundant”. Most weekends in the season, three pages covers about 2 days of threads, or after a loss, about 30 minutes of threads. As for breaking news, make sure that you check the publish dates on articles – you can almost be assured that anything over an hour old has made it to the board barring a huge oversight (and sometimes, something does get overlooked). Normal rules on sourcing apply as well, so for example, be judicious with Bleacher Report, no Chatsports, and don’t post a whole Freep article out of spite – post a quote, link it, and give people the opportunity to avoid reading it.

3)  DO NOT attack players or fellow MGoBloggers personally. Ad hominems are essentially your ticket to Bolivia or worse depending on the severity of the statement. I know people get emotional after games, but do try to run your initial reaction by your frontal cortex first for proper review. Criticizing play and strategy is fine, but basically bringing someone’s mom into it, if you will, is your way of telling the mods you no longer wish to be here. As you may have seen in the Mod Sticky as well, there will be a doubling down on efforts to promote a more welcoming environment around here too, so PLEASE check your choice of words and photos against those rules set forth in the sticky before posting.

4) Report potential infractions or questionable posts in the Mod Sticky with a link to the comment or thread. We will review them as soon as possible and dole out point deductions and so forth accordingly. If it is raining in La Paz, we will provide appropriate gear assuming we did not spend the money on beer first. If there is a delay in getting to an issue, remember that the mods have lives too, but if it is something that really should go, say, right now, tweet me at @LorneEC3 and I’ll address it right then or make a note to do it ASAP. Yes, I can’t stand the threads with “IBD” or “Moms please delete” in 40 different forms and posts either, so let’s try to mitigate that, eh?

5)  Sunday (also Thursday and Monday) NFL threads will be allowed as usual. Pro sports events which are significant are fine as well (World Series, NBA or NHL coverage, etc…) – just not every bit of news like we get during the draft and free agency periods sometimes. I know people gripe about the amount of Lions coverage during the NFL season, but try to remember that a sizeable number of the active users on this site also live in Michigan. Do feel free to throw in some coverage of your own teams, if you so choose, but be selective due to OT restrictions.

6) Threads covering other college games should typically be OK, but do try to keep the tradition of “Saturday Noon Games Thread”, for example, on the weekends (and on Thursdays and Fridays when sometimes there is a significant slate too). The tradition of MACtion is absolutely OK even though ESPN has apparently all but killed it. If something noteworthy is happening in a particular game, a separate thread should be fine but detail the reason for breaking out of the open thread coverage. 

If there is anything that is unclear or anything I have missed, let's talk.