Is it possible to Fix MGOBLOG?
I have been signed up on this blog for a fairly long time, and at first I loved it, primarily because of Brian's writing and the amazing content Brian and the rest of the contributors provided. I could come to this site and read more about a satisfying Michigan win, or if Michigan lost, it helped somehow to hear from others about how the loss affected them. There were all kinds of reasons why it was a great blog -- certainly too many to list here. At one time my cousin tried to start a sports blog for the school he went to and I asked him if he had heard of MGOBLOG. He said of course he had, it set the standard for sports blogs and exemplified what he and his friends were trying to do.
I realize it's OT season, and there have always been irritating posts -- I have made some myself. But despite those posts, the good parts of the blog always overwhelmed the bad because it felt like it had momentum. Even during the Rich Rodriguez years there was a spirit to the content and the board posts that showed pride in the University of Michigan.
Over the past couple of years, though, I have sensed something different. It feels like this blog is slowly dying, or losing cohesion, or falling prey to too much negativity. Discussion threads seem increasingly tawdry. Every board topic, no matter how relevant or informative, soon devolves into a rant about Michigan's poor recruiting or Harbaugh's mediocrity, or worse, into a political argument. The same self-hating idiots take over every fucking thread and if the person's account is banned he/she just gets a new one. This person who calls himself Berns is a case in point. He signed up about a week ago and every single one of his posts says the same god damn thing, and he keeps on posting like he owns the place. No matter what anyone says he won't shut the fuck up.
I realize part of the overall negativity is about Ohio State's dominance. I hate it too, and I hate it that they can recruit at such a high level while Michigan seems, with a few exceptions, stuck with second tier talent. So some negativity is warranted. But once it's been said, it doesn't need to keep being said, especially by the same douchebags who lack perspective or knowledge about the game.
Does anyone else think this blog has gone downhill? What can be done to save it? (aside from Michigan becoming a perennial playoff team, which obviously would help, but that's not what I am talking about.)
One possibility would be for the blog to require a subscription in order to make or comment on posts. The content could still be free, and it would still be possible to read board posts and comment threads, but in order to actually have a voice you would have to pay a monthly fee. At least that would minimize trolls and help to keep multiple accounts to a minimum.
April 27th, 2020 at 12:58 AM ^
No. Shitty site. Shitty things keep happening to program rosters.
Also, welcome to the fucking BPONE
Operators error
Sounds like you're just complaining about the message board.
Maizen is annoying as hell but he also gets routinely banned. Apparently it's 5 bucks to sign up now and he'd just like to spend his money being angry and yelling on the internet. I don't know what the blog is supposed to do about that. If someone acts shitty and isn't banned within 10 minutes, sometimes late at night, a bunch of people whine about the lack of moderation.
The blog is a victim of its own success in some ways. The message board used to be better but being the most popular sports blog has brought in every shitty crazy fan.
I feel like moderation is mostly fine. I'm more annoyed by the layout and functionality that seem pretty simple but haven't been fixed for a couple years now.
It's $5 now?? How did I miss this????
Because you are delinquent in your dues, you lousy cheapskate.
I tested for fun to see if it's real and sure enough:
In true HUEL (maybe their fault?) fashion, it is only "mostly" setup & doesn't tell you how much it is or that it costs money until you get to the end. If you choose PayPal, then you see $5 in your cart. If you choose Debit/Credit Card, then you have to blindly enter your information and click Pay Now without knowing how much you are spending. There may be another screen, but I wasn't going to test it.
That is hilarious.
Holy shit, I had no idea of this crap. Remember when Seth was bragging for a year about how great HUEL is? They can't even fix the edit an original post function that's on every other message board in the world.
April 27th, 2020 at 10:28 AM ^
I’m beginning to suspect there’s been some disagreement between HUEL and Brian. There’s no way they would leave this site in its current state. It’s been terrible advertising for them.
April 27th, 2020 at 11:23 AM ^
I suspect they under-estimated the number of hours required to do the job properly (which is not exactly uncommon in software projects). So if this was on an hourly basis either Brian would have to spend twice as much money as he expected (or however much), or if this was done at a fixed price HUEL would be losing money on the project.
April 27th, 2020 at 11:35 AM ^
Yeah but why let users on the site spend over a year bashing your company? Maybe I'm overestimating the reach of mgoblog but it seems like it might be good to lose some money in the short term to avoid all the negative publicity. Especially for a business based in Ann Arbor.
April 27th, 2020 at 11:47 AM ^
Researcher: 'The average radio listener listens for eighteen minutes. The average Howard Stern fan listens for - are you ready for this? - an hour and twenty minutes.'
Pig Vomit: 'How can that be?'
Researcher: 'Answer most commonly given? "I want to see what he'll say next."'
Pig Vomit: 'Okay, fine. But what about the people who hate Stern?'
Researcher: 'Good point. The average Stern hater listens for two and a half hours a day.'
Pig Vomit: 'But if they hate him, why do they listen?'
Researcher: 'Most common answer? "I want to see what he'll say next."'
April 27th, 2020 at 12:46 PM ^
Just do not point out the irony in the snarky ad banner the dev. has posted all over the site. It will cost you your ability to post. Sharing for a friend....
Maybe it doesn't tell you because it goes up every time you get a banned account and your IP address tries to sign up again $5...$20....$50...we'll see how committed you are to being a troll then
spot on.....if this is a way to reduce the absolute trash posters then Im for it. I love having some rival fan bloggers on here, good perspective from them. (You know who you are, respect!)
but the hateful BS posters are out there and I hope this helps with that.
Sorry... I've been lurking more and more around here recently... I need live sports to return ASAP.
April 27th, 2020 at 10:29 PM ^
you do just fine. nice hat, too.
a buddy of mine just got in from shrimping, they killed it. none of us could go and help though since travel is a bit challenging these days.
You haven't been banned and if you never visited the moderator action thread you'd never know about it.
I would never pay to talk Michigan football on a blog, so there is that...
Mgoblog isn’t broken.
Lots of people aren’t happy with the current state/direction of the football team, myself included. It’s pretty hard to stay positive when OSU eats our lunch every year. Last years 56-27 ass kicking was the last straw for quite a few people, he’s had 5 years after all.
Charging a monthly fee isn’t going to change that.
Actually, a monthly fee to post or a larger fee to join is a good idea. It’s like I used to tell my best friend when he complained about cover charges for guys at the clubs-> they keep the riff-raft out, and if somewhat high, the better. I’ve quit coming to the site because almost every topic degenerates into crap and it’s just not worth skimming a dozen posts to read something decent.
I’m calling bullshit.
Paying money isn’t going to change people from bitching about our team.
It'll rationalize it!
"I've paid my money, I can say what I want!"
April 27th, 2020 at 10:07 AM ^
At least it'll stop those dumb "It's free content, we don't have the right to complain" when a recap gets blown off after a tough loss or a political post goes on the front page despite the "Things I will not post on: Politics,..." section on his ethics page.
"Riff-Raft" -- is that a boat that plays cool guitar licks?
Well, looking beyond the content, I would say mgoblog is broken. There was a half-assed redesign 2(?) years ago that created more problems than it fixed and no one has gotten around to fixing any of the new problems or the old problems that weren't addressed.
Disagree, Mgoblog sure seems broken to me.
It comes from the top. This site would never have taken off without Brian's writing and enthusiasm, emo as he was. Others on staff are keeping it going now. If this site relied on Brian like it once did, it would be shuttered. This isn't to rag on Brian. Everybody changes over time. He's worked hard to learn more about technical aspects of football most fans don't appreciate. He can still write a great piece. But if this Brian started Mgoblog now, what would it look like?
And I'm sorry, we'd all like to beat OSU a lot more often. But I'm not letting that turn me into someone who seems to hate Michigan sports, who has to constantly bitch about it and can't discuss the teams without spewing pointless negativity. It sometimes seems like there are a 100 little Maizens taking over the board. I'm not arguing for blind optimism, but the repetitiveness of the negativity can make this a very unpleasant place to visit, let alone post.
Maizen is special, nobody is as negative as that dude.
I agree that the board is at an all time negative level, but I liken it to a buffet, take what you want and leave the rest.
While I think the mods could do a better job of policing the board, I’m not to the point where I’ll call it broken.
THIS. I am drifting away from college football generally for other reasons, but the general tone of this fandom does not make me want to participate more.
Eliminate the board/comments and 95% of people will feel more positively about the site.
That might be true but I'm assuming that page views would go way down.
Nope. Discussion board is a very tiny fraction of the traffic compared to front page hits:
I assume the trend above corresponds to the end of football season and COVID cancelling everything... not discussion board related stuff... a lively post gets 100-200 replies. Plus some lurkers. Front page gets millions of views.
Doesn’t this show that the majority of site visitors read one board topic per visit?
2.59 pages for visits would be, 1 front page, 2 full article with comments, 3 ?
for the decimal to be larger than .5 the majority of visitors need to visit 3 pages. So what’s the third page? There’s not enough front page articles now to sustain that number for someone to read multiple front page articles daily.
Maybe page views aren’t counted this way?
The April data would be really interesting to see as well as historical data from 15-19
April 27th, 2020 at 11:20 AM ^
This helps to explain how useful your commentary is
The owners of the site have families now and people still visit regularly.
I wouldn't fix anything either
I agree though, the broken stuff should be fixed
Something that you always have to remember is that the experience of the people who post on the blog is not a priority. We are a small minority of the blog's readers. Brian made this point when he banned a longtime poster in 2014, I think, and I don't see what would have changed.
A second issue: the seemingly endless struggles of the football team against OSU color everything, and the people who run the blog can't control that. Throw in a meh basketball season, and there hasn't been much to be excited about lately.
I think this is the best website on the internet by far. But I have some observations/comments:
1. Compared to other Michigan fan sites, the content here is a million times better than anywhere else but the conversation and comments are pretty awful. I've been wondering for a while if the fact that each comment gets upvotes and downvotes motivates people to try to make jokes that they think are funny but that really just de-rail any interesting discussing. It seems like most threads are 80% stupid jokes, 15% two people arguing about a stupid off-topic point one of them made and the other one disagreed with, and maybe 5% at most sincere discussion about football.
2. I agree, the tone in a lot of the content is more negative than it used to be. IMO, a lot of our fans are more negative than they used to be, too. I get it that a lot of people thought Rich Rod was going to be great and then he sucked. And then after Hoke's first year, people thought he was going to be great, and then he sucked. And then people thought that Harbaugh would be the best coach in the country and so far he's been more like a top 10 or 15 coach depending on your perspective. And we never beat Ohio State. But the negativity is still over the top a lot of the time. Being a Michigan football fan is still absolutely awesome. Okay, we all wish we were better. But it's still really fun to be a college football fan, especially of an amazing program with great traditions like Michigan. If you can't enjoy it or you can't have a little bit of perspective, find a new hobby.
This is kind of a side note, but it's semi-relevant to a discussion of the negative tone of this website - it is annoying that we haven't had a UFR from an OSU game in like 10 years. I get that it's a lot of work and losing to them is soul crushing. Every year I tell myself I'm not going to get my hopes up, and then when the game rolls around I am more excited than ever. And then after we lose I am beyond crushed. So I get it that losing that game hurts. But for someone like Brian whose livelihood is built around being an expert on all things Michigan, you'd think that at some point you'd be curious and want to dissect what happened in that game. I know that for someone like me who reads this site religiously, even though those losses always hurt a ton, I'd love to read a real breakdown of what happened in those games even if it's published weeks or months after the fact. Instead, we usually get a post amounting to "we lost, the universe is terrible, the end." I mean for people where talking about Michigan football is one of their hobbies, we get all this amazing information from UFR for our first 11 games, but then for the one game that everyone is going to be talking about for years to come, there's no UFR and a lot of the times there isn't even a meaningful recap, so no one can form opinions with the same level of information that we have about every other game. Even if Brian didn't want to grade the players, it'd be great just to see a video and some analysis of what happened.
3. I'm sure that Brian knows way more about MGoBlog's finances than the rest of us do, but I have to imagine that most people who read this site would probably be happy to pay for a monthly subscription whether it cost $1, $2, $5, or $10. I'm not someone that buys a lot of subscriptions - actually I don't have a subscription to any other website - but buying a subscription to this site would be a no-brainer if it were subscription only. From a selfish point of view, I love that this website is free. But if you did have to pay a monthly subscription, it might cut down on trolls, make Brian a rich man, and make the staff more motivated to provide analysis of Michigan - OSU games even when we lose.
The yearly analysis of a UM/OSU game is that they have far better players and coaches. What more do you need? I’m not sure why you would want to relive ass kickings in more detail. Obviously Brian does not, hence the lack of UFRs for it.
@UM Fan from Sydney
We all know that OSU has better players than us, but that doesn't on its own explain how they were able to shred our defense the last two years in a way that they weren't able to against Penn State, Wisconsin, MSU, and other teams. On top of that, I'd love to see a UFR type article about our offense with a good explanation of why some things worked and some things didn't work. If you're a big enough Michigan fan to be on a Michigan message board talking football during the off-season - which all of us are - you'd think you would be interested in that stuff.
This site has many excellent attributes. I find it particularly useful for up to date information regarding Michigan athletics-lots of "ears-to -the-ground" here.
A simple change I would make is the elimination of the simple neg/down-vote. I believe there is a combative/negative component built into the up/down voting that is so/too easily available. Require any down-voting to be a comment. If you feel strongly enough about a comment and wish to contest it you should be required to put some actual thought into it and substantiate your point. I see this as promoting a subtle shift in attitude where people would "have to" up-vote someone's counter to a point or write their own counter in order to chime in. Informed people can hold differing views in an honest manner-each of us are informed by a variety of experiences. I believe good discussions are thwarted here by both the ease of negging that is available and by the subsequent withholding of comments by informed people who do not believe the (possible) negs are worth the effort of extending/offering their perspective.
I love this commenting to neg idea! I've often wondered why some posts are negged, and I have to believe that it just goes against an opinion - which is really no reason for a neg. We all have our views, and they're never going to match each other. This is what the First Amendment is based on.
April 27th, 2020 at 10:35 AM ^
Honestly do you really want to have to comment on maizen's posts?
I generally only neg vote when someone uses profanity or calls other posters names. ie you can't argue the point so you call them an "idiot". Well if they are an "idiot" it should be pretty easy to win the argument without calling them a name no?
April 27th, 2020 at 10:53 AM ^
Valid point... However, if we just ignore Maizen, will he go away? We can hope, right? LOL!!
April 27th, 2020 at 10:25 AM ^
This is irrelevant, since points haven't worked in (seemingly) years. If up- or down-voting actually did something, then it might work. Anyone below a certain threshold of points, or anyone accumulating a certain negative streak in a short amount of time, could be automatically banned.
Alternatively, make it like Reddit, where up-voting actually moves your post to the top of the board. I'm personally not a big fan of this, because it makes it hard to follow a discussion over time, but it's at least some sort of incentive for thoughtful (or at least non-shitty) comments.
April 27th, 2020 at 12:57 PM ^
Well somehow new accounts like Maizen’s many aliases are somehow able to accrue points. I don’t get it but who’s surprised?
We never beat OSU because the QB play isnt top shelf. Still looking for MCaf to change that.
Fix the football program, and you fix whatever is wrong with MGoBlog.