Is it possible to Fix MGOBLOG?

Nice little concern troll piece here. I love the addition of flavoring participles in the section where you complain about the threads becoming tawdry: they add much needed irony at a key moment. 

Reduce the number of comments a newly created account can make a day and have it increase over time. Do something similar with creating MGoBoard posts. Also, create a daily random discussion post to capture a lot of the minutiae that don’t deserve a full post on the board. I’m guessing most of that can be automated and would serve to clean up the board, especially with the trolls. 

I agree this blog has become a home for man pouting. Don't know how else to put it. I can be negative with a loss, but I look for analysis to feed the disappointment. But trolls and ignorance isn't helped with excessive drugs and booze. With that said, I need intelligent sports analysis. Either that or I drive the wife nuts. Im not a web tech or anything close but I sure hope some brains can bring some help. That said, Go Blue!

MLive shutting down their comment section left a lot of shitty posters needing a home.

Moms need to do their work. 

Yes, the fix is stop reading the comments if you can't handle it.

The comments that blindly defend Michigan can be just as nauseating as the 'maizen' comments.  

since the re-design the message board is far worse - I spend more time on reddit now; their message boards function much better

I blame the online classes at Ohio State.

Ugh... didn't post in the area I wanted it to originally, so I had to edit with this message.

I still just want an app. 
 

it would also be nice to be able to read a recruiting thread that doesn’t evolve into people yelling at clouds. 

As a fan of free speech it pains me to say this, but what the site needs is more moderation. At least in the short term to clean up the board and the troll posts. Draft weekend and the website was unreadable with 2+ posts for every draft pick and then 5x troll posts for Shea and DPJ. 

Add mods, clean up the board, delete all troll accounts, IP ban if you have to, and then hopefully in a few months we are left with a stronger cleaner board which accurately reflects UofM.

He needs to quit doing UFR's on Michigan.  It gives O$U free analysis.  

He needs to start doing ufr's on OSU instead. 

I've been visiting since shortly after start-up, and have made my share of complaints about deteriorating quality. There was a period of exhilarating possibility here in the early-going that is quite dead now, but that's been gone for five to seven years. That was a function of the fact that a small, bright group of really enthusiastic people were contributing, not just content but comments. Brian's posts were sometimes amazing in their adventurousness, in a way that just hasn't been sustained. Now he's kind of a football and hockey fan who weights in intelligently, and that's okay. 

The place also held a shambolic wonderfulness in terms of site construction that in time grew outdated, neared collapse, and was never replaced with anything terribly functional, let alone pleasing to look at. In truth, I don't think the managers or Brian give a dang, or maybe can afford better. But it did lend to the sense of decay that began to grip the place going back three or four years.

Now? It's hard to care a lot. I read Bronx Blue because he's sane and inspired and friendly, and I check in to monitor M news. Fending off the crazies and especially the lame and adolescent sexual stuff would have been important to me, but apparently means clicks. Or work. Or something. Hur hur reactionary stuff about women was never my thing. The sense that a certain laziness pervades administration and monitoring contributes to the ongoing an institution that has seen better days.

I wish I cared more; at one point I absolutely did. But not everything that ends--with a bang or with a whimper--means the end of the world. They can just be celebrated for the way they sustained people for a brief, beautiful time. 

I'd enjoy the site more if there were an official and enhanced version of the Troll Cave where I could click once and never ever see another post by maizen's current account.

Hell I'd even pay for that feature.  HUEL, what kind of dollars are we talking about here?

I help run/ran a variety of bodybuilding/fitness boards and I can share a few items to chew over. Keep in mind most fitness boards (and really any message boards) are dying due to other social media.

1. Charging is a bad idea, overall, because all this information available free, everywhere. It's why paywall sports type info/forums are dying. Why in the hell would you pay for insider info when you can easily find almost all of it free? If you want to stay alive or grow increase traffic and participation ie cast a wide net.  The lifeblood is traffic and participation. While msu or osu fans drive us nuts you want them here participating. That is a GOOD thing. Natural bodybuilders on a steroid site bickering and arguing is a GOOD thing as long as you have moderators to clean it up if it gets too out of hand. Start charging and you end up with people running a site who think their farts don't think and a circle jerk of 10 people actually paying while the site dies. 

2. Increasing traffic and participation will lead to more troll accounts. That's ok. It's really not a big deal if you have a handful of good moderators. 

3. Don't be fooled into thinking your information is better than it really is. It's not. Plenty of high profile bodybuilding and fitness forums have "guru's", mr olympia's, people with huge social followings and they've died overnight when they started to charge. Again, all this information is either available free or really just not worth paying for, no matter how good the creator thinks it is. 

4. A clean and crisp forum is helpful. A few easy changes here would help immensely. Clean up the form, divide it into sections, etc. 

This is one of the best sports forums/blogs I've ever been to but the information isn't that special. I say that as a lifelong michigan fan and season ticket holder who has been here over a decade and truly loves this site. If that's how I think how do you think a casual fan will think? So...cast a wide net, increase traffic and participation, and have good moderation. With social media, message boards are going the way of the dinosaur, which is another reason charging wouldn't make a lot of sense.  

In the past I paid for subscriptions to many sites with sports but I don't pay for any now. There is too much free info available. 

I do online diets/training programs for people as a side gig and for 90% of people I tell them "all the answers you seek are available for free online". If they want to pay me cool but all the information is at their fingertips. Most of the time they pay me so they are accountable...but that's it. Just 10 years ago that wouldn't have been the case. All information is free so you have to figure out how to separate yourself. 

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.

Part of it is bickering over politics and Covid and part of it is frustration over JH and his lack of success against OSU and not being able to return to being a B1G winner or even sniff it.

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.

Agreed, see above.

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. 

I can't speak for anyone else, but as someone in their early 40's who grew up in the 90s, who's parents (alum) went there in the late 60s/early 70s, everything in my cultural upbringing gave me a sense of success and investment in the rivalry.  Now, it's a foregone conclusion that we will lose, and it's been that way going on almost two decades.  I personally will never accept that.  It has slowly chipped away at my enjoyment of being a UM fan.  I just don't enjoy it the way I did in the late 90's through mid 2000s where it felt like we had a legitimate NC chance every year.  It also is more frustrating now because we can follow recruiting very closely.  Prior to the internet recruiting databases, we didn't really know about recruits until the season started.  It may have been equally frustrating watching OSU sign top players back in the day too, but we didn't know about it.  Now, not only are we getting beat on the field, but we're getting beat all offseason and being forced to listen to our rival fans taunt us online in a dozen different media platforms from blogs, to youtube videos, to Twitter.  The list goes on and on.  It's one loss after another.

There is a lot between the two schools on how we got here that are incredibly frustrating.  Meyer & Tressel's uncanny success and suspected and/or real cheating.  Day's subsequent success.  UM's seemingly one failed coach after the next.  You get the sense that no matter what UM or OSU does they will always come out on top.  That feeling of powerlessness of never being able to beat your biggest rival, particularly when despite that fact, they continue to seemingly work at beating us more than we do them, even during their success is a hard pill to swallow.  I think it's human nature.  You can get mad.  You can stop paying attention.  Or you can accept it.  But, it's hard to be a positive, excited fan in the face of failure in comparison to your biggest rival whom you have historically been competitive with.  I just don't know how fans get past that.  It won't go away until we start beating them at least once in a while.

There needs to be more mods. How hard is it for them to designate a few more? After some time on the site and a certain points threshold (assuming they are working) you can be up for being a mod. 

Also the game threads limit posting frequency. Why can't that be done with the board? Make it so you can only start 1 thread per week. And only make 25 posts or something per day. This prevents people from spamming. 

The whole BPONE attitude and going on and on about how everything sucks is getting tired. We get it man, you want to win more, you want better recruits. So does everyone else. 

The message board has gone downhill IMO, but the main content remains superb. I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, 2007 to present.

Some topics on this message board I avoid. Topics of a big Michigan Football or BB win or loss are usually fun and informative. Trolls happen. Like a bad TV show, I just change the channel.

Live and let live and tune out the bad whenever possible.

This site basically mirrors where the United States is at right now.

The board is fine. The reason people are negative is because the majority of posters here are football fans and they are fed up with the program, rightfully so. I am glad the wool has finally been lifted; it took a long time for people to finally understand Michigan football is all hype and no substance. And the sport I love most, basketball, is very little hype and all substance. I hope, someday, that Michigan football looks across the aisle and emulates the basketball program.

I never understood why people have a false nostalgia about how message boards used to be. I started in ESPN boards in the late 90s, and people were just as negative as they are now.