Mgoblog: Your Modest Proposals

I'm willing to bow to board opinion if no one agrees, but I feel that mgoblog is not in real healthy shape right now. There was some serious excitement and brainpower at work here in the early going which I wouldn't assume can be recaptured--Brian's early diaries were magic, and with a small pool of exited member-posters the quality of thinking, and humor, was often really great. 

Some of the decline, I think, must be pinned on the founders and site managers. There is still plenty of good reporting here (Ace has improved markedly with the bball, Brian still brings a wealth of insight and occasional genius word play). The place is stale looking, to my eye, but a redesign is--reportedly--coming and will no doubt breathe life.

But now that we are into the post-season and can mull it, I'd like to offer a forum for constructive comments--not just complaints, but maybe only going to the look of the blog if that involves how discourse can flow better, too. 

My two suggestions: So many threads get hijacked by a silly side-conversation at the very outset/top that--repeatedly--you have to scroll miles down the page to get to commentary on the actual subject. (You know--one guy says funny, the next guy says ha ha, the next guy says good one or upvote and 30 seconds later you are still scrolling down for anything of value.) I think the mods need to go in and clean some of these up. Or--let me put it another way--lately I have been weary enough of it personally that I have started to bail when there's too much of it. Dylan has gotten very good at just stepping in when this happens at umhoops and asking people to get back on track; I think there has to be more attentiveness to the threads by mods in this regard. 

Second: I'm much more tolerant of off-topic threads, crazy opinions, and even interesting mildly sociological takes than most (not party political ones, but ones that point out the unfairness or fairness of how things work at a deeper level, that show insight about how things work). I welcome Brian's commentary, for example on getting players paid even when I don't agree with some of the underlying principles. 

But too many threads consist of just one or two poorly thought-out lines, replete with misspellings and--too often--are not even linked to factual supporting evidence. (I'm looking at you 'Penn Statte Fraternity Hazing Death," still up a day after it went up, and a one-liner lauding bowl season that didn't even bother to note what games were ON.)

Closer examination suggests that most are NOT from brand-new posters but people working into the thousands of points. So demanding that people get to X number of points before they post may not fix much. The answer, in my view: gotta have just a little more moderation.

Crap thread sitting on the sidebar for hours just isn't a healthy feel or look. 

How about other posters? Let's put together some serious proposals here; who knows, maybe a few will get adopted. Posted in a spirit of love and respect for this place.