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.
December 16th, 2017 at 3:42 PM ^
December 17th, 2017 at 7:09 AM ^
What would that solve beyond taking out some politeness from the board and making you less annoyed by something silly?
December 16th, 2017 at 3:43 PM ^
Here is my suggestion:
Brian creates a blockchain-based mgocoin cryptotoken and engages in an ICO. In order to post, you most pay a a coin-based fee. These coins are then used to pay the moderators periodically. Moderator activities are recorded and publically available and moderators are annually elected by coinholders (one vote per coin).
December 16th, 2017 at 3:48 PM ^
Now to be fair I have no fucking clue what any of it means but I think it sounds like mgopoints would be convertable into some sort of actual money or something and that's a proposal I can get behind.
That and making people register their phone number to get a user name. Would stop this surge of multiple user accounts dead in its tracks.
December 16th, 2017 at 4:32 PM ^
Goody. We can trade them on the open market.
1 MGoCoin will be worth 10,000 MGoCoins in two months . . . until the big MGoCoin crash we all know is coming.
December 16th, 2017 at 3:55 PM ^
Start your own blog if you don't like and see how that goes.
December 16th, 2017 at 4:13 PM ^
I've (sadly) been around here for a long time, and people complaining about how bad this place gotten is about as cliche as the actual shit posts. It's the same "this place would be better if", but no offer to be part of the solution. I'm sure you can ask to be a mod; it's a thankless, boring job at times, cleaning up crap posts and deleting the crudest, most racist posts, the bots, the drive-by acounts from other fans, etc. I think the mods have done a great job keeping this place as clean as it is, and leaving it to the community (if the "state of our boards" threads are any indication), would simply allow a whole bunch of anonymous people tell a whole lot of unpaid college students what anatomically-impossible actions they should do to themselves and others for not winning football or basketball games.
It's a free site. The trolls are no worse here than anywhere else on the internet. If this so bothers people, go elsewhere. Or ignore them. Personally, after the great culling a couple weeks ago of the particularly negative posters, this place has been fine and tolerable. Well, except for posts like this.
The one change I wouldn't mind seeing would be a tally on the side of each post saying it's up/down-vote ratios. That way, I could see that this was a pretty bad post designed to create a controversy without any real substance or actionable suggestions to them and just skipped it.
December 16th, 2017 at 4:14 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 4:18 PM ^
There are many suggestions . . .
- Don't bother whining. This board is too whiny sometimes.
- Realize that half the posts are from cell phones, and amount to a handful of words and snark. Skip over them.
- Wait until the board is updated, and see what changes are made. We may be pleasantly surprised.
- Self police. That is to say, if posts are way out of line, you need to email or ping proprietors or moderators, to let them know. The volume of traffic is too great to assume they will pick up on all stupidity.
- Mostly agree about OT posts being ok. But what is and isn't ok is often different, for different board users.
- Some kind of different or better way for users and mods to notice and flag and track and remove bogus posts.
December 16th, 2017 at 4:39 PM ^
You can go back to the pre-internet era when all we had was a paragraph in the newspaper and a 30 second highlight on Sports Center on a day like today.
If it was off season . . . you had nothing. Ziltch.
I'm happy to trade off a few nonsense posts / comments here and there for the ability to talk about Michigan sports with other Michigan sports fans 24 hours a day if I want.
I still find it awesome.
Stop whining. This is fun.
December 17th, 2017 at 11:00 AM ^
Thank you!
December 16th, 2017 at 4:41 PM ^
What happens on this message board isn't one of them.
December 16th, 2017 at 4:41 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 4:42 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 4:50 PM ^
Separate the Blog area in to sections .
Michigan Football has its own section . You can include Topics of recruting and topics about other football programs or something related to NCAA football .
Mens Basketball has its own section , same as FB .
Then a section for all other Michigan sports , Wrestling , Hockey, Softball, Track, what have you .
Then an area where people are free to create a topic of their choosing that is different than the other 3 . Want to talk about the new Star Wars movie, it would go in there . The weather , Your boss is a jerk , etc etc .
December 16th, 2017 at 5:49 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 5:51 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 5:05 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 5:09 PM ^
would be a significant benefit around here.
December 16th, 2017 at 5:26 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 5:46 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 6:18 PM ^
There is no free site with this quality of main page content. Fans from other schools like it too; there will always be a contingent of users from other fan bases. It's only the more determined and malicious trolls that are any concern.
On the message boards, not sure if this is true, venturing a guess that the when the regular season starts in the fall is also the primary headache season for mods. Maybe some part time volunteer help at that time could come in handy.
New accounts appear to cause the vast majority of problems so I'd vote for some controls on new accounts. Lots of good suggestions have been made. It's mysterious to me that new account holders feel the need to start posting immediately (and accumulate points then switch to trolling). I had no problem reading the board for a couple years prior to creating an account. My son has been reading for years and has yet to create one. Limiting new account activity might not have any bearing on the numbers of clicks.
December 16th, 2017 at 6:36 PM ^
Why not give more people the ability to moderate?
There are some people on here who have proven themselves over time to be solid MGoCitizens that could be given the ability to at least remove blatantly bad comments / threads.
Sort of "MGoDeputy's".
They perhaps can't ban users or send them to Bolivia, but they can clean up bad threads / comments that have gone too far down the tubes.
December 16th, 2017 at 7:08 PM ^
December 17th, 2017 at 3:38 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 7:53 PM ^
...or at the very least give more people to flag or put bad comments/threads/sub-threads in some kind of purgatory.
December 16th, 2017 at 7:57 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 6:55 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 8:19 PM ^
People filter the content we consume everywhere. You can't post just anything on Facebook, we don't get to watch any old person on TV, etc. There are producers and filters and "block" buttons and such. That's not the case here.
December 16th, 2017 at 7:06 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 7:20 PM ^
I agree with those people who suggest charging a modest membership fee for posting.
It would filter out some of the trolls and provide more cash to improve the site (maybe even pay the mods some beer money).
Put up or shut up.
December 16th, 2017 at 7:36 PM ^
Entitlement is an oft misused label, but the OP and whoever agree with him/her are entitled. This blog is free to participate in and is the best place for information on Michigan footall/basketball/hockey, etc. All you have to do to be taken somewhat seriously is not be a dick bag. I honestly don't know how the quality has been maintained assuming Brian, Ace and the others have lives. I seriously don't know how I'd cope without daily mgoblog check ins, so all I can offer is gratitude to all the people who make mgoblog what it is and fury to the idiots and trolls who think they know better.
December 16th, 2017 at 8:46 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 8:16 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 8:23 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 8:51 PM ^
My take:
It's not as bad as you think. Yeah, there are issues, but some of that has to do with the season being frustrating. The worst-ever time on the board was that stretch where voting was broken and everything about Michigan sports basically stunk.
However, there are some issues. A big one: Quality posters not posting. Some, like alum96, appear to have too much going on. Some, like Mr. Yost, stepped over a line into Bolivia and/or ragequit. One, WD, attracts attention entirely out of proportion with his actual activity (and it doesn't matter what he does--people will make a stink if he posts, and they'll mock him if he doesn't, doesn't matter). Anyway, there are a lot of people who used to contribute valuable resources to the board who no longer do so for various reasons, and we are poorer for it.
A lot of the little things that people think would help are technical issues. For example, an old voting system hid comments that got negative votes, though limiting how many votes they could get. Voting on OPs used to count. That sort of thing. Most of that stuff hasn't happened because after Brian fixed the broken voting system he didn't touch the voting system again, and that's what we have now. The technical issues have been a real factor in the subtle "feel" of the site.
I think raising the barrier of entry too high would seriously backfire and stagnate the culture. A brief wait to weed out impulse posters and maybe some way to help catch trolls, sure. But make it too hard and you'll just block people who can actually contribute things. This place is awfully hard on new folks as it is.
December 16th, 2017 at 9:01 PM ^
That this site is hard on new folks. On the contrary, it's too easy which is why the troll influence is magnified. There are clear signs of a handful of users having multiple accounts (the writing style is such a dead giveaway). New accounts that lack an aggressive agenda should have no problem.
December 16th, 2017 at 9:26 PM ^
The problem is that we have a lot of culture rules here and the mob viciously enforces infractions. Someone does something that isn't jerky in itself but violates the "code" and they are not only heavily negged but reamed.
Basically, it means that someone has to get by without putting a foot wrong when they first join up, because most newbies aren't going to stick around if they perceive that they are the ones getting slammed, no matter what the offense was.
The troll(s) (I think it's three people at most) are effective in part because they're immune to this, both because they already know the rules and desire the negative feedback. But Joe Average Michigan Fan who joins up to talk generally won't have understanding of the nuance of the local culture, and they won't yet have the thick leathered skin to step on a rake, take the negs, and jump back into a conversation. A lot of negs to a vet is no big deal, we all say stupid stuff from time to time and when we say reasonable stuff in the next thread people don't generally remember. For a new person, though, it is perceived as a referendum on them as a poster.
Just my thoughts.
December 17th, 2017 at 2:05 PM ^
I agree.. there are a few folks here that are basically insufferable in attacking other posters or only exist to add some type of snarky response (or, in the case of one poster, literally attacking / insulting a posters child or general well-being..Hi, 'His Dudeness').
Obviously we all want a perfect solution, there is none, it is what it is. Go Blue.
December 16th, 2017 at 9:11 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 9:18 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 9:35 PM ^
December 16th, 2017 at 10:09 PM ^
Just give us the incredible Christmas gift of a site update.
That'll simply and immediately boost a brighter future for the site.
Shut up about the front page though, I don't understand why that gets any criticism.
December 16th, 2017 at 10:09 PM ^
and come here often. Sports talk, off topic, doesn't bother me.
A couple things that might work for the OP:
1. I get that the points don't really mean anything, but if you want to potentially eliminate some of the posts that seem annoying (for whatever reason) to others, raise the point threshold.
2. Simply raising the poinits needed to start a thread might not be enough, so make changes to the points system. Eliminate receiving a point for simply posting. Points come from upvotes or downvotes only.
3. Allow for multiple in-game threads. I feel like so many people are involved, and so many comments are being made, that most questions/comments get ignored. Several threads might actually allow for more conversation.
December 16th, 2017 at 11:21 PM ^
December 17th, 2017 at 12:45 AM ^
Can we ban using "Modest Proposal" to make serious suggestions? I came into this thread assuming it was gonig to be a collection of funny and absurd proposals, given the title. There are a lot of ways to ask for suggestions for minor improvements to the site; "Modest Proposal" should not be one.
December 17th, 2017 at 1:47 AM ^
Kind of reduces the benefit and joy of understanding the literary reference if failure to observe the irony is actually against the rules.
Alas.
December 17th, 2017 at 7:25 AM ^
My personal favorite part was saying talking politics would make the site better, only phrased in a way to make your politics acceptable.
December 17th, 2017 at 10:41 AM ^
of comments I'll just package this all together. But many of this has been discussed before, a long time ago with Brian's input.
- Background: A long time ago, when we had a ton of shit threads, I had an exchange with Brian about increasing the number of points in order to create a thread. Brian wanted to keep the points required to post a diary at 0 so that someone who had new/insider information but didn't yet have an account could create one and post the "breaking" information. Although rare, this did happen on a couple of occasions.
- Background: Early on with the blog (back in the haloscan days, I think), Brian stated his view on the future of news/information web sites. He beleived that the future was in building a community that interacted with each other. The end result is that the site is less dependent upon Brian/Seth/Ace posts, increases the daily hits by an order of magnitude with people spending much, much more time on the site during the day interacting in the comments section.
- What not to do? Shuting down the comments section would be contrary to point 2 above and no doubt significantly decrease traffic and time spent on the blog, likely resulting in lost revenue. Not going to happen, and shouldn't happen. I also don't think increasing the points total to start a thread is something Brian still wants to do, and probably wouldn't matter given all of the pos-bang threads. Trolls would just frequent and post more in those threads.
- What to do? I suspect that the problem in the threads and comments section is with a few marginal characters who get repeatedly banned (or create additional accounts in order to have phoney conversations with themselves). As I have stated above, institute a nomial, 1-time fee for creating a user account in order to comment. An important aspect to this is the web site is still free; all of the content is available to be be viewed by anyone. But act like an ass and you will get banned and have to pay to create your new user account. Trolls that have to re-sign up end up paying the mods. And I think I would make that fee around $10, enough that it makes it a deterrent from being a troll, but small enough that it wouldn't really impact the membership of the community.