Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
I haven't read this whole thread, but I want to say for what it's worth that I'm thrilled. I think merging the boards will inject some much-needed life into this forum.
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
Quote:
Originally Posted by
westofyou
A secret site that has FCB on it.
:beerme:
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
Quote:
Originally Posted by
M2
Better to read one post from FCB than a thousand from some others.
:beerme: agreed a thousand times.
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
i miss the epic battles with NEILYNG.
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
What's the deal with FCB anyway? Weren't he and Steel both banned? How long does that last, isn't it time to bring them back? Or is the absence of their own volition?
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
Quote:
Originally Posted by
M2
You can act like there hasn't been an exodus of long-time and excellent posters, but there has been. Some of that is natural. Unfortunately too much of it is directly because of a general complaint that people don't wish to sort through the tripe and that the board often bores their socks off.
I was part of the exodus. It wasn't a planned walkout, just a lot of people asking themselves "What's the point?" and not coming up with a satisfactory answer.
I find it highly difficult to believe you joined and lurked on a board you didn't like. The Internet is a big universe. You had other places to go. You chose to return repeatedly to RedsZone. Too many people aren't making that choice today. I'm hopeful that can change because these should be the years when we're having the most fun, following the Reds when the team is on a roll. The window should be wide open for bizarre, daft and brilliant posts in a way it never was when the board partially had to serve as a coping mechanism for how terrible the Reds were. I sincerely doubt you'll find a big constituency for the notion that the board today is anywhere near something like a high point.
The main thing the rep system achieved (and it works this way all across the Internet) is it put a focus on the good stuff. It provided a way for the community to shine a spotlight on the posts it valued. And it cut down significantly on people who thought they were being brilliant when they were just running around in silly, little circles. Call it Richard Hand Syndrome if you will (though he was gone long before the rep system was instituted). If your pearls of wisdom were consistently being greeted by a wall of rep silence while a wide variety of other posts were getting repped, it let you know that maybe you didn't have quite the reach you thought you did. It wasn't so much what point you made, but how you made it that mattered. Again, more than anything else, rep put a premium on quality. Undeniably we had quality in those days. It's what brought you here.
For the record, what I said was nobody was going to change their opinion based on the rep score of a poster making a counterpoint. However, people change their opinions all the time if someone makes a persuasive counterpoint. That's what the rep system encourages. It's a way for the community to say "Yes, that right there, exactly like she/he said it." It's a virtual highlighter that draws attention to the best stuff on the board.
Right now the best stuff gets lost in the sludge. Perhaps an influx of new posters will change that, but I think it would help to have a mechanism that better identifies the Scott Rolen posts (e.g. be like that post, because that post plays the game the right way).
I agree with M2 on this.
I loved the rep system and thought the board was more interesting back then. Used to post almost exclusively on the baseball side, now I rarely do. I dont honestly know if its related to the death of the rep system or not. Could just be a lot of other factors that happened to come about around the same time.
I think merging the board is a step in the right direction.
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vottomatic
As for the rep points, I like the idea presented by whoever brought it up, to give points to a post, not a poster. This would help others, like me, to see what a quality post is. It would hopefully help improve posting by teaching those who don't do a good job, of what a good post is.
I've skimmed this thread, and this is my favorite idea. Rep points next to our name sounds lame, but it would be nice to scroll through some of the enormous threads that sometimes get started and just read some of the more interesting, or important, or entertaining posts. Red Reporter has something like this and I always like scrolling through their game threads and reading a couple usually hilarious posts. Can't really do that here. Maybe this would also do away with the "No Discussion Threads." I hate those things!
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Boss-Hog
A "thanks" actually can be set in the options to add to your reputation level. If we were to implement that, your reputation would be for informational purposes only and it would not allow you to do anything you can't normally do (i.e. affect another person's reputation level).
I guess that's pretty much what you just said, though. :) I can't think of anything I'd want your reputation level or accumulation of thanks to mean; otherwise, we start getting in to something very similar to the old reputation system, and I definitely am not in favor of that.
Not sure that a "thanks" button is necessary.
Occasionally, I will thank someone for posting a link to an article that I think is interesting. But I'm not doing it to build my post count. I don't think we have that problem here. Thankfully, post count is not a status symbol on this board.
I guess to be brutally honest, this message board isn't exactly the friendliest place on the internet, so I like that there's no rep-like tools anymore.
I'd fear a problem where someone posts something, the rebuttal gets 100 thanks.. the person who wrote the rebuttal gets a swollen head and continues attacking..
Note, I am not complaining about the board in any way, I just think the rep system caused more bad feelings than good, which I imagine just created more work for the mods. I am sure people like M2 did not abuse the rep system, but unfortunately everyone is not like M2.
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
Quote:
Originally Posted by
M2
Allow me to exaggerate to make a point here, where are the good ones?
I'm not saying they're not joining, but the board isn't getting anywhere near enough good posts. I'd also be interested in seeing annual posting stats from various years. My sense is the ORG used to be more active with a larger number of people posting on a regular basis (however, I recognize that could be wrong). It certainly had a wider, more colorful variety of people posting on it.
.
Again, I am not criticizing the board, but isn't it possible that the barrier to enter the ORG has now made it not worthwhile for new posters to try to get in?
I mean, a newbie poster could only interact with the people that could vote for him in the minor league forum (and maybe nonbaseball talk).
What if a newbie poster isn't a hardcore minor league guy?
He languishes in the Sundeck forever.
Heck, there's one person in the Sundeck (I will not mention his name) that did something politcially incorrect about maybe 5 years ago? People still hold grudges for that.. I'm not even sure if he's still here or not, but I remember it being brought up in his vote.
I think with the barrier to the ORG lower, we will get an influx of new posters. I am excited about this change. :)
I miss a lot of the old posters too. Not sure why they are less active, but people change in life. Only so much can be talked about on a Reds forum.
Walt is an awesome GM, but he doesn't juggle the roster on a weekly basis like Bowden and Wayne did. Less fodder for discussion.
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
For those of you lamenting the quality of discussion, I can recommend the discussion in the Minor League thread under "John Sickels Rankings." There has been a lot of great stuff in there about the potential impact of speed and run expectancy.
http://www.redszone.com/forums/showt...t=99883&page=7
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
GIK and I have agreed to implement the "thanks" addon on a trial basis. This will not be visibly tracked anywhere, so this is not the reputation system all over again. Due to the problems it caused (or that were exploited), we have no desire to go back to that.
It's very easy to change the "thanks" link to a "like" link a la Facebook while providing the same functionality; only the verbiage is different. I'd like to take an informal poll: which do you prefer?
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Boss-Hog
GIK and I have agreed to implement the "thanks" addon on a trial basis. This will not be visibly tracked anywhere, so this is not the reputation system all over again. Due to the problems it caused (or that were exploited), we have no desire to go back to that.
It's very easy to change the "thanks" link to a "like" link a la Facebook while providing the same functionality; only the verbiage is different. I'd like to take an informal poll: which do you prefer?
I'd actually prefer "high five!" but of the two homies offered, like (though I don't feel strongly either way).
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Boss-Hog
GIK and I have agreed to implement the "thanks" addon on a trial basis. This will not be visibly tracked anywhere, so this is not the reputation system all over again. Due to the problems it caused (or that were exploited), we have no desire to go back to that.
It's very easy to change the "thanks" link to a "like" link a la Facebook while providing the same functionality; only the verbiage is different. I'd like to take an informal poll: which do you prefer?
I'd go with "like" just because that's the more common term for this sort of thing.
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Boss-Hog
It's very easy to change the "thanks" link to a "like" link a la Facebook while providing the same functionality; only the verbiage is different. I'd like to take an informal poll: which do you prefer?
I like LIKE.
Re: Important: Merging of the Baseball Forums
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Boss-Hog
GIK and I have agreed to implement the "thanks" addon on a trial basis. This will not be visibly tracked anywhere, so this is not the reputation system all over again. Due to the problems it caused (or that were exploited), we have no desire to go back to that.
It's very easy to change the "thanks" link to a "like" link a la Facebook while providing the same functionality; only the verbiage is different. I'd like to take an informal poll: which do you prefer?
Like like.