Originally Posted by
Boss-Hog
Why, yes, since you asked kindly...
The decision to only have the game thread in the ORG forum was made for a few reasons. First and foremost, as has been mentioned, GIK and I want The Old Red Guard forum to represent RedsZone. Also, as paint mentioned somewhere else, the game thread is an incentive for those currently without ORG access to take the necessary steps to gain it.
Secondly, the quality of the game threads had deteriorated to that point that a few of us almost felt embarassed to have them on the site in their current state. I've never been much to follow the game via the game threads, but I respect those that choose to do so. However, when I did attempt to read it, the vast majority of the posts were knee-jerk reactions based on what just happened in the game. 'Oh man, we really suck', 'I hate this team', 'I've given up on these bums' to the complete other end of the specturm when the Reds play well (very rarely as of late ;) ). I'm all for having passionate fans post here, and I certainly understand that the game threads lend themselves to discussion that isn't what we're striving for overall, but those type of comments aren't what I like to see when I do read the game threads. The sky isn't falling when they lose, nor should anyone be printing World Series tickets when they win, but it's hard to tell that from sampling a game thread.
Thirdly and also very importantly, in their current format, the game threads were extremely time-consuming to moderate. You have thousands upon thousands of posts that are continuously being posted in real time. No matter how many moderates we add, based on the fact that our moderators voluntarily do this thankless job out of the goodness of their hearts, I can't reasonably expect them to read every single post in every single game thread, nor would I ever ask them to do so. However, it got to the point where you felt that was necessary, be it the types of posts I mentioned above or the inevitable bickering that went on in these threads.
By reducing the number of posters that have access to these, and therefore the overall noise, that's absolutely not to say that the only problematic people in the game threads were Reds Live / Sun Deck users. There are a number of users I can think of off the top of my head that regularly posted in the game threads without problems, just as there are some current ORG users that were (or are) part of the problem with the threads. That being the case, primarily for the first and third reaons I mentioned, the decision was made to restrict the game threads to those with Old Red Guard posting access. I know many are reluctant to give it a chance, but honestly, I don't see why chat couldn't serve much of the same purpose as the game threads with the exception that it wouldn't be archived (though I don't see that as a major deal, given the the game threads occur while the game is happening). Hope this helps...