Conversation about rumors in the forums

[Brock Beauchamp]

Alright alright alright, let's talk about this. I thought we could wait for awhile but people have strong opinions so let's hear 'em.

We have two options:

1. Keep the rumors in the Jays forum.

2. Create a dedicated rumors forum, like we have on... I think two?... of the other sites. Example:

https://brewerfanatic.com/forums/forum/6-transaction-rumors-proposals/

If you have suggestions or want to say something specifically, do it here.

[Laika]

I think it depends on how much activity there is. 

A bunch of subforums without active or high volume posting does not make sense. On the old board we didn't really need a bunch of subforums, and some of our general threads worked fine, because there was not a huge amount of discussion happening. If this place gets way busier then a rumour area could make sense but right now it's just segregation for the sake of segregation and a bit OCD. 

On a more general note... people just need to be self aware of the obvious conflict of interest. Ownership wants the message board to grow. The old posters liked a place that was familiar and of a certain pace so they probably don't really want it to grow or change. It just is what it is. Things will be different, some people won't like it.

[Chappy]

Personally, I don’t want to be jumping between several sub forums, much rather have all baseball talk on one and if need be then have a separate sub forum for off topic discussions.  99% of the time I’ll be on my phone and don’t really want to waste time jumping around.  Just will click on discussions I want to read and ignore what I don’t.  

[Jimcanuck]

Where things go doesn't really matter if there was the option to list all the threads with the threads with the latest posts at top

[Omar]

Traditionally we've always had a trade deadline thread on the old board which worked well leading up to the trade deadline.

Offseason is a different story it seems.  Keep it simple I say and let the MODS determine when something is egregious and needs to be moved/merged into another thread.  

"A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

[Laika]

38 minutes ago, Jimcanuck said:

Where things go doesn't really matter if there was the option to list all the threads with the threads with the latest posts at top

Genius idea 

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Laika said:

On a more general note... people just need to be self aware of the obvious conflict of interest. Ownership wants the message board to grow. The old posters liked a place that was familiar and of a certain pace so they probably don't really want it to grow or change. It just is what it is. Things will be different, some people won't like it.

Obviously, I want the forum to grow, no doubt about that. But even the forum staying the same size is okay with me because we're building so much around it. The forum might grow a little while the rest of the site blows up with traffic. It has happened before.

The thing about forums is that if things stay the same, the forum will ultimately die. It becomes insular, threads too long, users are unwelcoming to newbies, etc. And ultimately, people drift away one by one because life changes for each of us. I don't have numbers but I almost guarantee that this forum is less-trafficked than it was five years ago. Why am I confident in that? Because 99% of forum-only sites are less-trafficked than they were five years ago. Reddit, Twitter, etc. has just killed independent forums.

It's something to keep in mind. Certain things that have just "always been that way" should be challenged from time to time. And it's kinda my job to do that. But I want to work with all of you and will always hear your input before making a decision.

[Chappy]

Well there are a lot of us here even if most are not posting.  Old habits don’t just go away.  

[Brownie19]

Can't an option be for there to be a dedicated thread that is in the "Toronto Blue Jays Talk" subform - instead of separate threads for each rumour?

In the past, rumours would just go under the "Offseason Roster Thread" or "General Blue Jays Discussion".  Could either go there, or have it's own "Blue Jays Rumours" thread?  

I don't think anyone wants it in some other subforum (voting to date confirms this).

The old board was built on massive, long threads.  I don't love having lots of small, random threads, but I guess if that's preferred or "better" then that's the way it will be.  

 

[Nexii]

Put all the rumors in one mega thread in this forum. Sometimes they're interesting but they can feel like spam if mixed in with news and transactions 

[Brock Beauchamp]

11 hours ago, Brownie19 said:

Can't an option be for there to be a dedicated thread that is in the "Toronto Blue Jays Talk" subform - instead of separate threads for each rumour?

In the past, rumours would just go under the "Offseason Roster Thread" or "General Blue Jays Discussion".  Could either go there, or have it's own "Blue Jays Rumours" thread?  

I don't think anyone wants it in some other subforum (voting to date confirms this).

The old board was built on massive, long threads.  I don't love having lots of small, random threads, but I guess if that's preferred or "better" then that's the way it will be.  

Mega-threads often lead to the death of a forum. They're just so uninviting to anyone new.

Think as if you're a new user. You pop onto a site and want to catch up with Jays free agents. You don't know anyone and have never seen the forum before. There is one thread called "Jays rumors" or whatever. It's eight months old and 78 pages with over 2,000 posts.

Where do you start? The last page? The fifth-to-last page? And why?

Or do you just ignore the thread?

That's the problem. As much as I don't care for lots of things about Reddit, there's a reason it does so bloody well. It's full of accurately-titled topics that gain popularity for a few days and then everyone moves onto something else.

Imagine you're the same new user on the same new forum. You see a topic titled "Jays Made Offer to Anthony Santander" with 23 posts. You're interested in Santander. You know what the topic is about. You have something to say.

Do you see how the bar for entry is so much lower in the second scenario?

Managing a community is all about finding what works at an acceptable level for as many people as possible. If we're not bringing in new blood, we're shrinking. Because every single day, there is a person who will visit this site for the last time. It's just how things work. It might be their first and last visit, it might be a person who lurked for a few weeks and left. It might be a semi-regular poster who leaves for personal life reasons. Could be a million reasons why. But it happens.

[Brock Beauchamp]

By the way, why I speak bluntly like this is because I made all of these mistakes in my first baseball website and basically killed it.

[Brownie19]

Thanks for the explanation.  

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 minutes ago, Brownie19 said:

Thanks for the explanation.  

To be clear, I'm not all I MUST STOP ALL MEGATHREADS! Mostly, I don't care that much... but people need to be okay with some double-posting happening if megathreads are a thing. Just because something exists in page 86 of a 114 page thread doesn't mean it *really* exists in the public sphere.

If people want to keep their megathreads, that's okay. But there WILL be duplicate posting happening if that's the case. All I ask is for users to just ignore the threads if they don't care for them.

[L54]

Around Baseball is the perfect example of a mega thread that works 

It’s obvious what the thread is discussing. It is renewed yearly and is quite active with new posts daily. Easy to pop in and catch up in one spot 

[Brownie19]

Brock - I'm curious what type of growth you've been able to achieve with your other sites. I have no idea how many active members we actually have, but say it's 75 that post at least once a week.  Should we expect that number to double over the next year or so?

I guess the reality is that most the "casual fans" that infect comment sections in Facebook, Reddit, etc. do so because that access/community is right in their face.  They are much less likely to latch onto a website like this right?   RIGHT?

[Brock Beauchamp]

20 minutes ago, Brownie19 said:

Brock - I'm curious what type of growth you've been able to achieve with your other sites. I have no idea how many active members we actually have, but say it's 75 that post at least once a week.  Should we expect that number to double over the next year or so?

I guess the reality is that most the "casual fans" that infect comment sections in Facebook, Reddit, etc. do so because that access/community is right in their face.  They are much less likely to latch onto a website like this right?   RIGHT?

LOL. Excellent question. For the first year, traffic is mostly the same. It’s a matter of setting things up, creating consistency, and just grinding through that first year. From there, forum traffic grows modestly while front page traffic tends to take off.

We’re not after the Facebook/Twitter crowd in particular, not even a little bit. I believe our sites are a place to escape those monstrosities, not become them. I will (and do) happily sacrifice pure numbers in favor of being the smartest place to hang out, not the biggest.

We want the right kind of new users, not just new users. It’s why we moderate pretty heavily when it comes to insults, whether that be toward other users or team personnel. Tone matters a lot. There are plenty of places to be a mouth-breathing dipshit on the internet; I want to provide an alternative to that experience. 

[Jimcanuck]

Hey Brock can you amend things so the latest posts across all sub-boards can be listed?  I.e. a new posts listing

[Jimcanuck]

36 minutes ago, Jimcanuck said:

Hey Brock can you amend things so the latest posts across all sub-boards can be listed?  I.e. a new posts listing

Then won't have to check the sub-boards separately

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Jimcanuck said:

Hey Brock can you amend things so the latest posts across all sub-boards can be listed?  I.e. a new posts listing

For sure, read this blog post.

[BTS]

I have to say, I'm warming a bit to the subforums now that they have different icons that make them easily distinguishable from each other.

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 minutes ago, BTS said:

I have to say, I'm warming a bit to the subforums now that they have different icons that make them easily distinguishable from each other.

It's one of the primary reasons I do that. I'm also a visual person and use icons whenever possible to quickly identify what I'm looking for.

[Abomination]

I feel like the main issue is the "From the community" post which kind of breaks up the forum list. Maybe if that was made into its own forum and moved below all the other ones it would help with the flow.

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 hours ago, Abomination said:

I feel like the main issue is the "From the community" post which kind of breaks up the forum list. Maybe if that was made into its own forum and moved below all the other ones it would help with the flow.

It's actually from an entirely different section of the site. That's the user blog section, which you can access from the top navigation.

[Abomination]

6 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

It's actually from an entirely different section of the site. That's the user blog section, which you can access from the top navigation.

Wherever it's from, it breaks up the forums and a lot of people may not scroll down to the bottom. It might be less confusing if that was changed (unless it's an option in our individual site settings I haven't seen yet).

[Brock Beauchamp]

Just now, Abomination said:

Wherever it's from, it breaks up the forums and a lot of people may not scroll down to the bottom. It might be less confusing if that was changed (unless it's an option in our individual site settings I haven't seen yet).

The widget is hard-coded to that space but I may be open to moving it once we establish the site a bit more and get a good grip on how many forums there will be and where.

[Spanky99]

I've been using unread content since day 1, and it works beautifully. I don't see a problem with subforums, unread content links are at the top right of the page and bottom right of every page, it's great. There's also next unread topic as well.