RealGM

I don't mean to criticize any individual. Please don't be offended. But this Jays board is too over managed. Micro managed.

Everything has to go in specific discussion topics and no new topics can be made as there already are topics open. I think that really messes up the point of a message board. I mean this is for fun or to pass time. Why are people starting to make is a professional job to manage it? We are all Jon Does who love the baseball. Not pro sports writers.

For example. We have a Minor league topic. So EVERYTHING related to the minors Must go there. Any new topic created on minors will be merged there or locked. That is absurd.

Take the example of the Raptors board. Which I'd more open. People can make topics. Relevant topics and others can comment. It makes it more engaging. Everything eventually disappears and new topics appear again and again.

Please be more lenient. Let the thing just flow. Give people more freedom. This not a job.

Please don't ban me or lock this up.

What is it exactly that you want to discuss about in various threads other than what we already have?

Dude, you make way too many threads. Accept it.

From what I can tell, it's been nearly 10 months since a thread was locked. I think I merged two threads on one occasion this year, though perhaps that was last year. I only remember that because it took me forever to remember how to do it, as it'd been years. The only poster warned or banned in the past season was the guy with very wrong opinions on rape. It has gone totally unmoderated when I was away for a long period of time and I don't think anyone even noticed beyond the fact that game threads didn't get stickied. I may be biased, but I'm not sure that suggests a board that is severely overmanaged.

The specific discussion topics are to allow for the day-to-day stuff to be kept in a self-contained place. If something major happens in the minors, that can absolutely have a new topic. But on a slower board, having a bunch of "so-and-so went 3 for 4 with a HR in New Hampshire!" threads isn't going to let discussion flow, it's just going to atomize discussion into a clutter of two-comment posts that go not much of anywhere.

I'm going to be a little blunt: I suspect that the reason you feel stifled is that you really, really like making threads, and three years ago myself and the other mods asked you to stop posting your every thought as a separate thread, and we did that because other posters asked us to ask you to stop posting every thought as a separate thread. Which is, generally, how this board has worked; my preferred level of moderation is somewhere approaching none, because then I don't have to do anything, and if the majority of people prefer things to be structured differently, they can. I have not, however, encountered a great outcry of support for posting a whole bunch of stream-of-consciousness threads titled "My Thoughts On [Thing Already Being Discussed in Other Thread]".

BigLeagueChew wrote:What is it exactly that you want to discuss about in various threads other than what we already have?

For example, if I were to make a topic on the Happ trade. It would be merged with the Let's Make a Deal topic. While that is used for All trades not just the Happ trade specifically. Basically there can't be too deep a discussion on Happ as the topic quickly goes to the Britton trade and Warren trade and etc... trade.


Just use the Raptors board as an example. There are much more free flowing discussions.

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We've generally had threads on individual trades involving the Jays before (the Pearce one is still on the first page). I wouldn't have locked a standalone Happ trade thread when the trade went down; as it happened, people just posted in the thread where discussions of trades were already taking place.

If the Jays make a significant roster move (as a guidepost, DFAing whatever a Brandon Cumpton is will not count as a significant roster move), feel free to make a thread about it, so long as the thread's made relatively soon after the move. If, like, several hours have passed and there's already a discussion happening elsewhere, having two threads is just going to fragment things.

I agree with what schad said about too many new topics on a slower board. The fact this board only has a dozen or so posters, if there are countless new threads about every minor topic, they’re not going to amount to much. All you have to do is post the exact same thought/post in another wide ranging thread where that would be appropriate. If people care, they’ll respond. If not, they just didn’t have anything to say. But there are all sorts of random conversations about specific things, that happen in the more general threads.

Forgiveness please.... I accept defeat

Lock it up.

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For what it's worth, I agree to a point. I have no issues with the moderators, but I do find that restricting all discussions to essentially 3 threads (current series, minors, and trades) makes for a cumbersome browsing experience. In particular, trades and significant roster moves should be worthy of a thread should someone choose to make one, imho. It makes this board seem like a ghost town with so few active threads.

Natural11 wrote:For what it's worth, I agree to a point. I have no issues with the moderators, but I do find that restricting all discussions to essentially 3 threads (current series, minors, and trades) makes for a cumbersome browsing experience. In particular, trades and significant roster moves should be worthy of a thread should someone choose to make one, imho. It makes this board seem like a ghost town with so few active threads.

No disagreement on the trades/significant roster moves. Again, I'd emphasize that people absolutely can create threads on those things and generally have. For whatever reason, the thread dagger created for rumours ended up also containing the discussion of the trades themselves. Wasn't an enforced thing; most every move of any significance in the past has had its own thread.

Natural11 wrote:For what it's worth, I agree to a point. I have no issues with the moderators, but I do find that restricting all discussions to essentially 3 threads (current series, minors, and trades) makes for a cumbersome browsing experience. In particular, trades and significant roster moves should be worthy of a thread should someone choose to make one, imho. It makes this board seem like a ghost town with so few active threads.

I didn’t wven know where to look when the osuna grade story hit. There was no recent discussion in the osuna thread lol.

This is hands down the best jays messageboard. Not a thing I would change

I was kinda looking for an Osuna or Happ trade thread.

Yeah I have to say I love how this board is managed. I can quickly check in on 3-4 threads a day and stay very up to date on the team. Keep up the great work!

I think there is something to be said about having more threads for individual actions or stories regarding the Jays, instead of having all discussions on general stuff in singular, all-encompassing threads. I think more threads would help facilitate discussion and bring in more users interested but unaware of all the discussion that is actually going on.

Basically, if this place looks more lively, it will become more lively, and when a story comes out, we won't have the same half-dozen people taking the same stances on the organization or how it's being run.

That's not to say it should have threads made at necessarily the same rate as the Raps board, but when something interesting occurs, people shouldn't be afraid to just start a new thread on it.

ozzykhan16 wrote:I was kinda looking for an Osuna or Happ trade thread.

That had nothing to do with the board being over managed. People just decided to post about it in the “Let’s make a deal” thread.

vaff87 wrote:

ozzykhan16 wrote:I was kinda looking for an Osuna or Happ trade thread.

That had nothing to do with the board being over managed. People just decided to post about it in the “Let’s make a deal” thread.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm not a big jays fan; just kinda follow the team casually so I don't really know what goes on here.

North_of_Border wrote:I don't mean to criticize any individual. Please don't be offended. But this Jays board is too over managed. Micro managed.

Everything has to go in specific discussion topics and no new topics can be made as there already are topics open. I think that really messes up the point of a message board. I mean this is for fun or to pass time. Why are people starting to make is a professional job to manage it? We are all Jon Does who love the baseball. Not pro sports writers.

For example. We have a Minor league topic. So EVERYTHING related to the minors Must go there. Any new topic created on minors will be merged there or locked. That is absurd.

Take the example of the Raptors board. Which I'd more open. People can make topics. Relevant topics and others can comment. It makes it more engaging. Everything eventually disappears and new topics appear again and again.

Please be more lenient. Let the thing just flow. Give people more freedom. This not a job.

Please don't ban me or lock this up.

I think the outlet you’re looking for is the Toronto Blue Jays reddit. They post anything, and everything into new topics. There’s a downside and upside to every system. That open system allows for repeated cluttered and redundant questions about the same topics over and over with little to no moderation. Some people like that, including myself. I don’t mind talking prospects and Vlad jr all day long even if it’s about the same stuff over and over. Sometimes a single topic can be expanded into multiple open threads and view points. Places like message boards frown upon it, reddit encourages it. But this creates freeflowing daily activity, somewhat similar to the realgm raptors board.

But some people like a controlled, moderated, tidy system with less redundancy, but it also reduces traffic and discussion.
Everyone is different, but that’s why there’s various platforms.

Would I like this forum to be more active like the raptors side? Absolutely. There is definitely enough blue jays fans out there to make it so. But many of them don’t lurk to this corner as their platform.

vaff87 wrote:I agree with what schad said about too many new topics on a slower board. The fact this board only has a dozen or so posters, if there are countless new threads about every minor topic, they’re not going to amount to much.

I don't post often but have shared the same thoughts in the past.
It's a chicken and egg argument.
Is it a slow board, and therefore it's better to have fewer threads to maximize discussion?
Or is it a slow board because, to potential regulars and new posters, it appears that there are rarely any new discussions, just replies to the same original generalized topic/post? (Although more likely it's slow because the Jays are having a bad season.) But it's something to consider.