A RealGM Scandal, and a Conversation about Projects

[Top10alltime]

So like, 100-post minimum and a sponsor might work?

But definitely not "you need to have already been here for a decade before you can play in our sandbox;" that's just too nutty.

Raise it to 150 posts and I don't think you'd need a sponsor, but again, I'm just one of the new guys I'm sure my opinion doesn't matter.

[PistolPeteJR]

I’ve used and continue to use the discord server sporadically over the past few years. Mostly to rant, chat ****, and stockpile interesting stats I find. OhayoKD has always been pretty aggressive about pushing an anti-MJ stance, both here and in the discord. It started off as debate strategizing but somewhere along the way it turned into them recruiting posters from outside platforms. But AFAIK most of them are real people who were brought onto the forum.

I gotta ask though, like someone else in here mentioned, how is that significantly different from what posters have done in the past? People have recruited from the massive pool of vehemently pro-Jordan users on the GB for years. Users who otherwise have zero interest in PC projects, make low effort posts, and usually dip after the first or second round of voting. But no one was clutching their pearls about that. It’s more handpicked than pooling people from the GB but the intention and effect are the same. You're bringing in like-minded individuals to tilt the project, knowing how pro-MJ the GB skews compared to other corners of the internet. That's why the discussion has always been the highlight of these projects, not the results.

If you want to ban OhayoKD and AEnigma for being previously banned posters, fine. But then handle it quietly and hand over ownership of the peaks project. And if you knew then why wait to do it now if not to turn it into a public spectacle? You said that you were "in the absence of proof". So did new evidence come to light or something? This thread reads more like a call out post for agitated posters to air out every unrelated grievance they’ve had with someone's tone in the past. And if simply knowing about Ohayo’s activities is enough for AEnigma to be called out by name, then congrats, you’ve implicated half the forum. tsherkin and BadGatorade are in there. 70sfan like he said was around for a bit. The creators of MAMBA and BPM are in there. Most of the people pulled in from this forum were invited because of their pre-existing stances on MJ. It’s not some anti-MJ child grooming ring with AI bot accounts. It's a single schizoposter on a basketball forum. Let's stop acting like this is Watergate.

Do you have any evidence for what I've bolded? I've been here long enough, first as a lurker and then as a poster, but am oblivious to this.

[EmpireFalls]

It’s not some anti-MJ child grooming ring with AI bot accounts.

If anyone is indeed interested in that, though, come on over to the Charlotte Hornets subforum . I promise you the worst things you want to say about His Airness will be tame for the way we feel about him. MJ hate as a Charlotte fan is not only accepted, it’s fully deserved.

Yeah, I mean, that's fair. He was the James Dolan of Charlotte.

Whatever bad words or insults you’d like to lob at Jordan for his Charlotte ownership, I can promise you aren’t going far enough. His leadership wasn’t fit to run a Chuck-E-Cheese franchise let alone a competitive basketball team. At one point our entire decision making braintrust was entirely of his cronies, from his own brother to his college roommate, and he was so cheap that the entire back room may as well have been in the Stone Age.

[ShotCreator]

I want to say, as far what to do with the projects going forward, I believe less is more as far as greatest peaks and RPOY.

Having a POY and a RPOY is redundant. RPOY is a great, fun idea and it should definitely stay but as far as more recent seasons? I felt the recent 2015 RPOY was the exact line drawn on its usefulness. I specifically remember the quality of discussion on the 2015 POY being very high level. In general between LeBron and other 00’s and 10’s stars true primes playing out and the first year of the new dynasty, there was a lot of really high enthusiasm for that season by a lot of interesting posters, some that don’t post much anymore.


I don’t think you can top the real-time observations on a year like that. The amount of focus and the chronological understanding of the season and events is a different level.

That was a year with WB and KD largley being gone from POY contention. Paul Millsap was easily a top 10 guy that year and the 15 Hawks and that entire thing didn’t get a peep, just as an example.

Now, with the project runners being completely biased and bad faith, those projects are even more glaring to me.


Top 100 greatest getting a frequent update actually makes sense and is fun.

I think less projects getting updates would make the more reasonably relevant ones(top 100 greatest), funner and gives them more attention and would motivate posters to participate more often.

The projects should feel more like rare events IMO.

[sp6r=underrated]

Even the idea of a 'sponsor' is undesirable. It feeds into the insular clique echo chamber leanings that are just as unhealthy as the other extreme of KD & Enigma. We're all adults here, and there is nothing more special about one poster versus another. The idea you need a letter of introduction from members in 'good standing' harkens back to a bygone era where literal blackballing originated from.

Just set a non-trivial post limit, and for people who are new make them participate for a few threads before they get added to the voter pool. There's no real problem here tbh, I'm not even sure those 2 changed the results much. Much is being made out of very little. Ban them or whatever, and put off the peaks project because some of the key participants are gone and it's lost momentum, but this isn't some world changing event.

I agree. If it is someone new, just require they participate for maybe 3-4 spots with constructive input, even if people disagree, and then start counting their vote.

Requiring sponsorship, high number of posts or years on the board will make this place too insular.

[TrueLAfan]

Short post on an important topic. My 02.

Yes, the perma-bans are good. Let’s be clear to draw the distinction between less-informed or sporadic posters that participate in projects and what has happened here. For anyone that wants to throw their hands in the air and say “Who are you to decide who is less-informed?” my answer is: I’m nobody. I think those people should post and read as much as they can. I have no beefs or problems with people I disagree with. Maybe they know more than I think. Maybe they don’t. But a free exchange of ideas and thoughts is, IMO, a floor raiser. It can be a pain, but it ultimately leads to better posters, threads, and discussions.

But what we have here is deliberate manipulation. These are not people who have any interest in basketball analysis or fair discussion; their drive is to rig systems to achieve an outcome they desire. That is the opposite of a free exchange of ideas and thoughts. There’s no excuse for it. There’s no defense for it. That ability to give your thoughts in a respectful and (hopefully) meaningful way is sort of the prime directive of any discussion board. Rigging conversation by setting up sock puppet accounts and/or recruiting posters or telling them what to say is absolutely the worst type of violation of that.

[homecourtloss]

I gotta ask though, like someone else in here mentioned, how is that significantly different from what posters have done in the past? People have recruited from the massive pool of vehemently pro-Jordan users on the GB for years. Users who otherwise have zero interest in PC projects, make low effort posts, and usually dip after the first or second round of voting. But no one was clutching their pearls about that. It’s more handpicked than pooling people from the GB but the intention and effect are the same. You're bringing in like-minded individuals to tilt the project, knowing how pro-MJ the GB skews compared to other corners of the internet. That's why the discussion has always been the highlight of these projects, not the results.

If you want to ban OhayoKD and AEnigma for being previously banned posters, fine. But then handle it quietly and hand over ownership of the peaks project. And if you knew they were PBPs then why wait to do something about it until now if not to turn it into a public spectacle? You said that you were "in the absence of proof". So did new evidence come to light or something? This thread reads more like a call out post for agitated posters to air out every unrelated grievance they’ve had with someone's tone in the past. And if simply knowing about Ohayo’s activities is enough for AEnigma to be called out by name, then congrats, you’ve implicated half the forum. tsherkin and BadGatorade are in there. 70sfan like he said was around for a bit. The creators of MAMBA and BPM are in there. Most of the people pulled in from this forum were invited because of their pre-existing stances on MJ. It’s not some anti-MJ child grooming ring with AI bot accounts. It's a single schizoposter on a basketball forum. Let's stop acting like this is Watergate.

[Texas Chuck]

Oh man do I have some thoughts here. And while this should absolutely not be necessary for me to do, I've made it a point to always acknowledge my biases real or just perceived so...

1. I have long been a poster who pushed back against the myth of Mike
2. I have Lebron as my GOAT and have for a couple years after having long been a Russell guy.
3. I am a mod of a contentious forum with large traffic on this site, and am by and large the only permanently active mod on that forum and while I have maybe issued 2 or 3 formal warnings all year, a couple of 30 minute or 12 hour timeouts, and no requests to ban posters, and probably only asked 4-5 total posters to be banned in my decade long run as a Mod here-- my reputation as a Mod is probably as a bit of a hardass. I care deeply about the trade forum being a place where all feel welcome so if you come in promoting hate, I'm going to address it immediately and directly. We have very few rules but if you want to abuse them, I'm going to come blue font you and remind you to not.
4. I have access to the Mod forum and have seen the evidence. It's crystal clear guys.

Despite my personal view that Lebron had a better career than Mike, the conduct by the two posters in question here is beyond the pale. The behavior is wrong, period. Even if it works out to match my personal opinion. What a stupid reason to excuse it. Even stupider is to accuse Doc of only addressing this because he supposedly wants Mike to be #1(Doc even pointed out he's had Lebron past him...).

And yeah count me as a former PC board reg who rarely stops by. The agendas have long bothered me -- I'm quoted above being bothered by RD trying to promote Kobe and push KG down(again note I have a an-anti KG rep here and I wanted no part of trying to push him down). I have stayed out of projects by and large, and certainly never to vote because of issues exactly like this. What's the point?

But also this years long trend now of posters making a post only to have these two specific posters quote it line by line writing paragraphs attacking every word. This is not about discussion or disagreement. It was just about belittlement and personal attacks. I grew tired of having to defend myself against attacks. And they also love to bring up posts you made years ago to attack.

My favorite posters among the years have been those I disagreed with the most. From Ben to Andre to tsherkin to Doc, we disagreed on methodology and even when I realized their methodology was far superior to mine, I still found myself disagreeing with many of their conclusions by their own methodology. Yet our interactions were always respectful and on the merits of our posts. No need to belittle. No need to parse out every last word.


To those saying take this less seriously, I would politely say, sod off. And frankly being one of the most active posters itt suggests you care just as much, you just think its internet cool to pretend you don't. Belittling people on a forum about a topic for caring about that topic? LOL. We are basketball nerds. No apologies needed for caring that the board has standards.

What do do here? Ban these posters. For all the reasons listed. If they come back and behave, cool. But they won't be able to help themselves, and then ban them again. We have to try.

Start the projects again now or don't. Run them by a mod or a non-mod. There is no abuse of power by the mods here and I say that as the only place I have ever gotten warned is here, and mostly by one mod. That mod isn't out to get me lol. I made posts I shouldn't have and forced them to deal with it. The issue was me.

But mainly we all need to think about what we want out of here. Do we want to be right? Be seen as the smartest person in the room? Force our personal agenda? Or talk hoops? Maybe learn something from those we disagree with? Or who take a different approach.

Post counts and and 1's aren't it either. I have more of both than just about everyone here. I am not a better poster than anyone else because of it. Just way too much free time at work lol.

Bottom line, have any opinion you want. Just don't be a dick about it.

[Ron Swanson]

I can't say I'm fully comfortable doing this, but Ohayo asked me to post a message they wrote about this whole thing here. Obviously I was a member of their Discord server, though if you look at my posting history, I didn't fellow their lead on the project votes at all. I was actually invited to their server after I joined the forum, if you can believe it. In any case, this is what they said:

If anyone bothered to check the post history of these controversial newbies, they’d realize with the exception of Paul, they mostly post outside of active projects. But that didn’t stop various “respected posters” in this thread from claiming “they don’t post outside of projects”. Similarly when a couple voters spelled Michael Jordan as Micheal Jordan, Kemba Walker claimed it was everyone in the discord.

This is lying.

Thats actually hilarious, I totally forgot all about that. Like half a dozen ballboys in a row posting the same rearranged "arguments" that all spelled Michael as Micheal . With the fact that he even recalls that specific post more than I do combined with the obvious pathological liar/antisocial traits I believe one can safely assume he views that one as one of his biggest scripting slip ups.

I suppose it was inevitable that they were going to somehow get their manifesto/lunatic rant on here (most said it was only a matter of time). But I just about spit out my coffee seeing these parts in particular:

1. Stop antagonising new posters, or the communities they come from.

While Doctor MJ and co contemplate introducing 5000-post filters, surely motivated out of genuine concern, The 2025 peaks project will continue on discord, right where it left off. For the purpose of this project, the "unofficial" community of all things realgm will now operate as an official one inviting and actually nuturing contributors/voters of various dispositions from various communities in a way much of the pc board no longer seems willing to.

Self Awareness Level: Zero

This person simply wanted nothing more than a carefully curated echo-chamber with like-minded individuals. I can't even fathom the kind of narcissism and projection that this requires (we'll continue the "REAL" peaks project over here lol). Keep in mind, at no point in this rambling, incoherent screed of grievances, does he really even give a concrete denial of the fact that he was deliberately recruiting "new" posters to push an agenda (just a bunch of crap about not "nurturing" newbies who all just conveniently happen to be in lock-step ideologically with his basketball views). Anyone still even remotely defending this buffoon or criticizing the intent of this thread is kinda showing their true colors at this point. Good riddance.

[jjgp111292]

I gotta ask though, like someone else in here mentioned, how is that significantly different from what posters have done in the past? People have recruited from the massive pool of vehemently pro-Jordan users on the GB for years. Users who otherwise have zero interest in PC projects, make low effort posts, and usually dip after the first or second round of voting. But no one was clutching their pearls about that. It’s more handpicked than pooling people from the GB but the intention and effect are the same. You're bringing in like-minded individuals to tilt the project, knowing how pro-MJ the GB skews compared to other corners of the internet. That's why the discussion has always been the highlight of these projects, not the results.

If you want to ban OhayoKD and AEnigma for being previously banned posters, fine. But then handle it quietly and hand over ownership of the peaks project. And if you knew they were PBPs then why wait to do something about it until now if not to turn it into a public spectacle? You said that you were "in the absence of proof". So did new evidence come to light or something? This thread reads more like a call out post for agitated posters to air out every unrelated grievance they’ve had with someone's tone in the past. And if simply knowing about Ohayo’s activities is enough for AEnigma to be called out by name, then congrats, you’ve implicated half the forum. tsherkin and BadGatorade are in there. 70sfan like he said was around for a bit. The creators of MAMBA and BPM are in there. Most of the people pulled in from this forum were invited because of their pre-existing stances on MJ. It’s not some anti-MJ child grooming ring with AI bot accounts. It's a single schizoposter on a basketball forum. Let's stop acting like this is Watergate.

You keep doubling down on this "Yeah it happened but so what?" stance even though we now have proof that when somebody tried this to juice the top 100 in a matter much less indicative of psychosis, that it was promptly snuffed out and handled. And even without that, the "It wasn't even a big deal" defense is still an admission of guilt.

And again, you're being myopic here: people's grievances with these posters is the same pathology that led to this nonsense in the first place, so it's pretty relevant to painting the overall picture of what's happening.

Hell the most recent "recruitment" post I can find was actually for this project...and it was done by a LeBron guy who's actually sane and just encouraging participation: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2468736&hilit=%26quot%3Bgreatest+peaks%26quot%3B

[70sFan]

I want to add one thing about the time or posts threshold - I don't know if it a good thing or not (10 years is ridiculous though, I think barely make it) but I think the new posters shouldn't have any problem with that. When I came in to the board, I didn't have any intention to participate, because I knew I didn't have much knowledge to contribute. It's normal thing for a new member after all.

[tsherkin]

I want to add one thing about the time or posts threshold - I don't know if it a good thing or not (10 years is ridiculous though, I think barely make it)

You wouldn't, for almost 2 more weeks, which is insane. xD

[Special_Puppy]

I think 60 posts to vote is a reasonable requirement that weeds out sock puppet accounts while also not being too exclusionary. Could also add a 3 months requirement

[parsnips33]

The OhayoKD force ghost message from beyond the grave is killing me

"If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine"

Don't think there's anything wrong with some kind of prerequisites for contributing to projects, but I really think a move away from explicit rankings would remove some of the incentives for outright manipulations and hopefully refocus things around what matters. Hoping there's interest in non-ranking (and less relevant but more team-focused than individual-focused) based projects outside of just myself

[Caneman786]

Bro of course this is true! Anyone could have guessed!!!

[NO-KG-AI]

I want to add one thing about the time or posts threshold - I don't know if it a good thing or not (10 years is ridiculous though, I think barely make it) but I think the new posters shouldn't have any problem with that. When I came in to the board, I didn't have any intention to participate, because I knew I didn't have much knowledge to contribute. It's normal thing for a new member after all.

100, 1000 whatever posts is trivial. They have alts and use each others accounts to the point where they have burners going back years and years. It would barely slow them down.

Guarantee one of these accounts posting in this very thread will eventually get more and more aggressive until ultimately flaming out and showing it’s definitely OhayoKD. It always goes that way.

[parsnips33]

What if there was something like a book club? Everybody agrees to watch the same historical game from the archives and then agree to comment on what they noticed watching the game, how it relates to the current game, things they weren't expecting, etc?

This encourages participation from everyone without any opportunity for cheap point scoring, at least in theory. Now if the game features LeBron or Jordan, it might be a different story

[tsherkin]

What if there was something like a book club? Everybody agrees to watch the same historical game from the archives and then agree to comment on what they noticed watching the game, how it relates to the current game, things they weren't expecting, etc?

This encourages participation from everyone without any opportunity for cheap point scoring, at least in theory. Now if the game features LeBron or Jordan, it might be a different story

It's a bit adjacent to the current topic, but it's a solid idea for a participation-generating project on the board, no doubt. Would be a great way to engage ballboys and lower-count posters waiting to participate in the bigger projects, for example. And fun for anyone who decided to participate. It also wouldn't be a vote-based project, so it would be easy to drop in and then dip out based on whichever game was being discussed, too.

[parsnips33]

What if there was something like a book club? Everybody agrees to watch the same historical game from the archives and then agree to comment on what they noticed watching the game, how it relates to the current game, things they weren't expecting, etc?

This encourages participation from everyone without any opportunity for cheap point scoring, at least in theory. Now if the game features LeBron or Jordan, it might be a different story

It's a bit adjacent to the current topic, but it's a solid idea for a participation-generating project on the board, no doubt. Would be a great way to engage ballboys and lower-count posters waiting to participate in the bigger projects, for example. And fun for anyone who decided to participate. It also wouldn't be a vote-based project, so it would be easy to drop in and then dip out based on whichever game was being discussed, too.

Don't want to take this thread off track, I'm just hopeful for the opportunity that this reckoning might provide to rethink things and try to build a more positive environment going forward. If all that comes of this is 2 posters being banned, that's fine, but I think it will have been a missed opportunity to, as Doc said, "re-build a social internet culture"

[tsherkin]

Don't want to take this thread off track, I'm just hopeful for the opportunity that this reckoning might provide to rethink things and try to build a more positive environment going forward. If all that comes of this is 2 posters being banned, that's fine, but I think it will have been a missed opportunity to, as Doc said, "re-build a social internet culture"

And I don't want to bury the idea, I think it's a fantastic notion. It's something which bears further discussion, for sure. Perhaps even worthy of its own thread.