Ideas to Improve Quality of Posts

[Kerrsed]

The Lakers forum isnt as active as it was due to the fact that they are all Warriors/Clippers fans now.

I kid, i kid, but for real, you are dead right.

[Qwigglez]

ASUdevil you hit it on the head. I mostly agree with everything you said. I can't stand when people complain after a win. If we win a gritty performance against an underwhelming team, game threads will be filled with how sorry we are for performing at a low level. My take on any win... a win is a win is a win is a win. Doesn't matter the opponent as every player in the league is a professional (except half the Sixers roster).

Right now, the team is pretty exciting. I've been clamoring for it all summer, and it looks like our backcourt is gonna live up to my lofty expectations. I wanted Bledsoe to average 18/6/4. Right now, he's exceeded my expectations with averages of 23/6/4 and 2 steals a game. It's an incredible rate and if he keeps this up, he should be making the all-star team for sure.
Knight I wanted to average 17-19/4/4. I actually expected him to take the reign of offensive juggernaut for our team, but surprisingly Bledsoe & Knight are both doing it. Knight is getting 20/5/4 which is slightly better than I expected. Still, for being only 23 years old that's pretty solid. Someone mentioned that McCollum is older than Knight (only by 3 months) but I keep hearing how McCollum is a stud, but Knight is a scrub (honestly, both players play remarkably similar games). When was the last time we've had a player score 2 30 point games within the same week? I can't remember (I'm thinking it's probably Dragic)...
TJ Warren is averaging 15.5 points a game for the last 4 games. He's slowly stealing/earning the starting spot from Tucker. I can't wait til he develops a consistent three!
Alex Len has been under performing in the eyes of most Suns fans. I feel like he'll eventually have a Chandler-esque roll for our team, but we all want him to develop a significant post game. He might just not have it in him, but I'll keep the faith with this one. He's still an exciting player to have on the team.

Anyway, without getting too sappy, we all need to remember how bad this team struggled after Nash left and should remind ourselves that we could have it far worse. I'm sure most Kings fans would trade spots with us without hesitation. Sure, they have a superstar in Cousins, but they still haven't won 30 games in a single season since 2007-08. They actually haven't won more than 40 games in a single season since 2005-06.

[bwgood77]

I had originally missed asudevil's post because when this thread was bumped the other day all I thought the only new post was DRK's saying he didn't read.

I've heard similar sentiments that you raise about the negativity. A couple of months back I got feedback from people that this is the most depressing place to post they had seen, or that even when they try to post good info from sources people just respond with "that guy's a hack" (when they are not).

I see people say when the team is bad that less people will post. That is fine. If people decide to not post because the team is bad, cool. But the reason I bumped this thread with those rules bolded is that many people get extremely tired of some people beating the drum repeatedly saying the same thing and looking at every situation with a glass half empty mentality. Sure, there are generally glass half empty type of people in life. But generally people like to steer clear of those type of people if possible. We are all going to be disappointed at times with the team. But constant negativity gets old. There was a point before I became a mod that I considered leaving the forum as I didn't find it nearly as fun to post at as I once did. Ironically, I was offered a mod position around the same time, so I've tried to make an effort to turn things around.

Any suggestions and feedback as to additional ways to improve the forum are always welcome.

[lilfishi22]

Not just the negativity but also offering nothing constructive in their criticism.

[Mulhollanddrive]

I don't think this thread would have been created in the last week.

Give fans some clue about how the team wants to play and where it's going and we'll follow.

I'm hoping we can show consistancy like in season 1, otherwise the mediocrity will wear down again.

[aIvin adams]

this thread has returned to full suck

i feel about this thread the way at least 20% of the Phoenix Suns' starters feel about the Phoenix Suns.

[DRK]

If theres nothing positive to talk about, why should posts be positive? That's pretty much Communist style-propoganda... Pretending something is great but it really isnt.

However it seems like there is more positive things to talk about, so naturally the mood of this forum will improve. a quality of a post isnt measured by how "positive" or how "not depressing" it is. Greatly looking forward to the rest of the season and seeing how our team can play against tougher opponents

[bwgood77]

If theres nothing positive to talk about, why should posts be positive? That's pretty much Communist style-propoganda... Pretending something is great but it really isnt.

However it seems like there is more positive things to talk about, so naturally the mood of this forum will improve. a quality of a post isnt measured by how "positive" or how "not depressing" it is. Greatly looking forward to the rest of the season and seeing how our team can play against tougher opponents

Posts don't have to be positive. Mathias made the post to gather ideas to improve the quality of posts and he was hoping for more positivity, but that is tough because you want people to speak their minds. His post was made early into last season when we were 22-18 (and eventually we got to 26-18) after a surprisingly good season so things were not quality and extremely negative before the team got really bad last year.

This thread is about suggestions to the mods so we can have a better forum that increases the number of regular posters - old and new - and has better overall quality of discussions.

If you want to flame a suggestion, you must bring a replacement idea.

DIAGNOSIS

Here are the main problems I currently observe:

1) If you divide posts into NEGATIVE ("I hate my team"; "you suck"; "tank now"; "trade everyone", etc.) and POSITIVE ("I have a suggestion", funny stuff, useful links and thoughts, etc), I would guess more than 3/4 are NEGATIVE (I don´t have an official stat, sorry).

2) Psychology has something called "brain conditioning" (marketing uses it a lot). The more you are exposed to something, the more you get used to it, until it becomes normal (like the saying "a lie told enough times becomes the truth"). Excessive NEGATIVE posts are becoming the norm, and they drag overall post quality down. Even tipical POSITIVE posters get caught up in flame fests every now and then.

3) There is also a phenomenon called "crowding out". Which basically means that NEGATIVE posts tend to shy away POSITIVE posts, giving even more room for other NEGATIVE posts, which become more and more dominant. It is common to read posts such as "that is why I don´t even post here anymore" within our threads.

I believe that aiming for good quality attracts good posters and gets the best out of those we already have. In time, you´d bring in people from other Suns forums, Suns fans that are not currently active on internet boards, and older peeps who have left us because negativism gets too repetitive.

I quoted forum rules because the same statement being repeated over and over and over isn't necessarily meaningful, and that was what was happening at that time. When you know exactly what someone is going to post daily those posts are not informative or meaningful. This caused people to get into massive arguments and it kind of became divisive a month or so ago, and for some it still seems that way.

I know negativity is going to happen when the team sucks or with coaching or management decisions of course.

Last year the forum got so negative that many posters left. Of course people will not be interested as much when the team sucks so that is well understood by everyone. Some of the posters left, and some were contacted, and many left not because the team wasn't playing as well, or because of management/coaching, but they left because of vast negativity regarding everything and anything. I was reading an old thread tonight asking how often people viewed the forum (back in May) and some even stated this there.

This forum WAS turning into exactly what the espn forum had turned into....many came here and many of those have left here and post mostly elsewhere.

Our team sucked the two years before we had that good year, but the vibe was much different and hopeful. I don't know exactly what changed, but many complained.

But again, the main reason the thread was created in the first place was for ideas.

We have had many new posters join over the summer from all over the place, and many with good discussion and good new topics, which makes it more interesting as well.

Overall we are a good community but if people make suggestions I listen.