Call for Help
My father always told me to never be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Well, we need your help.
Due to a number of factors, it’s been a while since we’ve undertaken any major site changes. Although the site seems to satisfy a still-growing number of visitors, there are a number of feature changes/additions we believe would improve things. That’s where you come in. We need your help improving the site.
What do you want?
From past experience, we’ve learned it’s better to garner as much feedback before implementing changes, rather than thrusting them upon you without warning. With that in mind, and since we’re just beginning the process, we’d like to solicit ideas for ways to improve the site.
What types of features would you like added? How can we improve the way things are configured here? What types of new content would you like to see? How can things be better organized? Would you like to see social network functionality (like some Facebook-type stuff) integrated into our design? Would you like a dedicated section for more off-topic material? Would you like blogs for every team? Again, what do you want?
Alpha/Beta testers needed
We’ve already begun tinkering with some ideas for improvement. Since we’re also sure you’ll be able to suggest nice ways we can improve the site, we’ll need more feedback when your ideas move into tangible features. We’ll also need people to try the stuff out to make sure it works properly. With that in mind, we’re looking for volunteer testers. If you are interested, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Team Blogs
Dan has been pushing the creation of enhanced team-oriented blogs for some time. We already have a few volunteer editors on board and we’re looking for more. So, again, if you are interested .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Baseball Newsstand
We’re considering moving the Old-School Newsstand back to its own domain, BaseballNewsstand.com, and expanding the links and content. We’re looking for ideas about the structure of the updated design and suggestions for links and RSS feeds that should be included. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Primer Blog
We’re considering moving the main blog onto its own domain and bringing back the BaseballPrimer.com domain. We believe by moving the blog over to its own domain, it will be easier to spotlight the best daily links. Plus, over the years many people have written to say they miss the old site name. We recognize the attachment, and hope you’ll welcome the return. What do you think?
Contribute a Few Dollars
We’ve appreciated your contributions in the past. With these tight financial times, we’d appreciate your assistance more than ever. We’ve always been dedicated to freely providing all of our content. With the depressed ad market and every-growing traffic, doing so has gotten harder and harder. What would we like you to contribute? Anything you could give us would be greatly appreciated and will help keep the site up-and-running.
Whether you can help out in these areas or just have time to post an occasional link or comment, we thank you for being part of our community and for helping to make this such a fun place for us to hang out.
Jim Furtado
Posted: May 27, 2009 at 06:24 PM |
542 comment(s)
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The first page of today's lounge wasn't entirely representative. But I think I more or less agree with Bivens. If you play nicely, we loungers welcome mainlanders.
Not that I've ever posted in a Chatter.
Ctrl-R?
Hmm... just looking at the numbers, the Lounge gets roughly 800 comments (give or take a hundred), that would be a big crush the comment count on the mainland. And a revive game chatter probably would be double or triple it's current rate.
I know the server should be able to handle the traffic, and there is a lot of Lounge ad rev that is being foregone too. But it is a significant traffic to the mainland.
3) Having an unofficial catchall politics thread isn't bad. There will always be some tendency to political threads, since the site attracts argumentative people by nature. Having a semiofficial politics thread prevents other threads from getting derailed.
Pretty much every thread gets derailed or not commented upon. It's difficult to steer the posters, especially at BTF at least.
.
The last three years, a few random baseball threads were hijacked to talk about the NBA playoffs, so I thought that having a separate thread for it would be a good idea, pacrticularly since a lot of guys here make a point of saying, "I think the NBA sucks." I think it is a little odd that some people seem bugged by that fact that it is there at all, but to each his own.
Also, to reiterate, if you want to read/discuss a certain article or a certain type of article, it's easy to submit news to see if the site honchos are ok with it and it will usually go up pretty soon.
The Lounge was borne from betwixt the legs of Lesser Primate mothers, and so shall its replenishment be, fear not what the prodigal black sheep may think.
Also, if Bivens is mayor, he's Marion Barry.
Jeff's gotten into the horse tranquilizers again. Pay him no heed.
I've lurked far more than commented, so my issues are more about the fact that my brain doesn't separate the Blogpen from the Newsstand, the Game Chatters and the Features, but the site does. So, often, I get marginally annoyed by things like hitting the "ZIPS" tag in an article on the Newsstand and getting a list of news stories about ZIPS, yet, nothing even remotely resembling team projections shows up. Of course, then I realize I have to go to the Homepage because I have no idea, off hand, where they tend to go, or I click on a box somewhere listing recent ZIPS projections, hit a tag that looks awful similar to the one I just hit in the Newsstand, which then leads to completely different results.
I imagine the way I enter the site is probably off, as my entry point is the Newsstand, so things like being unable to get to Game Chatters, or ZIPS projections without the help of a batch of links slapped somewhere awkward or a trip to the homepage is a nuisance for me and probably not many else. But, the issue I think I generally have is that the site is separated in ways that aren't immediately apparent. I don't think it's normal for people to think of this site as a series of completely separate blogs, whose information is completely unlinked to each other even though they share incredibly similar tags.
Perhaps separating everything into different domains addresses that, but then it also feels like a lot of content would be lost on people who don't travel to all of them. I mean, myself, the Newsstand is where I go first, and informs me of whatever else is on the site, which is problematic because for a while I conflated the Newsstand with a News page for BBTF, which obviously isn't how it's intended to be, but old habits do die hard.
In the end, I'd suggest the reverse, consolidate everything into a single blog, use it as if it were an actual BBTF news page, and redo your category/tagging system so as to separate things like stories about ZIPS and ZIPS Projections (as in, instead of separate blogs separate that level of content into categories, then use a single universal set of tags that each category has access to). That way, I know I, at least, wouldn't lose track of things like a recent Blog post because I'm in the Newsstand, because everything would be up in one place chronologically. If I wanted to see Blog posts instead of the Newsstand, I'd still be able to go to the separate category, but with a universal set of tags linking content from all of these disparate categories, I'd be able to stumble upon things I'm never allowed to due to the current structure of the site. For example, hitting the "Mets" tag and getting a combination of ZIPS projections, Newsstand stories and Dial's blog posts would be infinitely preferable to currently only being able to view Mets posts within whatever blog I'm in.
Obviously Game Chatters would have to be separated out, as they occur far more frequently, and are, more or less, more like Forums than actual content, so maybe a top-level "Chat" section?
I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but I think something like that would be awesome.
The reason why the comments are so good is because Primer is a community. And the reason why it's a community is because there's a freedom for people to express themselves as people rather than merely through one particular avenue. The thing that makes for strong, fascinating, and entertaining communities is a bunch of people who have converging interests on one subject (baseball) but wildly different perspectives on other things.
You can go a million places to talk about baseball online. You can go a million places to talk about Pavement. You can go a million places to talk politics. What makes Primer so great is that all of those things are possible here. And therefore, the talk about ALL of them is better than it would otherwise be.
I agree that keeping things mostly focused on baseball is good. But even though I personally don't care in the slightest about the NBA, I'm glad that the folks who do are having such a blast talking about it here. I hope there's a similar thread here come time for the World Cup in 2010.
Honestly, this is the single most important change I can imagine. I post a lot at night and by the time I wake up 20-30 new threads have been posted and I've forgotten what threads I was in. Meaning that conversations I'm interested in routinely slip by me.
Of course if you're posting in more than 5 or 6 threads at once that might not be good enough, but how often does that really happen?
At this point, I want mention I have a much easier bookmarking system already finished. One click and the item is bookmarked and placed into your own personal Hot Topics and on your own My Primer page.
I'll address some of the other ideas later.
And you don't Lounge? Huh. What a waste.
The one thing I wish for is a way to quickly return to threads I've posted on to see if anyone responded to my oh-so-brilliant comment. Often times I'll fire off a comment and then go do some, you know, real work and then come back and have to dig to see if the conversation continued because the thread has been nudged out of the hot topics by five steroid threads and three Repoz Christian-bashing threads.
If I were to return and the website recognized me and presented links to threads I've posted on in the last so many days, that would be something.
The "bookmark thread" function is just not great. For every time we use that button, we have to keep wondering whether we should un-bookmark the thread because it is not very popular, or whether we should leave it bookmarked because someone might show up days later and post something of interest which would otherwise be totally ignored because it would drop off the Hot Topics bar immediately. "Ignore thread" would be a much better way of achieving the same basic goal.
Also there is a distressing tendency towards pointless sarcasm and snideness, engaged in by nobody more than myself. If there was a limit on the number of comments I could make in one 24-hour period, I'd resist my impulses to post comments consisting entirely of things like "Eric Bruntlett says hi".
The search function works, but "View all posts by this member" does not even come close to approaching anything that even the most generous observer would loosely describe as even vaguely working properly. For me, it says I've posted exactly two things, during one week last season. And when I click on those two links, they're broken.
Sigh.
That said, I've wondered about that "maximum comments per day" thing.
Not completely sold, but we have a thriving 26-year fantasy baseball league in large part because we limit "dumping active bums," to simplify, to 6 times a year.
So of your 5th starting pitcher struggles his first 2 times out, ok you can cut him. But now if his replacement is even worse, well, you have to think about it.
That's the point - you can't just endlessly churn/stream players. Actions have consequences.
If a daily post limit is valuable, that would be why.
Again, there could be a downside I suppose?
EDIT: Yay, I can edit!
Why can't Hall of Merit voters edit on those threads?
It's funny, because as noted in one post here, it's like not we're flame-warring each other and have some regrets. But we do make minor numerical or grammar errors and would like to clean them up in the same post if possible (says this ingrate).
I'll second the suggestion to allow more than 100 comments per page. I still find myself opening three windows for the same thread on occasion in order to follow a lengthy conversation.
The one feature I miss from the old site is the ability to post as (for example) Mike Piazza without changing your username for all time. It would be nice if you could use a temporary alias that would apply to one post and be persistent after changing your main handle. The link could even still direct you to the poster's account, if anonymity would be a problem. The ability to use one-off usernames gave the old site a freewheeling property that I miss, even though I enjoy the reduced trolling.
I'm still not sure why something like Mike Piazza (posted by <U>USERNAME</U>) wouldn't be a good solution. Am I missing something that presents a technical nightmare?
____________________________________________________________
Here there be ######## about the presentation of the forums.
Take a look at how much whitespace fills up the following post from a recent Lounge. With Firefox maximized and a pretty high resolution, a post that added two sentences takes up half of the page, and it wasn't even the longest one.
Gold Star for Robot Boy - 29 May 2009 02:51 AM
Help, I’m being held prisoner in a dahlian! - 29 May 2009 02:49 AM
Gold Star for Robot Boy - 29 May 2009 02:47 AM
1998 Barry Goldwater dies
The true grand old man of the Grand Old Party, Reagan be damned.
Barry would be horrified by what’s happened to conservatism.
Today we should honor his memory by taking up arms against California.
We’ll seize Blythe.
I always thought Blythe would be a great place for a comedic zombie flick of some sort. The image of the California
police on one side and the Arizona police on the other doing their damnedest to make sure that the problem stays
contained within California seems like comedy gold.
Here's a second example. The following five sentences take up an entire page.
1) it is May, 2009, every online clothing retailer should have a catergory for Dri-fit style shirts
2) oh, its going to be this kind of party, is it?
3) I have always been there for the lounge, now where is the lounge for me?
4) I am babysitting, and I forgot my laptop power cord.
5) Hey, I’m here. I’m just doing work. I do have a job, you know.
Please, I'm not CuffBuff.
I'll second this. On the rare occasions that I've attempted to navigate the lounge, I've stopped bothering within two minutes. The interface is just retarded.
Lounge posts aren't meant to be consumed like text in a paragraph; each individual post is meant to be savored on its own terms with the gradual build and release of tension with each new post in the hopes that maybe, just maybe that next post just may be one of humanity's greatest artistic achievements. If you don't feel the same when reading the Lounge then I pity you and your frail, withered soul.
I wouldn't object to the creation of a separate, but equal, newsblog forum for everyone that's concerned with getting as many posts per page as possible.
For what it's worth, I hate the forums. I used to post semi-regularly in the Lounge, but the interface killed it for me. The amount of wasted space from nested quotes requires an outrageous amount of scrolling and there's a tremendously small amount of content per page.
I'll second this. On the rare occasions that I've attempted to navigate the lounge, I've stopped bothering within two minutes. The interface is just retarded.
************************************************************************************************************************
And as "retarded" as it is, I like it just fine. While everyone is invited, the Lounge isn't for everyone, and if the interface is what keeps you away, I would suggest that you might be too rigid too enjoy the full flavor there, anyway, so, by all means, keep to the mainland. For your own comfort. Personally, I think you'd be fun to have in the Lounge from time to time. But I wouldn't want you to be uncomfortable.
Face it Ray Ray, you just think you are too good to slum with us in the lounge.
If you want to see how it works, install AP, go to the digg front page and click yes when it asks if you want to try the default. Seamless, easily configurable, and if you can make your own scripts you can extend it to whatever site you want.
Let's talk. Primer Mail me...I have nothing to do today.
If I'm not mistaken.
1. Ignore thread - while I don't understand people who can't seem to avoid clicking on obvious steroid threads, it would unclutter Hot Topics if I could ignore NBA thread.
2. Last X threads I've posted in - The posting on the profile page seems to be actual article postings, not comments.
3. Fix search function - I have to use Google to find anything.
4. Fix Live Preview - it works fine if you use >and <, but that tends to break the page if you screw it up. If you use the buttons, then you don't break the site, but you lose live preview
5. Screen name history - Better yet, forced, real (signup, and unchangeable) name available. Or even better, real, unchangeable name as a tooltip. Andy was Andy forever, and all of a sudden he was someone else.
Suggestions I don't like:
1. Post as Mike Piazza, Ackbar, etc. Come on, it doesn't really add anything.
Other comments:
The lounge has seemingly siphoned away some people. For example, Dan Werr never posts any more. But every time there's a geography question, someone says, "I'll get Werr from the lounge" and he shows up. Not that anything can or should be done, but it's disappointing.
I've just recently noticed that the Tags are getting used more and more for humor. Like Obits for a David Ortiz article or HOF for Matt Wieters. I don't use Tags for anything, but if anyone does, then they'll get a bunch of worthless articles. I know this has been done for a while now, but I would rather this stop.
I like that threads can digress. I've learned a lot from the different viewpoints and expertises of multiple posters.
The lounge is open to anyone who wants to stop by.
Funny
Not funny.
So says a Red Sox fan who recognizes that true humor comes from desperation and loss, not from anticipation and hope.
Better yet, let's just make everyone sign in under their real name, traceable upon registration. No ducking under the cutesy-poos. And while we're at it, let's make everyone state their political, religious, and sports team preferences. That way everyone can be safely compartmentalized for the casual Primate to pigeonhole.
There are hundreds of Primates who've changed their screen names over the years, and yet for some reason I'm the only one who seems to get singled out for this. I'm not sure of the reason, and I guess I should be flattered. But one click and you've got the whole history right there, so what is the big f'g deal? I'm not exactly hiding my identity, and if you're too lazy to make that one click to satisfy your curiosity, I can't feel too much pity.
The worst idea is forcing people to use their "real" names in parenthesis along with their cutesy-poos, as in "Jolly Old St. Nick (now, with Screen Name History) (Andy)". Seriously, that's as lame as requiring the use of smileys every time you make a tongue-in-cheek post. If you want to be literal-minded, be like Ray and David and use your real name exclusively. But if you just want one click transparency, I'd be fine with a requirment to list your previous screen names on your member name page. (I would have done that a long time ago if I'd known how to do it.)
The reason I don't use my real name is because I am mayor of my community.
Seriously...and as I said before, you're one of the most distinctive posters here, regardless what name caps your posts.
And "Ol' Perfesser"?
Oh, I know. It just seems like the site has split a bit. Not a big deal and not something that should be changed.
The worst idea is forcing people to use their "real" names in parenthesis along with their cutesy-poos
OK, I typed my comment about real names a few different ways, and clearly I picked the worst one. By real name, I mean a log in name. So if Crispix Attacks wants to have his login be "Crispix Attacks", then that's what it is and can't be changed. I would never suggest that it has to be his real name. But his display name can be whatever he wants. Assuming that my "real" name refers to logins, then I would prefer if there was one login for each member and you could see the login by hovering over the display name.
And Andy, I just noticed yours in particular because yours was the first time that I noticed such a prolific poster change names without the parentheses. I noticed Crispix the other day, too, but only because someone pointed it out.
So says a Red Sox fan who recognizes that true humor comes from desperation and loss, not from anticipation and hope.
Funny, yes. But it has the effect of making the tags useless.
OK, I just looked at some random articles and I guess the tags are pretty useless anyway. I can't even get the drop-list on the left side to work properly and it seems like a lot of articles aren't tagged with more than just General.
Well, no. They can't. I mean, they can, I guess. But you can tell if they're listening to every key.
Using a laptop, however, does nothing to change that.
Sure you are. I know the real reason. It is safe with me .
Midge would get elected before you.
And Monty, I love you, too. But in 10 years I've changed my handle all of about three or four times, and again, my screen name history is not only on my member name page, but it's advertised right in my handle, for Crissakes. You know who "St. Nick" is; when people reply to my posts the great majority of them refer to my real name (as you just did); and anyone who doesn't know it, but cares to know can find out with one bleeping click. Is this really such a huge inconvenience? Does every Primate have to adhere to the same rather rigid standard? Do we really all have to wear the ribbon?
I was lurking here for about a year before I signed up. It probably did take me that long to learn the injokes and the personalities of the regulars enough so I could come in without stepping on any toes etc. A newbie page may be helpful, but with a community that's been around this long it may not help that much. I've been a MetaFilter member for about 95% of MeFi's existence but I took a self-imposed break from it for a while and came back and was a bit lost.
Speaking of MeFi, this site is a bit similar, what with the newsposts and the threads that go offtopic and the political fights in unrelated threads and all that. Much like MeFi, the interests of the posters are all over the place. If BBTF takes anything from that site, it should probably be the "favorite" function where one can favorite/bookmark comments; there's already a bookmark function for threads. (With all the OMG over certain posters, it could probably use an equivalent to MetaTalk as well. ;) )
* a more reliable site (namely, less downtime). There are basically three kinds of downtime now: the planned nightly downtime, unplanned outages due to high traffic, and unplanned outages due to network/DNS/other hosting issues. It seems we've had enough issues with the latter that it may be time to find a new hosting service, rather than try to work these issues through.
Hardball Times uses pair.com, and we've been *extremely* happy with the service there (though the pricing isn't cutrate at all). That's just one option, but the point is that not all hosts have network/DNS issues nearly as often as BTF's.
At the same time, BTF should probably invest in enough resources that traffic spikes (comparable to those in the past) shouldn't cause outages; those spikes often represent a large number of incoming users, so an outage is especially painful in terms of leaving an impression on potential users. Hopefully, some investment in hosting resources and in the site coding should also remove the need for the nightly downtime.
* Better organization of content. I don't really understand the need for different blogs. I don't understand the distinction between them in some cases, and I sometimes have trouble finding content on this site. I know something is on the site, I make an honest attempt to find it, and I can't; this is a pretty serious black mark against the site's usability. Reading through this thread, it's not just me; there are enough people with this kind of complain that I must say this is due to the information architecture of the site.
I think the site would be much more navigable if it used a single "blog", but used tags more extensively. Like others have suggested, let's have more granular tags. Possibly even allow users to create tags. Let's encourage key-holders (and possibly even regular users) to update the tags on a thread as the conversation moves.
This kind of organization will make all content more findable, while also allowing people to customize the site as they wish, by looking for particular tags, ignoring threads tagged with particular content, etc.
-----
I could give suggestions on things like a "My Primer" page, customized Hot Topics, etc., but really, that's all secondary. And those would all be dependent on better content organization anyway.
Jeff K touched upon this, suggesting that the site's users would be willing to meet whatever shortfall there is in funding. I agree. If the proposed changes to the site are intended to make the existing site better for the users, rather than come up with something new that people don't want, I think people would be willing to pay for it.
Let me put it another way. Jim, if you were to say, "Moving to a new, reliable host, with a service contract that can meet our needs will cost X dollars. Advertising and other revenue will meet some portion of that Y. I'm paying $X-Y out of pocket unless we can raise that amount, but I want to hold an annual funding drive to do that," I think that'd work. If there is some transparency behind this (including not just the dollar costs, but also possibly some metrics about page views, visitors, posts, etc., so that people can estimate their "share" of the hosting cost), and it was presented as an annual drive with a clear goal to reach the cost of hosting (especially if it was coupled with a move to a more reliable hosting provider), I think the community would work to make up the shortfall. It's one thing to ask people to donate, with no guidelines for what's needed or appropriate; it's yet another to have a clear goal in mind and to ask the community to provide that funding, and I think the community would pull through.
You think they can't install key-loggers on laptops?
Morineko, you want the BTF Wiki. Find out quite literally 98% of the story behind 95% of the injokes, past happenings, and assorted whatnots. Though it seems to be down (again)...is HCO asleep at the wheel or something? The bots are logged into the Primer IRC channel, so it's not his connection. Wiki Gonzalez return!
Now in Andy's honor...
There are hundreds of Primates who've changed their screen names over the years, and yet for some reason I'm the only one who seems to get singled out for this.
But in 10 years I've changed my handle all of about three or four times, and again, my screen name history is not only on my member name page, but it's advertised right in my handle, for Crissakes. You know who "St. Nick" is; when people reply to my posts the great majority of them refer to my real name (as you just did); and anyone who doesn't know it, but cares to know can find out with one bleeping click.
1) I singled you out, apologies, I could have picked any of a dozen people.
2) BS you've changed your name "three or four times", you've changed it three times in the last two months, at least.
3) If everyone did like you and put their handles into the handle history, there'd be no problem. You'll notice that that was the entirety of my suggestion, to do so programmatically. My profile has every screen name I've used, but I'll bet that of those who've changed, less than 20% do this. Let's just check Harold...nope. Ditto for Peng (and yes, he's Softball Playing Human, I only know this for sure because I remember the thread where he posted "I'm going to use this reference".)
4) One of the reasons I picked you is exactly because you pick off the wall ####, and the only reason I know it's you is because someone else says your name. Now I just assume someone with a long, involved handle that seems like they know their way around is you, but if 50 people start doing it, what am I supposed to do when 40 of them don't update their handle history?
By real name, I mean a log in name. So if Crispix Attacks wants to have his login be "Crispix Attacks", then that's what it is and can't be changed. I would never suggest that it has to be his real name. But his display name can be whatever he wants. Assuming that my "real" name refers to logins, then I would prefer if there was one login for each member and you could see the login by hovering over the display name.
Just to note that other than the tool tip, this is exactly how it is now...
I've just recently noticed that the Tags are getting used more and more for humor. Like Obits for a David Ortiz article or HOF for Matt Wieters. I don't use Tags for anything, but if anyone does, then they'll get a bunch of worthless articles. I know this has been done for a while now, but I would rather this stop.
I do this, but only because tags are useless. I'd stop in a heartbeat if someone used them and it caused an issue.
I'm going to have to ask for an example here. What is there running now?
Jim's Lab Notes
Notes in a Minor Key
Transaction Oracle
Newsblog
Primate Studies
Hall of Merit
Where is there an unclear demarcation? Site stuff, MiL, transactions, general, original stat work, hall of merit. Am I missing something?
(And while I'm looking at the main nav: "Stuff"? Which doesn't point to Jim's Lab Notes?! See, Jeff, it's confusing as ####, and makes no sense.)
And I think I'm a pretty savvy user in general.
There are hundreds of Primates who've changed their screen names over the years, and yet for some reason I'm the only one who seems to get singled out for this.
I singled you out, apologies, I could have picked any of a dozen people.
That's cool, but no apology was needed, since my comment was more of an observation than a complaint.
But in 10 years I've changed my handle all of about three or four times, and again, my screen name history is not only on my member name page, but it's advertised right in my handle, for Crissakes. You know who "St. Nick" is; when people reply to my posts the great majority of them refer to my real name (as you just did); and anyone who doesn't know it, but cares to know can find out with one bleeping click.
BS you've changed your name "three or four times", you've changed it three times in the last two months, at least.
For the record, I've been JOSN since the first week of the baseball season. Before that I was "Moscow in the Bleachers" for a good six months or so. And before that I was simply "Andy" for the previous 9-odd years, even going back to the old "Clutch Hits" days when you could post under any name you wanted without going through the bureaucracy. And BTW you can blame Szym for that "Moscow" moniker, since he was the one who came up with it.
If everyone did like you and put their handles into the handle history, there'd be no problem. You'll notice that that was the entirety of my suggestion, to do so programmatically. My profile has every screen name I've used, but I'll bet that of those who've changed, less than 20% do this. Let's just check Harold...nope. Ditto for Peng (and yes, he's Softball Playing Human, I only know this for sure because I remember the thread where he posted "I'm going to use this reference".)
As I said, the only reason I didn't do this from the beginning is that I had no idea how to do it. If it were made into an automated feaure, that would be fine with me.
One of the reasons I picked you is exactly because you pick off the wall ####, and the only reason I know it's you is because someone else says your name. Now I just assume someone with a long, involved handle that seems like they know their way around is you, but if 50 people start doing it, what am I supposed to do when 40 of them don't update their handle history?
As any Yankee fan knows, "Jolly Old St. Nick" is Sterling's melodious / godawful moniker for Nick Swisher, used mainly when he belts one of his rare home runs. That's just for the record, too.
And as for those who switch handles without listing their prior names, it doesn't particularly bother me, but again, just make it either mandatory or automated and the problem is solved.
I meant "personal" laptops. I use my cell phone as a modem for laptop I use while at work. I'm pretty sure they can't see that. Sorry for not being clear. And for the asterisks.
Is that a euphemism for exotic dancer, Diamond Joe Bivens?
I learned this weekend whilst talking to a Yankee fan friend. Is a Tex message a Texiera home run as well?
Having an unofficial catchall politics thread isn't bad. There will always be some tendency to political threads, since the site attracts argumentative people by nature.
I'm not argumentative. I wonder what my attraction is to this place.
I fully understand what you say about the site organization. The nice part of taking a break from updates is it gives perspective. I've been able to step back a little to look and think about things. I agree about Blogpen, Newsstand, and Blog. One of my priorities is simplifying the groupings.
I have some things I've been playing around with and will start sharing some things in the new work/sandbox/beta area I'm putting together.
You mean like the one that has been here for the past 3 years??
naa
Didn't Sterling change his Swisher HR call to "Swishalicious" last week?
Didn't Sterling change his Swisher HR call to "Swishalicious" last week?
Sorry, Repoz, but that one's a hangover from his days in Oakland, and I only go with the gen-u-wine Bronx originals.
Is a Tex message a Texiera home run as well?
Yeah, but he also uses it for Tex's daily fielding spectacular, so it gets a bit more diluted. I think if I listened to Sterling more often instead of watching 90% of the games on TV I'd go insane at an even faster pace, much as I enjoy his over the top style.
It threw me when "Why Can't We All Just Get Along?" showed up. I saw you in several threads, but it wasn't until someone called you Andy that I realized it was you. Now, I'm not really a regular, but I'm not just a lurker either. Maybe I don't post enough to matter, I don't know. But as you admit, you didn't have your history on your page, either (and I do understand why).
Anyway, I'd like to echo above that I only used your name because it was the most recent one that I knew about. If I had posted my initial post a day later, I probably would have used Crispix since he changed his to Jeff Frwcr or whatever, and I also didn't realize that it wasn't a new poster for some days.
OK, I'm done with this, too. I meant no harm.
This site has lots of people who post during work hours. I don't we should expect that members will follow any guidelines that are handed down by admins here.
I think that the NBA playoffs thread is a great example of a member taking the initiative to consolidate discussion. If an admin had posted a thread and gave some warning that playoff discussion should only happen here, I doubt it would have worked as well. Some have complained about the thread, but I think the biggest complaint is not that it exists, but that the Hot Topics bar has limited space and that it's somewhat annoying that a basketball thread is occupying it.
Of course you all could have used the forum that has been around for the past three years.
naa
Given the reality of how people participate here, I think the NBA thread was a great solution.
This is one area where I am basically on board with the whole property rights thing, in that if I don't like what Dan does with the site, I am free to post elsewhere. I have brought it up mostly because there are always comments on random threads that say "I'm really glad kevin is gone" (like this thread) so I usally say "I'm not glad he is gone and wish he were still here." It is odd you single me out, considering what some other people have said to Dan about it.
I think it could have been handled better, but again, it is Jim and Dan's site, so I can leave if I don''t like it.
I give myself a C+. The "+" is for starting the NBA thread, which might drop me to C- to many.
Yeah, dammit, what's a guy got to do to get singled out around here?
i dunno, i guess i wasn't reading close enough, but for some reason i didn't figger out who jolly old st. nick was for weeks. it's a minor irritant, it won't chase me from the site, but i don't like feeling like i need a scorecard to keep up with handles.
I thought all you Red Sox fans stood up for each other.
Well, can you figure it now, when I include "(now, with Screen Name history)" right there in my handle? Anything else? Would you like me to move the hotel a bit to the left?
You've got to know your players to know your game.
okay, skip it. sorry i said anything, basil.
I'm 22 years younger than Andy and 31 or 32 years younger than HW. I am also 10 years younger than kevin.
I guess I am one of those guys with "Old Poster's Skills."
This is cool, though--it goes well with Ray and tfbg9 thinking I was a woman.
The Rangers and the Longhorns both suck even more than your mom.
Your my age? I thought you were younger.
I thought it was a good idea, and then Dan stopped doing it. Who didn't receive it well?
Easy mistake.
The Rangers and the Longhorns both suck even more than your mom.
I'd give it back to you, but you're a Philly fan if I'm not mistaken. I just wouldn't feel right mocking Temple and UPenn athletics; it'd be like making fun of Baylor...but five times worse.
I am sort of a BTF Rohrschach (sp?) test.
I am a couple of years older than you are. Older than most guys here but not quite in codger territory yet.
You are very mistaken. Maybe you have me mixed up with a 63-year-old woman who likes Cole Hamels.
So's your...nah.
Oh well, now you've gone from memorably mockable to non-entity. You and GGC should form a club or something.
Edmundo?
Maybe that's a way for Furtado to get some more money flowing...sell a BTF program with all top posters name(s), uniform number(s) and stats and history. Five bucks, and it comes with a stubby little golf pencil.
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