RJ in TO - 19 February 2012 11:02 PM

Also, this was posted by Dan about two years ago, in response to questions about political thread closures:

We’ve reached the point at which the nastiness and visibility of political threads is hurting our reputation in the larger media community.  Yes, our political threads are generally more polite than Freeper/Kos threads, but we’re not a political site and it’s not what we wish to be known for.

Other off-topic threads haven’t been moved for the simple reason that they don’t require constant babysitting - there’s little chance a thread that turns into Star Wars or classic movies is going to have a couple of people throw bombs and then get 100 posts of people yelling at each other in an hour.

I realize that you’re merely acting here as Dan’s de facto press secretary, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  But it might be nice if you’d at least acknowledge that in this thread, the main “nastiness” was instigated by Dan’s hyperbolic comment about school teachers.  It didn’t come from any of the people you likely think are destroying your enjoyment of baseball.  I’m sure I’m one of your arch-villains here, but I didn’t utter a peep in response to Dan’s comment, choosing instead to let it die its own natural death.

And if you don’t like political threads intruding upon Hot Topics, here are two easy suggestions:

1. Ignore them.  It can be done.  Others do it all the time, I do it all the time,  and so can you. 

2. Tell Repoz to stop instigating them with all of his pinata post articles.  Dan could put a stop to the great majority of political threads a lot more efficiently by simply reining in his own employee.  He doesn’t do that for the simple reason that he’s not stupid, and he knows that a thread that attracts 7000 posts is a moneymaker for BTF.

What makes all this doubly ridiculous is that this is a controversy entirely of Szymborski’s making.  It began and ended all in his head.  When I read veer bender’s initial post, I definitely didn’t consider it in the nature of a threat.  Moreover, if you think about it, how could it be any kind of real threat?  Szymborski posts under his real name on a site anyone can access.  I’m sure the employer in q. knows he’s connected with this place.  If he’s worried about what his employer might think, that’s a hell of a posture to assume—full personal ID disclosure on an open site.  It’s entirely of his own doing that he’s left himself vulnerable to anything getting back to his employer.  As a judge would tell him, your remedy is in your hands, counselor. 

The main inciters here to off-topic conversations are those who run this place. 

And that “bandwidth” is located here, in the spot that the admins created for the specific use of those who want to engage in political discussion on a baseball site.

So why are threads on Starlin Castro’s rape conviction, Jeremy Lin’s (not even a baseball player) name being used in a racial pun, etc. etc. etc. being created on a weekly basis?

tshipman - 19 February 2012 11:35 PM

And that “bandwidth” is located here, in the spot that the admins created for the specific use of those who want to engage in political discussion on a baseball site.

So why are threads on Starlin Castro’s rape conviction, Jeremy Lin’s (not even a baseball player) name being used in a racial pun, etc. etc. etc. being created on a weekly basis?

 

A weekly basis?  I’d say that Repoz’s average is closer to one a day.  You wonder if Jim or Dan ever takes him to the woodshed for his part in starting these mean old political discussions, or do they think that he’s merely some innocent bystander whose page hit stats are generated by Transaction Analysis articles?

Jolly Old St. Neck Wound, Moral Idiot - 19 February 2012 11:27 PM

I realize that you’re merely acting here as Dan’s de facto press secretary, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  But it might be nice if you’d at least acknowledge that in this thread, the main “nastiness” was instigated by Dan’s hyperbolic comment about school teachers.  It didn’t come from any of the people you likely think are destroying your enjoyment of baseball.  I’m sure I’m one of your arch-villains here, but I didn’t utter a peep in response to Dan’s comment, choosing instead to let it die its own natural death.

Yes, Andy.  I’m Dan’s press secretary.  I’m glad you’ve finally figured that out after all these years.  And I’m glad you noted that secret subtext I asked Dan to slip in there two years ago about the destruction of my love of baseball.  It’s wonderful to know that you can see so many imaginary things.

And if you don’t like political threads intruding upon Hot Topics, here are two easy suggestions:
1. Ignore them.  It can be done.  Others do it all the time, I do it all the time,  and so can you.

I do ignore them.  Dan made that comment I quoted, indicating the damage that these political threads were causing to the site, and I took him seriously and stopped participating in them.  Amazingly enough, it hasn’t hurt my enjoyment of the site.  As for the idea that you ignore political threads all the time, I find that to be an amusing notion, since your name makes more than its share of appearances in the “last post by” section of Hot Topics.

2. Tell Repoz to stop instigating them with all of his pinata post articles.  Dan could put a stop to the great majority of political threads a lot more efficiently by simply reining in his own employee.  He doesn’t do that for the simple reason that he’s not stupid, and he knows that a thread that attracts 7000 posts is a moneymaker for BTF.

Dan could put a stop to a good chunk of those threads by asking Repoz to not post them, and the participants could put a stop to all of them by:
1.  Not electing to take the submitter’s bait, and
2.  Not taking the bait offered by others in the thread

Leave Repoz alone.  He’s my man—he’s the Yogi Berra of ..well, of something or other.  On the other hand, he is, at best, if political discussion are categorically repugnant,  a wrong-doing catspaw, like the announcer in the Lin dealy thing.  There’s so much of the Claude Rains character in Casablanca around here, you wonder how anyone can be righteous with a straight face.

RJ in TO - 19 February 2012 11:48 PM

Dan could put a stop to a good chunk of those threads by asking Repoz to not post them, and the participants could put a stop to all of them by:
1.  Not electing to take the submitter’s bait, and
2.  Not taking the bait offered by others in the thread

The current events/politics threads are not populated solely by the same ten people.  Telling 30+ commenters not to have or express an opinion seems kind of the wrong way around the problem.

> Dan could put a stop to a good chunk of those threads by asking Repoz to not post them, and the participants could put a stop to all of them by:
>1.  Not electing to take the submitter’s bait, and
>2.  Not taking the bait offered by others in the thread

Marge: What happened here?
Homer: Oh, nothing, Marge.  Just a little incident involving the bogeyman!
      [He tosses the shotgun aside and it discharges]
    Of course, none of this would have happened if you had been here
    to keep me from acting stupid.

Repoz is the Yogi Berra of the Terre Haute Homeowners Association.

The Yogi Berra of Bad News?

I’m jumping in to defend Repoz as well.  The guy is by far the most prolific “contributor” to the site, in terms of submitting articles.  Like it or not, some of those articles are going to relate back to “real life” issues as well, and I don’t think it’s fair to Repoz, or beneficial to BTF, to expect him (or any other submitter, for that matter) to try and decide which articles are going to spur legitimate baseball discussions and which are going to go off-topic.

A few other points:

-If you go back and look at newsblog and look at all the articles Repoz submits, you’ll quickly notice that all of them are baseball-related, and most of them fade into oblivion due to lack of posts.  I think people are wildly overestimating how many of those articles are “political”- because the political ones are the ones that attract a lot of heat and as a result, end up spending more time on hot topics.

-If you’re sick of steroids threads, you might as well turn your interests over to Parcheesi Think Factory, or Marbles Think Factory.  We’ll be reading steroids threads until we (1) die or (2) the site dies, whichever happens first, because pretty much every Hall of Fame discussion into the foreseeable future is going to end up centering largely on steroids.  Alternatively, you can blame Ryan Braun.

-I think it’s completely unfair to suggest that the Starlin Castro rape story was inappropriate for this website.  Sure, given the facts involved, there was more than a possibility that the subject matter would turn to the politics of rape- but it’s still a legitimate story relating to baseball, the fact that the Cubs starting shortstop might be in legal trouble.  Hell, the (sort of) same thing happened with Ben Roesthlisberger and it had a major effect on the NFL season.  Now, nobody would have guessed that it would turn into a 70 page thread touching on just about every hot political issue under the sun.  And you definitely can’t blame the submitter for that.

-Personally, I agree that the Jeremy Lin/ESPN headline site has no place on the BTF mainland, but you can’t blame Repoz for that one (unless he’s the person with the keys who approved putting it up.  I don’t really get how that process works.)

Now, I don’t participate regularly enough in political threads to register on Dan’s axis of whatever, but I do find it strange that all of Dan’s named bete noires are on the liberal end of things.  And to call them uncivil is right out, as far as I’m concerned.  Passionate, sure.

The political and off-topic threads are the real lifeblood of this place.  There’s only so much baseball news and only so much you can say about it.  I’ve learned plenty of stuff from the other side of the aisle during the political discussions.  It would be a real shame if that interplay were cut off because of a lack of moderator SELF-control.

I commend Repoz in his mastery of the proper use of accelerants. (and I’m not talking about huffing, either!)

The point of those examples was not that Repoz should not post those articles.  The point of those examples was that while the official policy printed up someplace may be that the site is about baseball only, in fact, articles are posted on the main site at least once a week that have only a tangential relationship to baseball.  In the case of the ESPN/Lin thread, zero relationship to baseball. 

People are angry not because there is a stated policy on only discussing baseball on this website, but because the thread was taken down by a site administrator who said something vitriolic about teachers and regretted it later.

Szymborski should not be an editor on the newsstand, because he cannot control himself on the political threads.  If you want to state that there shouldn’t be political threads on the site, that’s fine, but that’s not the established culture of the board, nor does it fit the types of articles that regularly get submitted.

I don’t think it’s fair to Repoz, or beneficial to BTF, to expect him (or any other submitter, for that matter) to try and decide which articles are going to spur legitimate baseball discussions and which are going to go off-topic.

Well, I’m sure Repoz can probably guess what class of article will wind up in the weeds.  I want some of the discussions to wind up in the weeds!  That’s what makes this a community, the interplay of ideas which go beyond the mere facts of the case.  I would probably still visit the site if it weren’t so damn interesting, but I wouldn’t spend anywhere near the amount of time that I do.

This may be what drives everyone nuts, but I think that a position halfway between Guapo and Andy is perfectly reasonable regarding the Repoz political threads threads.  Although I don’t think that’s the primary issue here.