Missing poster formation; the lost please check in

[darksabre]

But there are plenty of topics available to fill the space.  We're just trying to stay away from one of them in order to keep things reasonably friendly.

Maybe. I'm not so sure. Has there been a more popular thread than the politics thread in the time it was alive? I'd love to see some board stats on it. 

[That Aud Smell]

Shrader left . . . . <> He does feel bad about his role in this board imploding

 

What's with the implosion talk?

 

But it goes deeper than that. In SDS' epic rant/interview with Gibby post, he said that it's the negativity about the team, from posters like me, that really drives people away. People have told him that. So I think his concept of the board is one of positive fans cheering on the boys, through good and bad seasons. A lot of the tensions with SDS here, IMHO, is that the board falls well short of that.

 

I would suggest Scott take a few minutes over the holidays to consider why he started the board(s) in the first place, what he wanted them to be and come back after the first of the year with a clear mission statement for the board and a set of rules. Then enforce them. If he doesn't want criticism of the team, so be it.

 

This really is the biggest bunch of malarkey going, PA.

 

And, yes, I realize he may get the Titans into the playoffs this year.

 

This might be pretty close to the truth. A lot of people sold their soul to the devil and now in the second post-tank season, the team is still bottom tier. The bill is coming due.

 

Wait, no: This is the biggest load of malarkey. 

 

This thread is turning into your greatest (s)hits, of sorts.

 

(And, yes, I agree: Your voice and role on the board are valuable and valued.)

 

I've been a member since 2005 . . . I'll probably continue to lurk and check-in often, but won't post much outside of the soccer thread.

 

Good to see you, sir - I will look for you in the soccer thread.

 

This is the first time I can say that I've seen such a change in the overall feel of the board.

 

I just don't see it. Maybe it's because, following the Pat Kane thread, I steer clear of any of the disputatious OT stuff. Not worth it.

[bob_sauve28]

Maybe. I'm not so sure. Has there been a more popular thread than the politics thread in the time it was alive? I'd love to see some board stats on it. 

Ya, but that thread had a bad Corsi number 

[darksabre]

Ya, but that thread had a bad Corsi number 

:w00t: 

 

Just looking at some quick numbers, the Awesome thread, started around the same time, has about 9,000 posts. The Politics thread has 29,000 posts. That's not nothing, is it? 

Even the complaint thread, which is nearly 4 years older than either of those threads, only has about 14000 posts. Has anything ever been as popular on this Sabres forum than Politics? 

[WildCard]

Ya, but that thread had a bad Corsi number

nailed it :lol:

[That Aud Smell]

Ya, but that thread had a bad Corsi number 

 

Outstanding.

[sabills]

I think this issue is really the same issue as the "Making Sabrespace more approachable to newcomers" thing from last year. There are a lot of people on here (or, at least, there were) who had made this place very personal to them. They didn't/don't view this as a public sports forum, but more a place to talk to friends about their lives and hobbies. Sure, the main hobby they talked about was hockey, but it had evolved beyond that. Its not that they were trying to be exclusive, but like anyone who finds themselves as the newcomer amongst a group of old friends, sometimes it takes a while to break through and become a part of the crew, to speak the language that had been developed over long years together. 

 

Personally I don't care about the politics thing here almost at all. That thread was a distilled version of the rest of the forum, so it was pretty inaccessible for me to jump into. A couple times here and there I would post, but I wasn't really willing to do the research necessary to be a real contributor in there. But the problem was you had this group of people who viewed the forum, and that post specifically, as a personal conversation. Someone stepping in and saying, "you can't talk about this any more" felt to them like a real invasion of privacy. Personal, not business. 

 

I get where the mods came from, and I even agree somewhat. And I think the rest of the posters could have been smarter about how they dealt with it and not brought it up in every conversation on this board. That was just gas on the fire. I am guilty of this too, though I was/am just trying to be funny about it, even if I'm not succeeding. And this site is SDS's, he can do how he likes. I do think, though, that the moderating staff could have been a bit more transparent about it all, and that would have helped.

[SwampD]

Couching your language?  Are you kidding?  You predicted that someone would get suspended for something that no one has ever gotten suspended for. 

 

Don't engage in trolling if you don't want to get called on it.

 

As for the posters who have left -- those were the long-time posters that immediately came to mind.  The total is of course much greater than 3 or 4, and saying so is just throwing up a straw man.  There have been many others who have remarked about the negative tone created by the politics thread.  People come to a message board because they enjoy the conversation.  When the place is suffused in bad vibes due to hysterical political discussion, then the place isn't enjoyable and they stop coming.

 

If you aren't agitating for a political thread, why do you keep dropping in clever little digs like "our new president is a POS" in multiple threads?

 

SDS isn't the one who needs to engage in self-introspection here.

I really hope you take your own advise.

[Samson's Flow]

I think the Politics thread is being unfairly labeled as the boogeyman here. This place has been a black hole of negative vibes for 6 or 7 years now, especially on the hockey front. There's a reason OT threads (not just the Politics thread) have taken off. We never had OT threads in 2007. But there's very little fun, positive hockey talk to be had right now. If people want to blame the politics thread for the board's tone, that's their choice, but if the hockey talk was any good we wouldn't be having this discussion at all. The politics thread is easy to blame, but it's not the only catalyst for people leaving this forum. Plenty of historically good members were already out the door long before a politics thread was even conceived. What thread are we going to blame next? 

You're not wrong. I think the only OT threads we had in 2007 was the Complaint Thursday thread and Fantastic Friday thread. When the team is good people are far more willing to talk exclusively hockey.

[woods-racer]

Animal House is overrated, but you still have to see it

You sir, should be flogged for such heresy. Overrated.....Ppfftt.

[bob_sauve28]

You sir, should be flogged for such heresy. Overrated.....Ppfftt.

The Blues Brothers was better  B-)

[darksabre]

The Blues Brothers was better B-)

I agree with this.

[LTS]

To be clear, I wasn't assigning causality, just reiterating my stance that it's a really bad look.

 

Maybe it'll work out in the long run, but I'm the short run the closure of the thread is having the exact opposite of the desired effect. The spillover into other threads is both significant and obnoxious (and I say this as someone who generally enjoys political debate). Maybe it'll work out in the long run, but the people who left because of the thread aren't coming back, and in the meantime we're losing and/or alienating a host of others.

 

Having the politics thread in the first place may have been opening Pandora's Box with unintended consequences...but it's open now, and there's no putting everything back inside. I suspect there's a hope among the mods that the closure is causing only temporary friction that will dissipate with time and everything will be back to normal times from before the thread's existence. I not only find this unlikely, but I think it may be causing irreparable damage that doesn't simply get fixed even if the thread is re-opened. So we get the worst of all worlds.

Reading comprehension. WildCard and I were responding to a post saying there shouldn't be any OT threads on the main forum, that it should be exclusively hockey talk. It wasn't about the politics thread.

 

Edit: Don't have time to respond to the rest at the moment, but I shall.

 

I understand why you say it looks bad.  However, couldn't it be that's the entire problem?  Rather than a group of people working to understand why actions were taken the assumptions based on perceptions began flying around.  The spillover is on those who choose to do it.  I find that immature.  This ideology that somehow people are entitled to voice their opinion whenever and wherever they damn please bothers me.  Fundamentally that may be true but it doesn't come without consequences and it's disrespectful to bring your beef into the lives of others by bringing your cause out of its sandbox and into someone else's.

 

My issue with it is that people are trolling the hockey threads with political references as a form of protest.  I can take or leave the politics thread.  Interesting to read and occasionally contribute, but I don't mind if it's not available to me.  It's the spillover into other threads that frustrates me.

 

No real difference.  That's pretty much what that was anyway.

 

Yep.. you said it.  And that's when it began to impact my enjoyment of the forum.

 

Maybe if "the plan" and "the intent" were communicated to the board before everything was put on double-super-secret probationary lock-down then perhaps there wouldn't have been any issues? How hard would it have been for a mod to start a thread letting the board know what was going on? Do we need to establish an ambassador to the mod staff from the rest of the board proletariat? Do we all have to send the mod staff PMs on our own every time something relevant to the whole board comes up? 

 

Seems to me there was a simple solution here that was deliberately avoided for no good reason. 

 

 

 

Here's the thing.  People are really busy and it's a busy time of the year.  You want an explanation and you might even go so far as to say "they are the Mods and they NEED to do this" but that's not true.  Perhaps they COULD have done that and perhaps it WOULD have helped.  

 

One step further, a thread is created that explains what is going on.  Then that thread becomes the focus point for the reaction of the members.  It breaks down into the debate and name calling and the end result is that nothing has changed.  Or perhaps they post it and lock it.. and then people who feel they MUST comment on things will do so in other threads (like they are now).  It might be that it would have satiated your concerns but only served to annoy and irritate others.

 

Is it also not plausible to think that perhaps the members of this forum, especially those who have been around a long time, placed a little faith into the mod staff and the operators and just go along for the ride?  It seems to me that the political thread gets closed and suddenly the accusations are flying like monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.  The mods have run this place for a LONG time and there's a certain level of faith they should be given when making decisions on how to operate the forum for the benefit of its members.  However, it seems that no one really wanted to put faith in them... instead they began accusing everyone of political silencing, etc.

 

One could argue that both sides (as has been said) are complicit in the escalation of the negativity surrounding this situation but perhaps at this point it's time to go back to what matters and let a little faith get you through.

 

Perhaps we can get back to having fun.... 

[WildCard]

Never saw Blues Brothers, seemed overrated too...

[bob_sauve28]

Never saw Blues Brothers, seemed overrated too...

What?? Maybe you can find a DVD at CVS... :thumbsup:

[Samson's Flow]

Never saw Blues Brothers, seemed overrated too...

Do you just have something against the Belushis? I don't get it.

[darksabre]

Never saw Blues Brothers, seemed overrated too...

That's it, I'm quitting the forum.

[Iron Crotch]

Been around here for over 10 years and I definitely post less than I used to. Most of my posts are in GDTs now. But, I think that is a function of aging and being busier as much as anything. I think there was always disagreement on the board, but IIRC it was more hockey-related disagreements back in the day (e.g., "Darcy suck" vs. "no he doesn't" type of stuff). I think the board used to be much more hockey focused in general and fewer and fewer threads seem to be hockey-related these days. That said, my opinion is if you don't like OT threads just don't click on them and don't post in them. Seems easy enough. I would like the place to be more focused on hockey during the season though.

[PASabreFan]

This really is the biggest bunch of malarkey going, PA.

What part exactly? I don't see anything controversial about my statement. Please elaborate. Otherwise it's just a drive-by insult with no backup.

[dudacek]

Count me in the "politics thread was a symptom" crowd.

 

The other stuff is interesting, but I come here for the hockey talk.

And the hockey talk this fall has not been great.

 

People who used to post a lot about hockey have cut back on those posts, or have stepped away altogether.

Those who do post seem to do so increasingly through a lens of "we suck and we always will"

 

Most people on here love the Sabres like family and but that relationship has gotten dysfunctional.

I'm not sure how many of you still get any joy from following the team any more.

The apathetic reaction to the recent game where we tied it late and Risto won it in OT was a prime example.

 

It's not them. They have some players worth rooting for again and have turned things back in the right direction.

It's us. We're beaten down and we threw in the towel on this season with about eight minutes left in the final preseason practice.

 

The Sabres survived Jack's ankle. I'm not so sure about the board.

Edited December 22, 2016 by dudacek

[That Aud Smell]

But it goes deeper than that. In SDS' epic rant/interview with Gibby post, he said that it's the negativity about the team, from posters like me, that really drives people away. People have told him that. So I think his concept of the board is one of positive fans cheering on the boys, through good and bad seasons. A lot of the tensions with SDS here, IMHO, is that the board falls well short of that.

 

I would suggest Scott take a few minutes over the holidays to consider why he started the board(s) in the first place, what he wanted them to be and come back after the first of the year with a clear mission statement for the board and a set of rules. Then enforce them. If he doesn't want criticism of the team, so be it.

This really is the biggest bunch of malarkey going, PA.

What part exactly? I don't see anything controversial about my statement. Please elaborate. Otherwise it's just a drive-by insult with no backup.

 

The idea that Scott desires a bunch of fan/cheer boys and gals on this board, and can't tolerate or abide criticism of the team (players, management, owners). I just can't disagree with that more. That take is a product of fitting cherry-picked parts of reality into a narrative that suits a specific outlook on this board, the team, the universe.

 

I am confident that the circumstances giving rise to this conversation are fairly mundane, ad hoc, and even a bit cobbled together. There's no grand agenda being hid behind the arass (besides, you only get stabbed by an emo prince when you pull that sort of thing).

 

Best I can tell, there's this guy with a love of Buffalo sports, IT chops, and a restive entrepreneurial streak - so he created these boards. He does the best he can to manage them in what little spare time he has. That's it. The business about "Scott needs to search his soul and figure out what sort of forum he wants this to be" is, to me, the highest order of nonsense. FFS. It's just a hockey message board with a fun and fairly varied group of regular posters (some of whom come and go, some of whom are missed more than others).

 

And none of that was an insult. That's a disagreement.

 

The other stuff is interesting, but I come here for the hockey talk.

And the hockey talk this fall has not been great.

 

<snip>

 

I just haven't seen this to any appreciable degree. But others have. So, I guess maybe I'm just tuning it out or glossing over it?

Edited December 22, 2016 by That Aud Smell

[Sabres Fan in NS]

PA,

 

Up thread in one of your reply's to nfreeman ... Thanks for that.

 

I deal with far worse in real life, though.  And this place is part of my 'escape'.

 

I so wish there was no tank.  The team is recovering from it, but this board I'm not sure.  The animosity built to epic proportions in those lost seasons and it lingers today.

 

My hope is that when the team(s) play better the talk will be better.

 

I participated in the politics thread quite often and viewed it as a diversion.  It was nasty at times, but not too far over the top at most times.  I will admit that some posts (note I did not say posters, as it should never be about the poster) got my dander up, but that is on me.

 

I am somewhat surprised that the politics thread lasted as long as it did.  It was started to discuss the 2012 election and just hung around after that until we ended up in the 2016 cycle, which really started in 2014, if not earlier.  I am glad that it is locked and archived.  For the record, I do not want it back.

 

I consider you all 'friends' and we all know the 2 things friends never discuss.  We will see how the new religion thread goes, but so far, so good.  I have a feeling that the good discussion in that thread is complete and it will soon go down hill.  Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I do think a thread like that can only go so far.

 

Finally, I really do hope that what nfreeman said about chz quitting the board is not the case.  Her hockey knowledge is acute and her contributions to the board played a big part in my deciding to join.

 

I blame the tank for all this and I hope we can get past it.

 

Never saw Blues Brothers, seemed overrated too...

 

I bet he floats ... burn him!!

[pastajoe]

Think Chillean nailed it. We've become bitchy and irritable.

 

We need to stop getting offended, have some chocolate, everyone go get laid, and come back

 

 

Animal House was great when it came out, it took movie comedy to a new level.  Right up there with Slap Shot.  I took my first movie date to it.  I had to try to not laugh at the cruder scenes because I didn't know how she'd react.  Blues Brothers was disappointing because I expected them to play the songs that were on their album Briefcase Full of Blues.

 

I never understand when people say they left because of a political thread.  If you don't like what's being said, don't open it and stick to the hockey threads.  I left the PPP threads because it just became a den of personal insults whenever I gave my left of center views.  And if the political thread was left unlocked, the commentary wouldn't end up in non-political threads.

[PASabreFan]

The idea that Scott desires a bunch of fan/cheer boys and gals on this board, and can't tolerate or abide criticism of the team (players, management, owners). I just can't disagree with that more. That take is a product of fitting cherry-picked parts of reality into a narrative that suits a specific outlook on this board, the team, the universe.

I'm just taking SDS at his word. That posters tell him they leave his sites because of negativity. I assume he wants less negativity. Logic? Is criticism different than negativity? Can you offer criticism without being negative? Does it have to be "constructive" criticism? I've been accused of criticizing the Sabres so much I'm not really a fan, which always sounds to me too much like, "America, love it or leave it." I can dissent all day against our government and still love the country.

 

I'm just waiting for good hockey people to run the show and get some results. Jury is out on Murray, but I'm reasonably hopeful. At least, as far as we can tell, he's making the hockey decisions. Haven't heard much about Terry hand-picking DD or convening a meeting with the power play unit.

 

 

Best I can tell, there's this guy with a love of Buffalo sports, IT chops, and a restive entrepreneurial streak - so he created these boards. He does the best he can to manage them in what little spare time he has. That's it. The business about "Scott needs to search his soul and figure out what sort of forum he wants this to be" is, to me, the highest order of nonsense. FFS. It's just a hockey message board with a fun and fairly varied group of regular posters (some of whom come and go, some of whom are missed more than others).

"Search is soul" is a little melodramatic, don't you think? He's convening people on Skype to talk about these issues, so I think he probably takes it more seriously than you're portraying. I think he should have the board he wants. He just needs to tell us what that is. After so many years, maybe this is a good time to re-examine it. I really don't think my suggestion deserved the snark you and nfreeman attached to it.

[That Aud Smell]

I'm just taking SDS at his word. That posters tell him they leave his sites because of negativity. I assume he wants less negativity. Logic? Is criticism different than negativity? Can you offer criticism without being negative? Does it have to be "constructive" criticism? I've been accused of criticizing the Sabres so much I'm not really a fan, which always sounds to me too much like, "America, love it or leave it." I can dissent all day against our government and still love the country.

 

There is a difference between negativity that tends to repel people and thoughtful criticism.

 

 

I'm just waiting for good hockey people to run the show and get some results. Jury is out on Murray, but I'm reasonably hopeful. At least, as far as we can tell, he's making the hockey decisions. Haven't heard much about Terry hand-picking DD or convening a meeting with the power play unit.

 

Hear, hear.

 

Fwiw, and the mods may note, I used to fairly pillory you (or try to) for your cynical skepticism about what was goin' on with Uncle Terry. Several years later, I've come to see a lot of validity in what you sensed was going on. I'm not in total agreement, mind you, but I think you were more right than wrong on that whole meddling, etc. front.

 

"Search is soul" is a little melodramatic, don't you think? He's convening people on Skype to talk about these issues, so I think he probably takes it more seriously than you're portraying. I think he should have the board he wants. He just needs to tell us what that is. After so many years, maybe this is a good time to re-examine it. I really don't think my suggestion deserved the snark you and nfreeman attached to it.

 

Maybe a little over the top. I think he offered the conference call because he's a serious and diligent guy who is trying to put a bothersome issue to rest in connection with a hobbyist venture he has. Frankly, I'm sort of bummed for him that he feels he needs to do that. I think it was the commute detail that landed me in the "lay off Scott, would ya?" camp.