Michael wrote:TheoSqua wrote:I think the one thing you have to remember is what actually makes an internet community flourish. Generally what causes increased activity is having multiple personalities that can weigh different sides of a discussion. Like Card's Talk was generally the optimistics vs the pessimistics. Once most of the optimistics (as in those who didn't want to spend the entire time complaining about the team) started going elsewhere the site starting to become stagnant and repetative.
The same is for GRB. But I think the site is really split more between the stat gurus and the scouting / casual fans. What makes the discussion fun is seeing different viewpoints on different subjects. Lately, it's been more statistical debate that is really pretty similar.
Don't get me wrong, i'm a total stat geek and I enjoy these threads, I just don't feel like we're getting as much of the other side as we used to, and once you isolate a certain persona of your community and they no longer enjoy a certain aspect of the community is when you will start to lose quality posters.
I'm not really sure what i'd do to fix that, and this is Michael's forum, so he can do as he pleases.
First off, I appreciate your thoughts on GRB and I hope you continue to post them.
That said you highlighted a small pet peeve of mine.
Just because a poster isn't stat guru doesn't automatically make them a scout oriented poster. Scout posters say things like:
"He's dropping his arm slot and it's flatting out his fastball."
"It looks like Rolen is cheating on his fast ball. I suspect there's still an issue with his shoulder."
I absolutely love posts like this and I wish we had more of them.
I think the issue is how focused should BT threads be discussing actual baseball topics. As I said earlier we have several competing needs on this board and I think we have to find a balance. Unfortunately it's tricky.
Again, thanks for your thoughts.
Aye, I completely agree. What I meant by that was that the groups and personas are split between the stat guys and the Scouts And Casual fans, seperating the scouts and casual fans. The reason I put them together is they both tend to post with the same basis: through observation. The biggest difference is that scout-types are far more knowlegeable and far more versed in their ability to observe the game, whereas the casual fan can say "Mulder isn't doing too good." and possibly give you reasons based on observation, a scout type would take the same observation "Mulder isn't doign too good" and break down the possible reasons based on his expereince and observations.
I think the two are completely different, but the perspective that they add to the forum, that of obersvation instead of analysis, is the counter-idea to the stat guys.
My personal favorite threads, and what i try to do when I make posts quality posts, are the ones that incorporate observation and stats. That's what makes the forum so fun. Poster A makes a thread about how it looks like Player A is absolutely smoking the ball. Poster B points out that Player A's vorp is 7 right now and that his age similarity is very close to Player B. Poster C makes a comment about how he watched Player B in the minors and believes that Player A and Player B are completely differerent because Player A has an uppercut swing and pulls the ball and Player B tends to drive the ball opposite field. Poster B posts the splits for both players to show that Player A does indeed hit the ball differently than Player B and whala you have a quality thread that incorporated the casual fan (Poster A) the stat geek (Poster B) and the knowlegable scout guy (Poster C).
My concern is that Poster A, the guy who started the thread, is afraid to post because all he knows is that Player A is mashing the ball. He doesn't know why, or how much better he's doing outside the normal stats, and if he feels like he isn't contributing to the forum because all he knows is what he's seen on T.V. then that is a quality post that is lost.
Part of this is just because of the sheer quality and knowlege that some of the stat guys in this forum have. Planet Pujolsian is the one who invited me to this forum, but RC21 and Skmskw are the type of posters that caused me to get hooked to reading baseball talk. I've made several attempts to PM a couple of stat guys to try to learn where they get their stat information and what I can do to start being able to do research like that. It was a while ago, but neither replied to my PMs. So I make posts when I can, but if I don't feel i'm contributing to a post I don't make a post. Maybe that's why I've got 600 posts to the several thousand that others have, but if all the casual posters start acting more like me then this forum will lose a big part of the community that makes it so entertaining.
So the whole moving of threads really isn't the problem, nor is it really all that big a deal. But when a large base of your forum community already feels somewhat intimidated about posting information that they might not feel is contributing to the forum the last thing you want to do is add another means of intimidation. And that's what I feel that the toughening up on post topics and moving threads has created.
I understand that you want to make this an elite forum with a lot of knowlegable posting and information, but unless you plan on just getting rid of the interaction part of the forum and having 15-20 people who argue over the same points over and over consist of the material that is posted, you have to do what you can to help include and encourage the casual poster to keep contributing to the forum. They might not add as much as some of the great posters that bring people to the forum, but without them you don't actually have a forum.
Now with all of that said, I want to make clear that I have no problems with the current moderators at grb. In fact I think this is one of the best moderated forums i've ever visited and I want to give you mad props for that. None of this has really become a problem yet, but i've spent a ton of time moderating and running internet communities and i see this as something that will potentially cause the forum to decline, and i'd rather address the issue now than wait until it becomes a serious problem. I'm well aware that the knowlegable stat guys is what makes this forum so unique and that you have to cater to them (maybe not even cater, because that's what you want) to keep the forum enjoyable, but on the other hand there are a lot of quality posters on this thread who are voicing concern, and if they stop posting as often because they don't feel comfortable giving their opinions than you will have lost a very valueable asset to the forum.
