What happened to the site

[javy knows my name]

I dont feel it is a case of too much hostility really, I think this place now just lacks interesting posters.

 

Back in the heyday of Cubs.com there was always something interesting going on it seems. An "I put everyone on ignore" thread (that was me),a fake death,poster of the week,dynastic vs nowacrat etc. I probably spent a solid week of my life just arguing with Lowblow.

 

Now you have a group of 3-4 smarmy posters with no sense of humor,who lack any sort of interesting posting skills,dragging down every thread.There are still a couple of interesting people here, but even when a thread they post in starts to be somewhat interesting,the omnipresent group drags the discussion into the gutter. It gets stale in a hurry.

 

This site needs new blood.

 

My last 2 cents,I promise.

 

We don't have new blood bc registrations were broken for a long time.

 

But nsbb started largely bc cubs.com sucked. If you want this place to resemble cubs.com in its 'heyday' you may be alone on the wrong side of the discussion.

 

That would really be a new thing for him, too

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Show me a list of the top, oh, 10 or 20 highest post counts on NSBB, and then try finding names on that list that ARE NOT persistently aggressive with their opinions.

It's stuff like this that gives off the "ridiculous crap" vibe.

[jersey cubs fan]

Fred is persistently passive.

[CubmanPi]

I don't think peoples' feelings need to be coddled or protected. If something mock-worthy gets mocked, accept it and deal with it as you wish. I agree with the premise that concentrated ridiculousness needs to be subject to some form of backlash from peers.

 

The problem is drawing the line on when it's okay and how much. Too often it turns into a pissing contest and things get derailed.

 

I'll use the Carlos Pena thread as an example. It's cherry-picking one of many threads, but I think it's a good microcosm of a lot of thread derailments that happen here:

Just tied it up in the bottom of 9. Nice.

He still sucks.

 

Hard-hitting analysis there.

Vinestal made a worthless observation that contributed nothing (but was still on topic), and Rob's mockery used equivalent effort and board space to address the ridiculousness. The response Rob gave may not be satisfying or full of the right jokes or snark that some other posters may think vinestal's post deserved, but too bad. It was a three-word, harmless post - pointlessness addressed, time to move on. Rob even tried to accelerate the discussion back in the right direction by using the very same post to expand on his defense of Pena (I edited out the rest of the post). It was helpful and constructive, but not necessary.

 

But the mockery and ensuing bickering went over the top in a way that did much more damage to the thread than the original post did.

 

Well, Vinestal has decided definitively that Pena sucks AND that Barney is the 2B of the future after one month. He knows things.

Wow you guys are awesome, this is the reason these boards are a ghost town and there are like 8 people that post here on a regular basis. I never said Barney is the 2b of the future I said I liked what I saw from him so far. Christ learn to read and stop talking for other people. If you run off everyone with an opinion sooner or later you'll be the only ones here left to listen to yours, of course that may be the way you want it and maybe its better that way.

Hey, davearm got a sidekick!

Yeah guys, learn to read more and respect everyone's opinions! Insightful posts like "he still sucks" should be applauded, not derided! This is why we don't have nice things!

Actually, you said people are "eating crow" over Barney, but I did you a favor and dressed it up a little bit.

Now a Carlos Pena thread is picking up an argument from the Darwin Barney thread, davearm is brought into the discussion from nowhere (bad on a few levels), and the defensive backlash to these reactions only makes the threadjack worse.

 

There's no need for warnings or bannings or further clarification of rules or anything like that. I think the mods should just delete this group of posts and call it a day.

Edited June 3, 2011 by CubmanPi

[XZero771679666304]

For me the point of emphasis is people who are consistently aggressive in their opinions, whether they're ignorant or not. It's fine to be passionate about what you think, and certain tactics of debating have their value at times. But if you're consistently berating those you disagree with, it shows you're not interested in discussion and aren't worth consideration whether I agree with you or not. "Morons" is a subjective term, and I'm less interested in filtering out those that we think are wrong than filtering out those who are thoughtless and/or persistently aggressive with their opinions, whether it's SABR-focused or not.

Show me a list of the top, oh, 10 or 20 highest post counts on NSBB, and then try finding names on that list that ARE NOT persistently aggressive with their opinions.

 

Throw out the persistently aggressive crowd and then there'd REALLY be nobody left.

 

Here you go dave. memberlist.php?mode=&sk=d&sd=d

 

Name names.

 

LOL, on that list it'd be harder to find aggressive types in the top 10. Although I am sick and tired of Fred pushing his [expletive] dogma on me.

[jersey cubs fan]

disagree. It's stuff like that which makes it worth reading.

[SouthSideRyan]

For me the point of emphasis is people who are consistently aggressive in their opinions, whether they're ignorant or not. It's fine to be passionate about what you think, and certain tactics of debating have their value at times. But if you're consistently berating those you disagree with, it shows you're not interested in discussion and aren't worth consideration whether I agree with you or not. "Morons" is a subjective term, and I'm less interested in filtering out those that we think are wrong than filtering out those who are thoughtless and/or persistently aggressive with their opinions, whether it's SABR-focused or not.

Show me a list of the top, oh, 10 or 20 highest post counts on NSBB, and then try finding names on that list that ARE NOT persistently aggressive with their opinions.

 

Throw out the persistently aggressive crowd and then there'd REALLY be nobody left.

 

Here you go dave. memberlist.php?mode=&sk=d&sd=d

 

Name names.

 

LOL, on that list it'd be harder to find aggressive types in the top 10. Although I am sick and tired of Fred pushing his [expletive] dogma on me.

 

Always pushing his GO CUBS! [expletive] in the game threads

[jersey cubs fan]

LOL, on that list it'd be harder to find aggressive types in the top 10.

 

You can probably combine a couple to change that.

[javy knows my name]

I dont feel it is a case of too much hostility really, I think this place now just lacks interesting posters.

 

Back in the heyday of Cubs.com there was always something interesting going on it seems. An "I put everyone on ignore" thread (that was me),a fake death,poster of the week,dynastic vs nowacrat etc. I probably spent a solid week of my life just arguing with Lowblow.

 

Now you have a group of 3-4 smarmy posters with no sense of humor,who lack any sort of interesting posting skills,dragging down every thread.There are still a couple of interesting people here, but even when a thread they post in starts to be somewhat interesting,the omnipresent group drags the discussion into the gutter. It gets stale in a hurry.

 

This site needs new blood.

 

My last 2 cents,I promise.

 

If there is a poster on here who derails good discussions by berating people and doing so without an apparent sense of humor, that person should absolutely be banned. Now, we all know who you're talking about and, big surprise, you're way off.

 

You know who derails good baseball discussions? It's the nsbb [expletive] du jour who gets to spout uniformed garbage under the full protection of the mods and at the dismay of people who aren't even allowed to salvage the thread with some entertaining snark.

 

Tree wins the thread. Either continue to get rid of the morons (FDB!) or let some internet natural selection take its course and either force them to get smarter, quieter or leave.

[imb]

I really dont think this issue has as much to do with the "mean people vs. stupid people" debate as people think.

 

The site's genesis luckily coincided with huge national interest in the team.

 

It was started because cubs.com was full of idiots and there was no place to actually discuss the cubs without all the meathead [expletive]. The popularity boomed and it was still basically cubs.com, this place or [expletive] desipio, so of course people were flocking here. And there was a lot of interest in stuff like the convention, and Q&As, etc, not necessarily because those things were insanely cool, but also because we were all just excited about the position the cubs were in.

 

Even the awful 2005 and 2006 seasons were met with lots of interest, because you were just switching positive interest for negative interest. Instead of OH MAN PRIOR, WOOD, ZAMBRANO, PATTERSON, SOSA it was FIRE DUSTY, IS PRIOR HEALTHY, stuff like that. The cubs were bad, but people were still interested. They were just riding the downslope of the rollercoaster.

 

But somewhere during the four-year stretch, tim realized he could make money off the site. You can't blame him for that. I mean, people were paying $50 a year, and the only difference was the ability to change avatars and usernames. Remember the beginning of the premium service? It was basically "look, we can't actually offer you anything yet, but it's coming, so will you please support the site." And people did. Hell I wanted to, but I was broke and in college. But some did. Do you think they were doing it because of all the sweet avatars they could switch to? Of course not, it was more because they were excited about talking about the team.

 

But eventually that money dried up, and it was too late to go back. The site had been profitable and it needed to be in the future. It was like the peter principle of websites. The hits had to be driven to the front page instead of the message board. So we got FRONT PAGE ARTICLES from (no offense, seriously) Andy, who I dont even think lives in illinois, meph, a sociopath idiot and roast, who was an usher and couldnt even watch the games he was at. What are we supposed to learn from them? There was no accountability or editing, the articles were poor, no one looked at them and they just stopped.

 

So we got stuff like the ducross bros, who were basically cubs.com posters with a microphone. They were the type of people everyone made fun of in the insiders forum and we're supposed to be excited about their podcasts? So they stopped, and we got B-Squared, and they were actually good! But again, there was no accountability and they stopped posting podcasts all the time. Am I supposed to check the front page breathlessly every day for 2 weeks on the off chance they're going to post something? No one is going to do that.

 

So, money can't be made here, there has to be another way. So we end up with second city hoops (failed), the bears board (failed), some all-encompassing chicago sports forum, where people without credentials or ability watch the games on tv and then post stuff worse than what you would get from just going to espn.com (failed. Did anyone think this would work?)

 

Let's not forget SPORCLE.

 

The site got monetized and sterilized, the money went away and instead of getting back to the basics (a good place to talk about the cubs) the misplaced effort went toward making money. The end.

[jersey cubs fan]

I never realized how much thought people put into this site.

[CubmanPi]

If my post above isn't the way to go, then count me in the FDB/Meph re-instatement camp.

[SouthSideRyan]

Whoa ho ho who said anything about Meph.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

FREE DA BUM

[javy knows my name]

Whoa ho ho who said anything about Meph.

 

Seriously. I'd much rather bring back Reds44 and baseballnumbers

[USSoccer]

Whoa ho ho who said anything about Meph.

 

Seriously. I'd much rather bring back Reds44 and baseballnumbers

 

Yeah. Only one sociopathic lunatic allowed at a time.

 

The order of reinstatement should be:

 

-FDB

-To be determined

 

EDIT: TT, imb! and Tree have all hit the nail on the head, and I'd bet that two of those three are the people that davearm thinks are too mean/snarky/cliquish.

[CubColtPacer]

Whoa ho ho who said anything about Meph.

 

Seriously. I'd much rather bring back Reds44 and baseballnumbers

 

Yeah. Only one sociopathic lunatic allowed at a time.

 

The order of reinstatement should be:

 

-FDB

-To be determined

 

EDIT: TT, imb! and Tree have all hit the nail on the head, and I'd bet that two of those three are the people that davearm thinks are too mean/snarky/cliquish.

 

How can TT and Tree both hit the nail on the head when they said such dramatically different things? The board would look very different and be comprised of different members if it was run by TT's philosophy than if it was run by Tree's philosophy.

[UMFan83]

Whoa ho ho who said anything about Meph.

 

Seriously. I'd much rather bring back Reds44 and baseballnumbers

 

How you gonna slight deucebaseman like that?

[USSoccer]

Whoa ho ho who said anything about Meph.

 

Seriously. I'd much rather bring back Reds44 and baseballnumbers

 

Yeah. Only one sociopathic lunatic allowed at a time.

 

The order of reinstatement should be:

 

-FDB

-To be determined

 

EDIT: TT, imb! and Tree have all hit the nail on the head, and I'd bet that two of those three are the people that davearm thinks are too mean/snarky/cliquish.

 

How can TT and Tree both hit the nail on the head when they said such dramatically different things? The board would look very different and be comprised of different members if it was run by TT's philosophy than if it was run by Tree's philosophy.

 

Because I agree with large swaths of what they said? There's more than one reason things have changed.

 

Not sure if Tree posted a philosophy so much as he broke down the two options that the board could go about addressing the complaints about snark, etc.

[CubColtPacer]

Whoa ho ho who said anything about Meph.

 

Seriously. I'd much rather bring back Reds44 and baseballnumbers

 

Yeah. Only one sociopathic lunatic allowed at a time.

 

The order of reinstatement should be:

 

-FDB

-To be determined

 

EDIT: TT, imb! and Tree have all hit the nail on the head, and I'd bet that two of those three are the people that davearm thinks are too mean/snarky/cliquish.

 

How can TT and Tree both hit the nail on the head when they said such dramatically different things? The board would look very different and be comprised of different members if it was run by TT's philosophy than if it was run by Tree's philosophy.

 

Because I agree with large swaths of what they said?

 

Not sure if Tree posted a philosophy so much as he broke down the two options that the board could go about addressing the complaints about snark, etc.

 

Well, Tree says eliminate people who are consistently wrong even if they're civil about it. He even encourages people in the right to be aggressive about it.

 

TT says get rid of the aggressive people if they are right or wrong.

 

So if we think of it as 4 quadrents-civil people with unpopular opinions, aggressive people with unpopular opinions, civil people with popular opinions, agressive people with unpopular opinions. Tree wants to get rid of the first 2 groups and wants the 4th group to dominate. TT wants to get rid of group 2 and group 4 and then wants the other groups to have the discussion. So the only group that would survive in both iterations of the board is group 3. How is that even close to the same?

[Vinestal]

Still think Pena sucks, if you don't agree I don't really care. I didn't read that thread again after I posted that because I knew what was coming after. You don't have to go on and on about your opinion and how much you value it after someone says something you disagree with. Other people posted their opinions I posted mine. There's no need to degrade someone's post because you think it's worthless, I thought most of the opinions in that thread were worthless but I didn't feel the need to go off on how worthless their posts were. It's why I avoid the baseball discussions thread for the most part these days. it's filled with egotistical know it alls. people really need to lighten up.

[UMFan83]

Actually, I like imb's post to an extent. Except, I am 99% sure Tim has never made a profit with NSBB. He might have been trying to at one point, but from whatever I remember discussing with certain people at the time, the first goal of NSBB Premium was to help with the server costs he was incurring with the explosion of traffic we were getting.

 

I can't blame Tim for seeing a large population of people congregating at one place and thinking he could expand upon it and maybe make a few bucks for his efforts. I was never really too interested in any of it (except the interviews and chats we were doing with prospects and stuff). The poster awards were kind of cheesy, as was giving a pepperidge farm sausage or whatever it was to Eric Patterson for minor league player of the year but helped build a sense of community within NSBB. I still have no idea how IMB won poster of the decade tho.

 

And dammit the list of returning posters should be:

 

1) FDB

2) YANRSLATR

 

and Yanr is still right behind Bum. I think people forget what a classic poster he was. Yanr was Bum before Bum was Bum.

[javy knows my name]

Still think Pena sucks, if you don't agree I don't really care. I didn't read that thread again after I posted that because I knew what was coming after. You don't have to go on and on about your opinion and how much you value it after someone says something you disagree with. Other people posted their opinions I posted mine. There's no need to degrade someone's post because you think it's worthless, I thought most of the opinions in that thread were worthless but I didn't feel the need to go off on how worthless their posts were. It's why I avoid the baseball discussions thread for the most part these days. it's filled with egotistical know it alls. people really need to lighten up.

 

see? it's WORKING

[jersey cubs fan]

Still think Pena sucks, if you don't agree I don't really care. I didn't read that thread again after I posted that because I knew what was coming after. You don't have to go on and on about your opinion and how much you value it after someone says something you disagree with. Other people posted their opinions I posted mine. There's no need to degrade someone's post because you think it's worthless, I thought most of the opinions in that thread were worthless but I didn't feel the need to go off on how worthless their posts were. It's why I avoid the baseball discussions thread for the most part these days. it's filled with egotistical know it alls. people really need to lighten up.

 

You're talking about other people's worthless opinions and complaining about egotistical know it alls?

[Vinestal]

Still think Pena sucks, if you don't agree I don't really care. I didn't read that thread again after I posted that because I knew what was coming after. You don't have to go on and on about your opinion and how much you value it after someone says something you disagree with. Other people posted their opinions I posted mine. There's no need to degrade someone's post because you think it's worthless, I thought most of the opinions in that thread were worthless but I didn't feel the need to go off on how worthless their posts were. It's why I avoid the baseball discussions thread for the most part these days. it's filled with egotistical know it alls. people really need to lighten up.

 

You're talking about other people's worthless opinions and complaining about egotistical know it alls?

Never claimed to know much of anything honestly, didn't say all of the opinions were worthless and didn't feel the need to single out anyone for further humiliation over their opinions.

Edited June 3, 2011 by Vinestal