An open discussion about the state of the forums

[Brock Beauchamp]

I'm not really targeting this conversation about anything specific, I just want to get a read on what people think about the state of the forums and where they would like to see improvement. This could be technical in nature but mostly, I'm curious what people think of the tone, the conversations, and the general demeanor of the community.

If you have gripes or compliments or whatever, share them here. I haven't been very active lately (on any of the sites, frankly) and like to check in periodically to gauge how things are going.

As always, if you are not comfortable sharing something publicly, I'm always available via PM.

[Bertz]

I'll say I feel good about where things are at in-season.  I think the flow of gamethreads getting pinned to then hanging out in discussion for a day or two postgame to getting archived works and is legitimate improvement from the old way of working.  I also feel like the tenor of the conversation and community is generally good.  People get overly dramatic when things get tough, but that's anywhere.  I mean if you want to see a place that's gone totally off the rails in that regard check out the change in tenor over the last 18 months at Bleacher Nation.

I do think we need to figure out the best "flow" for next offseason.  I think many/most of us old timers would vote to resurrect the Transactions forum.  But the megathread this past winter was a slog and at the same time we shouldn't start a new thread every time like JP Morosi tweets conflicting info about Cody Bellinger.  Maybe separate running threads for some of the hotly rumored/logical Cubs targets and then a megathread for assorted league goings on?

[CubinNY]

my 2 cents - have a different forum for the articles than the Cubs discussion. It gets pretty crowded quickly in the discussion forum and can be hard to follow.

Put the games back in the game forum. It's where they belong. We could have an after-game discussion thread or something for each game in the Cubs forum.

Overall, it's fine. I think the new people from PSD have mostly integrated well. I think we'd all like to see more discussion and people posting, but it's a different world than it used to be. 

I appreciate the articles a lot. I appreciate you all keeping this place going. 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Agreed with Bertz that the state of conversation feels pretty good, though we'll see what happens when the team isn't playing at a 100 win pace(injuries or not).  Also agree that figuring out something better for the offseason would be a nice improvement.

Related to that second point, the main thing I notice is that I'd love for there to be a little more seamless integration of articles when there's existing threads on that topic.  An example of this cadence is that news breaks, someone starts a thread, it gets discussed a bit, then a couple hours later when e.g. Matt has had a chance to analyze that situation, an article gets posted as its own thread and fractures the conversation.  I think there's been a time or two(probably in the offseason) when there's multiple articles on a topic that split things further.  I know there's SEO motivations and architectural reasons for how articles get treated, but I'm guessing there's a way to find a middle ground where that analysis is incorporated into existing conversations when they exist, rather than forking the dialogue.

[Hunter]

1. Create new forum for all the articles. They clutter up the main forum.

2. Fix Dark Mode to not be cookie-based but a user-based setting. Having to set dark mode every time I login is a hassle.

3. I personally would rather the game threads be a separate forum. It just feels more organized.

4. I'll get flamed for this one, but can we do a better job of moderating the political talk. There's a forum for it. Some of us just don't care about politics and hate having it jammed into various threads by the same posters (both sides of the political aisle) and would rather not see any of it. I get that some people enjoy jousting but it does get exhausting at times and derails threads a lot of the time.

Edited April 30, 2024 by Hunter

[WhyCantWeWin]

27 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

my 2 cents - have a different forum for the articles than the Cubs discussion. It gets pretty crowded quickly in the discussion forum and can be hard to follow.

Put the games back in the game forum. It's where they belong. We could have an after-game discussion thread or something for each game in the Cubs forum.

Overall, it's fine. I think the new people from PSD have mostly integrated well. I think we'd all like to see more discussion and people posting, but it's a different world than it used to be. 

I appreciate the articles a lot. I appreciate you all keeping this place going. 

Maybe make a NSBB tik tok account and post some article shorts on there, and then say “continue the discussion on NSBB”. Could get some more yungbluds that way. 

[Jason Ross]

Outsider's perspective: I think things work pretty well. I like that the game threads are connected to the main forum, myself. It means I don't have to have a handful of extra clicks; I can check the game thread then immediately look under to go into an article or roster-construction question. That's more similar to how things worked at PSD, so that's probably where that's coming from, but either way, I appreciate that. 

Conversation has been good too! Again, as a newer member, the levels of discussion are really similar to where we were at on PSD when we had a lot of active members. People are happy when things are good and melt down when they're not. God forbid the Cubs lose a three game set to a mediocre team; then it was death-watch city. We had a few bumps, and we jettisoned the biggest offender, but I've been having a good time here with everyone. Feel less like an outsider/new person and more integrated for sure. 

[squally1313]

Really like TTs suggestion on the article integration if it's possible to do so without screwing up SEO goals. My experience has been that I wasn't able to replicate the 'Active Topics' approach from the old site, and therefore I've just gotten used to going to the same 4-5 forums (Cubs, Minors, General, Other Sports, Social), and if we pushed all the articles into their own subforum, I would be way less inclined to come across them, and I think it would be an additional barrier between attracting new readers and turning them into frequent NSBB visitors (which, to my understanding, is the point). There's some great work being done with these articles and I occasionally feel bad when they drop while the conversation is already going and there isn't any direct interaction because people just stay in the general threads. And I'm sure, logistically, that's a big driver in keeping the lights on here. So I'm fine where they are...I'm team Big Thread, but putting myself in Brock's shoes I would probably continue to encourage more threads as immediate reaction to news dropping and then trying to incorporate the long form articles into there.

Won't say anything to Hunter's last point besides that I disagree and happy to elaborate on why but figure that might do more harm than good to your overall goals here. 

[SOFNR]

As a newer member I've really enjoyed it so far. Good discussions. Easy enough to keep up with the important threads. Looking to some fun in October.

Edited April 30, 2024 by SOFNR

[Andy]

32 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

My experience has been that I wasn't able to replicate the 'Active Topics' approach from the old site, and therefore I've just gotten used to going to the same 4-5 forums (Cubs, Minors, General, Other Sports, Social), and if we pushed all the articles into their own subforum, I would be way less inclined to come across them

It isn't exactly the same, but this link should help recreate 'active topics': https://northsidebaseball.com/discover/unread/

[Derwood]

I appreciate the work that goes into the articles, but I'm just not interested. I survived 20 years of NSBB without them, I don't really need them now. It is annoying seeing that there is new activiity in Cubs Discussions but, nope, it's just three new articles, not actual discussion about the games or what not

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 hours ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Related to that second point, the main thing I notice is that I'd love for there to be a little more seamless integration of articles when there's existing threads on that topic.  An example of this cadence is that news breaks, someone starts a thread, it gets discussed a bit, then a couple hours later when e.g. Matt has had a chance to analyze that situation, an article gets posted as its own thread and fractures the conversation.

This has been a thorn in my side for a decade. Ultimately, I keep landing at the status quo because some of the technical solutions get UGLY and dangerous. It's a problem I've been trying to find a lightning in a bottle solution for for years and I just can't.

[Brock Beauchamp]

2 hours ago, Hunter said:

2. Fix Dark Mode to not be cookie-based but a user-based setting. Having to set dark mode every time I login is a hassle.

This has been on my list of tasks and is currently queued in the development task list. I can't say it will get fixed tomorrow but it should be fixed some time this season.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

4 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

This has been a thorn in my side for a decade. Ultimately, I keep landing at the status quo because some of the technical solutions get UGLY and dangerous. It's a problem I've been trying to find a lightning in a bottle solution for for years and I just can't.

How do you feel about using less scalable/automated options?  E.g. segment all articles in their own forum immediately, and rely on the author, moderators, or good samaritans to cross-post to existing discussion threads when they exist?  

[mul21]

Just now, Transmogrified Tiger said:

How do you feel about using less scalable/automated options?  E.g. segment all articles in their own forum immediately, and rely on the author or good samaritans to cross-post to existing discussion threads when they exist?  

This was going to be my suggestion.  Seems like posting a link to the article in the active discussion and then the main post would be in the "Front Page News" section or whatever it's called that some (but not all?) articles end up in eventually.

On that note, why do articles that get posted in Cubs Discussions also appear in the Front Page News section and marked as unread for me even though I read them when they were originally posted?

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 minute ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

How do you feel about using less scalable/automated options?  E.g. segment all articles in their own forum immediately, and rely on the author, moderators, or good samaritans to cross-post to existing discussion threads when they exist?  

Ultimately, our goal is to move articles to their own forum permanently. It's what we've done on TD and also BF. But before we do that, I'd like to see more user-based topic generation in the Cubs forum.

I'm all for putting articles in their own forum but when a user drops by to check in, I want them to see three new topics to read, not a handful of existing topics that are months old with 42,439 comments apiece.

[Stratos]

5 hours ago, Hunter said:

1. Create new forum for all the articles. They clutter up the main forum.

2. Fix Dark Mode to not be cookie-based but a user-based setting. Having to set dark mode every time I login is a hassle.

3. I personally would rather the game threads be a separate forum. It just feels more organized.

4. I'll get flamed for this one, but can we do a better job of moderating the political talk. There's a forum for it. Some of us just don't care about politics and hate having it jammed into various threads by the same posters (both sides of the political aisle) and would rather not see any of it. I get that some people enjoy jousting but it does get exhausting at times and derails threads a lot of the time.

Overall, as a PSD convert, I'd like to thank the veteran posters and mods/admin here for making us feel welcome to the board.  I am actually a lot happier here as I find this site less toxic since PSD had hands-off moderation and insults/bullying etc were allowed and frequent and problem users not often dealt with.  No site or community is perfect, but I've been posting on many different baseball and Cubs message boards since the 90's and i'm mostly pleased here.

I'll just use Hunter's above comments as a jump off point for mine:

1. I agree, but i'm also getting a bit more used to the articles.  I do agree with others that having multiple threads on the same topic is problematic.  I'd say i'm only interested in a minority of the articles, and many of the ones I do read are enjoyable and filled with good info.   Personally i'm probably interested most in deep stat/analytics breakdowns, not only players but trends on the team, where I may not personally have access to those stats or have the time or sometimes knowledge to research them myself..  I appreciate the work and the effort to make content for the site.

2.  Thanks to this comment i just discovered the forum has a dark mode!  Thanks!! 🙂

3. I like game threads in the main talk forum.  I agree it would be a lot more organized in its own forum.  Maybe a link to the game thread at the top of the main Cubs talk forum?  Big thanks to the mod for keeping older game threads around for a few days before archiving and killing those discussions immediately., which was a big frustration of mine.  I think having the current game thread plus the last 2 or 3 game threads in the Cubs talk forum is a good compromise between clutter vs discussion.

4.  I agree that pure political talk should be kept to any political section we may have here, it derails threads and becomes toxic.

[Stratos]

2 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Ultimately, our goal is to move articles to their own forum permanently. It's what we've done on TD and also BF. But before we do that, I'd like to see more user-based topic generation in the Cubs forum.

I'm all for putting articles in their own forum but when a user drops by to check in, I want them to see three new topics to read, not a handful of existing topics that are months old with 42,439 comments apiece.

In the new article forum could you pin the articles posted from the last 3 or 4 days or whatnot and then unpin them after that and let them float?  Or permanently pin them all based on order they were posted?

User-created topics are going to be fewer obviously as long as the articles are there covering the same topics.

[javy knows my name]

I'm glad that I can now resume my "unread" game threads even after they've been archived. That was a bug that was identified early on and you seem to have fixed it over the off-season 

There are two more that still stick with me that I'd like to see fixed: 1) For those of us who have set our setting to the non-default font, it still reverts back when you click to see who commented (mobile). 2) I still sometimes get moved to the bottom of the page after navigating to the next page in the thread and I have to click the arrow to go back up. Annoying.

Overall, the place is better since you took over. More people means better discussion and you're letting us moderate ourselves. Can't say I need much to change regarding the quality of the discourse or the navigation of the site. Nice job.

And these check-ins are appreciated and set a good precedent. 

Edited April 30, 2024 by javy knows my name

[Thurman Merman]

Yes, don't understand why it goes to the bottom of the page when I go to the next page. Super annoying.

Other than the occasional full page pop up ad that I have to click out of, happy with the site.

[Brock Beauchamp]

13 hours ago, Thurman Merman said:

Yes, don't understand why it goes to the bottom of the page when I go to the next page. Super annoying.

This is a bug I've had three developers look at and it SHOULD be a two-minute fix but continues to elude us.

[JBears79]

I enjoy my time here. It's been a great replacement for PSD. I love the articles that are written on here. I agree with a lot of the suggestions such as moving the articles to a separate forum.

[Brock Beauchamp]

There is quite a sentiment to move articles to their own forum. I'm okay with that but we need to make a compromise:

I'll move articles to their own forums if we kill megathreads. I don't mind one or two megathreads - we also use them on other sites for minor transactions or what former players are up to across the league - but we can't have one offseason thread or one transactions thread. It's too offputting to new users.

The first thing a new user does in a forum is look at how many threads are recent and any click into a thread automatically takes them to the first unread page. That's a problem if the first page is posts from 90 days ago.

When we took over a year ago, about 250 people visited NSBB a day. That number is now 1,000. We're bringing in new users on a very regular basis and I want some of those users to drift to the forums and participate. For that to happen, we need the most welcoming environment possible and part of that goal means the Cubs forum needs to have recent, specific threads that make them want to click and read (and then hopefully post their own opinion).

[BigbadB]

13 hours ago, Thurman Merman said:

Yes, don't understand why it goes to the bottom of the page when I go to the next page. Super annoying.

Other than the occasional full page pop up ad that I have to click out of, happy with the site.

Mine only does that on the first page turn on each thread visit. After the first one, it goes back to the top for all subsequent page turns.

[Rex Buckingham]

2 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

There is quite a sentiment to move articles to their own forum. I'm okay with that but we need to make a compromise:

I'll move articles to their own forums if we kill megathreads. I don't mind one or two megathreads - we also use them on other sites for minor transactions or what former players are up to across the league - but we can't have one offseason thread or one transactions thread. It's too offputting to new users.

The first thing a new user does in a forum is look at how many threads are recent and any click into a thread automatically takes them to the first unread page. That's a problem if the first page is posts from 90 days ago.

When we took over a year ago, about 250 people visited NSBB a day. That number is now 1,000. We're bringing in new users on a very regular basis and I want some of those users to drift to the forums and participate. For that to happen, we need the most welcoming environment possible and part of that goal means the Cubs forum needs to have recent, specific threads that make them want to click and read (and then hopefully post their own opinion).

I use a filter that someone came up with that's essentially what we used to have as our "active topics" option, and that makes it pretty easy to navigate all the threads I want to read.

From the ease-of-use perspective for a visitor, I am all for killing (most of) the mega-threads. But we also need to strike a balance where we don't have threads popping up all the time for each random post-game complaint. Would love to find a way to integrate the articles into appropriate threads, especially pertaining to offseason transactions.