Brock Beauchamp

Given that our proclaimed goal is more interactivity and traffic, I'd like to address game threads. First, I'll get it out of the way that they're ALWAYS a pain in the ass in pretty much every possible way. If things are going badly in the season, people are negative. If things are going well in the season but badly in a game, people are negative. If it's a day of the week ending in Y, people are negative. But game threads are also an important part of a baseball community, one I'd like to revive here. What have past problems been? How are game threads created here? What would you like to see?

My excitement for baseball is always abated by actually watching spring training games. At some point I'll start tuning in but the first couple of weeks with regulars being rotated out after two innings is particularly painful to watch.

I'm pretty into the Away Games podcast. Listened to a few episodes, I like their banter and style. Anybody familiar with the guys who do that pod?

But I've never even met your mother.

Yer all a bunch of masochists over here.

I bumped the size limitation a bit because I didn't feel like down-sampling my own avatar. When we migrate, the size limit will be bumped further (but the icon as it renders on-screen will be of limited size). But you'll also get profile banners and other stuff to customize, too.

I just noticed this and I'm completely on board if it doesn't seem disrespectful. But it's not something I'll get to in short order, maybe mid-season is my best hope there.

It's always a shock to the system and for that I apologize. Everyone gets into a routine and shuffling things around is hard. But I'll try to do it in as few pieces as possible. I just wanted to do a little housecleaning so my brain can sort out where the active content is a little better. The end goal is to get the most active content closer to the top of the page so that's good, right?

I moved a bunch of stuff around, tweaked some names for future SEO, added some descriptions, deleted empty forums. merged a couple near-empty forums. We'll still make more changes but I want more people to chime in on the forums that are being used, I just wanted to clear up some screen real estate.

Kind of, I guess? I just wanted to get a feel for the community and that's easier to do if I'm registered and commenting. And I created that account quite some time ago, like maybe over a year ago?

In my experience, it quarantines the whack-a-doo proposals. The real upside in this forum is another section of the site that automatically creates a forum post in that forum AND it goes like gang-busters for us in SEO: https://twinsdaily.com/minnesota-twins-free-agents-trade-rumors/ Twins Daily pulled in like 50,000 users from google/social this offseason from that section of the site alone. It's a huge boon to growing the community when we can quickly collate rumors in a place like that and google latches on to it. If you search "twins free agent rumors", these are literally the first two results: [attachment=0]results.jpg[/attachment]

Fair enough but I used an ancient screen name there, as I do most places (rocketpig).

Don't plan on buying any Cardinals fans message boards in the future. Nah its fine, buy GatewayRedbirds as long as you agree to destroy them if we do extra good at bringing in ad revenue. They created their forum and modeled it after ours, so I feel the need to be part of their destruction as well. I registered over there a couple of years ago and they literally banned me minutes after I had created my account but before I actually posted anything. I have no love for them.

I'm from Wisconsin and been a Brewers fan for a very long time. They were actually my first team before I moved to MN and started following the Twins. My dislike of the Cardinals is quite embedded; even when I was away from the midwest for a long time (lived in SoCal for 17 years), their fanbase is enough to make any reasonable human want to throw up.

What about this? The way we do rumors works really well for us from a technical/SEO perspective. https://brewerfanatic.com/forums/forum/6-transaction-rumors-proposals/

Don't plan on buying any Cardinals fans message boards in the future. Best Fans in Baseball, you mean? Hard pass, thanks.

We can set permissions for this based on usergroup. It's a conversation we'll have post-launch, just remind me about it. In the past, we've locked down usernames for most users with long time users having the ability to change it on their own.

The new system does a pretty good job of saving drafts as you type. It's not 100% but seems to work most of the time. If you return to the same topic and try to type again, the editor displays where you stopped typing last time.

Lots of forums. So many forums. All the forums. I just ran through the list and gave my quick thoughts. Please feel free to comment/debate anything said or not said here, this was literally four minutes with me quick-firing thoughts as a place to start the conversation. North Side Baseball Cubs - keep, obvi General Baseball - keep Game Threads Forum - The only suggestion I have here is to start the game threads in the Cubs forum and archive them here the next morning Minor Leagues - keep, obvi Amateur Baseball - it feels like this could probably be done a little differently with topics moving to transactions or MiLB or a specific draft forum Front Page Articles - stays with new system Insider’s - explain what this is about, please Transactions - Brewer Fanatic has this, Twins Daily does not; my slight preference is to roll this into the Cubs forum but convince me otherwise Polls - Roll as much of this into other relevant forums as possible, why is there a forum for only polls? Site Suggestions - stays but moves to a different category Fantasy Sports General Fantasy - stays, maybe move it to the category below this one A bunch more that are inactive Non-Baseball Talk Other Sports - stays Social - what is different about this than rants? Rants - what is different about this than social? Sim Baseball - merge into fantasy, inactive Guest Chats All empty, eliminate NSBB Activities Events - stays but will likely move to a different category Honors - empty, merge FAQ - empty, merge My goal is to eliminate inactive forums and merge somewhat like-minded forums together. Condensing categories is kinda necessary. If a list of categories grows too long, the lower forums become ghost towns as people stop scrolling. Ultimately, I could see the categories working as such: Baseball Forums Miscellaneous Forums Other Sports Forums Staff and Site Questions Forums With most of the above forums being in one of these four categories.

Probably not, unfortunately, but I will look into it at some point. The upside here is that our mobile experience on the new platform is pretty good, better than what NSBB has right now.

It'll take me a little time to get the time machine to 1999 out of mothballs but consider it done.

Tim gave me the run down on that name and it's definitely staying for obvious reasons.

I'll get out in front of this one because it caused a real headache with Brewer Fanatic. The new system uses email address for logins. This adds a layer of security for users. Having a screen name be the log in gives potential bots/hackers half of the equation needed to log into your account. So when we flip the switch on the new system some time next month, you'll need a current email address in your profile to log in.

We're gonna have to visit the number of forums and how they're arranged. It's pretty chaotic in its current form. But we'll have a discussion about that. All the content will likely stay but we'll have to do some shuffling. I'm not in a position to really give advice HOW to do that so I'll be leaning on all of you to figure that out based on how you currently use specific forums, how often you use them, and how long they've been idle.

The new software has a robust activity tool that many of you will surely want to explore. It has all sorts of settings and can be quite granular based on your own interests. And you can save these settings to be quickly-toggled options for future use. https://brewerfanatic.com/discover/unread/