Brock Beauchamp

First, the data we collect is no different than what's currently being collected. It all comes through Google, who has a stranglehold on the website advertising market. Where we have gains is that we have access to higher-quality (ie. higher paying) ad clients. In essence, our overall volume allows us to punch above any single site's weight class. Moderation won't change, at least from what I've seen of it. All current moderators are not only welcome to stay on board but are encouraged to do so. I'm going to observe, especially in the beginning. I don't believe in shadow bans, especially for long-time posters. I give opportunity after opportunity. There was one case on Twins Daily where it literally took a decade to permanently ban the biggest pain in the ass on the board. I've since learned my lesson and will pull the trigger a little more quickly but it's ALWAYS with moderator input. I do not believe in unilateral decisions unless it's beyond the pale... which DOES happen but not often. A bit of background on me that absolutely applies to operating a community: I'm raising two adoptive Black daughters and part of my old neighborhood literally burned during the George Floyd unrest in Minneapolis. To say my tolerance is nonexistent for racist, sexist, gaslighting, etc. commentary is an understatement. People are free to hold whatever opinion they please but voicing things that would make me ashamed to show my daughters the community isn't going to be allowed. I did some scouting on this community for quite some time and part of the reason I reached out to Tim is because my personal beliefs seemed to be very much in line with the already-existing community. But those instances are few and far between, frankly. We had a really wild ride at Twins Daily during the summer of 2020 but we emerged the other side with a *better* community that had less hit-and-run trolling and more substantive conversation. Unless I'm missing something huge - and I don't think I am - most of my input is going to be about procedure and creating an environment for new posters to want to contribute. And it won't be hard-and-fast rules, it'll be a slow adaptive process often led by my own content and interaction with those posters. As example is that "mega-threads" are often unwelcoming to new users. Mega-threads seem to be popular here. I'm not going to start locking them or anything but I'd like to start having conversations about how to split those topics up into more specific content. I'm going to try to get all of your buy-in on my ideas, not just impose them on the community. I had to do the same at Brewer Fanatic and while a couple of people were salty about it for awhile, over time I won over the board - by ALWAYS trying to work with them to reach a compromise - by showing them things can be slightly different without upsetting the apple cart. In a nutshell, I plan to work in the margins a lot and talk things through as much as I can.

This is a very real thing. There *will* be attrition simply because change causes people to re-evaluate their decisions and some will just drop off over time. But my goal is to minimize that as much as possible by being transparent, changing only what *needs* to be changed (mostly tech right off the bat), and working with all of you to get your opinions on things.

do you think they're regretting this purchase yet This is becoming an awesome thread. One guy is trying to tell us all how great it's going to be while the rest of us are basically ignoring him and fixated on Kyle's former life and cracking wise about stupid horsefeathers. You can take the Tim out of NSBB, but you can't take the NSBB out of NSBB. Oh, I'm also finding this wildly entertaining. You all are obviously a tight-knit group and snarky as hell. It's funny to watch.

Have you SEEN the Twins postseason record lately? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I don’t know any of you well enough to hate you that much.

First things first, not sure when we will relaunch the site. It'll be on a weekend morning, probably in the second half of March. As we nail down a date, we'll announce it. But I thought you might like a rundown of the cool stuff coming: User Blogs: all users can start their own blog if they're so inclined. https://northsidebaseball.com/blogs 40-man/Active Rosters: Updated automatically every night. https://northsidebaseball.com/forty-man-roster/ Prospect Tracker: This is perhaps our most popular feature. Stats updated nightly with articles and videos that have that player tagged. https://northsidebaseball.com/chicago-cubs-top-prospect-rankings/ Draft Tracker: Same as the prospect tracker but for draft picks. https://northsidebaseball.com/chicago-cubs-draft-picks/2023/ Payroll Blueprint: This won't apply until the offseason but it's really cool. It allows you to build a roster, add commentary, and then it creates a thread with your name in the title for other users to discuss. https://northsidebaseball.com/payroll-blueprint Then we have other stuff like dark mode, the ability to purchase a subscription for ad-free usage of the site, and a bunch of other stuff I'm surely forgetting while typing this (the current version of Twins Daily was launched about two years ago and I've kinda lost track of all the features I've added). And if there are things you specifically want to see, please share. A user on Brewer Fanatic mentioned that it'd be nice if prospect voting was a drag-and-drop interface to speed up voting so we're going to roll that out some time in the next two months.

Yes and yes! We will launch with dark mode, which both TD and BF have. If you look in the red/blue bar at the top of the page, the half circle icon toggles dark mode.

As a counterpoint, I'll bring up that this site's traffic has been consistently declining for a few years. Long-term posters inevitably leave and if they're not being replaced (which they haven't been for a few years now), a forum can become a ghost town. People WANT high quality commentary. It has been our calling card for years on Twins Daily and was the case for 20 years on Brewer Fan. The same has carried over to Brewer Fanatic, we're just giving good smart posters an option they may not have known about before. If you're irritated by the likes of Twitter and Facebook commentary, other people are, too... we try to be a place that attracts those people and bring them into the fold. We also don't hesitate to give Twitter bros the boot because we don't want to hear their thoughts any more than you do.

Mostly monetization happens through volume, both in our overall company traffic and individual site traffic. Our goal is mostly eyeballs, really, and we do that through aggressive social media usage, search engine optimization, email lists, and other assorted things. Because we have such a high volume of traffic from other projects (Twins Daily), we have access to premium advertising options that pay *much* better than most small sites have at their disposal. We want more forum traffic to sustain the community but what we REALLY want is for our news stories, videos, prospect tracker, etc. to dominate social and search channels. And a thriving community only stays that way if the community is on board with tone, opinions, and whatnot. We have some rules forced on us by advertisers but it's pretty extreme stuff that I haven't encountered here at all (racism, bigotry, the really bad stuff) so I don't foresee many issues in that regard. So mostly when it comes to the forums, don't expect us to be heavy-handed. You all like things the way they are in the forum and that's why you're here; if we change too much of that, we're just shooting ourselves in the foot. The way I've thought about this in the past is as "we wrap a shell around your community to protect its integrity and continued existence". We do that with news, user blogs, videos, guides and resources, etc. and a by-product of that is that new users join the community but we don't actually change much about the community itself, nor do we want to. Down the road I might have suggestions how to make things a little more welcoming to new users but it won't be major and it won't happen immediately (and they'll be suggestions).

*bans self* I already saw based on the comments that NSB was going to lose so I voted for it to make the poll results visible.

Domain squatters are the spawn of satan. The reason we changed Brewer Fan to Brewer Fanatic is because someone was squatting on the BrewerFan.com domain for something like $5k.

One of the features we'll be rolling out with the new site is a prospect tracker. You can see an example here: https://twinsdaily.com/minnesota-twins-top-prospect-rankings/ At Twins Daily, the rankings are a composite of writer and community votes. At Brewer Fanatic, the list is entirely driven by the community. I'm not really sure how many prospect hounds you have here so not really sure which approach we'll take with NSBB but the community always gets a say in our rankings. So, Cubs prospect gurus, give me your top 20!

Every board has its running jokes, please explain this one to the new guy.

I was wondering about this, thanks. It's a good point.

Well, this is certainly coming down as a lop-sided vote. :D

I see mentions of both all over the place and would like all of your input on it. I've been drafting up logos for the past couple of weeks and this is close to the finished product. I incorporated the legacy banner and wanted to keep some of the same vibes for continuity. We use "initial" logos a lot in our work so there is the full logo (the top) and two variations on the initials (bottom). I have a slight preference for NSB because it's cleaner but that ain't my call. It's yours. Thoughts and feedback, please! [attachment=0]nsbb-logo-three-up.jpg[/attachment]

TIL there are apparently two cubs fans named mattew trueblood, who knew!??! Your name is Matt Trueblood? Are you messing with me?

A quick history of me: I founded a Twins message board in the mid-2000s, a lot like this one. In 2012, I met a bunch of Twins bloggers are we founded Twins Daily. That site has become the preeminent Twins site on the internet, reaching 2,000,000 visitors in 2022. We're going to cruise well past that mark in 2023. The foundation of what we built there is community engagement. We actively promote from within our own ranks and we believe discourse should be respectful and hot takes discouraged (unless they're really funny, naturally). Last year we bought BrewerFan.net and turned it into Brewer Fanatic (I'm from Wisconsin, don't hate me for it). In the past year, we've worked really hard to take what was a dwindling community experience and build it into a robust, modern community experience. So far we've seen about 100% growth year over year and we haven't quite hit our first birthday yet. Why the Cubs? Because one of our good friends is Matthew Trueblood, who is a Cubs fan and one of the best baseball writers I've ever met. While I personally will be managing the technical aspects of the site, this is going to be Trueblood's baby and if you haven't read his analysis, you're in for a real treat. I'm an old internet guy. I cut my teeth on forums through the late 90s and early 2000s. Seeing great legacy communities like this one fade into obscurity as we become more beholden to the likes of Facebook and Reddit chaps my ass, to put it bluntly. Each community needs its own flavor, personality, and perspective. My entire goal with this project is to preserve and grow the legacy that Tim and all of you built over the past 20 years. If you have ANY questions about literally anything, my door is always open and we're not some corporate behemoth. We're a bunch of baseball nerds who believe in community and no one knows this community better than all of you. I don't expect this site to fit into the same mold in which we built Twins Daily and later, Brewer Fanatic. We'll offer a lot of the same features but the core of this site is all of you who have contributed over the years and we value your input on pretty much everything. I'm looking forward to working with all of you in the coming days, months, and years!

It's hard to consider the loss of Alexander an actual loss. If he's pitching regularly, things have already gone sideways for the Brewers.

The variance on Bellinger is so large I can't even begin to predict how he will perform this season. Nothing would surprise me at this point.

Pretty much. They still have a nice core but very little depth behind it, which is why projection systems are so low on them.

Unlike ZiPS, PECOTA has Milwaukee and St Louis basically neck-and-neck at 87-ish wins. The Cubs come in a few games under .500 with 77-ish wins with the rest of the division being (expectedly) terrible with 70 or fewer wins. Thoughts? https://www.baseballprospectus.com/standings/

Looking to get into some new pods, hoping all of you can recommend some good ones.

Last year's draft is going to be among the worst in Cubs history. It's really inexplicable. Seems a bit premature to declare final judgment on a draft that's a little over six months old. While the top of the draft doesn't look great, it takes over half a decade to truly see how the middle and back of the draft class performs.

Oh, I know. I was just making a dumb joke at the expense of the Astros.

Amorality is the new baseball inefficiency.