I'm scared...

[Montana Redskin]

of starting a new post like 5,000 other people are and getting ridiculed and talked to like my own mother did to me when I was a child doing something wrong?

Seems like every post gets whacked and the poster gets basically reprimanded for starting a new thread?

See the problem is....many people such as myself (who rarely posts but read a lot and enjoy it) don't feel like reading 5 zillion threads to try to see what post they appropriately should put under. I saw one the other day where some guy got lectured that there was a thread on that from back in pre-season, I think a Jason Campbell one? Well, that's great, but many of us (non-hardcore, "know every thread that exists to mankind" type) aren't going to go back to preseason and wade thru 900 of those to post a response?

I agree with the rules, I do, it's just the way some people are scorned on many of these re-directs and think the noose should be lossened up quite a bit?

Now I'm sure I'm gonna get the Staff lecture of posting in the wrong area, or a link to the site "Rules" or lectured on a mis-spelling or lectured about something, but I do think I'm speaking for quite a few "bottom-feeder/occassional/partime" readers/posters that just like to chat and not walk around on eggshells wondering what thread they should post under...

It's human nature to just go out, without spending hours looking for the exact post to post under, and start a thread, even if a thread (who's title may not even resemble the topic at hand) exists.

One last important note, I do appreciate the hard work the Staff does to maintain this site. Good work, as I know countless hours are spent working on software/hardware maintenance among many, many other things. Obviously, I've never spent any time on that and am sure it's hard work that many of us don't realize. Thanks!

[Hoss]

Question. Does this belong in Hogwash? Does this pertain to the Redskins?
I think the rules are pretty simple.

[Redskin in Canada]

See the problem is....many people such as myself (who rarely posts but read a lot and enjoy it) don't feel like reading 5 zillion threads to try to see what post they appropriately should put under. I saw one the other day where some guy got lectured that there was a thread on that from back in pre-season, I think a Jason Campbell one? Well, that's great, but many of us (non-hardcore, "know every thread that exists to mankind" type) aren't going to go back to preseason and wade thru 900 of those to post a response?

I have one suggestion to save you the pain to go through whatever zillion threads. It is very simple. Press the button above or the link http://www.the-hogs.net/forum/search.php


Enjoy and welcome to the site.

[BossHog]

Moved to the Lounge since it has nothing to do with the Redskins really... i suppose that'll be some form of censorship too.

What is there to be scared about brother? Why is it hard for people to understand what a zoo this place would be like if we didn't try to keep threads in order. We'd have had at least 100 threads on Mark Brunell and every one of them would have had basically the exact same thing in them. How is that better for everyone?

See the real problem always seems to be that people don't want to discuss something... they want to state their point and be done with it. I've said it over and over and over again, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to stop you from cutting and pasting the post from the thread that got locked into the thread that you are pointed to. Why is that so difficult to do or understand? how is anyone curtailing your thoughts or ability to express them. it never ceases to amaze me that no matter how cordial a moderator is about trying to keep people to post within like threads... people have to go nuts and fly off the handle and scream censorship and blah, blah, blah. Come on people, do you ever stop to think about anything other than yourself? We do what we do for the good of the community, and at the root of nearly EVERY type of complaint like this, there's a personal consideration and little else.

Why is the logic always that those that don't come around as often don't know what's been discussed? It's not like you can't search for it... and what about the people that are here all the time? How is it fair to the most frequent patrons to penalize them by having them go through umpteen million posts on the exact same thing just because someone who stops by occasionally couldn't take 10 seconds to look around... the individual user is either to lazy to search for it himself, or worse still... look down the board 4 or 5 posts and see that it's already there.

But the staff are to blame right?

I'm sorry that some of you don't like it... really, I am. But I just know that I can't please all of the time, and this is something that we as a staff feel is integral to running the community in the manner we see fit. it isn't open to discussion, it isn't up for debate, the rules aren't going to change, and if it's something that you don't like, then i'm afraid you should just find another Redskins message board to particpate in.

There are many people that ONLY come here BECAUSE we run the board that way, and in our collective staff opinion, we'd take 1000 of them over 10,000 of the alternative any day.

There are options available to you. Changing the way that we do things at THN isn't one of them though.

Thanks.

[UK Skins Fan]

Think of it like this: you walk into a room full of Redskins fans, and want to talk about Andre Carter's feet (well, some people probably would if given the chance). In this situation, do you:

a) Walk around the room, mingle, and hope to find somebody else who is already talking about Andre's feet. If your search proves unsuccessful, then you decide to stand in some corner of the room, waving a placard that says "Let's talking about Andre Carter's feet".

b) You don't bother to walk the room, but instead opt to stand out in the hallway, and yell "I WANT TO TALK ABOUT ANDRE'S FEET" through the keyhole.

Now, option 2 might actually work for a while, but I'll take a guess that, after a time, it gets really tiresome for the moderators to have to keep walking over to the door, invite you in, and then walk you over to a group of people from the Washington DC Chiropody Club. At some point, they're just going to get fed up, and lock the door.

I'm not aiming this at you Montana, but if I was a moderator, I would probably have chosen to club some people to death with all of the Brunell threads that have been started this week.

[Montana Redskin]

Boss Hog,
Well written with good points. But, I still didn't see anything acknowledging my point, that it seems more time is spent (not necessarily by you, but you are one of many) that it sometimes appears to me that more time is spent policing the site than just plain old chit/chat? I agree, as I've mentioned, with the rules. I don't agree with the way responses are made and the quick trigger finger that some have saying "this is discussed here, don't waste another thread on it" and other verbiage thats taken more like "hey noobie, hey dips888, this was discussed 4 months ago in the following thread"...

I just ask that a bit more lenience be applied, that's all. Just a bit less policing, a bit more relaxation..a bit more openness to giving people a break, in summary, to chill out a bit...

I agree with you too, it's hard to please everyone...I'm pleased overall, just seems like I've noticed an increase in policing threads.

As obvious it is to the power user, such as yourself, the occassional/moderate chit chatter may not know or want to go thru an extensive search module to find a thread..

You say things "aren't going to change", "it isn't open for discussion" or "maybe go find another board" isn't, in my opinion, being open minded as I am not criticizing anything more than an apparent increase in lecturing many as to not creating some thread from a week or 2 ago or a month. I understand the Brunell thread issue.

[Montana Redskin]

Think of it like this: you walk into a room full of Redskins fans, and want to talk about Andre Carter's feet (well, some people probably would if given the chance). In this situation, do you:

a) Walk around the room, mingle, and hope to find somebody else who is already talking about Andre's feet. If your search proves unsuccessful, then you decide to stand in some corner of the room, waving a placard that says "Let's talking about Andre Carter's feet".

b) You don't bother to walk the room, but instead opt to stand out in the hallway, and yell "I WANT TO TALK ABOUT ANDRE'S FEET" through the keyhole.

Now, option 2 might actually work for a while, but I'll take a guess that, after a time, it gets really tiresome for the moderators to have to keep walking over to the door, invite you in, and then walk you over to a group of people from the Washington DC Chiropody Club. At some point, they're just going to get fed up, and lock the door.

I'm not aiming this at you Montana, but if I was a moderator, I would probably have chosen to club some people to death with all of the Brunell threads that have been started this week.

well written and good analogy, thanks. I totally agree. It's just that when people pop into a chat room they typically click on the room, look at the top, glance around and then place a thread if nothing pops out. They tend to not want to or don't know how to search for extended periods of time...I'm not saying that we shouldn't, it's just human nature to not want to spend all day finding the appropriate thread if one even exists.
Then getting lectured in some cases only makes it worse.
With that, I just ask that some people relax a bit before going off on some person for starting a thread for the 2nd or 3rd time or referencing some months old thread, as I understand a Brunell type of situation where 500 would be there. That's all, will it be taken into consideration? Probably not, in my opinion, as BossHog, states "rules aren't for discussion/ rules don't get changed". That's not really a "look outside the box, open-mindedness" approach, imo. I'm not saying change them, just possibly have others turn it down a notch or two on the happy trigger fingers.

I'm sure my 3rd or 4th lecture today basically telling me "to go somewhere else if you don't like it cause nothing is changing around here" is quickly approaching.
Probably won't be anything about the fact I do actually have a reasonable rational thought whether some want to believe it or not. I am taking everyone elses thoughts into consideration? are others?

[admin]

I guess the short answer to your question is because there just is no way to have a happy medium really. How do you start deciding what's 'close enough' to warrant 'allowing it' and what's not. The moment you start letting any of it go, the urge for anybody to do it will disappear... how can it not? When you start making exceptions for the rule, then it just becomes that much more 'grey' what that rule is.

Besides, it's not anyone's concern what takes more work or not, and frankly, we take pride in the fact that we do what we think is best... not what's easiest.

One solution would be to just start dumping the accounts of those that don't like the rules and seek to openly criticize them. Please don't misconstrue this as directed at yourself... you have been very cordial and respectful in your very reasonable questioning... but there are others that bitch so often I just have no idea why they come here, and frankly, I think ridding the community of some of those members would drastically cut down on the convoluting of threads.


I say the rules aren't going to change to be fair to the community. they aren't. i don't really care what anyone thinks about the rules, they were determined long before anyone here was here, they were determined by what we thought it would take to create the community that we wanted, and they have served us very well. It would be easy to just abandon all of he principles that make THN what it is, but we're just not interested. Absolutely no offense to ES, but you can totally get what you are looking for there. There are a million threads on everything, and always someone to chat with in real time, and it's one of the biggest online communities in sports.

But it's not what we're about, and it's not something that any amount of (even) reasonable discussion is going to change... let alone rantings and ravings. It's just something we believe in, and something that we work very hard to achieve... whether it is to the liking of all or not.

From an administrator's stand-point, I'll be honest with you. You all just keep providing me with more reason's to make THN a private forum, and not a public one. As I've said, we're certainly not about quantity, we're about quality. I could cut the work of the moderators AND the rhetoric on the board in half simply by removing a very small minute portion of it's population.

As a staff, we give people a huge amount of grace in terms of what it takes to get yourself kicked out of here... multiple warnings... heck, it really has to be an established pattern... different infractions don't neccessarily have a cumulative effect... recent past is usually all that's considered... rarely past indiscretions... maybe if I just start making it a lot easier to lose the right to post at THN, more people will respect the rules, and we'd undoubtedly remove an awful lot of the 'distractions' irregardless.

That isn't meant to take the tone of a threat at all. What I'm saying is that we have always operated under the premise that EVERYBODY has the right to express their opinion, and we're happy to provide that place. But we've come to the realization that the success of the community as a whole actually hinges on the particpation of very few. We do our best to keep rhetoric to a roar, but we can't stop people from posting it. But astonishingly, it is quite often the exact same people all of the time and at every opportunity. From an aDMINISTRATIVE stand point, if eliminating 50% of the garbage is achieved by eliminating 5% of the population, that's good math by me. So if it takes shortening the leash permanently to maintain the environment we feel is condusive to good, healthy football dialogue, then that's what I'll have to do.

The site is experiencing tremendous growth every day, and more and more great things keep happening for us to allow us to continue to grow. That growth is fueled by our content and BECAUSE of the strength of our community. From my stand point, without looking at individuals, that means that on the whole we are accomplishing what we seek to achieve, and that what we're doing is working. And to me that just means that as a staff, our resolve is needed more than ever.


And I have no misconceptions whatsoever. I know that it is not something that everyone will agree with, or even like. I truly respect that. Man, I started a website because I just wanted to reach out to some Redskin fans from up here in Canada. Anybody can do what I did to make THN what it is... anybody. All I had going in, was a computer and an internet connection... and if you're reading this... then you have that. And if you don't like the forums that we hav created, it's dead easy to start your own these days. Anybody can start a forum... but it takes discipline, structure and belief in your principles to KEEP a community, because it takes a community that as a whole enjoys being part of that community.

So I guess the long and short of it is that I agree that we have seen an increase in the amount of rhetoric that has plagued conversation on the board... what with the locked threads, and the threads to complain about locked threads... and the threads to complain about all of the complaining about locked threads... but my solutions for fixing don't likely involve changing the rules at all other than perhaps adding one to make the staff's judgement more absolute.

I can't do any more than lay it out for you all like that. I'm not pulling any punches... I'm not having a go at anyone... I'm taking a long-winded approach for both myself and other staff to continue to point to when somebody has something to say about the way the community is run.

Those that agree with what I have posted should stick around... keep enjoying what we presume you enjoy... those that don't agree... find a Redskin forum that better suits your needs, or start your own where obviously you will be able to use whatever rules you would like.

No disrepect at all, just an acknowledgement that not everyone will agree with me, and that I make no claims to be 'right'. But like it's everyone's right to bleed burgundy and gold wherever they want, I have earned the right to run this community as I see fit.

And that's all the staff and I are trying to do.

[Montana Redskin]

BossHog,
That was very well written and I understand completely. You've done an excellent job with this site and I commend you and all your hard work.

With that, I would just ask one favor. Keep an eye open for adminstrators that are just a bit on the quick finger for opening up a can on the moderate user that posts a thread when maybe that thread shouldn't be started...that's all. Just give the poster a little leeway as more than likely, actually very unlikely, there was no intention.

Again, thanks and you're last post was very well written and understood.

[Champsturf]

I suppose this is as good a place for this as anywhere. I was rudely reprimanded for "attacking a poster, rather than the post." I was unaware of this until the following day. I have no recollection of this, but admit it is possible that I did so. As many others, I was very heated after last week's loss. What I have a problem with is respect. I respect greatly what you all do behind the scenes, however, I do not respect the manner in which I was repimanded. This is because the staff member, who is still nameless, despite my request to know, treated me like a punk kid. I will try to copy all 3 PMs. look for this in "Smack"

I was successful at putting it in "Talking Smack" if anyone cares to continue the read.