Forum Administration

[lineygoblue]

Thank you Tony.

[madootra]

We're STILL talking about this?!

It's a damn internet sports group. The rules seem simple enough. Don't like it? Move the fuck along.

[lineygoblue]

Hmmm... why didn't I think of that? ... :-)

[THE_WIZARD_]

liney:

hello

[lineygoblue]

Hi Wiz!

football season is almost here ... ::: pant pant :::

[THE_WIZARD_]

About time you read a rule book son...

[lineygoblue]

Just got the new books in the mail yesterday. Been lookin' them over good.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Yes I am helping with a high school clinic tomorrow...whoa I just read the new NFHS rule changes...I like them though...most make sense.

[THE_WIZARD_]

OPI, DPI, KCI changes are all good.

[Rob F]

OPI, DPI, KCI changes are all good.

I sure picked a good time to lose my Ovaltine Decoder Ring...

[lineygoblue]

OPI - offensive pass interference

DPI - defensive pass interference

KCI - kick/catch interference

[THE_WIZARD_]

What a dumbass.

[Rob F]

STFU

[THE_WIZARD_]

no

[Rob F]

I know that a good many of you who participate on our forum here aso read or even participate at MGoBlog. I've been watching very closely over the last couple of days a meltdown the size of which I've never seen before on a blog/forum, one that makes the squabbles that show up here from time-to-time look really tiny and insignificant. Sorry that I haven't been around here much, even to follow up on conversations I was in the middle of.

To sum up the "mess" that turned into a meltdown, MGoBlog added someone new to their staff a month or two ago, "Brandon Brown", who writes pretty exclusively of recruiting. Brown had his own recruiting blog for the last couple years, I think he called it "The M block" or something along those lines, I had clicked on it a handful of times over the last several months to take a look and frankly wasn't all that impressed. Brian Cook must have been more impressed than I was and hired him recently to write about recruiting, kinda to fill the spot that TomVH used to do so well at MGoBlog.

Brown did a frontpage piece a few days back about a prospective recruit for the 2016 football recruiting cycle, a kid that looks (from the picture provided) to be in his early teens. A few of the regular board contributors were critical of Brandon Brown's "process" of direct contact with minors, a couple posters made "snide" and/or crude remarks to up the ante, and the resulting meltdown is one of epic proportions, with even Brian Cook himself getting involved and going ballistic. Right now there are about a half-dozen MGoBoard threads going that are at least indirectly connected to the main controversy, and (by my estimate) a couple dozen or more long-term regular board posters have had their accounts deleted by the MGoBlog staff. Some, of course, have reappeared under new account usernames. Many, many others have indicated that they are fed up and have or will be leaving MGoBlog for other Michigan boards.

Why is this important? For one thing, it's quite the "soap opera" on a certain level and as such is entertaining. But it also shows how difficult it is to run a forum, to moderate a forum, to keep a forum going smoothly. And that place is absolutely huge in comparison to our little "happy home" here that we've got going. Liney has taken a lot of flak (some deserved but much of it, IMO, piling on a bit) recently here for postings and decisions he's made that I feel are somewhat less controversial than some of what Brian and a few of his staff have been tossing at "enemies" over the last couple days.

Appreciate what we've got here, folks. Deb at the parent "Lions Forum" here does a great job and maybe doesn't get the appreciation she quite deserves for welcoming us here. Liney (while I sometimes don't exactly "agree" with each and every comment/decision he's made) also does a damn good job overall of trying to keep the peace around here.

That's all for now, as I have to take off for a half-hour or so, if anyone is interested later in what i'm referring to at MGoBlog, I can provide a link later.