The Sports Bar: Off-Topic General Chat - Page 3

I know exactly what you mean. We've started threads many times over the years due to this or that announced project as discussion can go off of speculation alone with those kinds of things. But it'd be kind of sad if you go for team threads and ones for teams that have been around a LOOOOONG time like Green Bay can't get going.

I honestly do not follow nor have the first clue what goes on with Rugby. Separate threads sound easier to get better acquainted with the sport instead of only allowing you guys a single thread.

I mean, for starters, what's the difference between the Heineken Cup and the Six Nations Championship? Different tournaments, different threads as far as I'm concerned. Just make the first post informative to what teams are in.

Also, speaking of Rugby, are there any official websites that represents the sport ala NFL.com for American Football, NBA.com for Basketball, etc... I'd like to represent that in the header links to the official dot coms if I could.

So if I were to put just one Rugby domain link in the header, it would be this for the IRB, and that would represent all news/results for England, Australia, USA, Japan and wherever they play Rugby?

Sorry, don't mean to be thick on this but again, I really don't follow Rugby whatsoever.

hey is there a college bball thread floating around here somewhere? I checked the first few pages and didnt see one, but I didnt want to create one if there was already one that might be somewhere else..

I'm late with my two cents but I think the seperate team threads is a horrible idea. Some teams in this forum only have one fan. They'll make the thread and who will they have to talk to? Nobody. Except when they play another team, in which case someone from that team might stop by to their thread, but why would they do that when they can just talk about the game in their own team thread instead?

The current system works. Have a thread for each conference in whichever sport if it's popular enough (i.e. baseball, football), and a single thread for the less popular sports (i.e. rugby, cricket). It works.

If you're here long enough, you know how discussions lean. Once we get to the regular baseball season and you have a single baseball thread, it's just going to get obliterated with Red Sox/Yankees discussion and everything else falls to the wayside. At least the National League people don't have to put up with that in the current system.

Same with news. I agree with whoever said it, Exile/Kinetic, whoever I forgot. Some news is just completely pointless to report in its own thread.

But hey, I can adapt to anything, just look at facebook, haha. If that's what people want I won't whine about it.

Sorry I guess I misunderstood your original post. I thought it wanted feedback on an idea, not "I'm taking over, I'm doing it this way, you can all deal with it."

I think you're way too quick to dismiss what people are saying though. Most responses seem supportive of change to me, just not all of the changes. I actually like the news idea the more I think about it.

But these are guys who are some of the longest tenured, biggest contributors to the forum, including someone who used to mod this forum and was highly favored by the members when he did. They know what doesn't work and your response is to compare them to old dogs who should be shot.

Your original proposal was to merge conferences into a single thread. The reason they were split initially was because smaller conversations and lesser markets got drowned out by the bigger topics.

Your other proposal, regarding baseball, is to split the AL and allow individual threads for bigger teams. So without running anyone down, can you explain how it would work when someone watches the Angels/Yankees game and wants to talk about it, and they log in and see the following threads:

MLB: AL West 2011-2012 Season
MLB: AL East 2011-2012 Season
MLB: New York Yankees 2011-2012 Season
MLB: Los Angeles Angels 2011-2012 Season

How is this less intimidating to new visitors than what we have now?

The more I think about it, if we absolutely have to change then fine, let's have a general season thread for each sport and then allow team threads for more detailed discussion. But that latest proposal appears at least to me like you're going to alienate everyone from one another even more.

If you want to generate more discussion you need to give people a reason to click on every thread. I know I could care less about posting in the AL West thread and I'll never even open the Yankees thread since the Yankees can go *bleep* themselves, haha.

Two really well worded posts. Not sure if I can really add much after that but...

I think it's a mistake to ignore the input of people who have been around this forum for as long as they have. Whether you like it or not, the "old dogs" were responsible for keeping the Sports forum on the map all these years and are still responsible for a large percentage of the activity that occurs in this forum. I don't think it's fair to refer to those people in the context that you chose to.

As mentioned above, I think everyone has said they are open to the idea of change. But taking away some of the primary things that the members in here enjoy isn't the answer. For example, the Red Sox/Yankees seem to be a big part of your argument for why those types of threads are needed. That's fine but like said multiple times now, every sports team is related in some way, you enjoy hearing those outsider perspectives. EVERYTHING is related in sports. EVERYTHING. Discussion revolves around matchups, divisional races and leads, etc. Those types of discussion INVOLVE EVERYONE, not just fans of the Red Sox or Yankees. A large portion of the discussion is often about the Sox and Yankees but going through those threads will provide ample evidence that plenty of discussion does take place in regards to smaller market teams. If anything, I feel like I would rather just go into the Yankee thread where I can continue my daily arguments there. Discussion among fellow Sox fans can only go so far just like discussion among Yankee fans go only go so far. I talk about the Sox plenty with all of my real life friends. It never leads anywhere because we always talk about the exact same shit. You need those outsider views.