Fryowa
Administrator
Might want to sit down for this, but it's 2020. What else could you expect?
I've been contacted by the owners here at HN and accepted a role as moderator on the boards. Don’t head for the door yet, there won't be a whole lot changing other than some clean-up and organizing of forums which I’ll talk about below.
One thing we can all agree on is that that COVID and a whole bunch of intertwined social issues have made for a lot of contentious discussion. All of us (including me) have let ourselves be drawn into it to some degree. In my experience moderating other boards in the past, playing whack-a-mole and deleting these posts and arguments is a lost cause, but letting it go unrestricted just drives people off.
So…
The only semi-major change that’s going to happen is we’re going to add a couple new Off Topic sub-forums, each with their own discussion rules. Like most of you, I like off-topic discussion throughout the season and when there aren't any sports to talk about. I've had great convos here about grilling, smoking, officiating, economics...you name it. I wouldn't stay here if I couldn’t continue that.
Also like many of you, I don’t like to have sports threads constantly derailed with political and social discourse, so we are going to have two (for starters) new sub-forums. One for open discussion where you can talk about whatever you want. You want to talk about Trump, Biden, COVID-19 policy, racial/social issues, the Pope, or Chris Hitchens, this is your place. Obviously anything like threats, offensive images/videos, etc. won't be allowed but aside from those things you'll be free to post on whatever topic you want. I think this is a good compromise and it's worked well on boards I've worked on (and still work on). If you want to derail a thread or have a tiff with another poster start a new thread or take it to DM.
The other OT forum will be for anything but those sorts of topics. Food, music, movies, hobbies, "what laptop should I buy," that sort of thing. Now we're going to have those threads, but you can participate with zero fear of it getting political, etc. OT posts will still be allowed in the FB/BB forums as this is where most people will see them, but if they take off I'll just move them over to the new forum. As soon as they get hijacked with political/social stuff, the individual posts are getting deleted. We all get that way from time to time, but please don’t do it. This forum will be moderated more heavily and we can add new ones if it makes sense…
Also, I am up for suggestions and feel free to reach out to me via DM with issues or suggestions. I’m doing this because I like the boards and the posters at HN, not to play Sgt. Slaughter and I wouldn’t offer to spend the time if I didn’t enjoy the place. Hopefully as sports get rolling again the HN board will start to get back to something resembling it’s old self.
Go HAWKS
I've been contacted by the owners here at HN and accepted a role as moderator on the boards. Don’t head for the door yet, there won't be a whole lot changing other than some clean-up and organizing of forums which I’ll talk about below.
One thing we can all agree on is that that COVID and a whole bunch of intertwined social issues have made for a lot of contentious discussion. All of us (including me) have let ourselves be drawn into it to some degree. In my experience moderating other boards in the past, playing whack-a-mole and deleting these posts and arguments is a lost cause, but letting it go unrestricted just drives people off.
So…
The only semi-major change that’s going to happen is we’re going to add a couple new Off Topic sub-forums, each with their own discussion rules. Like most of you, I like off-topic discussion throughout the season and when there aren't any sports to talk about. I've had great convos here about grilling, smoking, officiating, economics...you name it. I wouldn't stay here if I couldn’t continue that.
Also like many of you, I don’t like to have sports threads constantly derailed with political and social discourse, so we are going to have two (for starters) new sub-forums. One for open discussion where you can talk about whatever you want. You want to talk about Trump, Biden, COVID-19 policy, racial/social issues, the Pope, or Chris Hitchens, this is your place. Obviously anything like threats, offensive images/videos, etc. won't be allowed but aside from those things you'll be free to post on whatever topic you want. I think this is a good compromise and it's worked well on boards I've worked on (and still work on). If you want to derail a thread or have a tiff with another poster start a new thread or take it to DM.
The other OT forum will be for anything but those sorts of topics. Food, music, movies, hobbies, "what laptop should I buy," that sort of thing. Now we're going to have those threads, but you can participate with zero fear of it getting political, etc. OT posts will still be allowed in the FB/BB forums as this is where most people will see them, but if they take off I'll just move them over to the new forum. As soon as they get hijacked with political/social stuff, the individual posts are getting deleted. We all get that way from time to time, but please don’t do it. This forum will be moderated more heavily and we can add new ones if it makes sense…
Also, I am up for suggestions and feel free to reach out to me via DM with issues or suggestions. I’m doing this because I like the boards and the posters at HN, not to play Sgt. Slaughter and I wouldn’t offer to spend the time if I didn’t enjoy the place. Hopefully as sports get rolling again the HN board will start to get back to something resembling it’s old self.
Go HAWKS
