Rule Reminder for this Site

RobHowe

RobHowe

Administrator
Catching up on posts after returning from Indianapolis last night. One of the first ones I saw was political.

While I'm sure without games and events to talk about, some of you will be tempted to politicize what's happening with the pandemic in this country and around the world. You can do that elsewhere - twitter, facebook, reddit, etc. That's not going to be allowed here.

We had an HN meeting yesterday about what content we can provide and we will continue posting items to discuss. We can still write recruiting stories, Hawkeye history stories/Where Are They Now, previewing Iowa/college football, and there will be news related to how things unfold moving forward.

But, again, this will not become the wild west because there are no games. There are no games in the summer and we don't allow politics on here. The same applies now.
 
I appreciate that and I want to come here to take my mind off of stuff, but it's also hard when the stuff I want to escape is impacting The Hawks. I hate politics and fighting about "it" or about COVID-19 or what plan we should be doing is exhausting...but also informative. I am hoping you might at least let us keep one thread discussing the disease as long as it doesn't become too political. I would like that because if I were to try and have that discussion on my social media platforms, it would ONLY become political. This place could provide objective discussion from several points of view. Unfortunately I don't know how we avoid it at some levels in our worlds current climate.
 
I'm open to talking about the virus and how it's impacting the sports world. I'm not willing to allow people making it political.

I like topics like "should student-athlete's receive an extra year of eligibility because of the seasons being canceled?" And I think there are more of those.

I'm not open to people arguing about the government's response to the virus or having a right v left discussion on a pandemic. That can be taken elsewhere.
 
RobHowe said:
I'm open to talking about the virus and how it's impacting the sports world. I'm not willing to allow people making it political.

I like topics like "should student-athlete's receive an extra year of eligibility because of the seasons being canceled?" And I think there are more of those.

I'm not open to people arguing about the government's response to the virus or having a right v left discussion on a pandemic. That can be taken elsewhere.
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Thank you.
 
RobHowe said:
I'm open to talking about the virus and how it's impacting the sports world. I'm not willing to allow people making it political.

I like topics like "should student-athlete's receive an extra year of eligibility because of the seasons being canceled?" And I think there are more of those.

I'm not open to people arguing about the government's response to the virus or having a right v left discussion on a pandemic. That can be taken elsewhere.
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You'd pretty much have to ban a few folks if you really want to observe the rule.
 
RobHowe said:
Do you feel like you've complied with the rule?
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I have responded to political posts. I have not instigated any.

You gotta give us a break though. Some really see all these cancellations as "political", and we're still coming to terms with the cancellations themselves.

My wife is happy, at least in short term. She may not be when she sees the reverberation throughout the country.

This could really do more harm than good. Disney, Universal, and others have closed. That will KILL those local economies for a while. Ditto with travel bans. And it may last a lot longer than the panic/pandemic, itself, will last. Simply saying, "It's the right thing to do" is, alone, oversimplifying it.
 
InGoodCo said:
I would like that because if I were to try and have that discussion on my social media platforms, it would ONLY become political.
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Unfortunately that will also happen here.

That's one of the nice things about this board is that it's not Twitter and it can serve as a respite from people's politics. There's zero chance that it doesn't get political or turn into a coulda/shoulda/woulda, and every single one of us has a different idea of what they coulda/shoulda/woulda done.

I have my views and I alluded to it a little bit in a post last night, but I have zero interest in discussing it because 1) I'll never change anyone's mind on what the response should be (we've all subconsciously made that determination ourselves), and 2) In 99.9% of cases it devolves into pissing matches. Pissing matches about sports are fun on a sports board. Politics? not so much.

A bar I used to hang out in had a trash can in the entrance foyer with a sign that had an arrow pointing to it. The sign said "Leave your religion and your politics here, and don't forget to take them with you when you leave. They are not welcome in this establishment."

There is not a better piece of advice that's ever been given. COVID-19 is a sociological issue now, and that's just a fancy way of saying political. Discussion belongs on boards dedicated to those types of topics.
 
hawkeyebob62 said:
This could really do more harm than good. Disney, Universal, and others have closed. That will KILL those local economies for a while. Ditto with travel bans. And it may last a lot longer than the panic/pandemic, itself, will last. Simply saying, "It's the right thing to do" is, alone, oversimplifying it.
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See? look.....

Barely a few minutes later and you're doing exactly what Rob said was banned. Talking about the political response side of it without even referencing sports. (Disney/Universa/"local economies"/"travel bans.")
 
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Fryowa said:
See? look.....

Barely a few minutes later and you're doing exactly what Rob said was banned. Talking about the political response side of it without even referencing sports. (Disney/Universa/"local economies"/"travel bans."

Take that shit somewhere else. We know you have an opinion. Nobody wants to hear it.
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Rob asked me a question and I responded, you sense fucking moron.

Maybe YOU should take YOUR shit somewhere else. Or not. I really don't care what you think.
 
hawkeyebob62 said:
I have responded to political posts. I have not instigated any.

You gotta give us a break though. Some really see all these cancellations as "political", and we're still coming to terms with the cancellations themselves.

My wife is happy, at least in short term. She may not be when she sees the reverberation throughout the country.

This could really do more harm than good. Disney, Universal, and others have closed. That will KILL those local economies for a while. Ditto with travel bans. And it may last a lot longer than the panic/pandemic, itself, will last. Simply saying, "It's the right thing to do" is, alone, oversimplifying it.
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You're either part of the problem or part of the solution. ;)

I get it. And I hope people got whatever it was they needed to off of their chests. I was driving a car to and from Indiana the last two days and could not moderate these boards.

I'm writing a column right now and will go through threads later today to clean things up.

We have an unprecedented situation here and I am sympathetic to the emotion attached to it. I do not, however, want this community to mirror what I'm seeing on social media platforms right now. We can enjoy conversations on here that don't have people lashing out at each other from each side of the isle.
 
RobHowe said:
You're either part of the problem or part of the solution. ;)

I get it. And I hope people got whatever it was they needed to off of their chests. I was driving a car to and from Indiana the last two days and could not moderate these boards.

I'm writing a column right now and will go through threads later today to clean things up.

We have an unprecedented situation here and I am sympathetic to the emotion attached to it. I do not, however, want this community to mirror what I'm seeing on social media platforms right now. We can enjoy conversations on here that don't have people lashing out at each other from each side of the isle.
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That has to be frustrating for you. I can't even imagine the disappointment you and others felt on getting the cancellation news for B1G tournament, let alone NCAA.

Was media allowed at all games, or just the ones involving the air "primary" teams? Were you in arena for the Wednesday games? And...would the Hawks have beaten Minnesota? :)
 
Rob, I will first say that I would not want to be in your shoes to have to decide where to draw the line between sports and politics, because our way of life is woven so tightly among them. When I try to decide on where I draw my line, I tend to look at the extremes, and in this case I dont want to come on this message board to defend or admonish a political leader, nor, do I want to just come here and pretend that Iowa sports reside in a vacuum, oblivious to what is going on in the rest of the world. So that leaves the line, to me, somewhere in the middle.

Someone stated earlier that they don't want to talk about this stuff on social media because it will go political immediately, and with that I concur. So I am not sure if this place is not the perfect place to discuss what is going on in our society, because unlike any other platform, we all have a commonality in that we love the Hawks. There is a sense of trust in that, even though many of us dont know each other. And for me, the Hawks do impact my life before the start of the game as well as after, and I am sure that I am not alone there. So that means that this team for whatever reason that many of us dont even know why, is intertwined so dearly into my life that I like to interact with others here beyond sports because my brothers and sisters on this board are the only ones that can understand it. Even my wife, my dad, my kids, while they totally understand my love for Iowa and support me in that, they dont and cannot ever fully understand how much.

So saying that, I hope you let us all talk about what we need to talk about. The name calling, bashing, and demeaning rhetoric doesnt need to happen, but that is pretty common aside from this crisis and doesnt have a place here. But I do want to learn people's thoughts on how this crisis has affected them and what their ideas are for how it has gone wrong in an attempt to change it in the future and make it better. Change happens from the bottom up, and there is no lower rung than an anonymous message board.
 
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Fryowa said:
Unfortunately that will also happen here.

That's one of the nice things about this board is that it's not Twitter and it can serve as a respite from people's politics. There's zero chance that it doesn't get political or turn into a coulda/shoulda/woulda, and every single one of us has a different idea of what they coulda/shoulda/woulda done.

I have my views and I alluded to it a little bit in a post last night, but I have zero interest in discussing it because 1) I'll never change anyone's mind on what the response should be (we've all subconsciously made that determination ourselves), and 2) In 99.9% of cases it devolves into pissing matches. Pissing matches about sports are fun on a sports board. Politics? not so much.

A bar I used to hang out in had a trash can in the entrance foyer with a sign that had an arrow pointing to it. The sign said "Leave your religion and your politics here, and don't forget to take them with you when you leave. They are not welcome in this establishment."

There is not a better piece of advice that's ever been given. COVID-19 is a sociological issue now, and that's just a fancy way of saying political. Discussion belongs on boards dedicated to those types of topics.
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I mostly agree that people will not change their mind on ANY topic, no matter how strongly or effectively you argue your point.

However, I definitely flip-flopped on this COVID-19 thing from "a bunch of over-hyped panic" last week, to this week thinking, "I can't believe people are not taking this more seriously." I spent a few hours researching how this is actually different from what has happened previously. That helped me to understand the important difference. I have been trying to share some of this same information this week in the hope that other people also find it illuminating.

But ultimately we are in a situation of tremendous uncertainty, and you are right, in those situations we will all tend to run back to our camps/ideals.
 
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