Open conversation about the state of the forums

[Squirrel]

On 5/2/2024 at 11:41 AM, Bigfork Twins Guy said:

I agree with the thumbs down comments.  Maybe if somebody uses the thumbs down emoji, the site could force a comment for why the user rated it that way.

I will use the thumbs down from time to time without comment. Often times those who disagree along with me have already said it, even better than I could. Or I've already stated my opinion elsewhere in the thread. The other times I use the thumbs down ... I reserve it to constant trollers or dead horse beaters ... 

That said, I'd be in favor of doing away with them because there are those who never/rarely comment and just let their emojis do their talking. Especially those who use the 'laugh' emoji when someone is very obviously stating a serious opinion. That is nothing more than trolling by emoji.

[Squirrel]

30 minutes ago, Muppet said:

It might be nice to have an option to mute people for a set number of days (1 week?). 
That way I won't shut people out forever if they are just having an overly-emotional baseball day rather than just here to post endless complainey rants about their least favorite managers and owners.  

There is an ignore feature that is pretty easy to use. And it still allows you to view a user's post if you choose to. It's pretty easy to put someone on ignore and remove it.

[Fire Dan Gladden]

I am a pretty consistent visitor/reader to the site.  I would say my general view of everything is positive, though I do have a few items I think need to be addressed:

1) As with every social media site, comments are basically anonymous.  Because of that, you see a lot of negativity and attacking (though the site does a pretty good job directing things towards the team and away from each other).  This is basically unavoidable.

2) Many times there will be streaks of articles saying exactly the same thing.  It feels a little lazy and more like the need for having "some" content vs "quality" content.

3) Along those same lines, there are a few contributors whose articles I have a tough time clicking on because of the number of click-bait articles.  Along the lines of Stephen A Smith or Skip Bayless, it feels like an attempt at a cheap click count.  It also takes away from when they write other articles of quality,

4) I believe there is also a place for long-form articles here.  I understand the time investment can be rough on the writer, but the occasional change of pace would be great!

5) Lastly, I understand the need for advertising, but there will be times I try to access a story or write a comment and there are so many advertising windows pop up I have to refresh the page.  There has to be a better way...

Thanks for the efforts guys!

[BsuNemo]

I, like many others have said, come here every day during the season and at least weekly in the off-season.  I like the lay out.  I like the articles that dig deeper than just the game recap.  I disagree in the "let's keep it positive" tone here.  I think more along the lines of let's keep it respectful and let's keep in honest - and what I see as honest may not be what another sees as honest but it opens up a conversation if it is not allowed to devolve into name calling and fighting (i.e. Me saying the Twins really did a number on the fans by cutting 30 mil this year vs someone else saying we can still win because we've got young guys that can play).  I'd be dang sad if I didn't have my Twins Daily.

[Jocko87]

5 hours ago, Dman said:

Maybe it is the Minnesota nice in me, but I don't love the thumbs down either.  While I understand it gives a fellow poster the power to just disagree with a point made, too often it leaves me wondering what it is they disagreed with and especially why.  IMO if someone took the time to post something and you completely disagree then lets hear why by posting your own opinion.  Then we all get another viewpoint on the subject.  I think the disagree button cheats us out of discourse and doesn't really provide much value that I can see.  

Then the thumbs up would need to go away too. 

The thumbs down is at least a flag that tells me to maybe re-read that post again and as I continue reading maybe I'm on the look out for something else I hadn't considered.  Blind agreement is no different and in the absence of a visual for disagreement, agreement is assumed.  With what we have, at least there is a middle ground of MEH, don't agree or disagree enough to do anything. 

Here, I thumbed down a couple anti thumb down posts (because I disagree) and several posts later I am making comment on it (because I strongly disagree).  It has value.

[Dman]

1 minute ago, Jocko87 said:

Then the thumbs up would need to go away too. 

The thumbs down is at least a flag that tells me to maybe re-read that post again and as I continue reading maybe I'm on the look out for something else I hadn't considered.  Blind agreement is no different and in the absence of a visual for disagreement, agreement is assumed.  With what we have, at least there is a middle ground of MEH, don't agree or disagree enough to do anything. 

Here, I thumbed down a couple anti thumb down posts (because I disagree) and several posts later I am making comment on it (because I strongly disagree).  It has value.

The difference with the thumbs up is that you know they already agreed with the post.  Having them post essentially the same thing wouldn't make much sense.  Thumbs down what didn't you like, why? would be different content.,

[Jocko87]

1 hour ago, Riverbrian said:

I don't know if it is possible for anyone to miss the game thread more than I... because I miss it so much it physically hurts. 

Twinsdaily users who have joined more recently won't know exactly what I'm referring to but I'm am talking about the Glory days of around 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013. The Twins on the field were about as bad as it gets. Lots of losses yet the negative comments were few and easily dismissed or passed over because the majority of game thread participants were having a fantastic time from Chief's Dad Jokes, to Bark Art, to all of us. It was an incredible group of participants.   

I wrote a lot of openers during that stretch with the wonderful help of Squirrel. I tried my best to start with that fun tone. It was hard to come up with that much weird stuff daily but regardless if I was successful or not, I did it with pride and I never looked at it like it was a burden even though it kind of was.

I was a fully formed adult with fully formed life responsibilities, a full time job and yet like a kid who couldn't wait to open packages X-mas morning, I couldn't wait for the work day to end so I could go home, turn on the Twins and just let those adult responsibilities slip away so I could laugh, joke with all those wonderful people on the game thread. Every... single... day, the game thread was going to be a way to end my day with a smile on my face. There were times that I was laughing so hard that tears were coming out of my eyes. It's really hard to explain to your wife why you are sitting in a living room by yourself watching the Twins and laughing audibly out loud. I honestly can't express how much I looked forward to it... every... single... day.  

Sadly, those glory days were probably not sustainable because here's the deal. When a town grows... it isn't just Andy and Opie moving into town. Otis is coming to. By about 2015 I started to notice the pendulum swinging the other way. The negative posters started to arrive which is going to happen with growth and as time went by those numbers grew and the people who made me laugh started waning and it just kept getting worse every year. 

There were many days that I showed up excited to game thread in Glory Days style and the glory days were gone because there was literally no one to play with. The room was filled with fire this coach, how stupid is that player. 

I was an avid game threader because It made me happy. There is enough negative in this world to challenge everyone's happiness, I do not want to seek out more of it in my off time. So, I would simply close my lap top by the 2nd inning and leave. One less guy trying to have fun while only the rats were left to chew on the woodwork. Woodwork with craftmanship that a lot of us put a lot of elbow grease into. 

Once the tide had turned with no sign of an ebb. Those game thread intros that were not a burden became a burden. The time I spent on the game threads was only sending me to bed angry. I crave happiness... I don't want to go bed angry. So, eventually... I just pulled the plug. I mourn this loss. What I lost was important to me. More important than I can express. 

I've tried to jump in on occasion lately but the room is still to... not what I'm looking for. It will be almost impossible to bring the game threads back to the glory days because the negative is here to stay. The only chance to at least make it better is participation from people who would actually like to be happy and those folks don't surround themselves with unhappiness to find happiness. 

  

 

 

You were probably never properly thanked, but I also cry laughed at many game threads in those days.  Thank you.

Yesterday was a beautiful example of a space where a great game thread would have been wonderful distraction from the days news.  I made the following comment in that thread as a response to the blind lady meme and was basically told to F off. 

Quote

Hey everyone, I'm not a moderator but there are a couple of threads for this discussion.

What I want to point out is that in this mess there is also a huge opportunity for the community at Twins Daily. This and further game threads have the chance to be the eyes of the fanbase. It's easy to bitch but this thread might be the only way some fans can "see" the game right now.

Staying disciplined and talking ball only here will help the community in the long run.

I truly believe this.  The game thread of the glory years could be a huge boon for TD right now.

[Vanimal46]

7 minutes ago, Jocko87 said:

The game thread of the glory years could be a huge boon for TD right now.

The game threads of the glory years rarely discussed the game going on. Maybe 20% of the posts were actually about things happening on the field. I bowed out after my blindfolded meme yesterday because until further notice, I can’t make any comments about what’s happening on the field. 

I miss the old game threads too. I wrote tons of openers just like RB and tried my best to make the atmosphere fun no matter what was happening on the field. I’ve accepted long ago those days are over. 

[bean5302]

As somebody who left this site for 1 or 2 years, I can't agree with the comments about increased negativity here. I find it refreshingly less hostile, more mature, and more optimistic than it used to be. I'll be blunt... it felt like there were cliques on the site a couple years ago. I forums tended to be very polarized, and like users tended to go out of their way to support their clique or disparage their "enemy."

I find the forums, posts and content to be much more moderate, and much more thoughtful in 2024.

While the forums themselves may have less traffic, I also think the posts spawn site content and food for thought, even if the posts don't necessarily often have a lot of comments on them directly. I think it also provides an area for users who might be interested in furthering their involvement with the site as potential future writing talent.

They're fine. I do still like the dead horse reaction...

[USAFChief]

5 hours ago, stringer bell said:

I like the fan-driven discussions that are on the Twins Talk page. As the author of six threads on the first page of this forum, I can speak with some experience about this. The game thread intros were fun with new and different perspectives, but it happened far too often that the intro was forgotten. I did more than my share of "emergency" intros and reminders of when the first pitch was occurring. Having a short "let's go" actually isn't too bad. 

As noted, I have authored a lot of threads and do get disappointed when no one seems to want to comment on a topic or the topic morphs into something else. As Squirrel noted, often a topic is brought up here and within hours (sometimes minutes) the same topic is on the Front Page and usurps the discussion. That is unfortunate.

I agree that the negativity can be draining, but it is tough to moderate. We should allow people to state their opinions, but some on this site seem to be waiting for failure.

Concur.

I hope the Twins Talk forum doesn't go away.

One of the things I have appreciated about TD is a sense of community. I would much rather see a "Twins Transactions" thread started by Stringer than something done for pay on the front page.

I want to be a part of something,  not a source of income.

[Dave The Dastardly]

2 hours ago, Riverbrian said:

I don't know if it is possible for anyone to miss the game thread more than I... because I miss it so much it physically hurts. 

Twinsdaily users who have joined more recently won't know exactly what I'm referring to but I'm am talking about the Glory days of around 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013. The Twins on the field were about as bad as it gets. Lots of losses yet the negative comments were few and easily dismissed or passed over because the majority of game thread participants were having a fantastic time from Chief's Dad Jokes, to Bark Art, to all of us. It was an incredible group of participants.   

I wrote a lot of openers during that stretch with the wonderful help of Squirrel. I tried my best to start with that fun tone. It was hard to come up with that much weird stuff daily but regardless if I was successful or not, I did it with pride and I never looked at it like it was a burden even though it kind of was.

I was a fully formed adult with fully formed life responsibilities, a full time job and yet like a kid who couldn't wait to open packages X-mas morning, I couldn't wait for the work day to end so I could go home, turn on the Twins and just let those adult responsibilities slip away so I could laugh, joke with all those wonderful people on the game thread. Every... single... day, the game thread was going to be a way to end my day with a smile on my face. There were times that I was laughing so hard that tears were coming out of my eyes. It's really hard to explain to your wife why you are sitting in a living room by yourself watching the Twins and laughing audibly out loud. I honestly can't express how much I looked forward to it... every... single... day.  

Sadly, those glory days were probably not sustainable because here's the deal. When a town grows... it isn't just Andy and Opie moving into town. Otis is coming to. By about 2015 I started to notice the pendulum swinging the other way. The negative posters started to arrive which is going to happen with growth and as time went by those numbers grew and the people who made me laugh started waning and it just kept getting worse every year. 

There were many days that I showed up excited to game thread in Glory Days style and the glory days were gone because there was literally no one to play with. The room was filled with fire this coach, how stupid is that player. 

I was an avid game threader because It made me happy. There is enough negative in this world to challenge everyone's happiness, I do not want to seek out more of it in my off time. So, I would simply close my lap top by the 2nd inning and leave. One less guy trying to have fun while only the rats were left to chew on the woodwork. Woodwork with craftmanship that a lot of us put a lot of elbow grease into. 

Once the tide had turned with no sign of an ebb. Those game thread intros that were not a burden became a burden. The time I spent on the game threads was only sending me to bed angry. I crave happiness... I don't want to go bed angry. So, eventually... I just pulled the plug. I mourn this loss. What I lost was important to me. More important than I can express. 

I've tried to jump in on occasion lately but the room is still to... not what I'm looking for. It will be almost impossible to bring the game threads back to the glory days because the negative is here to stay. The only chance to at least make it better is participation from people who would actually like to be happy and those folks don't surround themselves with unhappiness to find happiness. 

  

 

 

Riverbrian- One of your intros was the very first game thread I read on TD and I laughed so hard I just had to follow the game via the thread. The experience was more than enough to convince me to become a TD member, which I've enjoyed for the past dozen years or so.

I owe you, buddy.

[Brandon]

Tp help lower the click bate articles maybe not have so many being done on a daily basis.  maybe some days just have the game rehash available and that way in a day or two 4 articles can come out that are better written.  and then 2 or three more days with game rehash or an article here or there and then a good 3-4 article day....... basically, we don't need 3-4 articles a day if it's just click bate due to limited topics.  and it doesn't have to be a consistent and same number of articles every day either.  

the negative tone from articles too.  occasionally is fine.  regularly is not.  

Why don't we hear from John Bonnes. Seth and other owners very often anymore.  I thought we would still get some articles from them.  Nick Nelson still writes good articles.  

I like the idea of adding baseball related emoji's to the mix like the dead horse, but also a homerun, or great catch, or a crowd wave..... or even making a library of memes we can easily reference into comments.

Making it obvious when an article is for caretakers on the site so you don't read a partial article and be left wondering....

[mini_tb]

The quality of the content on twinsdaily has gone considerably downhill over the years, and it's often tedious to navigate the site on my phone with ads and videos everywhere (or at least it was - not really sure anymore TBH).  It's a bad combination.  I don't think I'm on the site more than once a week at this point.  I feel like the owners have become more concerned with overhead type stuff and profit instead of being visible and providing high quality, passionate ramblings that I used to look forward to reading daily. 

[wsnydes]

3 hours ago, Riverbrian said:

I don't know if it is possible for anyone to miss the game thread more than I... because I miss it so much it physically hurts. 

Twinsdaily users who have joined more recently won't know exactly what I'm referring to but I'm am talking about the Glory days of around 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013. The Twins on the field were about as bad as it gets. Lots of losses yet the negative comments were few and easily dismissed or passed over because the majority of game thread participants were having a fantastic time from Chief's Dad Jokes, to Bark Art, to all of us. It was an incredible group of participants.   

I wrote a lot of openers during that stretch with the wonderful help of Squirrel. I tried my best to start with that fun tone. It was hard to come up with that much weird stuff daily but regardless if I was successful or not, I did it with pride and I never looked at it like it was a burden even though it kind of was.

I was a fully formed adult with fully formed life responsibilities, a full time job and yet like a kid who couldn't wait to open packages X-mas morning, I couldn't wait for the work day to end so I could go home, turn on the Twins and just let those adult responsibilities slip away so I could laugh, joke with all those wonderful people on the game thread. Every... single... day, the game thread was going to be a way to end my day with a smile on my face. There were times that I was laughing so hard that tears were coming out of my eyes. It's really hard to explain to your wife why you are sitting in a living room by yourself watching the Twins and laughing audibly out loud. I honestly can't express how much I looked forward to it... every... single... day.  

Sadly, those glory days were probably not sustainable because here's the deal. When a town grows... it isn't just Andy and Opie moving into town. Otis is coming to. By about 2015 I started to notice the pendulum swinging the other way. The negative posters started to arrive which is going to happen with growth and as time went by those numbers grew and the people who made me laugh started waning and it just kept getting worse every year. 

There were many days that I showed up excited to game thread in Glory Days style and the glory days were gone because there was literally no one to play with. The room was filled with fire this coach, how stupid is that player. 

I was an avid game threader because It made me happy. There is enough negative in this world to challenge everyone's happiness, I do not want to seek out more of it in my off time. So, I would simply close my lap top by the 2nd inning and leave. One less guy trying to have fun while only the rats were left to chew on the woodwork. Woodwork with craftmanship that a lot of us put a lot of elbow grease into. 

Once the tide had turned with no sign of an ebb. Those game thread intros that were not a burden became a burden. The time I spent on the game threads was only sending me to bed angry. I crave happiness... I don't want to go bed angry. So, eventually... I just pulled the plug. I mourn this loss. What I lost was important to me. More important than I can express. 

I've tried to jump in on occasion lately but the room is still to... not what I'm looking for. It will be almost impossible to bring the game threads back to the glory days because the negative is here to stay. The only chance to at least make it better is participation from people who would actually like to be happy and those folks don't surround themselves with unhappiness to find happiness. 

  

 

 

RB, your thread openers are what finally got me to actually join the site and start commenting after years of lurking.  I miss those days quite a bit too.  It was always great to have threads go off on completely random topics and almost totally void of baseball.  Now we get complaints about another ridiculous game thread about food.  It was once a pretty solid rule of thumb that the less baseball discussion, the better the thread.  Those days are long gone.

Game Threads are a lot of work, but when they were fun, they weren't work at all.  

As for the rest of the site, I've also stopped reading a lot of the front page stuff.  It's not that I'm not necessarily interested in it, but often that my time is limited and I'd rather read things in the forums.  I do think a lot of the front page articles are borderline click baity.  I don't mean to disparage the writers, I couldn't do their job, but I think the front page gets saturated with quantity over quality.

[ashbury]

57 minutes ago, mini_tb said:

The quality of the content on twinsdaily has gone considerably downhill over the years, and it's often tedious to navigate the site on my phone with ads and videos everywhere (or at least it was - not really sure anymore TBH).  It's a bad combination.  I don't think I'm on the site more than once a week at this point.  I feel like the owners have become more concerned with overhead type stuff and profit instead of being visible and providing high quality, passionate ramblings that I used to look forward to reading daily. 

This is a really valuable comment, simply because it goes against the inherent statistical bias of asking current users, and represents the group of people who may be least satisfied (and least engaged).

[Linus]

I disagree that things are “too negative” in articles or comments. First of all it is a very subjective notion. Someone upthread commented that the site has gotten too negative in recent history. If you look at what has transpired with this team after the playoffs and before the recent winning streak it hasn’t been pretty. If you are going to write objectively about those topics it is going to come across as negative to some people. I don’t want someone to whitewash or sugarcoat things to avoid coming across as negative as long as it is objective.   I’m not picking on Seth but I don’t find his assessments of minor leaguers useful because he only writes positive things. I do really appreciate the work he puts into it however. My greater concern is not positive or negative - it is when certain posters repeat the same argument or opinion ad naseum because they have to get the last word or “win” the debate. State your opinion and discuss new angles but move on. 

[Jocko87]

What if the pre-arb writers were doing game thread openers instead of front page articles?  Lots of low leverage reps and after a short, actual game related opener they could do a @Riverbrian type story.  Great writing practice and with a few people doing it they can work ahead and not have to do everyday.  I have no idea how long a riverbrian opener took him, but I can tell you it would take me a month. 

Maybe the blub could be baseball related, maybe not, who cares?  The beauty of the thread, as with sitting at the game, is just nice discussion with friends filling in the dead time in a slow moving event.  Topic is irrelevant and will weave back and forth into baseball anyway.  

My earlier point with people not able to watch is that there will be enough actual baseball talk to fill in gaps for them. Several of us regulars still have access and do talk baseball plays. It already happens a lot where someone listen to radio will ask what happened. 

[Craig Arko]

5 hours ago, Riverbrian said:

I don't know if it is possible for anyone to miss the game thread more than I... because I miss it so much it physically hurts. 

Twinsdaily users who have joined more recently won't know exactly what I'm referring to but I'm am talking about the Glory days of around 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013. The Twins on the field were about as bad as it gets. Lots of losses yet the negative comments were few and easily dismissed or passed over because the majority of game thread participants were having a fantastic time from Chief's Dad Jokes, to Bark Art, to all of us. It was an incredible group of participants.   

I wrote a lot of openers during that stretch with the wonderful help of Squirrel. I tried my best to start with that fun tone. It was hard to come up with that much weird stuff daily but regardless if I was successful or not, I did it with pride and I never looked at it like it was a burden even though it kind of was.

I was a fully formed adult with fully formed life responsibilities, a full time job and yet like a kid who couldn't wait to open packages X-mas morning, I couldn't wait for the work day to end so I could go home, turn on the Twins and just let those adult responsibilities slip away so I could laugh, joke with all those wonderful people on the game thread. Every... single... day, the game thread was going to be a way to end my day with a smile on my face. There were times that I was laughing so hard that tears were coming out of my eyes. It's really hard to explain to your wife why you are sitting in a living room by yourself watching the Twins and laughing audibly out loud. I honestly can't express how much I looked forward to it... every... single... day.  

Sadly, those glory days were probably not sustainable because here's the deal. When a town grows... it isn't just Andy and Opie moving into town. Otis is coming to. By about 2015 I started to notice the pendulum swinging the other way. The negative posters started to arrive which is going to happen with growth and as time went by those numbers grew and the people who made me laugh started waning and it just kept getting worse every year. 

There were many days that I showed up excited to game thread in Glory Days style and the glory days were gone because there was literally no one to play with. The room was filled with fire this coach, how stupid is that player. 

I was an avid game threader because It made me happy. There is enough negative in this world to challenge everyone's happiness, I do not want to seek out more of it in my off time. So, I would simply close my lap top by the 2nd inning and leave. One less guy trying to have fun while only the rats were left to chew on the woodwork. Woodwork with craftmanship that a lot of us put a lot of elbow grease into. 

Once the tide had turned with no sign of an ebb. Those game thread intros that were not a burden became a burden. The time I spent on the game threads was only sending me to bed angry. I crave happiness... I don't want to go bed angry. So, eventually... I just pulled the plug. I mourn this loss. What I lost was important to me. More important than I can express. 

I've tried to jump in on occasion lately but the room is still to... not what I'm looking for. It will be almost impossible to bring the game threads back to the glory days because the negative is here to stay. The only chance to at least make it better is participation from people who would actually like to be happy and those folks don't surround themselves with unhappiness to find happiness. 

  

 

 

You, sir, are a TD treasure.

[jorgenswest]

12 hours ago, Eris said:

I don’t like the thumbs down and I wish it would be removed as an option. I try very hard not to respond to negative comments or comment negatively  

I agree. Rarely use it but used it today on a front page article that seemed mean spirited ranking when players will leave. I had composed a longer comment on the decision to rank these 6 and then deleted and chose the thumbs down. Not sure what my better move might have been there.

[jorgenswest]

5 hours ago, Jocko87 said:

Then the thumbs up would need to go away too. 

The thumbs down is at least a flag that tells me to maybe re-read that post again and as I continue reading maybe I'm on the look out for something else I hadn't considered.  Blind agreement is no different and in the absence of a visual for disagreement, agreement is assumed.  With what we have, at least there is a middle ground of MEH, don't agree or disagree enough to do anything. 

Here, I thumbed down a couple anti thumb down posts (because I disagree) and several posts later I am making comment on it (because I strongly disagree).  It has value.

I got a thumbs down from you once that made me rethink. Thanks.

[Squirrel]

25 minutes ago, jorgenswest said:

I agree. Rarely use it but used it today on a front page article that seemed mean spirited ranking when players will leave. I had composed a longer comment on the decision to rank these 6 and then deleted and chose the thumbs down. Not sure what my better move might have been there.

You can also rate the article using stars. Not sure how it shows up on the phone, but I know on the ipad or computer, on the upper right of the article page, you can click on the stars, 1-5

[Tjwalsh65]

I love the site.  I read most days.   The minor league reports are among my favorite.  I am more of a lurker but have been here a long time.

[dxpavelka]

14 hours ago, wabene said:

I don't think anyone has a problem with constructive disagreement and debate.

Try having a take they don't care for......

[Riverbrian]

@Jocko87 @wsnydes @Dave The Dastardly @Craig Arko 

Thanks so much... truly kind words.

It was a team of people... It was a community. 

It was a good run. Fun while it lasted. 

 

[Riverbrian]

22 hours ago, stringer bell said:

I like the fan-driven discussions that are on the Twins Talk page. As the author of six threads on the first page of this forum, I can speak with some experience about this. The game thread intros were fun with new and different perspectives, but it happened far too often that the intro was forgotten. I did more than my share of "emergency" intros and reminders of when the first pitch was occurring. Having a short "let's go" actually isn't too bad. 

As noted, I have authored a lot of threads and do get disappointed when no one seems to want to comment on a topic or the topic morphs into something else. As Squirrel noted, often a topic is brought up here and within hours (sometimes minutes) the same topic is on the Front Page and usurps the discussion. That is unfortunate.

I agree that the negativity can be draining, but it is tough to moderate. We should allow people to state their opinions, but some on this site seem to be waiting for failure.

The topics you introduce are intelligent, timely topics worthy of discussion. 

 

 

[Yoke]

I don’t post at all anymore (nobody misses it), but the main thing for me is that the articles aren’t worth dealing with the ads. Reader mode helps, but then you have to switch off that for the comments.

I just think the rush for more “content” had diluted the quality of the writing.

[Doctor Gast]

I want to take the time to thank TD for having an open forum where I can express my opinions & read the insight from other members. Hope it never becomes solely a platform for Twins to spread their narrative.

[Brock Beauchamp]

44 minutes ago, Yoke said:

I just think the rush for more “content” had diluted the quality of the writing.

While this thread is about the forums, I'd like to address this point for a moment. We're not rushing for content, we're trying to give as many aspiring authors a voice as we can. And that's going to be a bumpy ride at times as writers of varying knowledge and ability levels try their hand at the craft.

A few years ago, we decided on this path forward, knowing that it'd be impossible to read ALL the articles. Hell, I don't even know if I read half of them. Find your favorite authors on the site and give them a follow. If you aren't interested in reading everything we publish (and seriously, why take that burden upon yourself), curate the site to your liking using the available tools!

[Brock Beauchamp]

13 minutes ago, Doctor Gast said:

I want to take the time to thank TD for having an open forum where I can express my opinions & read the insight from other members. Hope it never becomes solely a platform for Twins to spread their narrative.

There is little danger of that happening, as our relationship with the team is quite volatile. Some of the owners have a decent relationship with them, others have little interest in having a relationship with them.

[Riverbrian]

8 minutes ago, Yoke said:

I don’t post at all anymore (nobody misses it), but the main thing for me is that the articles aren’t worth dealing with the ads. Reader mode helps, but then you have to switch off that for the comments.

I just think the rush for more “content” had diluted the quality of the writing.

I'm no different than anyone else. I can roll my eyes at times with the some of the content but at the same time... I can only imagine that providing content every day has to be very very very hard to do. Yet it has to be produced. Without content... how can the site sustain itself? 

How much actual news is being generated daily to provide subject matter for a website that NEEDS content generated daily? An article can be written on the 10 game win streak or the sausage. How is that different from the article about the 9 game win streak. Things just don't change that much day to day to provide the interesting content necessary until every once in awhile something big happens... like all of sudden not being able to watch the game or the Twins trade Jorge Polanco.  

The next thing to consider is what does the community react to. What trips triggers? An article on Matt LeCroy is written with 3 replies and 85 views over 5 days compared to an article ranking which veterans are most likely to be let go which generates 69 responses and a close to a thousand views in less than 24 hours. "Who gets the blame for the Twins poor start" generates 94 replies and 2,300 views. You and I don't control the content... we shouldn't. Everybody controls the content. Everybody votes every day with their interest and the Macarena spends 14 weeks at #1 on the charts. 

There is enough content here that I'm able to find stuff to vote for but I understand what you are saying.