July & August at Twins Daily, Part 2: Forums

I’ll get to the raw numbers in a little bit, but let me take a second to reflect upon what it means to be part of a community and in particular a sports community. Better yet, let me refer to David HK, who nailed it with the most liked comment over the last two months. Miguel Sano's walk-off bomb versus the Braves was a welcome distraction for David who, as you can see from these last few paragraphs of his comment, has bigger worries on his mind:

Image courtesy of © Jordan Johnson-USA TODAY Sports

Twins Video

I look at this place as one refuge where fans can bitch and moan and celebrate together-without resorting to personal beefs, and keyboard warriors are not something we have to deal with. (That's what twitter's for). My kudos to the admin's, and to the people on this board itself.

I gotta say, these past few days-- my country is grieving and tearing itself apart, and Hong Kong where I live, is literally tearing itself apart. It's incredibly scary here right now; yesterday and last night were some of the worst hours of my life. I needed this couple hours of respite for my very soul today. I'm happy for the Twins win. And I'm happy to share it with folks like you.

Thanks.

No, thank you David. For reminding us why we all invest so much in this place. Now here are the numbers:

Registrations – 266 (up 380% from 2018) !!!!!!!!
Topics –670 (up 40% from 2018)
Posts – 35,829 (up 47% from 2018)

It looks like more than ever, more of you are investing in this place. When I saw that registrations number, I assumed I had messed up my report. That’s cray-cray. But I didn’t, and I’m so excited that so many of you are willing to share your thoughts and voice to our forums. If you haven’t yet, we would love to have you join us and talk Twins. AS David points out, sports is better when you can share it. This sure seems like a great year to get involved. Just register and tell us your thoughts.

The top posters in June (not including moderators or writers) were:

1061 Aggies7

925 yarnivek1972

721 spycake

717 mrtwinsfan

668 MNT1996

615 operation mindcrime

604 Blake

565 bighat

546 Mike Sixel

536 sampleSizeOfOne

Thanks for all your activity and passion folks. But we want to recognize quality, too, which is why you can choose to give a comment a “like”. The five most liked posts were:

David HK’s comment above.
Jiminy was unimpressed with how the umpiring crew handled (or failed to handle) the Rangers retaliating against Max Kepler when Jake Cave broke one of baseball’s unwritten rules.
USAChief gave a little pep talk to the Twins front office to get some some bullpen help at the trade deadline.
Twinsbythebay also took issue with the Kepler retaliation, and didn’t think Cave needed to apologize to anyone.
SwainZag weighed in on Luis Arraez’s chances for winning AL Rookie of the Year, with a comparison to Houston’s Yordan Alvarez, who is an absolute monster.

As for the members with the most likes in July or August, we will start with our excellent moderators, who always deserve our thanks. The top five were all moderators: ashbury, USAFChief, Riverbrian, Brock Beauchamp and SQUIRREL. Among non-moderators, Aggies7 and Blake took the top two spots and both cleared 1000 likes.

Many of these folks are heavy contributors to our active game threads and indeed they dominate the top spots for most commented topics for the two months. If you would like to join them, they’re always pinned to the top of the Minnesota Twins Talk forum. But the trade deadline also drove a lot of discussion, such as Seth’s story asking what happens if the Twins do nothing (473 comments) and a topic about getting Noah Syndergaard (425 comments).

Thank you to everyone for sharing your thoughts and keeping the Twins Daily forums a civil, entertaining and informative place. And if you're not yet sharing, check them out yourself here.

John cofounded Twins Daily and co-hosts the Gleeman and the Geek podcast.

Follow John Bonnes on Twitter: @TwinsGeek