2K13: What Can We Do to Improve the Fantasy Baseball Forum?

[BigJonEmpire]

We should fix an introduce yourself post to the top of the forum. It is a good way for newbies to break the iuce as far as posting. They get a few replies from the vets and feel less intimidated by them. An idea I've seen on lots of message boards.

[Hammer]

I know it's really early in the calendar year and there are lots of world and domestic issues, but I really am letdown at how this forum is now. I have noticed over the last two or three years that it continues to have less and less discussion. You go to other forums and they are hair-splitting ad naseum on players and here it's a ghost town.

I always try to get the 2K13 threads going each year as I really love breaking stuff down but I'm not sure why a fantasy baseball MB spends all of its time repeatedly fighting over religion, politics, evolution, etc. I used to come here because it was loaded with so many smart people who really helped push me to new levels. I like to try to give back where I can but I don't understand what is going wrong. Maybe it's just early and maybe it's just this or that, but I feel like we've said that all before.

Please forgive my little sidebar rant here but I just hope all of you smart and opinionated contributors will spend some time helping building out this forum and providing your analysis (or dare I say it: fight over something here more frequently)

I stopped posting and frequenting for all the reasons you suggested. There will be some who say its ebb and flow but theres more to it than that. I find that this site is virtually useless for football and the religion/politics virtually always gets personal so i decided its not worth it. I will pop my head in during baseball and i am still going to mock and have made good friends in both RJ PFP as well as RJEL but i can be friends with those people with or without RJ.

Just my 2 cents.

[Piney Boy]

I stopped posting and frequenting for all the reasons you suggested. There will be some who say its ebb and flow but theres more to it than that. I find that this site is virtually useless for football and the religion/politics virtually always gets personal so i decided its not worth it. I will pop my head in during baseball and i am still going to mock and have made good friends in both RJ PFP as well as RJEL but i can be friends with those people with or without RJ.

Just my 2 cents.

So are you in for Mock 1?

[Hammer]

Revo gave the "hammers in" i believe.

[amcg]

We should fix an introduce yourself post to the top of the forum. It is a good way for newbies to break the iuce as far as posting. They get a few replies from the vets and feel less intimidated by them. An idea I've seen on lots of message boards.

Yeah that's a decent idea.

[griswold]

We should fix an introduce yourself post to the top of the forum. It is a good way for newbies to break the iuce as far as posting. They get a few replies from the vets and feel less intimidated by them. An idea I've seen on lots of message boards.

I like this idea as well.

[roadtrip68]

If there was a "like" button this one would have a ton. We have a thread for this on a forum I use for work and it is a great way for newbies to be seen and welcomed.
'

[TopChuckie]

I stopped posting and frequenting for all the reasons you suggested. There will be some who say its ebb and flow but theres more to it than that. I find that this site is virtually useless for football and the religion/politics virtually always gets personal so i decided its not worth it. I will pop my head in during baseball and i am still going to mock and have made good friends in both RJ PFP as well as RJEL but i can be friends with those people with or without RJ.

Just my 2 cents.

Agree with this. The vitriol from the religion and politics seems to have taken over the tone of the entire site, most importantly including the baseball area, and turned it more into what most other boards were when this one was still above all that. There are other reasons also, which have been mentioned, as to why many of the valuable posters have moved on, but it's just not really that fun around here anymore the way it used to be and now there are simply better places to go for what we used to come here for. Unfortunately, they are not better than what this used to be.

[Judge Jude]

I do think there's a pretty widespread vibe on the site at this point for an improvement in tone, so I hope that will come across and encourage now-occasional visitors to visit more frequently again like the old days.

Lots of thought-provoking posts on this thread, keep 'em coming!

[Todd Zola]

Suggestion from the peanut gallery...

Everyone and the horse they rode in on has an Experts (how I loathe that word) League. See about getting into a couple with the affiliation being Rotojunkie. Sites blog about the league, you get mentions that way, etc.

Not talking Tout/LABR but Razzball, KFFL, FP911, RotoRob, CBS etc

[roadtrip68]

Agree with this. The vitriol from the religion and politics seems to have taken over the tone of the entire site, most importantly including the baseball area,

I almost stopped coming around too because of this. I don't think it was quite that rampant as you think but the last thing I want to see is political beliefs of others (especially avatars with political figures/overtones). I come here for baseball and fantasy baseball talk. If those who frequent want to talk politics and religion then it wouldn't take much to add a forum on here for that. I still think this is a great group of guys and we can all make it better and more welcoming to newcomers.

[amcg]

Suggestion from the peanut gallery...

Everyone and the horse they rode in on has an Experts (how I loathe that word) League. See about getting into a couple with the affiliation being Rotojunkie. Sites blog about the league, you get mentions that way, etc.

Not talking Tout/LABR but Razzball, KFFL, FP911, RotoRob, CBS etc

This is another very good idea.

[amcg]

Could we set up a Rotojunkie Commissioner Court?

Say, 7 of the best and brightest RJers are voted (by us) onto a "court". This is then offered as a free service to adjudicate in trade disputes arising in any league, anywhere.

Don't know how you advertise it but I'll definitely say that many leagues would use it. It's a non-charge service but would surely get some traffic out of it, and perhaps some entertaining threads

[TopChuckie]

I almost stopped coming around too because of this. I don't think it was quite that rampant as you think but the last thing I want to see is political beliefs of others (especially avatars with political figures/overtones). I come here for baseball and fantasy baseball talk. If those who frequent want to talk politics and religion then it wouldn't take much to add a forum on here for that. I still think this is a great group of guys and we can all make it better and more welcoming to newcomers.

My issue isn't so much that the topic of politics is spilling into the baseball area, it's more that the tone that is created by the conflict in the Sports Bar is then carried into a baseball thread and permeating the entire site. You can avoid the politics threads, but you can't avoid the tone when it takes over. Someone goes to the Sports Bar, gets fired up and pissed off in a politics or religion thread, and then goes into the baseball forum and directs it at someone sharing their harmless, innocuous opinion about baseball. After a while of that, people just start coming here expecting or looking for a fight, and if you're not in the mood for that, you just don't come that day, or any more...

There's a reason why there's a rule of thumb about not bringing up politics or religion in mixed company, it seldom ends well. We broke that rule here.

[TranaGreg]

My issue isn't so much that the topic of politics is spilling into the baseball area, it's more that the tone that is created by the conflict in the Sports Bar is then carried into a baseball thread and permeating the entire site. You can avoid the politics threads, but you can't avoid the tone when it takes over. Someone goes to the Sports Bar, gets fired up and pissed off in a politics or religion thread, and then goes into the baseball forum and directs it at someone sharing their harmless, innocuous opinion about baseball. After a while of that, people just start coming here expecting or looking for a fight, and if you're not in the mood for that, you just don't come that day, or any more...

There's a reason why there's a rule of thumb about not bringing up politics or religion in mixed company, it seldom ends well. We broke that rule here.

maybe a sticky re: rules of engagement for the baseball forum ... keeping all posts civil, focussing on the baseball issues raised as opposed to the poster, etc.; violations will result in being forced to watch Houston Astros games, or something similarly evil.