What is really important to foster the .Net community

[bbsplitter]

This may not be helpful input, but I feel that a site like Discord is more attuned to the majority of conversations that happen on here. This site works well for a "main post" type of interaction with following comments, but is kind of lagging in terms of other communications.

I think this should be embraced, it's not a negative thing. Fade started writing articles throughout the season, and I think more people should be fostered and encouraged to do that type of writing on here.

One off questions really aren't meant for this type of forum, "Does Bruce Irvin Come Back"? is really something people should be able to weigh in quickly and then move on to the next topic.

A lot of the negativity seems to fester from 3 page posts that have lasted weeks for people to languish over, rather than the natural conversation speed of Discord or such where people have moved on after 5 minutes and it's easier to forgive and forget. 8 minutes later you are talking about your favorite pizza instead of languishing over how to prove the other people wrong.

 

[Teahawks]

Well I'm new here but not to posting about the Hawks. I'm the primary Hawks poster in an NFL thread on a small site for 11 years. It has about 25 regulars so not as big, but similar format. The following may already be on Seahawks.net, I don't know, but this is what works well in my experience:

1. Contest/elimination threads/recurring threads. Such as mock drafts, HOF squads, record prediction, etc. Someone actually keeping track of that is the hard part but can be done. It's just for fun, keeps things interesting.
2. A strong first page or first thread, with intro and history, that can tie into what I just mentioned. For instance, in the off-season everyone makes a bold prediction. Those are then screenshotted into the Hall Of Guarantees in the first thread, and then we go back and laugh at how bad they were.
A. Also in page 1 is an intro to key members, their affiliations, legendary quotes they made, etc. This gives you a sense of people seeming more personal/real, rather than just a user name.

3. As far as attitudes, we have our resident Pat's, Packers, and Eagles fans who get super distraught when something happens to their team or they disagree. I could imagine it's alot more of that here with the higher numbers. The thread has never gotten so toxic, but it has its moments. Usually the best thing would be for me or one of the regulars to just say knock it off. Or there's an ignore post button lol. We're not on the phone so you can't read sarcasm or intention, and miscommunication will happen. Just assume good intent. Again, not sure how to foster this. It's kind of like friendship, it happens organically not forced. We have a like button, and positive posts are real easy to tell apart from negative ones because of it. So maybe try that and everyone will be able to tell real quick when someone is being a jerk because that post won't have likes.

Hope this helps.

 

[LymonHawk]

Well I'm new here but not to posting about the Hawks. I'm the primary Hawks poster in an NFL thread on a small site for 11 years. It has about 25 regulars so not as big, but similar format. The following may already be on Seahawks.net, I don't know, but this is what works well in my experience:

1. Contest/elimination threads/recurring threads. Such as mock drafts, HOF squads, record prediction, etc. Someone actually keeping track of that is the hard part but can be done. It's just for fun, keeps things interesting.
2. A strong first page or first thread, with intro and history, that can tie into what I just mentioned. For instance, in the off-season everyone makes a bold prediction. Those are then screenshotted into the Hall Of Guarantees in the first thread, and then we go back and laugh at how bad they were.
A. Also in page 1 is an intro to key members, their affiliations, legendary quotes they made, etc. This gives you a sense of people seeming more personal/real, rather than just a user name.

3. As far as attitudes, we have our resident Pat's, Packers, and Eagles fans who get super distraught when something happens to their team or they disagree. I could imagine it's alot more of that here with the higher numbers. The thread has never gotten so toxic, but it has its moments. Usually the best thing would be for me or one of the regulars to just say knock it off. Or there's an ignore post button lol. We're not on the phone so you can't read sarcasm or intention, and miscommunication will happen. Just assume good intent. Again, not sure how to foster this. It's kind of like friendship, it happens organically not forced. We have a like button, and positive posts are real easy to tell apart from negative ones because of it. So maybe try that and everyone will be able to tell real quick when someone is being a jerk because that post won't have likes.

Hope this helps.

T.C.?

 

[Appyhawk]

:lol: If we had a like button I would have clicked it for the "Like button" idea.

 

[KiwiHawk]

If you read threads even going years back people were complaining that the site was going downhill...so it seems to me it's just people historically b!@ch. Yes some posters who had some good content and writing ability left...mostly because they did not like their views being questioned or critiqued. I have found if you post something here be prepared to defend it and dont take it to heart when someone disagrees with it.

It's funny how you can be wrong about the highlighted bit for the very reason you recognize in your next sentence.

Posters would put time and effort into analysis posts only to have people dump on them for being wrong without presenting anything resembling a rational argument to back it up. THAT's what they got sick of. The ones who always did their homework were given equal weight to the loudmouths, and they just stopped having the will to do the homework anymore.

I'm old-school. I think you DO have to be able to defend your position, and I think you also need to be receptive to a well-presented argument that challenges your position. But I don't think you need to pay any attention to loudmouths spouting unsupported crap. Unfortunately the choruses of loudmouths drown out some of our better posters and they left, understandably. Why should someone stick around supporting their position with facts and figures only to have some asshat with a hunch claim his opinion is equally valid?

Then there are the White Knights who feel they must defend their chosen protected from any form of criticism, whether or not it's valid. If you make a post analysing the first half of the conference championship game against Green Bay, you'd better not mention Wilson threw any interceptions without placing 100% of the blame on Jermaine Kearse, or the proverbial will hit the fan and you'll be assailed by an entire kingdom of these knights.

It gets tiresome. Every year it's harder and harder to be an old-timer because it's now no longer the third time you've had to deal with some opinionated dick who's too lazy to present anything but his own opinion. It's the 20th, or 50th.

How do you promote critical thinking, research, informed opinions, and openness to ideas? Hell if I know. All I know is back in the day that kind of who-shouts-loudest-wins crap didn't fly here.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

People can defend Wilson and still be critical. He's not perfect. It's funny how if someone sticks up for the guy, they get branded as someone who thinks he can do no wrong. He's a hell of a player who can get better. That being said, I've pretty given up arguing the same point over and over again. And that's fine, plenty of other stuff to talk about.
Russ is my favorite player, but he, like ANY QB has his bad games, fortunately it's not that often.
And who on here ever claimed that Russ didn't play like crap in the 1st half of the GB Championship game? He was WAY off (and yes Kearse also played like crap most of that game) Basically, Russ had his worst game ever and best game ever in the same game.
It's just the same argument over and over again. Some will point out all the bad stuff, others will point out the good and the fact that he got it done. Meh, it's never gonna' change and that's fine.

 

[thegameq]

A new or long time Seahawks fan is looking for a place to get news, vent and just talk Seahawks football in general. He does a search and finds .Net. He decides to read some of the threads.......

......what do you think is his first impression? Do you think he or she wants to join after that first impression?

We all know what the problem is? You want to see this place grow and take off in popularity? Fix the problem.

It will take a lot of moderation--at times it might be a little heavy handed--but it will get the message across.


I don't frequent forums as much as I used to, but the best ones are always inviting, informative and you can usually get a good laugh or two. There's also the sense of camaraderie that keeps people coming back and it gets prospective members to join and participate.

The best part of .Net is the analysis and the articles--opinion and technical. Venting is the other major draw when we lose.

But the pissing matches (every board has them) and cliques bring the board down.

The seahawks are at an all time high right now. The teams exposure is creating new fans every season. Where are those new fans going to go............?


Fix the problem. I'll make it easier......this is a business--you're losing customers.

Fix the problem.

 

[SantaClaraHawk]

I've found people here to be great about fleshing out views and why we all have them, and in the main forums (this and NFL nation) pretty tolerant even from the "longtimers" who disagree. Personally I've found personal attacks to be pretty limited and especially in the main forums.

I think Discord, Twitter should be ramped up as ancillaries to the main site. These can be useful especially when outages happen and they can also drive traffic here. But I don't think they're substitutes in themselves as they do not provide sustained discussion. People come home from work and post; those conversations take place over days or a couple weeks as opposed to the two-hour window you typically see on Discord. It's nice to be able to see how everyone's weighing in over a long period of time.

 

[Teahawks]

Well I'm new here but not to posting about the Hawks. I'm the primary Hawks poster in an NFL thread on a small site for 11 years. It has about 25 regulars so not as big, but similar format. The following may already be on Seahawks.net, I don't know, but this is what works well in my experience:

1. Contest/elimination threads/recurring threads. Such as mock drafts, HOF squads, record prediction, etc. Someone actually keeping track of that is the hard part but can be done. It's just for fun, keeps things interesting.
2. A strong first page or first thread, with intro and history, that can tie into what I just mentioned. For instance, in the off-season everyone makes a bold prediction. Those are then screenshotted into the Hall Of Guarantees in the first thread, and then we go back and laugh at how bad they were.
A. Also in page 1 is an intro to key members, their affiliations, legendary quotes they made, etc. This gives you a sense of people seeming more personal/real, rather than just a user name.

3. As far as attitudes, we have our resident Pat's, Packers, and Eagles fans who get super distraught when something happens to their team or they disagree. I could imagine it's alot more of that here with the higher numbers. The thread has never gotten so toxic, but it has its moments. Usually the best thing would be for me or one of the regulars to just say knock it off. Or there's an ignore post button lol. We're not on the phone so you can't read sarcasm or intention, and miscommunication will happen. Just assume good intent. Again, not sure how to foster this. It's kind of like friendship, it happens organically not forced. We have a like button, and positive posts are real easy to tell apart from negative ones because of it. So maybe try that and everyone will be able to tell real quick when someone is being a jerk because that post won't have likes.

Hope this helps.

T.C.?

Unsure what TC means or is asking.

 

[LymonHawk]

If you don't understand, then it doesn't matter. Forget it.

 

[SantaClaraHawk]

A "like" button like Teahawks is talking about would be highly useful. I have seen this or variants of this introduced on phpBB boards. I've seen this actually expanded into different buttons.

With a lot of posts, here and elsewhere, the "like" can show roughly how much engagement a particular post is getting without putting it on the responder to feel like they have to just say "I like this" or whatever.

 

[Tical21]

You need smart posters. How you get that is....tough

 

[olyfan63]

Wenhawk, please keep doing what you need to do to make the site financially sound. Better to run a surplus than a deficit.

I think there could be more options for F2F meetings for .NET members. It seems there must be a group of season ticket holders that get together in person on a semi-regular basis, well, 8 times a year or so. I'm not committed enough to shell out for season tickets. I'm not really even committed enough to shell out $300 a pop for individual game tickets either. In the past I did have Seahawks season tickets back in the KingDome days and for one year at Husky stadium during that interim time. Anyway, back on topic. I am not aware that there is anywhere on this site that lists regular or even special event F2F meetups. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm simply blind.

I do agree that creating more/better connections would likely improve the quality and tone of the dialogue here. Say for example, I get annoyed with (insert your favorite .NET poster whipping boy here, choose from John63, Anthony!, XRay, and Tokadub, or choose your favorite), I'll say John63, for this example. Now John63 only annoys me occasionally, and usually only when he's engaged in some silly pissing match I'm not directly involved in, but he also has some really good points and interesting takes on things, to balance that out. So I briefly contemplated putting John63 on my foes list, but decided against it, to not miss out on the interesting takes he comes up with. I suspect that if I met John63 in person, say at a Seahawks-oriented bar, I'd probably get along well with him and have a good conversation, and kind of see how he is. Then, when I see a mildly annoying John63 post on here, I'd just think, well, that's just John, he's a good guy, and I don't need to get sucked into this one, and hit "PageDown", instead of responding in a way that triggers drama.

I have felt at times that there are cliques of guys who know each other, season ticket holders or whatever, that have a bit of an "in-group" vibe going on. It was more of a thing when I first came on board, that if I didn't start a thread in exactly the right way, it would get quickly closed by mods, and then someone who was more "in" would start almost exactly the same thread, and that thread would have a nice little run. I haven't felt that way in a good long while, a couple-three years maybe, but when I was a beginner here, it was a bit disconcerting and puzzling. I don't see that happening now.

I did a follow-another-team's-player-for-the-whole-season thread in the NFL Nation forum, and happened to choose Kirk Cousins, partly because of his parallels and history with Russell Wilson. Some posters asked why I was so obsessed with Cousins, but a few posters shared some great insights, and a couple even messaged me saying they really liked the idea and approach. Simply something I tried for fun and learning. I learned that Uncle Si lives in the Twin Cities, and got the local perspective on Cousins. Overall, it felt worthwhile and I intend to do a similar thread next season, and right now, I'm thinking Gardner Minshew. Maybe, "Gardner Minshew, Franchise QB, winner, or simply the next Christian Ponder?"

I expect to have a couple extra Seattle Dragons tickets available for maybe 2 of the remaining games, and if there was a simple setup for making them available as a fundraiser for .NET, I would definitely do that.

 

[Uncle Si]

Picking a hell of a time to promote face to face meetings and tickets to the Dragons games..


But, once this all settled down, it would be nice to see the pre-kgame meetups and road game gatherings again.

 

[olyfan63]

Yeah, my timing's not the best. I hereby decree that all .NET related face-to-face meetings in the Twin Cities are summarily cancelled for the next 24 hours. All you Seattle sickos, let's go watch a Dragons game. On TV for those of you with compromised immune systems. But sanitize your remote control first, and in between every different remote user.