OT: On topic or off?

Maybe I should just shut up on this one ;)

My take is this: It’s a BCB community, not a BCB collective. We’re not the Borg(e) (Victor), thinking only with a single mind on a single focussed topic.

So we, like any group of people, we sway during the course of a discussion- to and fro. We mostly keep on topic, but when we don’t we try and note it with a OT: designation (for a Fanpost or Fanshot).

Inside the threads, the river runs where it runs. As long as we are respectful of each other, I’m fine with it.

If a portion of a thread discussion goes way off what I’m interested in, then I skip down with the ever-trusty “Z” key until I get to a spot I like. No big deal.

Anyway, that’s my two cents.

I think some of these OT posts are fine, since most days in the winter, there isn’t any baseball to discuss. This will diminish or disappear during the season.

we are a family of sorts. We share many common interests, and (with or without meeting in person) are concerned of each others wellness. I am sure since it is the offseason and a slow one at that it has been a litle more than in the past, but even during the season it happens.

I probably am guilty of what you speak of, but I do try to stay out of more serious discussions that I know nothing about. I do ask questions, but try to ask after ther discussions die down. I have a tendancy to pick up on the non serious stuff….I feel bad this is ruining this site for you.

And when BCB gains popularity, you’re going to get results like you’ve noticed.

Yeah, there’s more off topic stuff. A lot of personal threads, like asking for prayers for sick Cubs fans or introductions. The Harry Potter thread and even my trivia one this week. It’s the off season though. And it’s the internet. It’s not like we’re taking up space. I think without these threads, we’d be a lot more bored. Some of us have limited internet use during the work days and for whatever reason, BCB is not blocked. So we spend the majority of our days on here. Given that, I look forward to the new threads about randomness. It’s nice to talk about things other than the Cubs every once in a while. When you’ve been posting or reading here for a while, you get to know some of the other posters. It’s nice to see a different side of them once in a while.

I also do agree that the number of “off-topic” posts has increased from what I remember of years/off-season’s past. I attribute it to two things: 1)It’s the offseason and people are bored/anxious, and 2)There are more new people around and there hasn’t really been an announcement in a while mentioning that this isn’t a “general topics” blog (or at least not that I remember).

I do find the increased frequency of OT posts to be a mild irritation (and I want to emphasize mild), especially if they aren’t clearly labeled as to their actual topic. And additionally, I know there are things that are important to people that they’d like to talk about, but that aren’t really appropriate for this venue. Since it is the offseason, I’m not going to complain too much (or at all, apart from this comment here; and especially if their topic is something that’s more important than baseball like life and death). But I hope that as the season draws near people might choose to find other venue’s that might be more appropriate.

One reason I feel that way is that for some of us, we use this board as an escape from the events of life that trouble us and would rather have the site as purely baseball, without reminders of the things we’re hoping to get a brief break from. Of course, that’s just my own view and I don’t expect that everyone feels the same nor must accede to my vision of the site.

Anyway, in the end it’s Al’s choice as to how this all goes. Regardless – or at least barring any major changes – I’ll still be around here anyway. But I do hope that as the season draws near the site will return to its more normal form though. But this is all just my penny-thoughts.

an OT post about the amount of OT posts?

I know it’s the off season, and there is not a lot of news, but there are other sports, is it really necessary to get bogged down in (so many) posts about topics far removed from sports in general?

You’re really answering your own question here. There is nothing Cubs-related to talk about most days in the offseason, so why sit around waiting for news when we can discuss something else that interests a lot of people around here?

By your logic, a post about football would be as OT as a post about LOST – since as you noted, this is a Cubs blog, not a sports blog. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with OT posts – especially when they’re marked OT. If you’re worried about them pushing Cubs posts off the front page, go into your settings and make it so more FanPosts/Shots appear on your front page. You could also just click on ‘All FanPosts’ to look for anything that might interest you.

Obviously there was some drama years back when things were getting a little too OT for some people a little too often, but in the offseason I can’t imagine how this can be viewed as a problem.

And I actually started typing up a long, long FanPost about the premiere of LOST, but decided against it because I was worried that this exact sentiment would be shared by many. Although in all honesty, I’m still itching to start up that LOST post.

Sort of On Topic: 7, not 6.

I think it’s pretty good ratio, actually.

…especially seeing as how it’s the off-season. My Fanpost sidebar is set at 10 and most of them are related to the Cubs or baseball in one way or another. (Ha, as I’m typing this, I see Drew’s statistical breakdown.)

there have been much higher expectations from the Cubs where as it seems we’re in a holding pattern this time around so not as much to talk about.

My 2nd thought is that Al and SBN have grown exponentially in the last year and have been exposed to the masses thru Yahoo, Internet articles quoting Al, even a recent interview he did with the HotStove blog. So there are bound to be many new posters that are not aware of the culture of BCB from the past.

BCB has definitely changed a lot from back way before the 2.0 revolution, but most of it has been for the better. It will however be interesting to see how things develop once baseball starts with these aforementioned “new posters” but I think for the most part there will be less of them (off topic).

Shawngoldman, where is the second installment on the stats?

what happened a few years ago. There was a contingency of people who would regularly post OT, one person was even posting an OT post everyday with celebrity/gossip stuff, even during the season if I remember correctly. They all became so comfortable with each other that other posters began to feel isolated and it created animosity among posters. This eventually led to BCB losing quite a few regular posters, an event I like to call The Great BCB Rift.

If someone would post a topic that was not a great topic, but still a Cubs topic, they would highjack the thread and talk about God knows what. This also led to people feeling frustrated about even posting a topic out of fear that it would not be taken seriously and their comments/questions would go unanswered or, to a certain extent, mocked.

Obviously, as this is a community, people are going to feel more comfortable with one another as they get to “know” each other, it happens. And by no means is this a slight against Cubbie-Tim, but just for example, creating a BCB awards could be viewed as nothing more than a popularity, or unpopularity, contest. I voted in it and honestly don’t have a problem with it but think some people could view it that way.

Having been here at the blog for quite a while now, I know that the off season breeds boredom and OT posts. I just hope that it doesn’t carry over into this coming season and we eventually see BCB devolve into what happened as I described above.

I know we can rec posts now, and i know this has been brought up many times before, but this site really could use and unrec feature as well.

If we could rec the good fanposts up (as we do now) and unrec the bad fanposts in to oblivion, the OTness of some posts wouldn’t matter, as it would be clearly evident what value it had to this community, no matter the relation to the Cubs it had.

Same would be useful for fanshots and commenting.

The trolls of this site wouldn’t get nearly the fun from it if a few “unrecs” sent their comments below a reader-optional fold, or removed all of the vowels (called disemvoweling), making their trolling unreadable.

So in a little less than two weeks we can got to the ON topic stuff, like Fuld getting his spot on the bench, and if “special assistant to the GM” Maddux will continue to pull clubhouse pranks. So goof off for a little while longer with OT stuff and soon we can discuss the above, as well as which player got the best off season hair cut.

This offseason has been better, IMHO, even though there has been less interesting Cub news.

I will say that I don’t have impressions in my mind of the poster here and their favorite opinions or slants. I went to the BCB Awards poll, and put in some names, but I couldn’t really remember who tends to go off-topic or who is who in the stats vs scouting debate.

When I reply to a comment here, I don’t pay attention to who made the comment. I just add my two cents. Apart from a few experts, like Josh77, toonsterwu, and Al himself, you all look the same to me. Does that mean I’m old?

then we won’t be bored to distraction and be creating “off the wall” threads, most of which, by the way, I enjoyed throughly. I also always look forward to well written Fanposts, Fanshots, articles and comments by people who know more about the game than I do.

A community which can so easily embrace several generations of fans, with very diverse backgrounds and differing levels of baseball knowledge, is special. Many of us live in a Cubs dispora, and this makes the crowd here even more special. With this background, I am not worried about too much silliness or too many very mathematical statistic disputes on BCB, etc.

I would think that most of is were originally attracted to the site by the quality Cubs content paired with a lively bunch of people. The longer we, in a virtual sense, hang together, the more we know about each other personally, the more secondary subjects will come up. Just imagine sitting next to a fan in Wrigley for game after game, and never, for example, mentioning how pretty the boats on the lake are, which leads to talking about… The same thing happens here, and does not diminish us as fans. Talking about boating for a couple of comments could, IMHO, easily be a sub-thread in a game thread. Doing the same thing in a thread analysing the WAR of two possible new Cubs outfielders, shouldn’t be.

On the whole, I think we do a fairly good job of retainig the correct balance between ON and OFF topic.

Thank you for letting me add my somewhat confused rant.

“P.S. I’ll be at ST 3/18 – 3/23… …Oh damn is this off topic?”

IMHO not at all. I envy your trip to ST and look forward to reading about your impressions of the 2010 Cubs team.

the Cubs fan community shone through for us, and I and my family deeply appreciated it
BTW, my mom’s had a bit of a set back – a blood clot in her leg, which is serious, and possible gall stones. Thanks for all of your good will and prayers

How much longer is the picture series? I was tired of it after like the third picture. I understand some people like it, but personally I dont like it.