First, I commend all of you to cwyers' winter meetings open thread diary for today; as usual he's done an excellent job of linking all the major MSM articles, condensing all the rumors into one place, and in general summarizing what everyone's going to be wanting to talk about today, whether it's the Brian Roberts rumor, the Dempster-as-starter discussion, the Rule V draft, or the latest Great Thoughts Of Lou Piniella.
Buried in the comments in yesterday's various discussions was this one from TCobb1911, which I repost here in its entirety because it is an excellent summary of how each and every one of us -- myself included -- should approach posting about something we've heard:
- Set your default number of diaries shown on the right sidebar to say 40 or some number (any ideas people)?
- When "breaking news" comes about, check the right side bar for a diary containing like "news". For instance, any possible rumor today and tomorrow would go into Cwyers Daily Diary.
- When in a diary that MIGHT contain the rumor, do a CTRL-F, or for us MAC users COMMAND-F, and type in for instance "Rich Hill and Sean Marshall. The Find technique is very useful.
- If you have a rumor, take 1 minute and Google it. Chances are, if it holds any water, you'll find multiple sources...ESPN, MLB etc etc.
- If you have news of a Cubs signing, check the source. If its an actual credited source such as being on ESPN or MLB, or is recognized by a trusted Baseball Writer, check the side bar, and if there's nothing, REFRESH the page, and look again. If nothing is still there (which on this site, its an improbability) feel free to post a diary. If its already mentioned in a diary of another name, don't worry, its should deserve its own.
Let me add a couple of notes here. In addition to setting the number of visible diaries (the default number is 10, but you can set it as high as you like), there are TWO search functions under "Menu" at the top of the right sidebar. Search BCB searches this site. It is an all-encompassing search; everything that has ever been posted here can be searched, and you can search, using the drop-down menu, stories (that's main-page posts), comments, diaries; you can search for a specific user or comments by that user. Search SB Nation Baseball Sites is a Google-powered search which does exactly what the link says -- searches every one of the 32 SBN baseball sites (all 30 team sites plus Minor League Ball and Beyond the Boxscore) for information -- this is a valuable resource that many of you may not have noticed before.
In summary, some of you may have gotten the impression that I don't want people to "break news" or that there are only certain people "allowed" to "break news". Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a community site. Each and every one of you can, and I hope will, contribute. All I've been asking -- and all that anyone who's asked for people to stop posting multiple diaries on the same subject -- is to try to limit multiple posts on the same topic. Thanks.
Sorry, I don't have any holiday songs or poems to parody today. Inspiration cannot be forced, you know.