Open discussion about the future of the BF forums

[stalton]

As a long time BFer (give me a grilled cheese sandwich), I still use BF to get my Brewer and MLB news but quite honestly my interaction has seriously dropped because of all the animosity and personal attacks on the site.  The overall culture of the site seems to be more toxic than it ever was, and I just have zero desire to deal with any of that.

[Gump]

I like the forum. I like the way the forum reads and how it presents itself. I don’t go to Reddit or Discord for my Brewer news. Whenever I go there….it feels so… “🤪🤪🤪🤪” for lack of better term. 
 

This site feels mature. I’m new here,but most of the people here actually seem knowledgeable about the Brewers and the game of baseball. 
 

Please don’t change anything and keep it the way it is. I dig it 👍

[Jim French Stepstool]

4 hours ago, torts said:

Only forum I visit, I like the old school forum look/feel, please don't turn this into a knockoff reddit

 

A thousand times, yes. If it ain't broke.........

This may be odd, but I like the IGT even though I very rarely post while a game is going on. I enjoy going on afterward, posting some observations about what I just saw & reviewing some of the comments that were made "live". I guess there will always be a certain amount of toxicity & disagreement, as sports fans are passionate & usually opinionated about what would make their team better. But for those who think it's bad, I can direct you to places that make this site look like Sunday go to meetin' in comparison.

Many good folks on here. I appreciate the chance to interact.

[SomewhereInTime]

I'd like to see a ballpark guide.  Maybe as a new forum with a thread for each park.  Would be nice to have a place where fans who travel to road games can share their experiences at each ballpark.  Plus there's a number of us here who don't live anywhere near Milwaukee anymore and the majority of the Brewer games we attend are road games somewhere else.

[edfunderburk]

12 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Traffic as a whole is WAY UP. Forum traffic has been relatively steady from 2022-present. Game threads are down a bit this season, which isn't super-surprising given how contentious they can get.

Really, there's nothing "wrong" with the site as a whole and it's in a very stable place right now. Traffic is higher than it ever was as BF.net.

But that doesn't mean it's perfect or that it shouldn't be improved. I've kinda been ignoring the forums for awhile now and want to get my finger back on the pulse of them.

By the way, we have the option to format by conversation instead of the traditional forum format of chronological. But I know forum users ******* HATE that idea. Personally, I'm not against it, I just really want to do what's right for the community and if you all say jump, I'll try my damnedest to jump.

I am an avid forum fan & user & certainly prefer chronological 🤓

[kestrel79]

In game threads are great. I really enjoy following along with the game, or catching up with the game later at night on it. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

Okay, so the pushback on threaded conversations was just as I expected - and I agree that chronological is best - but I have to ask every so often.

[RobertCrawley]

This board adds immensely to the enjoyment of the games.

And it's free.

Can't ask for more than that.

Except maybe more rhymes.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I'll try to dedicate a little more time to contributing to the game threads. To be completely honest, I haven't been watching much baseball lately. Every so often I go into burnout mode and climb into a hole (this time it's the Red Rising book series). It's probably time for me to crawl out and rejoin the beisboling world (I still read a lot and work on the sites every day but haven't watched much game action).

[KeithStone53151]

One thing that's significantly better this year is the in game threads. I had stopped participating last year, but it has been a bit more level-headed so far this year. Generally more positive. Positive vibes are a lot more enjoyable and make it more enjoyable to participate. It might be helpful to be able to stack 2-3 quotes instead of only one. That's all i've got.

[homer]

IGTs usually go as the team goes.

[Underachiever]

IGTs are more pleasant and shorter. In my opinion, IGTs are always shorter when the team is winning. Edit: What homer said, directly above me.

I visit here daily, and usually multiple times a day. I am at least monitoring the IGTs, sometimes even more if I can't watch the game so I can get a sense of what's happening to an extent that is greater than following the gamecast online.

I wish that threads didn't get hijacked. I know that my tendency is to want to police what gets said. I think I restrain myself almost all of the time. But my engagement goes down when, for example, an IGT becomes about Cheap Mark A instead of the game in front of us. There's already plenty of threads discussing payroll. 

I am glad the site is here, and as Zack Mayo said in An Officer and a Gentleman:

[Austin Tatious]

I think the arrangement and setup of the forums are totally fine.  My favorite forum is the minor league forum. Tremendous contributors there who I greatly appreciate.  

The tone of the main forum isn’t my thing.  Too much snarkiness so I stay away a lot.  If someone doesn’t like your view, a lot of posters go into smartest man in the room mode or try to manufacture a phony gotcha.  It’s loathsome and I am sure I am not the only one driven away by that.  

[Samurai Bucky]

You had asked about the tone -- I appreciate how the mods will get involved when some things get a little personal.  Head on over to some Badger sites and it is a cesspool of jack wagonry.

As far as technical?  If there would be an option to go back to the forum list after marking the forum as read. 

The ads aren't intrusive.  No worries there.

Nice work, guys!

[iKezims]

This is the only Brewers forum I trust to really get any legitimate discussion around the team. That isn't a shot at the "casual" fan, but this forum has always been able to take the team and talk about the team a step past casual which I think is very hard to find nowadays. The coverage of the Minor league teams is fantastic and I think should be highlighted more. I think some threads can get contentious at times very unnecessarily and there are still a few "power" users that think their post count directly resonates to the standing of their opinion, but I would say that is fewer and far between over the last few years and unavoidable in nature in a forum setting. Been lurking or posting here since somewhere back in 2005 (lost an account somewhere in 2015), but ultimately wouldn't change anything and this provides a nice home. 

[torts]

1 hour ago, iKezims said:

This is the only Brewers forum I trust to really get any legitimate discussion around the team. That isn't a shot at the "casual" fan, but this forum has always been able to take the team and talk about the team a step past casual which I think is very hard to find nowadays. The coverage of the Minor league teams is fantastic and I think should be highlighted more. I think some threads can get contentious at times very unnecessarily and there are still a few "power" users that think their post count directly resonates to the standing of their opinion, but I would say that is fewer and far between over the last few years and unavoidable in nature in a forum setting. Been lurking or posting here since somewhere back in 2005 (lost an account somewhere in 2015), but ultimately wouldn't change anything and this provides a nice home. 

Wait... You mean to tell me post counts don't matter?! 

[Nola Beery]

I'm still a real newbie around here with no connection to Milwaukee, except maybe stopping at the airpoirt decades ago. And I may not hit every IGT as much as I'd like. But I really like this forum. (It's not like there's a bunch of Brewer fans hanging out in New Orleans to gripe with.)  The threads are never too hostile, and I can even learn from the stat nerds who speak a language that is still foreign to me. I'm glad to pay to avoid the ads, because they really interupted the flow, esp. on my phone.  Well done. Carry on. Thanks.     

Oh yeah:  even if I miss the thread during the game, I like to read what people were thinking while the game was being played. 

Edited May 1, 2024 by Nola Beery
added a bit

[Jim French Stepstool]

2 hours ago, iKezims said:

 The coverage of the Minor league teams is fantastic 

That was also brought up by one or two others, and I swung-and-missed by not mentioning it myself. We're blessed with a handful of people that really go over the farm with a fine toothed comb & are spot-on with their observations. Greatly appreciated.

[TURBO]

1 minute ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

That was also brought up by one or two others, and I swung-and-missed by not mentioning it myself. We're blessed with a handful of people that really go over the farm with a fine toothed comb & are spot-on with their observations. Greatly appreciated.

1000% this!

[Nola Beery]

10 hours ago, RobertCrawley said:

This board adds immensely to the enjoyment of the games.

And it's free.

Can't ask for more than that.

Except maybe more rhymes.

Do NOT encourage Trego!  Well, yeah, go ahead. 

 

[Nola Beery]

Whoever mentioned coverage of the Minor Leagues: Yes!  I could easily drive to Biloxi to see the Shuckers and spend a night at a nice hotel while my wife gambles away my pension. JK, she's cool; its her mother (of blessed memory) who could gamble away a pension, and tried to.  

[mrn1ceguy]

For awhile the tone was getting a little too hostile for me but a sprinkling of the “ignore user” feature cleared that up.  

My only issue has been technical.  When loading a page, the ads sometimes load in a wonky order so the page jumps to the “last read” message then jumps up and then back a few times before finally settling down.  While it’s doing that, it’s slightly frustrating as you will be reading a post then have to either try to scroll for it multiple times or wait awhile for it to fix itself.  And even less often, sometimes the whole page needs to reload once or twice because an add crashes it.  All in all, a pretty minor issue and who knows, could just be me.

[areacodes]

6 minutes ago, mrn1ceguy said:

For awhile the tone was getting a little too hostile for me but a sprinkling of the “ignore user” feature cleared that up.  

My only issue has been technical.  When loading a page, the ads sometimes load in a wonky order so the page jumps to the “last read” message then jumps up and then back a few times before finally settling down.  While it’s doing that, it’s slightly frustrating as you will be reading a post then have to either try to scroll for it multiple times or wait awhile for it to fix itself.  And even less often, sometimes the whole page needs to reload once or twice because an add crashes it.  All in all, a pretty minor issue and who knows, could just be me.

You aren’t the only one that happens to and, I agree, it can be a little annoying.

I also agree that there was an increase in hostility for a while after the switch but seems to be better of late.  With that said, even the increased level of hostility here was nothing compared to the rest of the internet, other forums, twitter, TikTok, etc.

[duewizard]

I don't even live in the USA so this has been a great place to talk about the Brewers and baseball in general. There's always interesting discussions going on, and most debates are friendly and informed, and that is a rare thing to find in the Internet.

As others have said, the minor leage work done by Joseph Zarr, Damuelle and Mass Haas is incredible, and I've learnt a ton from them.

Only technical issue I've had is that, on mobile, ads on articles sometimes glitch and move you up and down. Its not frequent or too annoying so I dont mind it

[brewers4eric]

I've been a member for twenty years but I rarely post.  I used to follow a Brewers forum linked to the Journal Sentinel site but the sniping was out of control.  One of the posters wanted to hang on to Lyle Overbay and trade Prince Fielder for Shea Hillenbrand and Daenys Baez.  That was the end of that forum for me.  

But one of the Brewerfan founders had posted a link at the JS site to a discussion on the merits of Wes Helms.  I followed the link and I was hooked.  I visit the site each day and am one of the biggest fans of the Minor League forum.  The site has made me a better fan of the Brewers.  

It's time to wake up and smell the tailgate.  Go Brewers.