Brock Beauchamp

Exactly, that's what I'm trying to wrap my head around; how to log and store the results in a digestible manner.

Welcome to the site!

Welcome to the site!

Welcome to the site!

We rolled this out last year at Twins Daily and it's pretty fun. We only do it during the offseason to keep people engaged during what can be a pretty boring five months, particularly here in the upper midwest. The way it works is this: A topic is picked by someone and people silently enroll to be one of two debaters on that topic (the example I'll list below is Kirby Puckett or Joe Mauer: who was better?). Once two anonymous users have agreed to debate, the debate happens in four parts: Opening Statement, Rebuttal 1, Rebuttal 2, Closing Statement. The debate moderator posts *for* the debaters under obfuscated special accounts, once every 24 hours so both debaters have time to research and respond. No one reading the debate knows who is debating in an attempt to avoid bias. This is key because it allows anyone from a brand new user to an owner of the site to participate without losing/gaining votes based on user popularity. The debate topic is locked so no one can post until the debate is concluded. After the debate is complete, a poll is added to the debate and everyone is allowed to vote on the more convincing debater. Then the polls close and the debate topic is open to all users to participate in the debate and continue the conversation. Here is an example of a Twins Daily debate: https://twinsdaily.com/forums/topic/53816-debate-no-2-who-was-the-better-player-kirby-puckett-or-joe-mauer-debatepoll-concluded-thread-open/ Is this something you all find appealing as a way to kill a long, dark offseason?

You got my mind whirling on this. I'm talking it over with the other owners but I think there's a good chance you just sent me down a path to add a cool new feature.

Interesting. How do you envision this working in the forums?

Welcome to the site!

We have a tool to use if you want player recommendations with salaries. When you submit the form, it posts to this forum. https://brewerfanatic.com/payroll-blueprint

I understand ownership not wanting to blow open payroll but now would be the wrong time to turn cheap. Either spend some short-term money now or blow up the team and rebuild quickly. This team has significant gaps that require free agents to fill. Either make a real effort to compete or start over. But as you said, one more year of higher payroll before packing it in for a few years is a pretty likely scenario and I'm pretty okay with that.

I understand ownership not wanting to blow open payroll but now would be the wrong time to turn cheap. Either spend some short-term money now or blow up the team and rebuild quickly. This team has significant gaps that require free agents to fill. Either make a real effort to compete or start over. But as you said, one more year of higher payroll before packing it in for a few years is a pretty likely scenario and I'm pretty okay with that.

Welcome to the board!

Welcome to the board!

I just discovered this as I was looking over early plans for the 2023 season. Opening Day once again has all teams playing their first game. This makes me incredibly happy, as the dilution of OD over the years has really chafed me. Back in the day, when I lived on the west coast, I used to take OD off and start watching the Reds around 9-10am, then continue through to the Dodgers, Angels, or Padres through 10pm. I really like the schedule changes MLB made going into the 2023 season. Hell, I like pretty much everything MLB is doing with the 2023 season.

I'll impart some experience I have here: expectations tend to dictate the tone of game threads, except inverted. As many of you are aware, the Twins were a complete trash fire from 2011-2014, then again in 2016. The game threads during those seasons were actually the most fun I've seen; everyone just threw up their hands, admitted they were spending time on something that didn't matter at all, and had some fun with it. But the moment the Twins returned to relevancy, the game threads began a multi-year spiral. How can we remind people that this is a game they claim to enjoy even when they have an emotional stake in what's happening? I don't know.

To follow up, I completely agree with this 100%. I actually don't participate much on game threads either here or at Twins Daily because I find it so frustrating to see constant, repetitive negativity often before anything bad has even happened. On the other hand, this has been a really vexing problem for me personally for over 15 years now. It's not a new phenomena, though it may have escalated over the years, I'm not sure. I find this a perfectly reasonable issue to tackle in this thread. If anyone has suggestions about this or literally anything else, we're all ears. But please don't descend into bickering, let's try to find an acceptable solution for as many as possible.

If anyone feels they are not being treated fairly, I can always be reached directly via PM and respond pretty quickly most of the time.

We don't mind a couple of snippets so what you did there is probably fine. But, say, if there were six Brewers listed and you pasted 200+ words of paywall content, we'd prefer users not do that. Thanks. A paragraph or two of content to stimulate conversation is fine but writers are paid by that paywall, let's be sure to respect that.

That's a possible long-term fix, though I'd have to dig into the RTE and see how it triggers the transition to an emoji.

Okay, so now I'm starting to think about the offseason and next spring training. The season is often full of maintenance work: updating features, making sure the site is running smoothly, the community is happy, etc. The offseason is when I look to how the next calendar year will look on the site, starting with new features usually rolling out around the time spring training starts. So give me any input you have on the site. What could be better? What bugs you? And maybe most importantly, give me ideas for things you'd like to see added to the site. It doesn't matter how crazy the idea seems, throw it out here and I'll give it consideration.

For the time being, it appears all I can do is remove automatic emojis that render when you type something like :). But you can still use emojis through the menu or by typing something like "colon-smiley-colon" (spelled out so the system doesn't fill in an emoji for me).

I’m on vacation right now but this has annoyed me for years. I’ll try to remember to look into it when I get back.

An interesting point. Something I'll try to resolve in the future, giving each spot a minimum salary in case people don't fill out the entire sheet.

Okay, Kolten Wong and Christian Yelich have been fixed.

Anybody who wants to put together a Brewers free agent target list and send it to me would be appreciated! I’ll add it to the options section.