Matt Haughey's Excellent Hospital Adventure: Matt Haughey, original coder of SportsFilter and a great inspiration to the site, has a post up on his personal blog today about his recent brain tumor diagnosis. The tumor appears treatable with hormones and surgery if needed. Our thoughts and prayers are with you, Matt.

posted by rcade to navel gazing at 08:13 PM - 13 comments

Should SportsFilter Think of the Children?: Kerrycindy, a new SportsFilter user with an 11-year-old son who reads the site, is upset that profanity appears here. Although we discourage some profanity and delete most profanity that's personally abusive from one member to another, we've never had a rule here to keep it as clean as a PG-13 movie. Our archives will show lots of examples of George Carlin's seven dirty words. Should we reconsider this policy and clean our act up?

posted by rcade to editorial policy at 11:38 AM - 37 comments

Hooking Delicious and Twitter to the Huddle: I'm thinking about connecting Delicious and Twitter to the huddle, so that SportsFilter users can contribute sports links and comments on those sites and have them automatically end up here. I know there are Twitter users who might use a #spofi hashtag. Anyone here actively posting sports-related bookmarks on Delicious?

posted by rcade to feature requests at 02:36 PM - 13 comments

Pushing an Agenda on SportsFilter: "I don't like to come to SPORTSFILTER, to defend my religious or political views. It's not fun. We share a common thread here and it's sports." Longtime member Tselson has a beef with the high school baptism link.

posted by rcade to editorial policy at 09:18 AM - 50 comments

On Kim Clijsters, Marriage and Childbirth: The asswhip I'm getting on the front page gives me a good opportunity to make a point. There are a lot more people with strong opinions on front-page links than there are people who post front-page links.

posted by rcade to editorial policy at 04:58 PM - 22 comments

The Sidelines are Back: SportsFilter's admins can post to the Sidelines on the front page again, so if there's something site- or community-related you'd like to see us promote, just ax. Also, we're increasing the number of categories for posts, so make your suggestions and feedback here.

posted by rcade to navel gazing at 05:23 PM - 7 comments

Comments with Profanity: There's no blanket rule against profanity on SportsFilter, but we've moderated the site to avoid becoming a community where people routinely use phrases like "piece of shit racist anti-fan fuckbag motherfuckers." Though you may be able to wield such a phrase with style, humor and panache, experience shows that most people who follow your lead will just be abusive dolts.

posted by rcade to editorial policy at 08:43 AM - 20 comments

Should SportsFilter Have a Daily Catch-All Link?: The Drudge Retort has a daily Nooner post that's an open thread for any discussion that doesn't belong in any of the existing stories. It has been a useful and popular feature. Should SportsFilter have something similar?

posted by rcade to editorial policy at 01:49 PM - 18 comments

EPL Fantasy League Starting Up Soon: The Premiership begins play Saturday when Chelsea plays Hull City at Stamford Bridge. Here's the discussion for members interested in playing this season.

posted by rcade to fantasy at 02:39 PM - 10 comments

Suggestions Needed for Sidebar Links: I've added a link to the SportsFilter Wiki to the sidebar as the first step in fully integrating the project with the mother ship. If there are other SportsFilter-related efforts we should be linking here, or other sites that merit a front page link in the sidebar, please suggest them here.

posted by rcade to editorial policy at 12:52 PM - 10 comments

Comment Formatting: If you have problems formatting comments on SportsFilter, post bug reports here. I'm working on a way to keep users from putting line breaks at odd places while still allowing things like lists. The comments you post here should look exactly like they do in preview.

posted by rcade to bugs at 02:36 PM - 34 comments

Happy Birthday to Us: Seven years ago today, seven members of MetaFilter pooled our money together and paid Matt Haughey to clone his code to create the first sports-themed community weblog. A day later, Justgary asked the question that we've asked ever since: "Tony Dungy promises to rebuild Indianapolis' defense, and with his defensive resume, who could doubt him?"

posted by rcade to navel gazing at 08:28 PM - 19 comments

SportsFilter Under Development: SportsFilter is launching its new old code today, a rewrite of the site in PHP that incorporates the original design. If you have trouble posting or commenting, log out and log back in again. Post bug reports here.

posted by rcade to bugs at 10:03 AM - 120 comments

Locker Room Bug Fixed: The bug that prevented messages from being posted in the locker room has been fixed. The email bug that prevented me from being notified about the locker room bug also has been fixed.

posted by rcade to bugs at 02:30 PM - 7 comments

Auto-Login Enabled: We've added auto-login back to SportsFilter. The next time you log in, the site will set a cookie that logs your account in automatically when you visit the home page. For times when you're at a public library or someone else wants to log in from your browser, the cookie can be manually deleted by clicking the logout link on the front page.

posted by rcade to bugs at 03:07 PM - 12 comments

Member Pages Are Back: Member pages are back online on SportsFilter, the first pages to be brought back under the site's real user interface. See Terrapin's page and any member link in this discussion for examples.

posted by rcade to navel gazing at 06:50 PM - 41 comments

Ask SportsFilter: Know Any Software That Delays Internet Radio?: A friend of mine likes to hear the Internet radio broadcasts of sporting events, even when they're being televised. When the radio is delivered faster than the video, you hear things before they happen on TV, making this impossible. Is anyone aware of audio software that can introduce a user-selected delay, making it possible to sync Internet radio with a TV broadcast?

posted by rcade to feature requests at 02:32 PM - 1 comment

Welcome to the New Server: SportsFilter has relaunched on a new Linux server with MySQL/PHP software driving the site. All weblog posts and comments have been moved over, going all the way back to the first post on Jan. 24, 2002. (Updated Aug. 21).

posted by rcade to editorial policy at 02:31 PM - 112 comments

Should Fantasy Sports Be on the Front Page?: Considering the popularity of the leagues here, and the work being done by the users who start them, should we consider moving the Fantasy Sports category to the front page, now that such things are possible?

posted by rcade to editorial policy at 02:51 PM - 11 comments

SportsFilter is Moving: We're moving this site to new software and a new server this weekend. I will post updates to my Twitter feed and weblog as needed, so check those if the site can't be loaded.

posted by rcade to navel gazing at 04:27 PM - 14 comments

SportsFilter Team Ownership Project: I recently became an owner of AFC Wimbledon, a British football club begun by fans that's managed by a fans' trust with publicly sold shares. I'd like to see SportsFilter become an owner of several publicly traded sports franchises (or even individual athletes such as golfers and baseball prospects), buying at least one share a month and using site votes to exercise our voting rights when issues come up to a vote. What do you think of the idea?

posted by rcade to feature requests at 09:11 AM - 49 comments

Calling All Rookies: If you're an active participant of this site who joined in the last 12 months, please help us answer this question: What's good and bad about this community?

posted by rcade to navel gazing at 09:50 AM - 85 comments

SportsFilter Has 2.37 Million RSS Subscribers: That's not a typo. For several years, this site has been the most-added weblog on Yahoo and one of the 10 most-added sports sites. This audience sees the site differently than web visitors, as you can see by visiting My Yahoo's Add SportsFilter page. We've tweaked the posting guidelines a little to account for them.

posted by rcade to editorial policy at 09:02 AM - 44 comments

Editorializing on the Front Page: My choice of the phrase "early exit" in the Yankees post drew some heat from SportsFilter members who felt I chose the link to kick the Yankees while they were down.

posted by rcade to editorial policy at 09:49 AM - 172 comments

Server Slow No Mo: SportsFilter had 58 gigabytes of old log files cluttering up the server. Now that they're deleted, the server should be as quick as Billy Donovan's NBA coaching career.

posted by rcade to bugs at 09:39 AM - 17 comments