- 07:04 AM
- 04/20/24
The real problem is not the use of certain content providers, but the use of wire stories from the Associated Press, Reuters and others, which are almost always watered-down versions of a local news story. Usually, these have some indication of their nature from the beginning: "AP Sports Writer", "NEW YORK (AP)", etc. Yahoo! and ESPN carry a lot of wire stories, but so do local papers. So it isn't simply a matter of saying "No Yahoo" or "No ESPN", because there are some investigative stories and original columns from those sources that far surpass the quality of wire stories, even when those wire stories are carried in local papers. It's a lot easier to just say "don't use ESPN" than to explain the concept of a wire story, but unfortunately a lot of members tend to look past this simplification as well. The idea behind SportsFilter - finding links to truly well-written stories, and then discussing those stories in a thoughtful manner, whether they be breaking news or analysis - is distinct from the idea behind almost every other sports board out there, which is just to say the hell with quality writing, let's drop the gloves and bare-knuckle box each other into submission (or boredom). I'm not sure that there's any magical warning or guideline that can educate new members to this concept, but in my short time here I've seen many joinees get progressively enlightened as to what we're all about through the assistance of veteran community members. Essentially, if we hold our new members to a high standard and back each other up in doing so, the group of quality SpoFi users will grow and the ability of the community to self-police links and comments will increase, which in my mind is a better way to do it than some kind of ESPN-block or something like that.
posted by Venicemenace at 12:10 PM on April 23, 2007
Huzzah for continued SpoFi innovation.
posted by Venicemenace at 10:53 AM on April 13, 2007
Oh my god. The "NFL Banhammer" thread is turning into a scary example of SpoFi turned chatroom. I just want to state that as a sworn member of the SpoFi Grammar Fascists, I support any moves that the admins want to make against AOL-speak guerillas in our midst...
posted by Venicemenace at 12:24 PM on April 05, 2007
I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me.
posted by Venicemenace at 11:43 AM on April 04, 2007
No way! Harvard comma 4-eva! Wikipedia has a great example of what happens when you abandon the serial comma: "The Times once published a description of a Peter Ustinov documentary: 'highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.'"
posted by Venicemenace at 12:25 PM on April 03, 2007
Sounds like you are doing a great job. Despite very little interest in girls' youth soccer on the whole, I am eager to hear how your season progresses. Good luck!
posted by Venicemenace at 12:08 PM on March 12, 2007
Yerfatma, that article was awesome. I was in DC last weekend and the town is gaga over Agent Zero.
posted by Venicemenace at 02:02 PM on March 01, 2007
Had that thread been my first exposure to spofi, I'm not sure I would have come back. Really, Tieguy? You're not afraid to post jokes at the expense of developmentally disabled kids, why would gay-bashing from a handful of idiots (quickly refuted by a legion of intelligent SpoFites) drive you away?
posted by Venicemenace at 11:52 AM on February 16, 2007
Don't make me repost BullpenPro's -- er, I mean Crafty Sousepaw's -- rant about the worthiness of all four-figure SpoFites. Easily my favorite locker room post of all time. It's no coincidence that it came from a member of the legendary 3K cohort.
posted by Venicemenace at 11:46 AM on February 14, 2007
...Pangaea broke up. It was all downhill for the continents after that.
posted by Venicemenace at 11:43 AM on February 14, 2007
The "Flame Warriors" that Yerfatma links to are awesome. We've got more than a few Evil Clowns around here.
posted by Venicemenace at 06:54 AM on February 13, 2007
I love conversations like this. That's because I have signed an exclusive deal that stipulates any and all portrayals of me in film or television be performed by the great David Caruso.
posted by Venicemenace at 10:05 AM on February 08, 2007
Good news...
posted by Venicemenace at 03:30 PM on February 07, 2007
I got all mine from the Mike Ricci posse, and some time ago. I know at least one of my discs found its way to its destination and I hope the rest did as well. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go listen to some Ashlee Simpson cranked up to hyperspeed...
posted by Venicemenace at 06:45 AM on January 29, 2007
Yup, I noticed it on Windows XP, Firefox browser.
posted by Venicemenace at 07:24 PM on January 22, 2007
All four mixes recieved from my Mike Ricci hombres. Hopefully mine have reached their destination by now, as well. Looking forward to getting all four up and running on my iPod for the long, cold morning commutes!
posted by Venicemenace at 02:46 PM on January 21, 2007
I still remember back in my early days on SpoFi when I wasn't aware of the site's international membership. I made an extremely foolhardy comment about the "haughty Brits" on a thread about the Kraft family having interest in buying an EPL franchise, and the thread quickly turned into a UK-based Venicemenace smackdown. Quite frankly, I deserved it and I definitely got a self-effacing laugh out of it. I don't think you can have an effective forum of this type if people are afraid to call other people out for idiotic comments. As long as it doesn't get personal or cruel, and the bashing doesn't carry over to other threads, I feel that it's all good. I've been accused of being a "grammar Nazi" in the past, but I feel strongly that writing in complete sentences with appropriate punctuation is a skill that virtually every member here possesses. I think SpoFi should be proud of its commitment to a basic grammatical standard. Let's not go overboard, bashing people for a misspelled word or split infinitive, but AOL-speak is the enemy of civilized discourse.
posted by Venicemenace at 09:09 AM on January 19, 2007
NoMich's Mike Ricci metal mix awaited my return home from work today. Can't wait to let this baby rip...
posted by Venicemenace at 03:31 PM on January 18, 2007
I can't decide if I'm annoyed at the federal holiday for thwarting my plans to ship out at the deadline, or thankful for the extra day of prep time that it bought me. I'll be at the Post Office tomorrow. 
Dan Brown, eat your heart out.
posted by Venicemenace at 09:11 AM on January 15, 2007
I don't know why Yahoo Sports and ESPN are considered to be problematic. Isn't the issue with generic, vague wire stories, not with the original writing of either site? I've seen way more sucky, homer sportswriting from local papers than I have from the original material on Yahoo! and ESPN. I've also seen many local papers carry those same wire stories that are frowned upon when linked on Y! or ESPN. Is the idea that these websites simply cannot produce good sportswriting of FPP caliber? I have to disagree...
posted by Venicemenace at 10:57 AM on January 05, 2007
I don't follow your logic. If the Pantheon wants members to follow their guidelines they should charge them money outright, otherwise everyone should adhere to YOUR interpretation of how the site should operate?
posted by Venicemenace at 09:58 AM on December 27, 2006
I just want to re-iterate my support for the people on the front lines, enforcing SpoFi's high standards for FPPs and posts. I've been flamed a few times myself for doing so, but I have no regrets. There are a million free-wheeling sports discussion boards out there filled with careless comments and homerism. Most of them are pretty intolerable. SpoFi is different, and I applaud both moderators and members for helping to keep it that way. I've never had a dissenting view censored here, even when I ripped rcade for guaranteeing Jacksonville over New England in last year's playoffs. Censorship shouldn't be confused with the enforcement of high standards.
posted by Venicemenace at 08:44 AM on December 27, 2006
Holy crap. Those are some awesome mixes. Glad I already signed up...
posted by Venicemenace at 02:27 PM on December 19, 2006
I've never wanted a favorites feature on SpoFi more than I do right now. Amazing.
posted by Venicemenace at 11:12 AM on December 14, 2006
If Norman Rockwell painted gay porn, he would have painted that. Well, maybe not gay porn, but there are some people who read a sexual subtext in Rockwell's paintings... Anyway, where were we?? Man boobs? Carry on!
posted by Venicemenace at 07:29 AM on November 15, 2006
I want to be mature enough to not laugh at that Mickelson picture but it gets me every time. The guy in the background's facial expression ...man that is classic.
posted by Venicemenace at 11:01 AM on November 14, 2006
22 miles of hard road 33 years of tough luck 44 skulls buried in the ground Crawling down through the muck Oh yeah!
posted by Venicemenace at 10:29 AM on November 02, 2006
I would like to have seen Montana.
posted by Venicemenace at 07:48 AM on November 01, 2006
Somebody's ex: "I don't know where that mo-fo is but I do know he spends half his time on SpoFi! that SpoFi usin' mo-fo!" That, or Maddux hunting down and slaying a randomly selected SpoFi member, just to send a message to the rest of us.
posted by Venicemenace at 07:46 AM on October 24, 2006
He wanted to know the IP addresses used by that member in comments here. As part of their pursuit of that member in an unrelated matter? Or as part of a lawsuit solely based on comments made on SpoFi?
posted by Venicemenace at 07:37 AM on October 24, 2006
I'm told the more you know about tennis the funnier that clip is. The dude claims he took two games from Sampras.
posted by Venicemenace at 01:52 PM on October 20, 2006
Hahahaha I love this. Awesome.
posted by Venicemenace at 02:56 PM on October 05, 2006
Earlier today I looked through jakeamo's old comments to see the last thing he/she said that wasn't "tiger woods is a robot"...and it was a comment agreeing with something I said. "Aghast" doesn't even begin to describe my reaction.
posted by Venicemenace at 07:00 PM on August 29, 2006
I think these guidelines are terrific; they address a lot of the necessary issues without being too strict, and counterbalance the inherent sobriety of a rulesbook with amusing examples: "yelling the name of your team at random only makes you sound like a Saturday Night Live character." I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that the exemplar of crappy discussion is "yankees suck, red sox rule," however. I mean, those are facts, Jack. A few other issues: * I'm not a big fan of that aol-speak article; it doesn't just define aol-speak but it has a speculative thesis that's controversial at best. I think the expression "aol-speak" speaks for itself... * I don't think a policy that simply states "no personal attacks" is incompatible with one-on-one exchange between participants in a debate. As I understand it, "no personal attacks" means address the argument, not the person making it. So: "Bob, you're totally wrong about Cristiano Ronaldo" is OK, "Bob, you're a little bitch just like your boy Cristiano Ronaldo" is not OK. * Perhaps a link to sportsfilter.info could be placed at the top of page at all times?
posted by Venicemenace at 11:57 AM on August 16, 2006
And for Venicemenace: I am not sure who is arguing that "anything goes." I certainly wasn't. That doesn't sound like an accurate characterization of my argument, nor did I use those words you place in quotation marks. I think you used a strawman to accuse me of using a strawman. I simply believe SpoFites (not admins, just everyday users) can help stop off-topic flame wars by addressing them before they explode, instead of subscribing to the assholes-will-be-assholes line of reasoning or trying to cut troublesome posters down with snarky remarks. Guidelines are useless if we don't actively help implement them. I am just afraid this unnecessary thread is an overreaction to a problem that isn't worth our time. To cite the quotation you cited earlier: "Show your displeasure in the subject by letting it die on the vine. And if 10 or 20 people actually do like the post and want to comment you can be proud you didn't try to derail the thread."
posted by Venicemenace at 05:17 PM on August 08, 2006
I guess it was the comparison of new members to bandwagon fans that gave me that impression. In my mind, there's nothing worse in all of sports fandom than a bandwagoneer...
posted by Venicemenace at 01:59 PM on August 08, 2006
I don't think these locker room threads are hear to really solve the problems that this site is faced with. While it is clear that the only things that can *really* fix these problems are more substantial guidelines and tactical moderation, these locker room threads are only useless if we all throw up our hands and conclude that "The assholes come, the assholes go" and there's nothing we can do about it as a community. I disagree with the idea that we should stoically endure regular sieges on our discourse as an inevitable side effect of the site's evolution. In my opinion, the strongest response to an incendiary, off-topic posting (we know them when we see them) is for veteran members to actively engage the troublemaker, either referring them to the soon-to-be-unveiled guidelines or with some kind of clever stock response. Replying to these sorts with anger or snark only exascerbates the problem, and the argument against "just ignoring them" has been well-stated by others already. The three-digit stars are a minority in the sea of trolls and junior high school dropouts. This implies that an intelligent sports fan finding the site today, with the potential to become an active member, isn't just as valuable to the site as someone who joined a few years ago. Personally, I disagree with the implication. Old-school members, even disaffected ones, are already loyal to SpoFi. For the site to continue to thrive, it's important to work to maintain the atmosphere that made it so great in the pre-troll era. This will continue to attract quality new members and increase the collective potential of the community.
posted by Venicemenace at 01:02 PM on August 08, 2006
To clarify, I meant that people should not go onto FPPs they (personally) don't care about and post "Who cares, NASCAR sucks", etc. Admittedly, a slightly unrelated issue...
posted by Venicemenace at 08:44 PM on August 07, 2006
Poking around the site, I've only been able to locate these guidelines for posting new FPPs. Are there any similar guidelines for writing individual posts that I've missed? Would it be helpful to have some and refer to them if someone's going off the reservation? I would suggest one item for inclusion, jumping off of the quotation cited by ?!: If you aren't interested in a given FPP, don't complain about its existence, just move on...
posted by Venicemenace at 05:59 PM on August 07, 2006
I wonder if it would be helpful to make a guidelines link available at all times; perhaps some newer members breeze right by the existing document on their merry way from registration to flame wars. Obviously, one would hope that new members would also linger around for long enough that expressions like "the Pantheon" and "FPP" have meaning to them before they jump into discussions with ten fingers blazing, but I don't think that's necessarily the case. Personally, I take perverse enjoyment in watching people get *really* angry at each other (even when it's not political, like the guy who freaked out on the Shea Hillenbrand FPP). However, if the cost of these feuds is veterans of SpoFi getting frustrated and leaving the site, It's. Not. Worth. It. It seems from the tenor of this discussion so far that we haven't reached that horizon yet. And did you notice how that Football HOF thread narrowly avoided falling into the abyss?? Progress.
posted by Venicemenace at 03:57 PM on August 07, 2006
Broken link in my post above; my bad, click here if you're interested.
posted by Venicemenace at 10:10 AM on August 07, 2006
The counter argument, bperk, is that subtle political comments and politically-editorializing FPPs are relatively commonplace here, but since they come from an American/Canadian liberal POV, the majority of SpoFites identify with the comments and thus have no issue with them. When conservative users start arguing the other side, they're told to get out of here and take their POV to MetaFilter. Not exactly my position, but I think it's an argument with some merit. Now, the long and drawn out treatises are a particular point of contention, but I think the consensus in this thread was that there is a place for long posts on SpoFi. So we're back to the issue of content. I posted this thread because I don't like to see people despairing about a deterioration in discourse on this great site; and I think discussion and (hopefully) consensus on these issues will lead to better guidelines and better community judgment on how to deal with them in the future. On preview: I agree with JG's observation that you can see some of these fights coming a mile away.
posted by Venicemenace at 09:32 AM on August 07, 2006
I don't know -- The Faith Day thread kind of became worth it to me when the "farts forum" retort got busted out. As off topic and pointless as the whole argument was, I'm still laughing about that one. Hahaha, farts forum.
posted by Venicemenace at 07:53 PM on July 31, 2006
lilnemo, I wouldn't group this FPP with news of a trade or free agent signing - because there is absolutely no *news* in the link. I have no problem with, say, an "Elmer Dessens for Odalis Perez" thread, even though it's not that noteworthy, at least something *happened*.
posted by Venicemenace at 08:10 PM on July 26, 2006
I don't think it is. Optimistic young reciever looks forward to the season - what is the story here? I considered bitching about it on the thread but there's nothing more annoying that a "this thread sucks" post...
posted by Venicemenace at 03:43 PM on July 25, 2006
What are SpoFites' favorite books?
A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley.