Author Topic: Is it just me, or is the quality of conversation around here at an all-time low?  (Read 37254 times)

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Offline wiley

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Something I think needs to be addressed about poor posting is opening up new threads when a thread on the subject already exists.

We had 4 separate threads on Anthony Davis trades in the Latest Discussions area the other day, when we already had a pretty prominent Anthony Davis trade thread that was over 100 pages.

In less than a week I have merged over 30 threads into threads that already existed.

Come on people! You have to do better than that.

My main problem is the general lack of knowledge on the CBA and how it effects trades and free agency as well as the general lack of desire by some to actually learn it. Many of those that don't want to learn it are the people who make the most trade proposals and are consistently not seeing if they are legal or logical, needing others to point it out.

Come on again people. If you are making a bunch of trade proposals and are constantly being corrected about your trades, go read up on the CBA at:

cbafaq.com

Or go to this stickied thread and ask questions. They will be answered

https://forum.celticsstrong.com/index.php?topic=99978.0

Bolded above is right on.  No idea how to change it.  An example is someone started an ignore button thread just after this thread...instead of suggesting the ignore button idea within this thread.  Just one example in a million.  This leads to broken up conversations and dilutes everything...

Offline wiley

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Just my observations but as of LATE there seems to be an ENTRENCHED thought process in regards to Kyrie Irving....

There is the camp that wants him back and wants us to go after AD or maybe KD...

There is the camp that has hated Kyrie from Day One....this camp started making their thoughts known as far back as LAST season.....making comments on EVERY SINGLE little thing Kyrie did...every thing he said...making something out of nothing....

To a LESSER extent there is ALSO a thought process - an ENTRENCHED mindset regarding Gordon Hayward as well....I don't think I've EVER seen such a negative outlook on a player since I've been on the blog (lurker since 06...member since 09)...

I think in some ways we have become just like SOCIETY...diehard Republicans on one side and Diehard Democrats on the other.

We need to get back to Biden / Kasich idealogy.

But anyways we've become a bit polarized....very little bend on either side. But the BBIQ of the blog is still there...VERY intelligent group here and has been for a long time.

Ky-publicans vs Jay-ocrats.

And debating Marvus smart is a lot like debating gun control. You can make all the arguments you want about the shooting, but for some people it's more about the emotion behind having Marcus Smart.

Gordon Hayward is like paternity leave. Everyone thinks he should get time to recover, but nobody wants to have to pay for it.

Al Horford is like social security. Everyone complains, says it's too expensive or broken, but as soon as it threatens to vanish everyone panics about how to replace it. Cuz we need it.

Kyrie is like global warming. Bad for the environment but nobody wants to make the sacrifices nessevary to live in a world without him (ie more losing).

Okay I'm done.

This is awesome.

an extra TP! 

Offline PhoSita

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One observation I would make, which other people have touched on also, is that these boards seem to be at their worst when factions evolve around a debate concerning one specific divisive player.

I think back to 2011-2012 or so when the fight was all about rondo, endlessly. 

Now it's Kyrie.
You’ll have to excuse my lengthiness—the reason I dread writing letters is because I am so apt to get to slinging wisdom & forget to let up. Thus much precious time is lost.
- Mark Twain

Offline csfansince60s

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Blow it up. Trade everyone for draft picks.

The SoSH boards are the only other forums I've seen that have a comparable feel to Celticsblog at its best. They seem to have a strong culture of self-policing that I am not sure we want on these forums.

I feel like the only real solutions are:
1. Ignore button
2. Lead by example and hope posters see the quality of post(s) most desire.
3. Find a way to call-out bad posts in a non-confrontational way.

Or we can tank, I guess. 14% chance it works.

If you’re the Fakers, you only need a 9.4% chance....and it works.

Online Silas

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 So, I've been on board for more than 12 years, don't post much and lost all my tommy points on a bet that I can't remember.

Tommy Point because Paul Silas was one of my favorite players.

Thanks.  He was a favorite of mine.
I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.   -  Mark Twain

Offline hwangjini_1

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Blow it up. Trade everyone for draft picks.

The SoSH boards are the only other forums I've seen that have a comparable feel to Celticsblog at its best. They seem to have a strong culture of self-policing that I am not sure we want on these forums.

I feel like the only real solutions are:
1. Ignore button
2. Lead by example and hope posters see the quality of post(s) most desire.
3. Find a way to call-out bad posts in a non-confrontational way.

Or we can tank, I guess. 14% chance it works.
jiri presents us all with three very good options to consider, if not rules to abide by. (thanks jiri)

an ignore button would be welcomed and help to clean up each person's feelings and hence approach to posting. SoSH (of which i am a member) has that option and i have used it only twice. but it removed what i considered to be an antagonistic, immature, and generally obnoxious pair of posters. my posting and reading pleasure soared as a result of not seeing them.

i have urged before that the all mighty arbiters of CS please restore that function here. i now respectively do so again.

quality of posts/calling out, as i have mentioned before, SoSH has one central and abiding mandate for everyone - don't suck. really, you can ask them and they will tell you that is the case. and they enforce it. mods regularly chastise posters if they post sucky posts. and if the posters continue to suck, then they do not belong there and are booted.

indeed, there is a super-secret-special-subform just for discussing whether or not new posters are worth keeping around. the forum benefits from this healthy discussion.

but they all take part in enforcing that rule. it helps everyone as a result, and, it demonstrates that SoSH is not for everyone. they have even managed to transform themselves....relatively. the bad old days of personal pile ons, NSFW mysogeny, and juvenile crudeness are much reduced. and the joy of posting there is much increased.

cripes guys, if SoSH can transform itself, so can CS. it begins with letting everyone know that the quality of post counts and affects everyone here. i would imagine that at first our magnificent mods would spent a lot of time telling people, professionally, things such as "stop attacking others or you get a time out", "support your baseless opinions with proof and argumentation or stop posting", "this place is not about you, but about the Red Sox. you need to stop trying to be the center of the discussion", and my personal favorite "with all due respect, this is the stupidest ****ing post i have ever seen. you need to not suck."  ;D

SoSH has standards, good ones. and they enforce them. oh, and they also do not hesitate to let posters know when they post good posts. very supportive in that way.

thank you roy for starting the thread. thank you jiri for you constructive points above. thank you jeff for keeping this place running. thank you everyone for the good posts and good humor you have displayed.

let's not suck.


I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy — not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to everyone around you. Democracy begins with freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom from fear, and freedom from hatred.
- Vandana Shiva

Offline PhoSita

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First off: I'm not at all perfect. I know my posts annoy people sometimes. Sometimes I post emotional knee jerk responses to things. Sometimes I post without reading all the posts in the thread before mine. I don't always pause for perspective or to consider what I post before I post it.  I'm also generally cynical and pessimistic, usually as a futile attempt to protect my own feelings.  I know that rubs some people the wrong way.

 Having acknowledged that I'm not perfect: One suggestion I would like to throw out there, which I have tried to work on myself, is that people try to add phrases like "I think", "I feel", and "in my opinion" to posts in which they state their strong opinions.

I think that making a lot of argumentative statements as if they are settled fact is a great way to up the blood pressure of a significant number of the people that read a post.

Part of "not sucking", in my opinion, is never setting out to raise the blood pressure of the people who post and read here, even understanding that a lot of us disagree about some very significant things relating to the Celtics, basketball, and life in general.


Another piece of advice that is very hard to follow and that I am always having to reiterate to myself is that it's important to recognize when it is not going to be possible to change somebody else's mind.  Sometimes I think the best we can hope to do is get to the bottom of our disagreements -- what are the basic premises we're operating off of that inform our strongest opinions?  Sometimes those premises are impossible to prove or disprove so there's no sense in arguing further.
« Last Edit: May 19, 2019, 08:28:54 PM by PhoSita »
You’ll have to excuse my lengthiness—the reason I dread writing letters is because I am so apt to get to slinging wisdom & forget to let up. Thus much precious time is lost.
- Mark Twain

Offline SCeltic34

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Some thoughts that I had in response to some of the preceding posts.

I don't think the divide within the blog is that pronounced.  Similar to politics, there's a small group of very outspoken people who articulate the same points repeatedly.  These people seem to set the tone for others who agree with them, whether they're in complete agreement or in partial/slight agreement.  These outspoken opinions have permeated through different threads, leading to contention of a topic (e.g Kyrie and his value to the C's) that in many cases was not related to the subject matter of the original post.  This seriously detracts from quality discussion.  It also certainly does not help when people call out entire portions of the blog for agreeing on something (e.g disliking Kyrie) and assume that they all think alike.

While it's not common for most of us to change our opinions in the short term, the majority here are reasonable people, I believe.  And like politics - excluding the hard-liners on each side - opinions change over time.  Like most jobs, evaluations of our players and coaches are an ongoing process.  We're not simply divided into camps that we belong to indefinitely. 
« Last Edit: May 19, 2019, 09:22:16 PM by SCeltic34 »

Offline Kuberski33

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My biggest complaint is too many dumb trade threads and too many Anthony Davis trade threads. Other than that, negative team performance leads to lots of negativity. We are, after all, Celtics fans. So there's bound to be a lot of that.

Best thing remains the game threads.

RazzelnoDazzel

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Well question for you vets:

This is about my first time really digging into the Celtics offseason moves. I really do my research and take my time when I write my “blogs” and enjoy doing it now although this is my first attempt at it. My question is, are the rumors that are coming out a lot more “drama” filled than any other season?

To me I just read these rumors in near disgust like why are they so “catty”. Like the rumor on the Pelicans co owner saying she would trade AD over her dead body. Or even during the trade dead line how the Lakers entire trade was displayed for everyone to see for it to not happen at all? Or what about how now they are saying teams are weary of Kyrie after they were also saying the Knicks would give him any and everything Kyrie would ask for.

I had thought rumors were just as simple as “Kyrie May leave or may go home to the Knicks.” Or “Kyrie was seen at a little league Knicks game and could show he may have interest in going home” like those rumors to me would be based off of something where I feel like these other rumors are just coming out of thin air.

Lastly some rumors just come from an individual just saying something. Like Windhorst take a lot of heat but lately he’s really not doing anything, but people take what he say and just run with it. An example was he was on the jump and said “just throwing it out there it’s not impossible that Durant signs and trades to the Celtics” the the media just spreads all these rumors on how it can happen and they reference Windhorst as if he said “The Celtics are looking to sign and trade for Durant”. Are things like this normal for offseason things?

Sorry if my post is hard for you to keep up with I tried to simplify my thoughts as much as possible but some things are better to be spoken not typed. 

Offline OnPoint

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Do not concern yourself with the person you are discussing a given topic with properly responding to your quality post, the silent majority, the reader, is the one you should be trying to persuade.

Offline keevsnick

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I think in a lot of ways the tenor of the discussion on these forums reflects the overall panic surrounding the team. The past five year or so have pretty much gone as good as it could (outside of championship) for the Celtics. Every year they won more games than the previous, they made the playoffs every year, they went to the ECF's twice, ect. Every move they made from the coach, to the draft picks seemed, to be golden. Even the injuries (Like Hayward) were just preludes to good things (young guys break out). To be honest there's not a whole lot of to argue about when everything is going  well. The questions were was Brad a top 3, or a top 5 coach. Would Tatum be a top 5, or only a top 10 player? And so on. This seasoning going to hell has A) Panicked everybody who watches the team. B) Made a lot of people very angry C) And caused deep divisions of opinion because suddenly the path forward isn't clear. The net result is strong entrenched opinions among posters who are reacting emotionally to the season. TBH  I think the reaction, and the civility of this blog, will return once the team picks a direction. Because even those who don't agree with whatever direction Ainge chooses will fall in line. either we will be young and fun (and hopefully likable) again, or we will be a contender. Either way, hope will return.