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Can we possibly get back to basketball and drop all the lame jokes, pictures, the crap that should be saved for IM and email? It's absolutely ridiculous. You can't start a basketball thread without it turning into a bunch of stupid jokes and crap. Half the threads you read are getting hijacked and sidetracked? How about deleting the stupidtiy that's taking basketball threads off topic?

JRut ask where all the cowboys have gone. This is one cowboy that's just sick and tired of all the stupid stuff. This was once a great place to talk basketball.

Not anymore.

And it will be again. I agree that this off-season has generated more than the "normal" amount of off-topic conversation. But I honestly think that once the season rolls around, we'll get back on track. We always do.

Seems like we have this conversation every summer, and then every winter, we forget that we had it.

Nah...even now, when a topic is posted that's basketball related, it goes off topic. It doesn't matter what season it is, some posters are going to drag it off in the wrong direction. Post all the OT stuff you like but the thread hijacking has just gotten way out of hand. There's no reaon for that. It's gotten real old for me. Call me in November if it's gotten any better.

That unfortunately is the nature of message boards. It does get frustrating at times, especially if you've posed a situation or specific question and it gets hijacked. Off season does tend to wander and many haven't posted or been on here much but are back now. Possibly different sections within the basketball forum might be the answer. Rules interps, situations, 'stories', Jokes. Just a thought.

That said, this is still a great site.

More realistic sections:

• Rules interps that got off topic
• Situations that got off topic
• Stories that got off topic
• Jokes that got off topic

From the poster that turned a rule book discussion into a binary joke discussion? :(

I am starting to agree. A simple post is turning into a joke feast. I do not see anything wrong with a little joke, but the entire thread gets off topic. This is getting a little out of hand. I think there is more attention paid to people that get into it, then threads that get seriously off topic. I will be the first one to admit I like many of the jokes, but a good thing is being taken a little far sometimes. And when you are looking to read good information, you have to weed through those posts to see the information.

Peace

I agree, but my hope is that with real basketball in a couple months (or sooner), things will get back to on-topic conversations. It always has in the past.

The other thing is, if the off-topic stuff weren't here, there would be almost nothing at all here. So it's not like we're drowning out people who want to be heard. It'd be more like the NFHS board with very little activity, for better or for worse. I go there once every two weeks or so and read 5 new posts. But hey, all of it's on-topic.

Actually I disagree with the NFHS Board comparison. The football and baseball sides prosper without all the off-topic issues and those sites are much more popular than their Basketball counterpart. Not to say that people do not make an occasional joke, but it is not as constant. And if you look at the Football side on this site, there is a lot of football only discussion. Now the conversations might be heated at times or contentious, but there is mostly talk about the sport and issues dealing with the sport from an officiating side. On this site we have more joke makers and that is fine with me. I just think we take it a little far sometimes. There used to be a time when someone would make a joke and we would laugh and get back to the topic. Now people ask one question and the question never gets answered but where are 20 different jokes. Of course that is a testament to the good people here. I just think we are driving away many of the good people without realizing it. JMHO.

Peace

That's fine, but just a couple of points.

1) I didn't mean to refer to the non-basketball portions of the NFHS site. I have never even looked at any of the other forums there. I have only ever checked the basketball forum. And what I said about that particular forum is true. There's very very little activity, except in very rare cases like moving underneath an airborne player. Even during the season.

2) My guess (and it is only that, just a guess) is that the basketball forum is not as popular as the football and baseball forums on the NFHS precisely because people prefer to come here instead for their basketball conversations, both on- and off-topic.

I understand, but I do read the other forums and I work those sports. There is much more conversation in those sports than there ever seems to be during the basketball season on the basketball side of that forum. People were talking a stupid offense on the football side during the spring and summer and football season was weeks away. Basketball on that forum hardly ever gets that kind of conversation during the regular season.

Actually the people that attend this site and attend the NFHS site are not necessarily the same people. The regulars on the football or baseball side (the two most popular sites over there) are not the same people that contribute over here. Why is that? I really do not know. We also get a lot of stragglers that come here that never seem to come to the NFHS site. Maybe it is because this site is dedicated to officiating and this site shows up on more the search engines.

Peace

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Agree, and agree again.

When we all start attending our local meetings in a few weeks I believe that things will start to both pick up, and get a lot more serious, at least that is my hope.

Also, the NFHS basketball forum is a "dead zone", like that Verizon commercial on television. At one point there was not a single post from mid-August to early-September. I check it every day, hoping to find some stimulating question, answer, comment, opinion, etc. When there are posts, they're usually quite good, but there are a lot less posts, a lot, lot less posts, on the NFHS basketball forum, than on this Forum.

Jokes, name calling, put downs, images (I'm trying to limit my self to infrequent, on topic, images from now on), inside jokes, hijacked threads, sidetracked threads, no closure to some threads, etc. make checking out this site a longer task than I would like, and I check it every day. It would be nice if this Forum only had questions, answers, comments, opinions, etc., on rules, interpretations, and mechanics, but, I can't find a better basketball officiating forum anywhere on the internet. If you know of one, could you please share it with us?

Maybe the moderators could be a little tougher in terms of censoring our posts, but I'm sure that if they were, some Forum members would complain.

I'm not saying I'm not guilty. Just sayin' that most posts here go off topic sooner or later. It seems inevitable considering the cast of characters that gather here. I, for one, am not bothered by it. To me, it seems pointless wishing this place was something other than what it is. shrug.

Maybe you have it backwards; all the off topic stuff might be the reason there aren't many basketball discussions.

If past off-seasons are an indicator, and I think they are, Scrappy is correct. There has been an increase in off-topic banter this summer, but no decrease in on-topic discussions. Off season just leaves a dirth of posting, and it always picks up about the time meetings start (and fall ball in Michigan).