Thank you Juulie. It's basketball season again, so I guess I should start thinking about it again.:eek:

Rita

Hm. I was wondering about that smell. It's your house! :eek:

As an ex-Chicagoan, did you ever try Manny's reubens on Roosevelt road? Pure ectasy.

Arghhh! Rita, Rita, Rita, you forgot the thousand island dressing. This is why it's so tough to find a decent reuben around the country.

FWIW, I disagree. I just came back from a couple of days away -- I could hardly make it through all the posts with the off-topic crap -- moslty from one or two posters. My guess is that about 50% of the threads disintegrate into OT lame jokes etc. If you want to make a joke, make it in the context of answering the OP (or a variant thereof that deals with basketball officiating).

And, while I think that Ceaser's Ghost's post to Billy was a bit harsh, I certainly understand where it was coming from.

I'll go away again.

A Rose By Any Other Name ...
 

Harsh? It scared the hell out of me, until Scrapper1 calmed me down. Come on bob jenkins. Are you saying that you weren't at least a little bit curious about his username? It is certainly a lot more thought provoking that bob jenkins, or BillyMac. I know, you don't have to remind me, "Curiosity killed the cat".

While you were gone. No images for two months. Tempted? Yes. Posted? No.

It was a long time ago. The smell is gone by now. But yeah, for a while there........

Rita:o

As long as there is sauerkraut on it, I'm good.

Rita

That is the beauty of a forum like this. We can disagree. I think that you have waaaayyyyy overstated the amount of off-topic material. But even if you are right, I want to thank you for not imposing your personal tastes through heavy-handed moderation.

Forum Changes, Or Not ...
 

Sorry Scrapper, I disagree. From March, until this coming week, I have, or will have, spent a lot of time on the Forum. It's my offseason basketball officiating "fix". I used to come home from work, eat dinner, do my household chores, read the newspaper, and watch television. Now I logon the the Forum instead of watching television. I find the Forum more educational, and more fun, than what's on early evening television. Since the debate two months ago regarding the direction of the Forum, I've noticed a few changes, and some things that have not changed.

1) Images have dramatically decreased, and I'm not just referring to me. In my case, once I figured out how to post actual images, instead of just the URL address for the image, I went little overboard, but thanks to a private message, and some public comments, I was able to stop. Why have others stopped? I don't know, but the images have decreased.

2) Thread hijacking has decreased a little. Most threads, although interrupted by some humorous posts, seem to stay on the original topic, or a slightly different slant on the original topic. Many members seem to more willing to start a new thread rather than piggyback on someone else's thread.

3) Inside jokes are still here, but have slightly decreased. We've had a lot of newbies join the Forum lately and many of veterans realize that these newbies won't understand our inside jokes.

4) Offtopic jokes, football rivalries, how's the wife and kids, etc. have stayed the same. Not increasing. Not decreasing. If Mark Padgett, and others, ever decide to leave the Forum, it will be a sad day. After posting for a few years now, I have come to think of us as a community, with a common passion, basketball officiating. But that shouldn't preclude us from having some good-natured fun with each other involving other topics.

5) The biggest change that I've seen is that the Forum has become more civil, and it's not because Jurassic Referee has left, hopefully, temporarily. He was getting more patient, and less insulting, for several months before he left. When I first became aware of the Forum, I didn't join, I just read the posts. Why? Because I was afraid that I would make some type of mistake and be insulted by some members. That's how bad it was a few years ago. It's not the same today. Fewer insults. Less name calling. More of, "I disagree with you, here is my citation, and my reason, for my interpretation", rather than, "I'm right you idiot". Maybe it's because the moderators are doing a better job? I don't know the reason, but this certainly is a kinder and gentler place than it was several months ago.

A agree with Scrapper1 that the moderators are doing a great, thankless job. You couldn't pay me enough money to do their job. Well, actually you could, but I don't think that Officiating.com could afford my fee. I have had a few of my posts deleted, and have questioned(myself) why, but haven't complained. They do a great job.

Scrapper1's prediction was right on about things changing once the season started. That's probably the main reason why things have gotten better. I just hope that things don't go back to the old way once we get into April. I've searched, and there is no better forum for basketball officiating than the Official Forum. I'm a veteran official and I learn something new from the Forum everyday. The NFHS forum is getting better. It's not as "dead" as it used to be, and it is certainly more serious, and more ontopic than the Forum, but the Forum, in my opinion, is the best in the world for it's purpose. If anyone can find a better basketball officiating "chat room", please tell me, because then I'll stop watching late night television.

Well, since you and Bob both disagreed with me. I did my own survey. I reviewed every thread that has been active beginning on Friday (11/28). That's 40 threads. Of those 40 threads, only 2 "disintegrated" into off-topic posts. The "Full or 30" thread and the "Socks" thread. The "Full or 30" thread disintegrated into silliness, while the "Socks" thread turned into a comparison of media censorship in the USA and Australia.

3 other threads (including this one) contained a significant number of off-topic posts, but returned to the original topic in a constructive way. I didn't consider this to be "disintegrating".

There were also 4 completely off-topic threads, two of which were obvious from the thread title.

So even if you consider any thread with any amount of off-topic material to be completely unreadable, that's still far less than 50%; and it's actually less than 25%. And the number of threads that actually disintegrated is only 2, or 5%.

In any case, complaints of massive amounts of off-topic posts and/or threads are, IMHO, unwarranted.

Now it's possible that someone has already done extensive moderating on those threads and I didn't realize it. But I don't think so, as there were some other comments (including PG-13 rated "barbs") that were not moderated. If Bob or Mick have already done the housecleaning, then I guess this entire post is moot.

No, the reason is that a lot of people think it's supposed to have thousand island dressing. It's supposed to have Russian dressing!

Hmm.. it does depend on the time frame used. My survey was the most recent 10 threads at the time I made the post -- that's all the time I had. I will say that I had a schedule change this evening and a chance to read about 20 threads -- all of which were on-topic. Of course, certain people haven't posted, yet.

I'm coming late to the party here, but.... I very much agree with Scrappy. It got a little stifling here for a while. But then, that's what we do when the game threatens to get out of control, right? It does feel like they're starting to "let 'em play" a little more now.

I think there have been very noticeable changes for the better.

• The dialogue is much more civil
• The amount of dialogue has increased significantly.
• Previously "settled" topics have come up for open and honest debate.
• There are many new contributors
• Not-so-new contributors are contributing more frequently
• Some of my long-time favorite posters, sadly absent for a time, have returned
• The amount of inside humor has fallen off dramatically. Of course, the only inside jokes I ever really objected to were the ones I didn't get. ;)
• This place still has some personality, and we can still cut up a bit at the back of the room. Sometimes.

And I don't think that's all just because of the season starting. Some honest discussion about what the forum ought to be, though somewhat painful at the time, has produced some positive change. And kudos to the mods as well for subtly (or not so) herding us en masse in a little better direction.

Scientific Method ???
 

Scrapper1: You made a lot of good points, and I agree that the Forum has improved a lot in the past two months, as you predicted it would, but as a scientist, I have to ask about your control group. How do the percentage of off topic posts over the time period quoted above, compare to a similar weekend period two months ago? I hope that you're corect in your hypothesis. I learn something from the Forum each day, and have a lot of fun hanging out with you guys. It's a lot better than early evening televison.