no he doesn’t.

Wedge certainly does not suck. Those who say that are just looking to play the blame game.

Huh? (reaches for his Wiki)

Occasionally someone will pop up and starting saying stuff like this. The fact is, we’ve been growing steadily as a community since the end of 2005. This kind of criticism might start to seem apt if we ever actually plateau in terms of readership and participation, but we’ve had several orders-of-magnitude jumps in traffic with no end in sight. Them’s the facts — maybe the community is functioning pretty well as-is, whether that goes against your theories or not.

No. It will be invite-only. And gahnki’s not getting one.

This better be in the book…along with the psychotic emails. I’m getting pretty giddy for the book’s release…any chance we can add it as a sort of supplemental handout with Byrd’s book? This way at least a few people will buy the poor guy’s work.

BOOM.

I’m glad somebody remembers that. I think it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

I think once you’re used to reading without, it’s incredibly obnoxious to use. Try to read a thread at SSS and see what you think.

Okay, it’s a bit odd, yet logical.

On the old platform, we never used the subject line — sort of. The software copied the subject line from the subject of the Story/Diary/Fanpost, or from the Subject of the replied-to Comment. So we all got used to reading that way, skipping over the subjects.

On other SBN sites, for some reason, the subject never copied, and yet it was required to have one. So people would start typing the message in the subject and then continue it in the body. This was (and is) an awkward, disjointed and awful way to read — and to write. The vast majority of these comments don’t really require a subject any more than a text message on your phone, or in an IM session.

So when we got to the new platform — which has a subject line, doesn’t copy it, but also doesn’t require it — I felt (and enough others agreed I guess) that we should continue the tradition of basically not using it, because it makes for a much less choppy, disjointed writing, in addition to making the page much easier on the eyes. And it really hasn’t been much effort to convince people to go along with it. I think it’s fairly self-evident that this way is just better.

I have lobbied the SBN folks (though not all that hard) to eliminate the Subject line entirely, or at least eliminate it for reply-to comments. I think they are hesitant to do this because of probably a million comments that already have them, but you can keep displaying them without entering new ones. Basically, these forums are more like chat sessions, they are not like e-mails or office memos, and the interface should reflect that, as all good interfaces reflect the essential nature of the activity they present and enable.

First, we need a definition of Dead Topic? Is it a topic to which there can be no fresh perspective, no original thinking, a topic for which LGT has displayed omnipotence?

Compensatory draft picks. Jeremy Guthrie. Martevich and playing time. Bunting. Victor at first. Peralta (not sucking, moving to third, moving to second, moving to outfield). Pre-emptive: Lonnie Chisenhall’s criminal record (I’d be happy to write it). Barfield for Kouzmanoff. Coco Crisp for Marte. Wedge’s bullpen use (in general). The Yankees. Batting average. Optional assignments. Trading C.C. (to date). Cliff Lee’s hat tip. The 2005 collapse. Ozzie Guillen. Curt Schilling’s meeting with C.C. (!). RISP splits. Willy Taveras. The Red Sox. That discussion we had about the Mirabelli/Grant drafts.

I hate to say it because I feel like I’m silencing people, but maybe include links to times we’ve hashed out the “is Chief Wahoo/The Indians name racist?” discussion. I don’t really feel anyone’s going to change anyone else’s mind at this point, and we’ve definitely had new people to the site bring it up before.