Censorship hits the Cardboard.

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Censorship hits the Cardboard. - cardcrimson - 11-30-2019

Apparently now, all threads deemed by the moderators to be critical of the football program are to be lumped into one giant hodgepodge of a thread. What's next, posters who are critical get a special mark on their avatar?

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - 2006alum - 11-30-2019

There were the instructions from our admin in a recent discussion about lots of threads about the same subject (the initial snafu, incidentally wasn't about threads being critical of Shaw et al.):

Quote:"Whenever possible, keep posts of the same subject within the same thread unless considerable time (weeks, months, not seconds or minutes)."

No one's deleting any posts or silencing any critics. But lots of threads on the same basic topic function to crowd out other topics off the topline page (including, as Bos noted rather ironically, the predictions thread for today's game). This is especially an issue when we've got a lot of in-season sports happening at once, as we do right now, with FB, MBB, WBB, WVB, MS, WS, and WS&D all in action at the moment. Not to mention various other Stanford-related and off-topic threads.

For an exemplar of board thread efficiency, note the combined thread for all of the women's basketball team's games in the Victoria Invitational, which keeps everything in one nice and tidy place.

(And incidentally, as a matter of fair warning, although I was not the one to combine the threads this time, I did previously post a friendly reminder to stick to a single thread, which was immediately ignored, so my fellow moderator's actions didn't come out of nowhere.)

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - SF_Cardinal_Fan - 11-30-2019

(11-30-2019, 11:26 AM)cardcrimson Wrote: Apparently now, all threads deemed by the moderators to be critical of the football program are to be lumped into one giant hodgepodge of a thread. What's next, posters that are critical get a special mark on their avatar?

I like combining similar theme posts into one thread and consider this to be good sense forum management, not "censorship".

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - OutsiderFan - 11-30-2019

This is a bad, no terrible idea.

Threads can veer into different topics all the time, and there is broad continuum between "x sucks" and observations, criticisms, questions, level-headed and well-reasoned suggestions for improvements.

If there are multiple threads on a topic, that means there is a lot of interest in that topic. If you want to control threads deemed to be "negative" you won't have much board traffic over the long haul. I suppose that's fine for this place since it doesn't make money off advertising or anything.

The awful Bear Insider board bans people for criticism. Is that where the Cardboard wants to go?

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - BostonCard - 11-30-2019

Clearly if the board had wanted to ban people for criticism, a lot of people would have been banned long ago. The problem I see is that there are a finite number of topics on the front page. While your point is well taken about the number of topics being a reflection of interest, the depth of each thread is also a reflection of interest. As others have posted, there is a single thread, spanning multiple pages, about the women’s basketball tournament in Vancouver, which I would venture was a topic of interest to many people. When, on the other hand, there are four or five more or less synonymous posts that garner a half dozen replies each, is it really a reflection of interest?

BC

Note that the single women’s basketball thread has 90 posts as of right now, while the merged football thread has 91, including a whole bunch of posts debating the wisdom of merging the threads.

BC

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - CornFed - 11-30-2019

(11-30-2019, 01:18 PM)BostonCard Wrote: Clearly if the board had wanted to ban people for criticism, a lot of people would have been banned long ago. The problem I see is that there are a finite number of topics on the front page. While your point is well taken about the number of topics being a reflection of interest, the depth of each thread is also a reflection of interest. As others have posted, there is a single thread, spanning multiple pages, about the women’s basketball tournament in Vancouver, which I would venture was a topic of interest to many people. When, on the other hand, there are four or five more or less synonymous posts that garner a half dozen replies each, is it really a reflection of interest?

BC

Note that the single women’s basketball thread has 90 posts as of right now, while the merged football thread has 91, including a whole bunch of posts debating the wisdom of merging the threads.

BC

Well, I was being a bit facetious, but to your point, those multiple threads on a single topic will divide the number of posts that each attracts and will fade much more quickly than will the single post about the women's b-ball tournament and its many new posts will keep it at the top.

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - cardcrimson - 12-01-2019

Geez. A thread about the press corp following Stanford Football gets dumped into the Stanford Football Sucks thread and an OT thread about today's Niners game gets converted to Stanford in the NFL. The censors have run amok.

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - teejers1 - 12-02-2019

(11-30-2019, 11:26 AM)cardcrimson Wrote: Apparently now, all threads deemed by the moderators to be critical of the football program are to be lumped into one giant hodgepodge of a thread. What's next, posters who are critical get a special mark on their avatar?

We have always been at war with Eastasia . . .

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - terry - 12-02-2019

Merging threads is not censorship.

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - cardcrimson - 12-02-2019

(12-02-2019, 07:45 PM)terry Wrote: Merging threads is not censorship.

Perhaps no, but burying various critical thoughts in a massive, incomprehensible hodgepodge certainly is. . . .

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - 2006alum - 12-02-2019

Man oh man, older generation snowflakes need even safer spaces than us young folk do! It was one thread - to quote the generation-spanning band U2, Walk On. The record is getting so broken it's in tiny shards. In a week where we have four teams in post-season contention for national titles (WVB, WSoc, MSoc, MWP) and a fifth team that just earned their first number 1 ranking in seven years (WBB), we still have SEVEN threads on the front page of this board devoted to football. If the mods are your Big Brothers, we're the world's most ineffective older siblings/statist oppressors.

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - BostonCard - 12-02-2019

(12-02-2019, 07:52 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:
(12-02-2019, 07:45 PM)terry Wrote: Merging threads is not censorship.

Perhaps no, but burying various critical thoughts in a massive, incomprehensible hodgepodge certainly is. . . .

When I merged the threads (and yes, it was me), I didn't realize how difficult to follow the resulting thread would be, as a result of it not being clear what individual posts were replies to what. I think the board software places replies in chronological rather hierarchical order. While I think that is generally better, it does create challenges for merging "mature" threads. Moreover, as I should no doubt be aware, a thread that starts out a certain way can veer in a very unpredictable direction. I should have limited merging to near duplicative threads with only a handful of posts each.

That being said, I do think posters have some responsibility to try to minimize thread spam. We could all do with the reminder to try to keep related posts together under one thread.

BC

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - cardcrimson - 12-02-2019

(12-02-2019, 07:59 PM)2006alum Wrote: Man oh man, older generation snowflakes need even safer spaces than us young folk do! It was one thread - to quote the generation-spanning band U2, Walk On.

I assume you're referring to me. So let me say this, please spare me the condescending old snowflake crap. I don't need a safe space, never have, and I've never shied away from debate.

Throughout my life, I've never tried to suppress views opposite of mine or to avoid them. In fact, I've relished them and sought them out. Views different than my own, always improve my own thinking and decision making; they prove my thoughts wrong, validate them, or in most cases tweak them to make my thinking stronger.

Now to the merged thread in question, a lot of threads were buried together and it's irrelevant who the OP was. They cluttered the board with the same thing you claimed--negativity towards the football program. Help me understand how a thread about the press corp, a thread about the running game, a thread about injuries / strength and conditioning, a thread about offensive creativity, a thread our coach's resistance to change, etc. are all about the same thing. To me, they are all separate issues and warrant separate discussions. To you, they are all issues to be feared, as they doesn't fit with your narrative that all is well with Stanford athletics, except for a minor blip with the football program. What a bummer it must be to live in a cardinal colored shell.

Let me leave you with one thought. Diversity of points of view, if you embrace them, are a wonderful thing and are certainly nothing to fear. They'll just make you stronger if you listen, understand, and especially appreciate them.

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - 2006alum - 12-02-2019

Let me take your comments in earnest, and in turn, once, and that will be my final say on the matter:

(12-02-2019, 08:37 PM)cardcrimson Wrote: I assume you're referring to me. So let me say this, please spare me the condescending old snowflake crap. I don't need a safe space, never have, and I've never shied away from debate.

I was not referring to you specifically, but to someone who called me a millennial "safe spaces" warrior for arguing that there were too many negative threads about football. I honestly have no idea how old you are IRL, but I do think, candidly, that you've whined pretty excessively about this issue. At some point, perhaps deferring to those who put time in to maintaining this space may, for decorum reasons alone, be the prudent course of action. Even if you think you're right, and we're wrong, you've made your point. Over. And over. And over. Maybe it's time to just let it go?

(12-02-2019, 08:37 PM)cardcrimson Wrote: Throughout my life, I've never tried to suppress views opposite of mine or to avoid them. In fact, I've relished them and sought them out. Views different than my own, always improve my own thinking and decision making; they prove my thoughts wrong, validate them, or in most cases tweak them to make my thinking stronger.

That's great, me too. I'm sure most Stanford fans are also fans of freedom of speech. And using that speech, some posters have set out thoughtful, concise, and precise critiques of Shaw. They're great contributions, but as far as I'm concerned, I actually don't care about what they have to say, because I don't actually care all that much about football. On some level, I think a sport so directly tied to CTE is fundamentally at odds with the core values of a university, least of all Stanford. My issues is rather that the constant repetitious hectoring about Shaw and the football team in many different new threads gets tiresome, and when it shows up in thread after thread, it starts to dilute the value of the rest of the board.

As a matter of process and not of content, I will confess that there have been recent ongoing discussions about several posters who have perhaps been creating too many repetitive threads that don't warrant or need a thread of their own, given similar topics that already have their own threads. Sometimes that means looking down a page or two for a common-theme thread and resuscitating it, rather than just deciding apropos of nothing to make a new one all of your own. One way to self-police this is to examine the percentage of new threads one creates and compare it both to the percentage of posts ones makes, and compare it to the percentage of threads the average Cardboarder creates. A well-named thread can go a long way, as the recent WBB Victoria Invitational thread shows. I think that one is up to over 100 posts? Most of the recruiting threads get similarly long mileage from a single origin thread.

To this end, part of diversity of ideas is ensuring there is room for that marketplace of ideas to flourish - when one poster, or one leitmotif, starts to crowd out the rest, it's our job as mods to discuss whether to intervene to ensure such diversity of ideas doesn't get lost in the shuffle.

(12-02-2019, 08:37 PM)cardcrimson Wrote: Now to the merged thread in question, a lot of threads were buried together and it's irrelevant who the OP was. They cluttered the board with the same thing you claimed--negativity towards the football program. Help me understand how a thread about the press corp, a thread about the running game, a thread about injuries / strength and conditioning, a thread about offensive creativity, a thread our coach's resistance to change, etc. are all about the same thing. To me, they are all separate issues and warrant separate discussions.

As I really hope you know by now, I had nothing to do with any aspect of these thread mergers. I had perhaps inspired it with my facetious and performatively over-the-top invitation to dump all hatred of Shaw et al. in a single thread, but I had nothing to do with the decision to merge threads, nor what got merged.

(12-02-2019, 08:37 PM)cardcrimson Wrote: To you, they are all issues to be feared, as they doesn't fit with your narrative that all is well with Stanford athletics, except for a minor blip with the football program. What a bummer it must be to live in a cardinal colored shell.

Fear?! Respectfully, I have to laugh at that. Nothing that takes places on this board strikes fear in my heart. This is my escape from a much more stressful day job as part of a much more stressful, publicly accountable career. And as to the substance of your critique, let me say once again, football is not even among the top 5 sports I care most about, so I'm not sure I even have a coherent narrative about the state of our football team. To the degree I do, it's that my class (2006) was the first to lose all four of our big games since I think(?) the 1950s, and the year after I graduated we had the ignominy to finish the season with 1 win and 11 losses. Maybe my standards are too low as a result, but I give David Shaw a lot of credit for maintaining a consistently winning program while doing it in all the right ways. And believe me, David Shaw's football teams have been anything but a "bummer" for me - our Rose Bowl win against Iowa was one of my best days as a Stanford Cardinal fan ever. If I am lucky enough to attend my 50th reunion, I am sure I will still savor the fact that the state of Iowa threatened sanctions because our band had the audacity to be funny while Our Guys were busy humiliating the Hawkeyes all over the field.

So if there's a tl;dr, it's this: it's not so much what any member posts, but how frequently, repetitiously, and in how many different places. When one poster has created half the threads on the front page of the board, or when one topic gets regurgitated in thread after thread after thread, it begins to feel a little unfair to everyone else, many of whom come here precisely because this is one of the few places that provides high-quality, in-depth coverage of all our other sports. That's the origin story of the Cardboard, and the chief reason why I've invested as much time into it as I have.

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - cardcrimson - 12-02-2019

(12-02-2019, 08:59 PM)2006alum Wrote: Let me take your comments in earnest, and in turn, once, and that will be my final say on the matter:

So typical of a response--I'll tell you what I think, and then I'll go home. . . . .

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - 2006alum - 12-02-2019

(12-02-2019, 09:14 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:
(12-02-2019, 08:59 PM)2006alum Wrote: Let me take your comments in earnest, and in turn, once, and that will be my final say on the matter:

So typical of a response--I'll tell you what I think, and then I'll go home. . . . .

Hardly! I'll happily listen to what you have to say - I just don't think I have anything else to add. :)

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - 76lsjumb - 12-02-2019

(12-02-2019, 09:14 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:
(12-02-2019, 08:59 PM)2006alum Wrote: Let me take your comments in earnest, and in turn, once, and that will be my final say on the matter:

So typical of a response--I'll tell you what I think, and then I'll go home. . . . .

Perhaps you should consider starting your own Board. You could start all the threads you wanted and make all the rules just as you like. You could name it The CardCrimsonBoard and even give it a motto. Maybe something like: “Less Signal. More Noise.”

Just a suggestion... :-)

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - terry - 12-02-2019

(12-02-2019, 08:37 PM)cardcrimson Wrote: please spare me the condescending old snowflake crap.

The real "crap" is crying "censorship" when that is not what happened.

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - qwerty49 - 12-03-2019

(12-02-2019, 09:52 PM)terry Wrote:
(12-02-2019, 08:37 PM)cardcrimson Wrote: please spare me the condescending old snowflake crap.

The real "crap" is crying "censorship" when that is not what happened.

Oh really? If all those threads had been praising Shaw and staff and discussing various positive aspects of the football program would they have been merged?

RE: Censorship hits the Cardboard. - Phogge - 12-03-2019

I kinda like the snowflake role. Never had it before. I definitely endorse it because I’ve been clubbed by the Miami Police, shot at at least four times, held captive on two occasions, been investigated for second degree murder, been in a couple of bar fights, had 13 broken bones, been pushed over by Spiro Agnew’s SS detail and dodged gangs in South Central besides numerous close shaves all over the world. Then there was the investigation for bribing border guards in Namibia and Botswana.

I’ll take snowflake any time. I deserve it.