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Originally Posted by ClarkNasty
Meh, there were many posters who at the time sent PMs thanking me for making the forum readable. All we did was "no name calling" and rigorously enforce it for about a month, get rid of the *****OFFICIAL**************** threads (that was in every single thread title) and ask for more informative thread titles in their place. That's it, but it was hugely effective and traffic started increasing well above any general water level increase.
About the only other thing I ever really did was move single team season threads into their own subforum. I still don't know if that was good or bad but it sure makes the front page better for me personally, so I'm happy with it.
The thread-title and subforum stuff was what I was referring to as forum formatting, which I agree are perfectly reasonable mod actions.
As for the name-calling, I think it's a little naive to think that helped anything. I guess a few thin-skinned posters may have liked it better (not that I particularly care to share a forum with them anyway, I'd imagine), but it's generally just a mockery where more time gets wasted debating about what is or isn't over some imaginary line of offensiveness. I don't consider it a win (or a loss for that matter) if name-calling is simply forced to appear worded slightly differently. I will agree, though, that there was a fair amount of entertainment value provided by reading the ban lists, if only because they served as a nice mix-tape of amusing forum moments, but I don't imagine that was the ultimate purpose the rules were created to serve....
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I mean, you're free to disagree, but there was a lot of data on traffic at the time, and anecdotally I can tell you lots of people said the changes caused them to start contributing/posting more. Considering that people now bitch about "lol x" thread titles, I think it shows how far we've come in the whole readability regard.
Who are these people? They have been referred to abstractly by multiple mods now, but I'm finding it hard to think of any reasonable candidates. I'll admit, though, that not everyone shares the same opinion about what makes a poster a "contributor".
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As a poster, I'm merely ok in general.
False modesty unbecoming of a poster of your quality!
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C'mon now. This is clearly false and only explained due to extreme bias as a result of real life friendship. Assani has clearly contributed stuff, but has frequently also been a mega distraction in a negative way on no shortage of occassions. Especially wrt SE, we're talking about the introducing FBG draft threads to this forum, above average basketball discussion and............what? Biased football analysis and Denver is an elite team takes? Assani adds value for sure, but you're neglecting the negative plays in your calculus.
You've got this completely backwards. I became real-life friends with Assani in the first place 100% because of his posting on here, and the same is true with Bobbo.
Adding the FBG draft template might seem like an obvious negligible contribution now, but nobody else had done it, and I don't see who else would have. The scale of the exercises and the volume and thoroughness of debate they spawned is unrivaled across the entirety of 2+2 afaict, including spreading to multiple other forums, some of which have even banned Assani (or at least had for a time....I don't keep that up-to-date on these things) because they are run by morons.
To sum up his contributions as the FBG draft, biased football analysis (as if any of the rest of the self-aware lot here are above this), and a thread about Denver is silliness, and you're better than that. There is nobody on here, Bobbo excluded, who is willing to explore the depths of an argument anywhere near the level Assani will. That he is sometimes (or often, as happens when you post a lot) wrong is so completely irrelevant that I don't know what else to say. The fact that these aspects are so often seen as a negative on here is simply disappointing. Maybe the forum would be better if instead of worrying about modding meme overuse, our good veteran posters wouldn't stoke the flames with dismissive accusations of "bobbotarding" or "assanitrolling" when these guys go out of their way to post what comprises almost all of what's left of interesting, thought-provoking content in TZ these days.
His artful trolling is just icing.
