Duplicate threads

[Nine of twelve]

After participating on this site for years it was only today that I noticed this forum.

I have PM'd Brock about this issue but thought I'd post about it here as well.

I view it as a problem that there are often multiple threads on the same topic, or very closely-related topics. This was especially messy during the Correa free agency and subsequent contract signing when I think there were close to a dozen or more different concurrent threads on the matter in the various forums. Just today a new article was posted on the topic of the opening day starter when the matter had been extensively discussed only a couple weeks previously. My suggestion is for administrators and moderators to be much more active in the area of merging similar threads, and when doing this to keep in mind that there's nothing wrong with reviving an old thread if a new thread or article fits there. I would also suggest re-organizing the forums into just two sections: Twins organization topics and non-Twins baseball topics. (I guess archived game threads would still be in their own forum, and should be locked when moved.) I don't think there's a need for a separate minor league forum because some topics overlap major and minor leagues and because the title of the thread lets the reader know the topic anyway. I think taking these steps would make it easier to follow discussions, to merge discussions, and to minimize the number of redundant posts.

[Squirrel]

Lots of things to unpack here. The Front Page News forum is generated from the creation of front page articles. It’s basically a secondary front page. Most everything from the front page is automatically duplicated and deposited into that forum for those posters who by-pass the front page to get those articles in that forum instead. The articles there are written by the site’s contributing writers and owners. Moderators have no control over what is written, when it’s written or when it’s published. An owner would have to explain that process, but I think other than some specific stories that must be covered, I think the writers pretty much can write what they want. Again, I don’t know if there is a schedule or organization to how those articles get written and published. Those articles cannot and should never be merged, ever, either with other articles in that forum or with threads in other forums. If you don’t like the number of articles on Correa, don’t read them. It’s as simple as that. But each writer has a different perspective on these events and are given latitude. What content there is in the Front Page Articles forum is completely generated by contributing writers and very separate than what gets posted in the other forums.

The Twins Talk forum and the Other forum and with some exceptions, the Minor League forum, are poster generated. In other words, those forums don’t have front page articles in them, with a few exceptions in the Minor League forum and even less so in the Other forum. But everything in the Twins Talk forum is its own entity and completely poster driven. When news breaks and multiple posters post the same news stories, yes, those do get merged. However, this year we were trying a new function with Twins rumors. Unfortunately, some posters were using this function not as intended, and were using that to report actual news of signings rather than strictly rumors, so signings came out as rumors. And, unfortunately, we couldn’t merge those, but we did try and lock and redirect threads in that case. We will definitely look into how to do this better as the season goes on. But, posters want to talk about things, and sometimes topics do get repeated that were discussed weeks before. We don’t merge those. We try to post links to the previous discussion, or other posters do, but mostly we view these as separate discussions even if it was had weeks previously. Again, you have control over what you want to read.

But the duplication of discussions between the Front Page News and Twins Talk forums … basically nothing we can do about this. I try to cross link the two entities when I can, but mostly it is what it is. In today’s discussion of ‘Who will start?’ it’s doubtful that writer even saw the poll and discussion in the Twins Talk forum from a couple of weeks ago. But there is a difference between the two. One was a fully fleshed out article, while the other was just a poll question. While the discussion ends up being similar, or even the same, again, no one is forcing you to read anything. I did put a link up in the new article, but it’s still a separate entity.

There is never a way to perfectly organize things, however, we can’t limit content. That just wouldn’t be a good thing to do when we need writers and posters on a content-driven website.

[Nine of twelve]

16 hours ago, Squirrel said:

The Front Page News forum is generated from the creation of front page articles. It’s basically a secondary front page. Most everything from the front page is automatically duplicated and deposited into that forum for those posters who by-pass the front page to get those articles in that forum instead. The articles there are written by the site’s contributing writers and owners. Those articles cannot and should never be merged, ever, either with other articles in that forum or with threads in other forums. If you don’t like the number of articles on Correa, don’t read them. It’s as simple as that.

...we can't limit content...

This is where you and I have divergent opinions. I already understood how the Front Page News Forum is generated. And I already understood that the owners and other contributors wish to highlight these articles, and with that I have no complaint. But I find that having a separate forum for those articles is a needless barrier for the user to access information on the site. To use the Correa situation as an example, I LIKED that a lot was being written about it, I had NO complaint--NONE--about the number of articles written, and I WANTED to read ALL the articles and ALL the user comments. What I didn't like was that there were so many articles and threads and user comments that reading everything was inconvenient and that it was nigh on impossible to keep track of what was written in which threads and in which articles and by whom. That's why such articles should ALWAYS be merged either with other articles or other threads on the same topic in any forum. (IMHO, of course.)

I agree that content should not be limited. However, if site administrators wish to highlight articles I'm sure that it can easily be done using techniques such as a larger or unique font or color, or framing, or even having links to articles within a particular thread. But for the sake of user-friendliness (which is something of highest priority, IMHO) please place articles in consolidated threads with other comments and articles about the same topic.

[Squirrel]

1 hour ago, Nine of twelve said:

This is where you and I have divergent opinions. I already understood how the Front Page News Forum is generated. And I already understood that the owners and other contributors wish to highlight these articles, and with that I have no complaint. But I find that having a separate forum for those articles is a needless barrier for the user to access information on the site. To use the Correa situation as an example, I LIKED that a lot was being written about it, I had NO complaint--NONE--about the number of articles written, and I WANTED to read ALL the articles and ALL the user comments. What I didn't like was that there were so many articles and threads and user comments that reading everything was inconvenient and that it was nigh on impossible to keep track of what was written in which threads and in which articles and by whom. That's why such articles should ALWAYS be merged either with other articles or other threads on the same topic in any forum. (IMHO, of course.)

I agree that content should not be limited. However, if site administrators wish to highlight articles I'm sure that it can easily be done using techniques such as a larger or unique font or color, or framing, or even having links to articles within a particular thread. But for the sake of user-friendliness (which is something of highest priority, IMHO) please place articles in consolidated threads with other comments and articles about the same topic.

Again. We are not EVER going to merge articles written by our contributors. Those are the articles that are in the Front Page forum and on the Front Page. Never happening. Maybe separate forum for certain subjects could be a thing? In the Twins Talk forum, though, those aren’t articles and we generally do merge those with the exception I noted, when they got posted as rumors. 

[Nine of twelve]

I accept that the site owners can run the site the way they want. It's their property to do with what they wish. And I understand that it's the role of moderators to carry out the wishes of the owners in managing the forums. But I'm free to disagree with how it's done, especially when I'm right.😉

[Squirrel]

10 hours ago, Nine of twelve said:

I accept that the site owners can run the site the way they want. It's their property to do with what they wish. And I understand that it's the role of moderators to carry out the wishes of the owners in managing the forums. But I'm free to disagree with how it's done, especially when I'm right.😉

You are always free to find a website that does things as you wish them to be

[Nine of twelve]

46 minutes ago, Squirrel said:

You are always free to find a website that does things as you wish them to be

My suggestion, and it's just a suggestion, was simply to consider reorganizing the forums into a format that seemed more user-friendly to me. And your response has been one to dismiss the suggestion out of hand even though you are not in charge of organizing the forums (as far as I know). I have to say that I'm not clear on where you are coming from here. If you are saying this as an individual I say you are free to express that opinion and I welcome your participation in the discussion. But if you are speaking as a moderator you are speaking as an official of the site, and therefore essentially speaking on behalf of the owners. If the owners prefer not to implement my suggestion that's fine, but I would like to hear one of them address that. And beyond that, are you as an official of the site really encouraging a loyal regular visitor to quit being a loyal regular visitor? Is that what the owners want? As I said before, the owners can and should do what they feel is best for their business. But typically business owners welcome suggestions from customers regarding what customers would like to experience from the business. If the TD owners prefer that I not patronize their business because I made a suggestion and explained why I made it I'll respect that, but I would like to hear that from one of them, not from an underling.

[Squirrel]

18 minutes ago, Nine of twelve said:

My suggestion, and it's just a suggestion, was simply to consider reorganizing the forums into a format that seemed more user-friendly to me. And your response has been one to dismiss the suggestion out of hand even though you are not in charge of organizing the forums (as far as I know). I have to say that I'm not clear on where you are coming from here. If you are saying this as an individual I say you are free to express that opinion and I welcome your participation in the discussion. But if you are speaking as a moderator you are speaking as an official of the site, and therefore essentially speaking on behalf of the owners. If the owners prefer not to implement my suggestion that's fine, but I would like to hear one of them address that. And beyond that, are you as an official of the site really encouraging a loyal regular visitor to quit being a loyal regular visitor? Is that what the owners want? As I said before, the owners can and should do what they feel is best for their business. But typically business owners welcome suggestions from customers regarding what customers would like to experience from the business. If the TD owners prefer that I not patronize their business because I made a suggestion and explained why I made it I'll respect that, but I would like to hear that from one of them, not from an underling.

I’m not exactly sure what you mean anymore. You say the forums, yet I’ve very clearly stated that the Front Page News forum is not really a forum that operates in the same way the other forums do. If what you want to suggest is more organization of what articles are written, when so there are not so many of the same articles, then yes, that is specifically an owner question. However, you are in the minority when it comes to big, breaking news or stories such as all the articles and forum posts we had about Correa. The data showed that most readers could not get enough on Correa and it was big news how that all went down making it a pretty wild off season, so all the articles written and published on that was very intentional. As for the regular forums, like the Twins Talk forum, yes, we do take great strides to streamline the threads that get started there, with the exception I noted about the rumors function, which was new and now something we need to tweak. So, I’ve explained, this is how it is. If an owner wants to step in and discuss the process of how it’s decided on what gets written and when, then they will. But the rest just feels a bit … overly picky 

[Nine of twelve]

Apparently I have to restate that I am not in the minority regarding Correa's situation. Like most users, I wanted to read everything that was posted here. The problem is that the site was unequivocally a big mess with articles, threads, and comments all over the place. That situation was certainly an outlier, but the presentation of information was haphazard and it should have been much easier for users to access it. In general terms, again I am not suggesting to limit content, merely to organize it better and to limit redundancy.

Overly picky? I suppose that's one perspective, but I see my suggestion as trying to be helpful. I care enough to want the site to be better and I am simply providing feedback in that regard.

[Brock Beauchamp]

On 2/28/2023 at 8:54 AM, Nine of twelve said:

This is where you and I have divergent opinions. I already understood how the Front Page News Forum is generated. And I already understood that the owners and other contributors wish to highlight these articles, and with that I have no complaint. But I find that having a separate forum for those articles is a needless barrier for the user to access information on the site. To use the Correa situation as an example, I LIKED that a lot was being written about it, I had NO complaint--NONE--about the number of articles written, and I WANTED to read ALL the articles and ALL the user comments. What I didn't like was that there were so many articles and threads and user comments that reading everything was inconvenient and that it was nigh on impossible to keep track of what was written in which threads and in which articles and by whom. That's why such articles should ALWAYS be merged either with other articles or other threads on the same topic in any forum. (IMHO, of course.)

I agree that content should not be limited. However, if site administrators wish to highlight articles I'm sure that it can easily be done using techniques such as a larger or unique font or color, or framing, or even having links to articles within a particular thread. But for the sake of user-friendliness (which is something of highest priority, IMHO) please place articles in consolidated threads with other comments and articles about the same topic.

Please realize this is a juggling act that never ends. In 2022, Twins Daily (for the first time) had over 2,000,000 users drop by and visit. That's an enormous number and it's largely due to the how diverse and comprehensive our coverage is through news, forums, blogs, videos, rumors, etc. Twins Daily is one of the biggest baseball sites on the internet now. It's mind-blowing how a site for a single mid-market team grew this large and juggling the needs of a disparate user base is always a struggle.

There's too much content to structure in an organized way. When the site launched, we hoped to run 5-7 stories a week. Right now, we're averaging 5-7 articles a day. We used to have front page news threads in the Twins forum. It completely broke the Twins forum and that's when we were running half the stories we are now. Users stopped generating threads because they'd be pushed out of sight within a few hours by the continual onslaught of front page news threads.

We're all about community here so that didn't fly. We value those user-generated conversations and therefore moved news threads to a separate forum to give users more breathing space to create and discuss their own content.

In short, when you have 2,000,000 users visiting in a year, there's no perfect way to coordinate that much content. It's going to be chaotic, it's going to be messy, and it's not going to work perfectly for literally anyone who uses the site.

You might want to explore this tool a bit. It's super-customizable and pretty cool if you drill down into it.

https://twinsdaily.com/discover/unread/

[Nine of twelve]

Brock, thanks for your comment.