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This seems reasonable
Almost… too reasonable…
That sounds like a movie line somehow….. Like from Airplane!
Test
Test? Please elaborate.
His reply is likely to be delayed.
Oh wow I’ve only ever used the app I didn’t know there were avatars and stuff cool
This would be awesome if people complied. However there are still some users I would love to block.
We are hoping to ban those people. But I am also looking into a mute option for our users.
Mute button would be absolutely fantastic if you guys can make that work Tim, love the site, hate stupid people :)
I don’t think they are stupid, but they certainly are obnoxious.
Or maybe just take away their posting ability. No reason to ban them from the site if they can’t post.
I believe that is what he means by ban. Ban them from the comment section, not the site. No reason to make them lose money.
“Banning” IS taking away their posting ability. Never heard of anyone being banned from viewing the site altogether.
They should be banned from even being able to access a computer
Lol
The mute button concept would be useful. Ideally it would be a time-frame based so muted for X days total. There are times people post and I’d love to mute them only to find they made useful comments later on. It becomes a question of time and space.
Mute option is long overdue. And frankly would go a long way towards getting rid of the trolls who thrive on people reacting negatively towards their comments.
Certain posters make very insightful, intelligent baseball posts from time to time but undo that good work with numerous mute-able, often inciteful, comments. Since the responses tend to indicate posts that might be worth unmuting temporarily, many of these value-added posts can still be interacted with and the rest ignored …or left to the imagination, as the case may be, if Mute is activated.
A mute option places the initial responsibility where it belongs …with the reader.
You can’t ban someone just bc a user or two don’t like them.
If they violate the rules sure, multiple times especially.
But just give a mute or block feature and let users determine what they want to see.
vtncsc
They can ban anyone they want. The question is “should they”.
I think if there is a question, they shouldn’t, but with some posters, there isn’t any doubt.
I’m only interested in a mute button if I can mute myself. ;)
Looks good overall, but what’s up with the no caps thing? I don’t get it.
I don’t either.
There was a user on NFL.com websites who use to post in all caps. Every comment.
Someone asked him why he posts in all caps and said he has seeing issues or something and caps help him see better when typing.
It’s not something I perceive to be a major issue around here, so I’ll just remove that from the policy.
All caps text impairs readability. It also makes the writer look like a jerk.
If someone starts doing it just to be annoying, we’d probably ban them. But as I reflected on it, I don’t see that much.
Oh no!!!! Replay review comes to MLBTR…….”Upon further review….” :)
I don’t type my entire comment in all caps, but if I want to put an EMPHASIS on a word, I use all caps. It’s essentially what I use instead of italics, i’m not trying to be annoying when I use it lol.
@rangers29
Couldn’t agree MORE!
I need to be able to capitalize full words for emphasis as I only use exclamation points sarcastically.
Do tell!
I see no problem staying within these guidelines. I don’t see a lot of comments with most of the articles about who has tested positive and with comments closed on those.
We are going to open up comments on COVID posts moving forward, so we’ll see how it goes.
There you go with the caps, Tim…
Kidding
No reasonable person should have any problem abiding by these rules. They are not very different than the previous policy IIRC. Either way one item I would like to have seen in the policy is the treatment of repeat offenders. It’s probably implicit that banning is the ultimate penalty but spelling that out couldn’t hurt.
The main addition is explicitly writing that we don’t allow unnecessary political discussion.
I admire the end goal, but boy is that gonna be hard. Pretty much everything baseball-related is COVID-19-related, and pretty much everything COVID-19-related has managed to become political. What a mess.
I think it will go fine. While COVID and MLB are interlinked unfortunately, no commenter has to comment on their opinion of whether or not the person is taking COVID too seriously or not seriously enough. Seems easy to keep it to the player or the team, and as to how the information in the article affects them.
restingmitchface
It’s a handful of agenda based posters. I don’t think it’s really going to be that hard.
What will be more difficult is these posters will constantly change their user names and just start up again.
I believe they are banned by email not username. So they would have to create a new email to avoid the ban.
That’s not hard to do. It takes minutes to set up an email address.
They should be banned by IP address. Its too easy today to create a new email and we have seen plenty of people that were banned come right back with a new user name that they obviously attached to a new email address.
You know a thing or two about creating new usernames don’t ya?
Got it. What is the thinking on not having an explicit banning policy?
Because louie and dewey both belong in the hall…
apols – that’s meant as a gentle joke – Louie/Dewey mentioned they’d set up a 2nd account on a 2nd device because of forgetfulness over a password. We’ve all been there unless you’re under the age of about 22. In which case I’m jealous.
Anyway – I think it illuminating – that all it has taken is a sensible word or two from the owners of this site for us to realise we are all capable of self editing. I think that is what the five minute edit allows and encourages and (hat tip to Rangers29) URGES!
I’m really not interested what someone’s political views are, I disagree with the politics of most of my friends, but I don’t want what I consider an intelligent site to descend into poop throwing.
We can do better and the value this site adds deserves better.
I don’t want the contributors (above the line) to have their time wasted monitoring my comments. I want them sniffing out stories, providing opinion, ignoring the mlb.com puff pieces and providing a platform for debate. They’re good at that – I’d rather leave them excelling at what they do best.
Kind regards,
Peter in London
But what about Huey?
I completely support these policies as personal politics has made the site less enjoyable.
The priincipal challenge I have noticed elsewhere is deciding what is “political.” A charge of “being political” seems to mean opinions on public policy that differ from your own. For example, lack of MLB testing could be widened into a discussion of why we don’t test more, which could be interpreted as being political. Best just to keep it to baseball, even when discussing the fact of someone’s COVID status.
ScottCFA
We can talk about the subject without saying one administration is at fault, or the boomers are idiots and they are the problem.
I think we can all recognize testing is an issue. The issue is people have little information but have preconceived notions who to blame and use inflammatory comments to make their point.
I think we’ll generally know the line when we see it.
Solid policy and one that should keep the comments baseball-centric. Politics definitely intersect with baseball but keeping the discussion on the actual baseball issue should be the aim here.
Will you be adding the ability to flag comments on the iPad app?
This. The only things we can do in the app (at least for iOS, not sure about Android) are post comments and reply to comments. There’s no option to flag, report, mute, etc.
Same goes for Android app. I see comments and a REPLY button, no option to flag.
I think it’s just sad that this reminder needs to be said.
These are very reasonable and appropriate guidelines. I also appreciate MLBTR taking the time to address this issue and also asking for the community’s input before unilaterally taking action, like disabling all comments. Well-handled.
Thanks for putting this out Tim, I love having conversations on here, and also hate seeing people get censored because others were saying rude / harassing type stuff.
So does this mean that articles like “Joey Gallo get Covid-19” will have open comments now? Because I would’ve loved to comment on a few of the Covid articles.
Reasonable rules. Nothing but praise for MLBTraderumors in coming up with these.
Now it is up to us to make this work. Keep it civil people!
This might be the best post of 2020. Thanks to the Trade Rumors staff for implementing and enforcing. Y’all have a great site and we look forward to future great articles and sensible discussions. Thank you!
halored760
And even that is political. Is he the real cause? “most polarizing Presidents”
When you write, I could write chapters on the cause of the “polarization”. But I don’t want to go there.
…and that goes along with my previous post that it is difficult to decide what is “political.” Many people assume that everyone agrees on certain things, and don’t consider their terminology to be “political” (I’m not saying halored is being political). It is more complicated than many people realize. Just stick to baseball and avoid societal comments.
Rather than saying “adversarial”, which cast no blame, he blamed a political party. It’s just that easy to spark a political debate.
People’s political opinions seem to always leak out. I’m just bringing this up to make a point.
Not close to splitting hairs. Not close.
But I really don’t want to explain why.
Well call it what you want and believe what you want. The point was that the election is a factor in the increased intensity of the comments. That’s it. I’m sorry if one of the words I chose made you uncomfortable. That was not the intent.
Now that this is settled, perhaps you can do something about the annoying banner ads that pop up on the screen and block some of your content, especially at the bottom.
Let’s just keep the bottom ad banners and not put up a pay-wall on the site, please. Well, unless something better than Ad-Choice comes along.
Lol…those banner ads may be annoying, but that’s what keeps the site free. ;-)
Tim, I’m sorry you have to even post something like this.
If the internet was civilized …he wouldn’t have to
The more we can keep politics to whatever other forums we read and comment on, the better. Baseball should be enough for us here. Let’s hope this works.
Sounds like a solid set of guidelines. Objective moderating is going to be the key.
Oh no! Now where do we go to agree that Scott Boras is…. ;-)
.
I see ongoing themes like rules and sportsmanship reminding us to do our best to be good individuals and refrain from personal attacks and aggrandizement, when we let our inner children out to play one of our favorite games.
From a business perspective and that of MLBTR and baseball: Remember we have our inner kids here and we want real kids to take interest in baseball. It seems counterintuitive that MLBTR switched to Ad-Choice for their advertising vehicle in order to stop inappropriate ads, only to have its readers skirt the issue by posting inappropriate comments on their own.
We need to have the MLBTR crew take over the FCC and stop the relentless politicizing of news events by news channels, on both sides….
Of course that would eliminate most of them…..
*all
Can we please get the use of the word “retarded” banned? It’s disgraceful.
+1
Does someone really use that word?
Yes, sadly they do. Just like in every day convo there are those who use it without even thinking how inappropriate and degrading it is.
Retard the fire and put out the lights. We plan to be here for years to come… Ad supported and not really, at all.
I thought it already was, but I re-added it today.
Thanks for everything, Tim. As expressed elsewhere, the app may need to refreshed. On both iOS and Android we have no option to flag comments; we can only reply. Great refresh on the site policy, take care!
I don’t know if anyone ever watched “The Good Place”, but there was a throw away joke that if you were not paying attention you missed.
The head of the Good Place was talking about insanely rare occurrences that bordered the impossibility. Then he quickly gave an exampled of changing someone’s mind on a chat forum.
This is all perfectly reasonable and I agree that it’s just as important that people don’t pour fuel on the fires by engaging those off-topic commenters. Hopefully moderating gets easier once a handful of instigators are out of the way.
Props and thanks to Tim and the MLBTR staff for all their efforts.
There are a couple of common posters who are not posting. I have hope.
Maybe they tried to post but couldn’t get past the moderator. Who knows what evil is still lurking in their minds?
I agree with everyone who believes that the new policy is a step in the right direction.
Is one with the initials DK? Lol
Thank you!
Lets have some great baseball discussion. That is the beauty of our sport.
Now if you guys would just go clean up Twitter and Facebook, in your spare time, that would be awesome.
Thank you
Evolution!
I remember back in say 2007 when I was writing for Pro Sports Daily and The Pit on the Cubs. I would come here and 10 articles in a row would have no comment(s). Us readers back then could almost have one on one conversations with Tim. Today this comment section is almost a entity of its own. Articles read by some of us, comments by others. I read them comment sections these days(over the last 5 years), but I never comment anymore since it is a new wave of writers in the comment section. Not that I have ever had any problem with any writer in the comment section, but evolution has me of more of a reader than a writer these days. I take the good with the bad in here and look forward to the next article.
Evolution of this site is amazing!
I am especially happy to see that there was a well thought out open-minded set of new rules put in place after all of the language and opinions left from the original post about this situation. Based on some of the comments, the original topic of commenting could have resulted in some major backlash and mass exodus of the site! It appears all is well, and without readers, Tim can take his ball away and pursue other streams of revenue and leave all of us missing an important part of our daily lives in MLBTR.
Thank all of the writers in the comment section for keeping this site open, opinionated, and diverse!
Thank you Tim for allowing them to have a voice!
Thank heaven for MLBTR!
Excellent
should have added name calling or insinuating, unless that’s included in insults.
This is out of the blue, but I’m curious as to what your avatar/profile image is. Not trying to accuse you of anything, I’m honestly wondering, and might I ask, what it is.(?)
Act like a gentleman, got it.
Play Ball!
If you ask us to flag offensive comments, please put the ability to do that in the app.
I plan to eventually, but we are a little strapped for development resources at present.
Tim, could you use this opportunity to share what is your vision for your site?
Glad to see this in place, although I will say overall MLBTR does have the best commenting section. Most commenters are insightful. There are a few that are just trolls, where every other commenting section on different platforms (mainly FB) are the opposite. Keep up the good work guys. We greatly appreciate it the content and good comments.
Is the previously floated prohibition against harmful lies (like COVID being a hoax or masks not stopping spread) left out on purpose?
Or is it assumed under the point about sticking to baseball?
We will be removing dangerous misinformation, but it’s possible some of that stuff would also be removed for being off-topic.
The comments about the recovery rate being 99 point whatever are especially galling. When you’re talking about a population of millions, to crow over the fact that only 1 percent is dying? Ghoulish and harmful.
Lol. Why did you turn the comments off on the Robby Ray post? I get trying to limit political/Covid talk but y’all might be taking it a bit too far.
R. Ray has been a flashpoint for heated discussion lol.
“He’s an ace, and if you don’t see that, you’re a [bleep]!”
“SP 3 at best, you [bleep]!”
X-D
Any talk of making a report button available on the app? It doesn’t seem like there’s anyway to report or flag a comment on the app
I have questions about how positive Covid tests affect team rosters. I tried to post the question in the comments section of three different stories yesterday, but each time I got the message that the comment section was closed. Was my question seen as offensive? Does this mean that you accept no comments or questions related to your stories on Covid or player testing? Please advise.
Tim, with all due respect, that is an asinine response to your pleas for comment feedback. Your solution is to post reminders about being nice to each other?
Not sure I understand your question. This was posted to remind everyone of our standing commenting policy and to post notice that we’ll be removing unrelated political discussion. We’ll be deleting comments and banning people as is necessary.
My understanding is that you were soliciting reader feedback on the comment policy, because either the management of offensive/inappropriate comments was problematic or because the content itself was something you found offensive and didn’t want to associate MLBTR with it. So, after all the back and forth with the users, it doesnt appear anything changed. The commenting has been opened back up on COVID-19 content, which was initially bothersome to you, and there doesnt appear to be any change on policy, other than a police yourselves and flag as deem fit. So why even bother to open up the dialogue on the matter?
To say you are giving someone “all due respect” and then call the same person’s actions “asinine” is kinda contradictory
I’m an English teacher, so I’m happy to clarify. When one uses the introductory clause “with all due respect”, the intent is to communicate that what follows is not intended as a personal jab, which it wasn’t.
Well, thanks, but no need to clarify. It so happens that I’m a teacher too (19 years of English, though I’ve moved more into teaching history in the past few years), and I understood that you THOUGHT you were being respectful. MY intent was to tell you that mixing “due respect” and “asinine” has the EFFECT of cancelling the former out.
How can you not take someone calling your decision “asinine” personally?
Sometimes people such as myself do not intend to come off as trolls, but through wrong wording or mistaken tone or just simply misunderstanding something, you kind of get labeled that way. Now I am not going to say that I have never had a conversation that deteriorated into insults or that I didn’t have a few (mostly lighthearted) sarcastic comments along the way, because I am human after all. But I have never intentionally tried to be “that guy.” But some people have taken it that way and quite frankly it is a hard characterization to shake.
Anyway, my point is that the comments should definitely be toned down, especially the political stuff, but people need to use the flag button responsibly as well. Reasonable people can disagree, sometimes heatedly. Sometimes things can be said, even typed, before you think it through. It happens. I’d just hate to see myself or someone else banned from discussion due to an overeager “hall monitor” of sorts.
Flags point the moderators to areas of concern. They can then assess, based on context and other factors
Yes, but useless flagging also contributes to the moderators having to do more work than necessary. I am all for getting rid of pointless bickering and juvenile name calling etc., but moderators are people too. As tired as they are of rule-breaking discussions, they must be 10 times as tired of going through unnecessarily flagged comments as well.
I know what you’re saying @kodlon but I want the writers writing – which is what they’re good at – rather than being moderators – which, let’s face it, none of us are very good at!
I really want a comments section because on occasions it give us, the readership an opportunity to say exactly what the writers are thinking, or hinting at, without provoking litigation….
Tim Dierkes: I have been trying to ask a question about how positive tests affect team rosters. Three times yesterday I asked the question and each time learned that the comment section was closed. I posted a similar comment about 30 minutes ago, thought it was actually posted, but then found it gone when I came back to see if my request for advice had brought a reply. I don’t understand. My question was polite and respectful, mentioned no player or other person
I think its back now. Glitch maybe it temporarily removes comments. Has happened to me also then it reappears later
Sounds great!
Thanks!
Is one with the initials DK? Lol
What do you have against Dallas Keuchel lol
I use baseball as a distraction from all the ridiculous political nonsense during election years even in “normal” times. This all sounds great to me. Thank you MLBTR.
Thank you
I do have one question about this site that came about from the comments being closed but is an entirely different subject.
I don’t know the specifics of how clicks and internet revenue work, but I realized that unless I click to see the comments I almost never have to click to read the stories. The full stories are usually posted in full form on the main page (with only the longer ones getting a “read more” type of link) and can be read without clicking on them.
Would it be better for the site to have users click on each story?
This issue is a weird one for me. I’m somewhat against the concept of a “mute” button, because, seriously?
Are readers of this site so fragile that a comment that isn’t against the rules (as those comments would be removed) is going to destroy you? Is someone who is so disaffected by any particular commenter not also responsible for how they handle their presence? I feel like the whole concept of a mute button is only necessary for the most immature individuals lacking in self-control.
As for the changes to the rules, they seem like good changes. Time will tell if the enforcement of these changes is good. I’m somewhat skeptical and suspect that they’ll be selectively enforced depending on the bias of the moderator, but, I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.
> refrain from using the MLBTR comment section to discuss elections, politicians, political parties, or political beliefs
It looks like you’re fine with relevant discussion of political decisions that directly impact the 2020 season. It’s the gratuitious stuff that makes the comment section unbearable.
A mute button is probably much better (and easier) than the site labouring to moderate comments and commenters. But I do so like using jokes to police deranged commenters! I hope that falls under “fair comment” when it is not mere lazy ad hominem.
Why even have a comment section then? Someone is always going to get offended or disagree with something someone says. That’s called life. I feel like telling the entire world to grow a pair.
specialK
I don’t even know what planet you are on? Allowing people to converse does not allow others to disrupt and destroy.
This isn’t about sharing opinions, it’s about people hijacking a forum and giving a voice for the sole purpose of disruption and people with agendas.
People who can’t contribute have no problem destroying.
Oh the irony of some of the people who this policy has been rewritten to specifically stop commenting on this post and complaining about others! Some people really can’t see further than their own noses!
Great to hear, Tim! I’ve been using this site much less lately due to the partisanship and bickering in the comments. Lay down the law!
This might sound a little silly, but I think if you direct what you’d like commenters to discuss in the comment section at the end of articles, they may comply. I know you already make an attempt at that with most articles, and use polls, etc, to enable interactivity on posts, which is great, but maybe you should try steering comments in specific, narrow directions, to limit broader, general debating, which is where comment sections always seem to unravel. Just my thoughts on this topic. Love everything you guys do with this amazing site, so keep up the great work! (And let me know when you’re ready to expand to European football coverage, because the transfer market is an absolute goldmine for fascinating content)
Go Rangers!! Play ball ⚾️