(05-25-2017 07:13 PM)Lenvillecards Wrote:  P5 Specific Forum

Conference Realignment Forum

General College Sports Forum

I like something like this. If there is no practical way to enforce tagging in the current board system, then the ability to move entire discussion threads wholesale from one sub forum to another is the only practical way to keep things organized so that discussion topics attracting a larger swarm don't swamped all other topics.

In the description of the sub-forum, there should be some nod to the evolving college sports media market being in the general Conference Realignment subforum.

(05-25-2017 07:13 PM)Lenvillecards Wrote:  P5 Specific Forum

Conference Realignment Forum

General College Sports Forum

I agree with this one

The SEC board is dead due to an overbearing moderator. Why don't you fix that

I think at the end of the day people will still gravitate to the most active board. The only true active boards are the G5 boards and the realignment board.

I would leave it how it is....

(05-26-2017 01:29 AM)StinkyDuck Wrote:  

(05-25-2017 07:13 PM)Lenvillecards Wrote:  P5 Specific Forum

Conference Realignment Forum

General College Sports Forum

I agree with this one

Some what agree, but would prefer two.

P5 Specific Forum

College Sports and Conference Realignment

------

OK with helping out and being a mod for the second one.

the problem I see with a setup with a p5 specific forum and then anything else is a lot of the p5 posters will just post there, and ignore anything else. And "outsiders" won't be treated favorably there. So you're going to lose a LOT of great conversation as a result. I think it's a complete and utter overreaction.

Have one other idea and not sure how easy it would be, but each thread has two columns in-front of the title. Use the second one with a P5 ICON and if possible make it easy to search by that icon/icon label.

Football Bowl Subdivision and College Football Playoff

College Sports and Conference Realignment

As of a few minutes ago, the distribution of thread topics on the first page was as follows:

P5 -- 9
G5 -- 15 (counting Liberty threads here because they all deal with FBS games, even though they're FCS today)
FCS -- 2
Non-football -- 2
Crossover (FBS+FCS, P5+G5, etc...) -- 7
Miscellany (non-sports, non-D1, administrative) -- 8

And that doesn't count threads that invariably will involve other groups sooner rather than later — a thread about Big 12 expansion, for example, almost certainly will involve MWC and AAC chatter, which then affects the other G5 conferences, and potentially touches on FCS.

So while I understand the desire to attract/keep P5 fans, I do think you run the risk of a) having threads fall through the cracks because they don't fit a sub-forum exactly, like overarching threads about all of D1 or FBS, and b) losing a percentage of posts because of the division (especially if there's going to be stricter moderation that keeps P5 threads from becoming more G5-centric as G5 posters weigh in, for example).

It's a sticky wicket, I'm sure.

Some threads are hard to classify. But out of curiosity, I charted the first couple of pages of threads, and tried to do just that. I broke them down into 5 groups: P5 general topics, P5 realignment, G5/FCS general topics, G5/FCS realignment and Media/Other.

Out of 83 threads, 42 were about one of the two G5/FCS groups, 30 were about the P5 groups, and 11 were Media/other.

When it came to # of posts, the G5 threads dominated the P5 (4260 to 1359). Three of those threads (UMass, Georgia State and AAC = P6) accounted for a whopping 1547 posts by themselves. The UMass and Ga State are continuous threads, not about anything in particular - they are like a private board within the bigger board.

If I had to guess, I would expect that more G5 posters chime in on P5 realignment threads than vice versa, so the G5 dominance would be even greater if you broke it down by the interest/affiliation of the individual posters.

I will be curious to see if the P5 threads after the split have as many posts as they do now. How many P5 posters are responding to G5 poster comments rather than discussing/debating with another P5 poster? And when these exchanges are removed from the equation, are those P5 threads going to become ghost towns?

Bottom line - beware of unintended consequences. The saving grace here is that if this doesn't work as hoped, it shouldn't be too hard to reverse it.

I didn't read thru all of this thread, but the most natural split would be Realignment and College Sports. In fact, for college sports it may be better to subdivide to 3: College Football, College Basketball and College Other. IMHO, I don't think P5 posters would leave because of co-mingling of fans of different conferences. The problem is with seeing gobs of realignment threads mixed with sports threads. If you use basketball as an example, you would WANT to have BigEast and other prominent BB schools who are not part of a P5 conference.

I find it very hard to believe that a fan of a P5 school would quit this forum because he/she just came across a couple of football threads dealing with MAC schools. That sounds dumb.

Is it possible that the decline in P5 posters is unrelated to the organization of the board?

(05-25-2017 04:44 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  Alright. I get it, you don't like the P5/G5 split if for no other reason than optics. Fine.


Here's the problem: It is unpleasant to sort through and find stuff specifically relevant to your school if you're in a P5 conference. As a result, the number of P5 posters on this board has slowly withered away. So SOMETHING has to be done to allow people to sort and find stuff relevant TO THEM. Because I'm bogged down on other projects, Aurora simply won't be ready by August 1st. And I'm probably not ballsy enough to switch forum software right in the middle of football and/or basketball season. So that means if I can't get it out the door before the last week of August (which is probably fairly likely the case) then I can't really launch until after March Madness at the earliest (and I can already hear the Rice fans now going "YOU'RE DOING THIS DURING BASEBALL?!" ... so really... maybe we're talking July of NEXT year at that point). So waiting for subtopic filtering in Aurora isn't really an option either. That will be an entire whole 'nother year where P5 fans attrition out of this board because they cannot readily find content specific to them.



Now I'm open to suggestions you may have to address this. But something has got to give. Right now the plurality within the mod team thinks the path of least resistance is to just create a P5 subforum, move any P5 specific threads into it, and then call that job done with no other changes. Without forum feature support to assist, the only way to try to filter right now is to have a "convention" where people prefix "P5: Thread title here" or something like that. And I cannot imagine everybody following such a rule or even bothering to check if one exists. We can also split for now and then try to bring them back together when Aurora is in place. Some posters have indicated they're OK with that, but frankly I think most are too busy raising a stink to have even read my post where I explained that ( http://csnbbs.com/thread-818334-post-143...id14353904 ).



So ... how are we going to square this circle? Which solution above, if any, sounds good to you?

Let me make sure I’ve got this straight…. You’re proposing a “P5” subforum, which is a made-up media term to describe the now “Autonomous 5”—another made-up media term. The reason for this is because the “P5 posters on this board has slowly withered away.” Moreover, you think creating a special subforum will bring these “P5 posters” back.

I posted in the past that the biggest problem with this board was that too many clowns were allowed to perform. Moreover, it was too many of them for the few moderators that we have watching them. I also mentioned that this board was too important for it to become a circus. Furthermore, I posted that we didn’t have any “G5” moderators on this board, which gave a perception of a “P5” bias. I even suggested two “G5” moderators: Attackcoog and arkstfan.

However, when you start losing “P5 posters", you want to further perpetuate the so-called “upper-class” of college sports by creating a “P5” subforum. My point: These mythical “P5 posters" don’t exist…. Members either sincerely want to discuss “College Sports and Conference Realignment” or they don’t. Nevertheless, it’s your board, but the day that you separate the P5/upper-class from the rest of us is the day that I’ll officially split….

Respectfully,


Underdog

As I posted on the other thread I enjoy coming to this board each day to get an overview of what's going on in college sports but if it has to be organized I propose leaving the main board just as it is and adding three forums to the board.

So College Sports and Conference Realignment as the main board with a Major Conference specific issues forum, a Mid-Major specific forum and a General (non-sports related) forum. Add a couple of non-P5 aligned Mods to help police the threads and then if things get out of hand or just don't apply to the main board Mods can move it over to one of the Sub-Forums.

Maybe we could have P5 liaisons so that when a P5 fan comes to the board they will get paired up with someone that can help them determine which topics they might be interested. I typically just read the thread title to determine if its something I want to open but based on their complaints they might have different expectations.

In seriousness, if you've got posters pining for a P5 board free from the rest of the riff raff, then by all means make them thier own board. But I don't see how or why that would affect this board other than the ones that want it are the current mods here so we'll need more. Plenty people like this board as is so don't change it. Like you said this place is a big tent, plenty of room for all interests.

I suspect that conventional wisdom presuming that at least 40 of 65 P5 schools will be in the same conference in 10 years as they are in today dulls interest in a board labeled realignment and a good argument can be made that there are only 10 P5 with decent odds of changing in the next decade.

(05-26-2017 08:49 AM)Steve1981 Wrote:  Have one other idea and not sure how easy it would be, but each thread has two columns in-front of the title. Use the second one with a P5 ICON and if possible make it easy to search by that icon/icon label.

I'll mull this all over tonight and come to a decision.