Merge: Combine The 2 New Forums

[HedgeHog]

Probably too early to tell, but I think the two new forums need to merge in order to have a fair shot. People that use a lot of Books are looking for betting angles. And people that bet +Ev are looking for decent Books. Join the two and you'll have one solid forum IMO. Combined the two are sometimes getting between 20-25% traffic as compared to the main one, and many of us are bouncing between the two new great sites.

Any other opinions?

[Brick Tamland]

should this thread be in here mods?

[bigboydan]

should this thread be in here mods?

No sir it shouldn't be in the "think tank" at all, and it's not anymore!

hey HH, I'm going to moderate those two new sections very strictly. So please keep your posting in those two section business like. Thanks in advance

[HedgeHog]

No sir it shouldn't be in the "think tank" at all, and it's not anymore!

hey HH, I'm going to moderate those two new sections very strictly. So please keep your posting in those two section business like. Thanks in advance

Dan:

Then it should have been moved to the sportsbook update forum. The thread dealt with both forums, so chose one if I chose poorly. Don't move it to the main forum. Apparently you missed the point of the thread; try reading it. You just opened a can of worms buddy.

[HedgeHog]

By the way, the thread dealt with both forums, combining them, so what's the problem?

[5 star bomb]

I agree with Hedge..... Off topic Hedge but are you from Chicago? If so where you livin?

[Bill Dozer]

The players talk is a good place for forum feedback and posts about posting.

Hedge,
There are a few ways we could go based on the different suggestions but with the expectation of continuing to grow fast, this should work. We are on day one with the all-business boards... let's give it a few days and see how it goes?

[HedgeHog]

I agree with Hedge..... Off topic Hedge but are you from Chicago? If so where you livin?

Originally near Glen Ellyn and Wheaton, now closer to Rockford.

[HedgeHog]

The players talk is a good place for forum feedback and posts about posting.

Hedge,
There are a few ways we could go based on the different suggestions but with the expectation of continuing to grow fast, this should work. We are on day one with the all-business boards... let's give it a few days and see how it goes?

The post was about both new forums so which do I put it in? When you guys said you were going to monitor more severely, I thought great...but this is crap. Just basic info being posted and you move it to the forum I'm avoiding?

[5 star bomb]

Originally near Glen Ellyn and Wheaton, now closer to Rockford.

Oh nice I grew up in St Charles and am still here but will be headed to the city before summer

[HedgeHog]

Bigboydan or Billy D:

This thread does not belong here. It pertains to your two new forums, which I suggested joining...and you put it here. What the hell is wrong with you guys...choose one and move it back. You're killing the new forums w/o giving them a chance, and for what?

[HedgeHog]

An innocent thread about the two new forums and this thread is moved from both. What a joke!

PS Let this be a warning folks: SBR is not remotely serious about the new forums.

[HedgeHog]

New Forums Suck

I think I can still say that here, w/o being edited. The new forums, dealing with sportsbooks and sports betting were meant for guys that want to know how to bet and where to bet.

And if you make a suggestion that the 2 new forums should merge, you get moved to the very place you're trying to avoid, the main forum. Yep, Dan and Bill move it to the main forum for everyone to read, the same place you wish to avoid. What a fukkin bad joke.

Avoid the new forums; it was never meant to be taken seriously.

[Louisvillekid1]

Dam hedge your really upset about this. . . Why so mad over something like this?

[HedgeHog]

Dam hedge your really upset about this. . . Why so mad over something like this?

Because I'm serious about my handicapping. I don't need a date to the SBR bash in August. I want a real forum as was promised...I thought the two new ones were it. God was I wrong.

[HedgeHog]

New Forums Suck--Part 2

It was never meant to be taken seriously.

[HedgeHog]

New Forums Suck Part III

Third thread will be deleted. I guess the truth hurts.

[5 star bomb]

Plenty of info here Hedgehog. Im serious about my handicapping as well.

[HedgeHog]

New Forums Suck...Part IV

Same as before. PM for reasons.

[Louisvillekid1]

The info is in the individual sport forums

[HedgeHog]

The players talk is a good place for forum feedback and posts about posting.

Hedge,
There are a few ways we could go based on the different suggestions but with the expectation of continuing to grow fast, this should work. We are on day one with the all-business boards... let's give it a few days and see how it goes?

It was only a suggestion, submitted respectfully...and in the correct forum. It dealt with the Think Tank directly yet it got dismissed to the place I was trying to avoid. I'm done with your 2 new forums.

[donjuan]

It doesn't belong in the Think Tank. It belongs either in Players Talk or Site Suggestions. To get so fired up over such a small thing isn't worth it.

[TLD]

I recalled seeing this thread shortly after it was started, and today I decided to return to it to respond to the question in the initial post. That meant first locating the thread. For what it’s worth, I assumed I’d seen it in “Handicapper Think Tank” or “State of the Industry,” since it was asking a question about those fora and it would be most relevant to precisely those members reading and posting in those fora. My third choice—when nothing turned up there—was “Site Suggestions.” I only came to “Players Talk” as a distant fourth possibility. So at least my intuitions of where this thread belonged seem to have matched HedgeHog’s.

On the other hand, surely he has wildly overreacted to moving the thread. It was not some kind of censorship that one needs to make a principled stand against; it was a judgment call on a fairly minor point of housekeeping. Whether it was the best decision or not, it hardly warrants boycotting this or that, or getting in a tizzy over.

Aside from where this thread should have been posted, I did want to respond to the initial question.

There is of course no way to arrange things to satisfy everybody, since there will be almost as many opinions as to what would be the “best” site as there are members and potential members. Then when you throw in the complicating factor that making the “best” site and making the most profitable site are somewhat overlapping but far from identical goals, the issue is even more complicated.

But anyway, I come to a site like this seeking information relevant to my making money sportsbetting. I want to know about payout problems at sportsbooks, disputes over grading, what bonuses and other perks are available from various sportsbooks, discussions of how to anticipate line movement, charts converting pointspreads to moneylines, advice on Kelly or other systems of money management, and so on and so forth.

The problem pre-change was that virtually everything I’ve described was in “Players Talk,” but so was an insane amount of stuff I either was indifferent toward or actively disliked, so finding the stuff potentially of value meant digging through all the rest—rather like a forum with countless pop-up ads or other drivel to push aside.

The problem now is that the stuff that could actually help me as a sportsbettor is spread around. Maybe 45% is in “Handicapper Think Tank,” 45% is in “State of the Industry,” and 10% is in “Player’s Talk.” So whereas I used to be able to open up one SBR forum in the morning and refresh periodically to see if anything of import had been posted, now I find myself jumping around from forum to forum concerned that I might have missed something.

Again, there is no ideal solution.

I suppose what I’d like to see is the “main” forum—the one listed first, the one newcomers are most likely to try first—be a heavily moderated on-topic sportsbetting forum for grown-ups. It would be a combination of “Handicapper Think Tank,” and “State of the Industry,” and whatever else helps us become more successful at sportsbetting.

Then below that there would be a much, much more loosely moderated forum (basically equivalent to the current “Player’s Talk”) where people could be a lot freer to talk off topic, tell jokes, shoot the shit about their favorite sports teams, show pictures of pretty girls (or guys if that’s your thing), debate politics, and so on. This would be the place for most of the new arrivals that one poster disparagingly referred to as “the shout out crowd,” a more informal sports bar sort of environment of “Hey we’re just here to hang out, have some fun, and talk a little sports—stop getting so uptight about us not being ‘serious’ all the time.” (If you absolutely insist on having the execrable posting bot JJGold and his ghosts and followers, this would be the place for that circus.)

Anything below even the standards of that forum (e.g., posters threatening each other, blatantly racist posts) would still be relegated to “Private Zone” if not deleted entirely.

People of course would be free to post in both fora (e.g., the same member could start a thread asking about correlated parlays in the main forum, and the same day start a thread asking whether you prefer starlet A or starlet B’s in the more open forum), but one disincentive to blatant or repeated inappropriate posting in the main forum would be precisely that you could lose your posting privileges in both.

That is, let’s say that hypothetical poster thinks it’s silly the main forum moderators won’t “lighten up” and allow his girlie threads there as well, and in protest he keeps reposting them there as fast as the moderators can move or delete them. This would be a bannable offense, and so he would be risking his general posting privileges. He could either continue to push it (meaning he’s gone from the site, or at least he has to go through the hassle of constantly changing member names and I.P.s to sneak back in as a ghost) or he can back down and so continue to be able to post all the girlie threads he wants in the more open forum.

So posters would have to learn to respect the restrictions in the main forum, or be gone from the site as a whole. Unprincipled shills, those extorting books or other parties through false publicity, scammers, those playing the JJGold game of giggling over how many neophytes they can trick into thinking he’s an “insider” or has some knowledge of sportsbetting, those making repetitive and unsubstantiated accusatory posts to advance their vendetta against the site itself or whomever, and just agenda-driven posters in general would know that they stand to lose the partial freedom they have in the open forum if they insist on trying to extend their nonsense from there to the main “serious” forum.

One would hope that having “something to lose” in that sense would keep the main forum largely free of AK, Raiders, JJGold, the wannabe thugs, and their ilk that pollute these sites.

One way to think of the overall set-up I’m suggesting is as descending levels of moderating. For most of the history of the site, “Players Talk” was the main forum, and material and posters that violated the (minimal) standards of that forum were relegated to “Private Zone,” and then booted. What I’m proposing would simply be one more level. On top would be a forum with significant standards of relevance, integrity, civility, etc. for the “serious” stuff, then an open forum with much lower standards, then “Private Zone,” and then the boot.

Anyway, my goal is for the “good” stuff that helps me in my sportsbetting to all be in one place, and for that place to have as little as possible of the “bad” stuff. Neither my suggestion nor anything else would be a perfect way of achieving this that satisfies everyone, but I’m just tossing it out there for what it’s worth.

In answer to the poster’s original question, combining the two new fora would result in something closer to the goal I enunciated in the preceding paragraph, so I believe his suggestion has merit.