Hi Folks,
I’m sorry to have dragged this out but I wanted to give this the attention I felt it deserved. I also value you, the people who make this board what it is. So I wanted to be respectful and thorough with a decision here.
The cut to the chase version is this:
The Political Forum is not shutting down today. But if it’s going to survive, things will have to change from where they’ve been.
Here’s the (incredibly) long version.
The Big Picture Of How The Forums Fit With Footballguys
It’s important to understand how the forums fit with Footballguys.
Footballguys is a business. We exist by selling access to our Premium Content covering Fantasy Football. You should buy one.
The message board forums are able to exist because the Footballguys business is profitable enough to support them. Without Footballguys, the business, the forums go away.
The Footballguys forums are an overall net loss to the business of Footballguys. Forums of this size are expensive to host. Especially when served at the speed people expect them. More importantly, there is significant “mental energy” cost in managing these. Our Moderators all have Footballguys work that generates revenue and contributes to the Footballguys bottom line. Selfishly, I find myself paying a high cost in mental energy with these forums.
The recent issues where the vitriol seemed boiling over the top once again coupled with a poster I care about accusing me of "subjugating truth" by the way we try to be inclusive on the viewpoints we allow, plus another poster claiming I was limiting people’s ability to express disagreement pushed this over the top.
I realize it’s selfish, but I put way too much heart, time and effort into a project that loses money to put up with those kinds of negatives.
It was extremely personal to me, but the reality is it came to a business decision of weighing the “Costs” vs the “Benefits”.
If we continue as it has been, the Costs simply outweigh the Benefits and the forum can’t survive. I owe it to the people who make a full time living from Footballguys and to the customers who’ve purchased our product to lead this company well. And if the forums become too much of a negative, they’ll go away.
The Question.
This raises an obvious question: If the forums are such a negative, why have them?
The answer is fairly simple. I love community.
It’s a big part of my real life. And it’s been a big part of my online life. I entered the world of Fantasy Football from the old usenet rec forums. If you know what I mean by that, you know what I mean. From the start of Footballguys, a message board forum was central to our company. Much of our long time staff came to us from the forums.
For me, the boards are personal. I think many of you feel the same way.
I love the idea of people gathering and sharing and interacting and encouraging one another. One part of that can be discussing issues. But you need to understand, the issues are secondary to the community. I don’t care much for the wonky details of politics in the PSF. I don’t care that much about reality TV in the Free For All.
I care a great deal about the posters furthering their relationship and feeling more informed as they interact on the boards. So back to the “cost” and “benefit” balance, it’s not like I look at the current Political Forum and say, “Yeah, people are tools to each other and the vitriol and condescension is off the charts, but I learned so much about the impeachment details today it’s all worth it.”
The “Benefits” value of the impeachment details for today is virtually nil for me. And when the “Cost” is seeing people intentionally be uncool to each other, that’s not a situation that will continue.
The Goal.
I want an open and inviting community where people can be cool to each other and make connections and build relationships. I want to provide a place where issues can be discussed and understanding can be furthered. Even if it’s just better understanding people who don’t think like you.
The General Problem.
First, the vitriol, condescension, snarkiness, and just general unexcellentness has moved off scale. There are a myriad of reasons and excuses. But what matters to me is the forum has become nearly unreadable. It's a 90-10 split between Anti and Pro Trump where the 10% is just enough to be a foil for the vast majority who use their numbers to shout down the minority. The net result is ugliness all around. There's plenty of blame for bof sidez.
Coupled with the fact most of you are anonymous. This was a revelation for me this summer when I met a popular FBG here and we took a photo and later I asked about posting the picture on the forums. He was adamantly opposed to posting a picture. He enjoyed having a very bright line between his real life and his FBG life.
I don’t have that luxury.
Footballguys isn’t a “secret” thing for me. Everyone I know well knows this is what I do. My family and my kids and all my friends know well what I do. I had the honor of performing the wedding ceremony for some friends last week. When the conversation turned to “What do you do?” (Apparently it was clear I wasn’t a pastor or professional wedding officiator ) I easily told people I have a company called Footballguys.com with a vibrant forum and encourage them to check it out. I do that all the time.
And the reality is this forum, and how you folks conduct yourselves, is representative of me.
And I’m not going to have a board where people are intentionally uncool to each other represent me.
The Specific Problem - Contempt.
This is important.
Everyone loves to blame something else for the problem. It’s the anonymous factor. It’s Donald Trump. It’s the Media Bias. I don’t care much about any of that. The problem is how we behave. I don’t give anyone a pass because they can come up with a story to blame their actions on something else. This is on us.
But here’s the specific problem I see. I’ve thought a lot about this and I feel pretty certain I’m right on this.
The problem is we’ve changed the way we feel about the “other” side. We’ve moved from feeling frustration and anger towards them, to a place where we have contempt for the other side.
Arthur Brooks has written a good deal about this. Here’s his article from the New York Times.
Here’s my take on it. Contempt is more than anger. Contempt is anger plus disgust. Contempt is degrading the value of a person, and their opinion, to the point that they’re worthless. Or worse.
Here’s an excellent article discussing contempt as the number one predictor of divorce.
And note. Contempt is radically different than arguing or disagreement.
Disagreement is part of community. If everyone thought the same thing, that’s not much of a forum.
We NEED disagreement. But, we have to be able to disagree well. We have to be able to disagree and discuss things without devolving into contempt.
From Arthur Brooks, these are some ways contempt is displayed:
Cutting sarcasm towards another.
Mocking another person.
Sneering at another person.
Hostile humor at the expense of another.
Eye rolling towards the other person.
All those can signal to the other person you feel they are inferior. That you may be disgusted with them. And worst of all, that you’re past the point of reasonable discussion.
Brooks talks about his study of “Motive Attribution Asymmetry”. That’s the dangerous and destructive assumption that your ideology is based in love. While your opponent’s is based in hate. I think it’s absolutely the biggest problem we face on this board and it’s why our dialog has devolved to where it has. This isn’t about Trump. This is about us.
From the New York Times article:
"A 2014 article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on “motive attribution asymmetry” — the assumption that your ideology is based in love, while your opponent’s is based in hate — suggests an answer. The researchers found that the average Republican and the average Democrat today suffer from a level of motive attribution asymmetry that is comparable with that of Palestinians and Israelis. Each side thinks it is driven by benevolence, while the other is evil and motivated by hatred — and is therefore an enemy with whom one cannot negotiate or compromise."
This has been us.
And if we don’t change, it’ll be the end of the forums.
The Solution(s).
Be Excellent To One Another
From the start, I’ve tried to operate these forums with the simple idea from Bill and Ted, “Be Excellent”. I think we’re going to need to expand on that a bit.
First off, and maybe the big one here in what I’ve been talking about is this:
Don’t act with contempt towards others here.
Not acting with contempt can mean a lot of things. Here are a few:
All those would fall under not being excellent to one another.
I’m going to assume you’re all smart and intelligent people and you’re not a psychopath. Meaning you know what you’re doing. Do the right thing.
Seek First To Understand. Then To Be Understood.
Dr. Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one of the cornerstones of how to navigate with people. It’s outstanding.
One of the most important of the 7 habits is: Seek First To Understand. Then To Be Understood.
This isn’t complicated. It means a discussion is not a one way street. It's not a blog post. A discussion involves two or more people. And if you’re going to provide any value, you have to listen as much as you talk. Or likely, much more than you talk. And you can’t just listen. You have to seek to understand.
I get it. It’s been said repeatedly on the forum that some people are “done with” trying to understand the “other side”. If they vote a way or if they support this person, they have zero interest in hearing anything they say.
I want to say this as gently as I can. If you’re a person who is “done with” trying to understand someone who voted for or supports a particular candidate, this forum is not for you. I fully understand that’s maybe naive or pollyannish. But I make no apologies for it. It’s how we’re going to operate the boards.
On the upside, trying to understand where someone’s coming from is a huge benefit to your own understanding. And this isn’t about minimizing negatives for another. Or a blind tolerance where everything is ok. It’s about furthering understanding and seeing enough value in the other person to better know them.
Think about furthering discussion.
This one may not be obvious to many people. But the board would benefit a good bit if people could step back a bit and try to view it more like I do. I see the board in a bigger picture view hoping for good discussion overall compared to individual threads.
I see the board sort of like a game of Scrabble. Everyone on Scrabble loves to see a player put down a long word creating lots of opportunities for other players. The equivalent for our forum would be a great post or thread that opens up discussion for others to contribute. In the same way, nobody in Scrabble likes to see a dead end word. Nobody on the board likes to see a post that adds nothing.
The difference of course is the forum doesn’t keep score like Scrabble. But the goal of expanding opportunities can be the same.
Practically, this plays out in asking yourself as you're typing a post, “Will this help or hinder discussion?"
Be Professional.
If you know me, you know I complain about the loss of quality journalism. We’re now in a place where speed is more important than accuracy. And stories are spun to fit a viewpoint.
You can help with this.
Discuss The Issue. Not The Other Poster
This one is simple to see. Look at what you’ve typed. Before you press “send”, read the post and ask yourself if your words are about the issue or if they’re negative words about another poster. If they’re about another poster, don’t press send. It’s that simple.
Someone brought up the Eleanor Roosevelt quote and it’s spot on: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
And a few more specific ideas.
Maurile posted these a few days ago and they’ve been helpful. I get it these may not line up exactly with mine. Footballguys is big and sometimes contradictory. If you're in doubt, don't post it.
I’m sorry this took a novel but this is important and personal to me.
It's my desire this forum remain alive. But it will not stay alive unless we change significantly. And that's up to you. My worry is we've done things somewhat like this in the past and things will be cool for a few days. Then it's right back to the old way. That part is up to you.
What I can say without question is if folks aren't able to keep it from getting back to the old way, it will close.
Thanks for being part of Footballguys and thanks for helping us have a forum we can be proud of. Rock on.
I’m sorry to have dragged this out but I wanted to give this the attention I felt it deserved. I also value you, the people who make this board what it is. So I wanted to be respectful and thorough with a decision here.
The cut to the chase version is this:
The Political Forum is not shutting down today. But if it’s going to survive, things will have to change from where they’ve been.
Here’s the (incredibly) long version.
The Big Picture Of How The Forums Fit With Footballguys
It’s important to understand how the forums fit with Footballguys.
Footballguys is a business. We exist by selling access to our Premium Content covering Fantasy Football. You should buy one.
The message board forums are able to exist because the Footballguys business is profitable enough to support them. Without Footballguys, the business, the forums go away.
The Footballguys forums are an overall net loss to the business of Footballguys. Forums of this size are expensive to host. Especially when served at the speed people expect them. More importantly, there is significant “mental energy” cost in managing these. Our Moderators all have Footballguys work that generates revenue and contributes to the Footballguys bottom line. Selfishly, I find myself paying a high cost in mental energy with these forums.
The recent issues where the vitriol seemed boiling over the top once again coupled with a poster I care about accusing me of "subjugating truth" by the way we try to be inclusive on the viewpoints we allow, plus another poster claiming I was limiting people’s ability to express disagreement pushed this over the top.
I realize it’s selfish, but I put way too much heart, time and effort into a project that loses money to put up with those kinds of negatives.
It was extremely personal to me, but the reality is it came to a business decision of weighing the “Costs” vs the “Benefits”.
If we continue as it has been, the Costs simply outweigh the Benefits and the forum can’t survive. I owe it to the people who make a full time living from Footballguys and to the customers who’ve purchased our product to lead this company well. And if the forums become too much of a negative, they’ll go away.
The Question.
This raises an obvious question: If the forums are such a negative, why have them?
The answer is fairly simple. I love community.
It’s a big part of my real life. And it’s been a big part of my online life. I entered the world of Fantasy Football from the old usenet rec forums. If you know what I mean by that, you know what I mean. From the start of Footballguys, a message board forum was central to our company. Much of our long time staff came to us from the forums.
For me, the boards are personal. I think many of you feel the same way.
I love the idea of people gathering and sharing and interacting and encouraging one another. One part of that can be discussing issues. But you need to understand, the issues are secondary to the community. I don’t care much for the wonky details of politics in the PSF. I don’t care that much about reality TV in the Free For All.
I care a great deal about the posters furthering their relationship and feeling more informed as they interact on the boards. So back to the “cost” and “benefit” balance, it’s not like I look at the current Political Forum and say, “Yeah, people are tools to each other and the vitriol and condescension is off the charts, but I learned so much about the impeachment details today it’s all worth it.”
The “Benefits” value of the impeachment details for today is virtually nil for me. And when the “Cost” is seeing people intentionally be uncool to each other, that’s not a situation that will continue.
The Goal.
I want an open and inviting community where people can be cool to each other and make connections and build relationships. I want to provide a place where issues can be discussed and understanding can be furthered. Even if it’s just better understanding people who don’t think like you.
The General Problem.
First, the vitriol, condescension, snarkiness, and just general unexcellentness has moved off scale. There are a myriad of reasons and excuses. But what matters to me is the forum has become nearly unreadable. It's a 90-10 split between Anti and Pro Trump where the 10% is just enough to be a foil for the vast majority who use their numbers to shout down the minority. The net result is ugliness all around. There's plenty of blame for bof sidez.
Coupled with the fact most of you are anonymous. This was a revelation for me this summer when I met a popular FBG here and we took a photo and later I asked about posting the picture on the forums. He was adamantly opposed to posting a picture. He enjoyed having a very bright line between his real life and his FBG life.
I don’t have that luxury.
Footballguys isn’t a “secret” thing for me. Everyone I know well knows this is what I do. My family and my kids and all my friends know well what I do. I had the honor of performing the wedding ceremony for some friends last week. When the conversation turned to “What do you do?” (Apparently it was clear I wasn’t a pastor or professional wedding officiator ) I easily told people I have a company called Footballguys.com with a vibrant forum and encourage them to check it out. I do that all the time.
And the reality is this forum, and how you folks conduct yourselves, is representative of me.
And I’m not going to have a board where people are intentionally uncool to each other represent me.
The Specific Problem - Contempt.
This is important.
Everyone loves to blame something else for the problem. It’s the anonymous factor. It’s Donald Trump. It’s the Media Bias. I don’t care much about any of that. The problem is how we behave. I don’t give anyone a pass because they can come up with a story to blame their actions on something else. This is on us.
But here’s the specific problem I see. I’ve thought a lot about this and I feel pretty certain I’m right on this.
The problem is we’ve changed the way we feel about the “other” side. We’ve moved from feeling frustration and anger towards them, to a place where we have contempt for the other side.
Arthur Brooks has written a good deal about this. Here’s his article from the New York Times.
Here’s my take on it. Contempt is more than anger. Contempt is anger plus disgust. Contempt is degrading the value of a person, and their opinion, to the point that they’re worthless. Or worse.
Here’s an excellent article discussing contempt as the number one predictor of divorce.
And note. Contempt is radically different than arguing or disagreement.
Disagreement is part of community. If everyone thought the same thing, that’s not much of a forum.
We NEED disagreement. But, we have to be able to disagree well. We have to be able to disagree and discuss things without devolving into contempt.
From Arthur Brooks, these are some ways contempt is displayed:
Cutting sarcasm towards another.
Mocking another person.
Sneering at another person.
Hostile humor at the expense of another.
Eye rolling towards the other person.
All those can signal to the other person you feel they are inferior. That you may be disgusted with them. And worst of all, that you’re past the point of reasonable discussion.
Brooks talks about his study of “Motive Attribution Asymmetry”. That’s the dangerous and destructive assumption that your ideology is based in love. While your opponent’s is based in hate. I think it’s absolutely the biggest problem we face on this board and it’s why our dialog has devolved to where it has. This isn’t about Trump. This is about us.
From the New York Times article:
"A 2014 article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on “motive attribution asymmetry” — the assumption that your ideology is based in love, while your opponent’s is based in hate — suggests an answer. The researchers found that the average Republican and the average Democrat today suffer from a level of motive attribution asymmetry that is comparable with that of Palestinians and Israelis. Each side thinks it is driven by benevolence, while the other is evil and motivated by hatred — and is therefore an enemy with whom one cannot negotiate or compromise."
This has been us.
And if we don’t change, it’ll be the end of the forums.
The Solution(s).
Be Excellent To One Another
From the start, I’ve tried to operate these forums with the simple idea from Bill and Ted, “Be Excellent”. I think we’re going to need to expand on that a bit.
First off, and maybe the big one here in what I’ve been talking about is this:
Don’t act with contempt towards others here.
Not acting with contempt can mean a lot of things. Here are a few:
- Don’t insult or belittle others.
- Don’t intentionally try to make others feel “less than”.
- Don’t try to show your superiority to others.
- Don’t make cowardly passive aggressive sweeping negative generalizations to a group knowing there are specific people in that group.
- Don’t use cutting sarcasm towards another.
- Don’t mock others.
- Don’t verbally sneer at others.
- Don’t use hostile humor towards others.
- Don’t eye roll towards others.
- Don’t act condescendingly toward others.
All those would fall under not being excellent to one another.
I’m going to assume you’re all smart and intelligent people and you’re not a psychopath. Meaning you know what you’re doing. Do the right thing.
Seek First To Understand. Then To Be Understood.
Dr. Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one of the cornerstones of how to navigate with people. It’s outstanding.
One of the most important of the 7 habits is: Seek First To Understand. Then To Be Understood.
This isn’t complicated. It means a discussion is not a one way street. It's not a blog post. A discussion involves two or more people. And if you’re going to provide any value, you have to listen as much as you talk. Or likely, much more than you talk. And you can’t just listen. You have to seek to understand.
I get it. It’s been said repeatedly on the forum that some people are “done with” trying to understand the “other side”. If they vote a way or if they support this person, they have zero interest in hearing anything they say.
I want to say this as gently as I can. If you’re a person who is “done with” trying to understand someone who voted for or supports a particular candidate, this forum is not for you. I fully understand that’s maybe naive or pollyannish. But I make no apologies for it. It’s how we’re going to operate the boards.
On the upside, trying to understand where someone’s coming from is a huge benefit to your own understanding. And this isn’t about minimizing negatives for another. Or a blind tolerance where everything is ok. It’s about furthering understanding and seeing enough value in the other person to better know them.
Think about furthering discussion.
This one may not be obvious to many people. But the board would benefit a good bit if people could step back a bit and try to view it more like I do. I see the board in a bigger picture view hoping for good discussion overall compared to individual threads.
I see the board sort of like a game of Scrabble. Everyone on Scrabble loves to see a player put down a long word creating lots of opportunities for other players. The equivalent for our forum would be a great post or thread that opens up discussion for others to contribute. In the same way, nobody in Scrabble likes to see a dead end word. Nobody on the board likes to see a post that adds nothing.
The difference of course is the forum doesn’t keep score like Scrabble. But the goal of expanding opportunities can be the same.
Practically, this plays out in asking yourself as you're typing a post, “Will this help or hinder discussion?"
Be Professional.
If you know me, you know I complain about the loss of quality journalism. We’re now in a place where speed is more important than accuracy. And stories are spun to fit a viewpoint.
You can help with this.
- Use Links. When you post a story, please don’t just expect people to believe your points. Very often, people will be referencing an article. Include the link. If you’re referencing something else, be clear where you’re getting the information. A regular response in posts should be "Can you please post a link?” using those exact words. With that said, use common sense. If you’re referencing an article, include the article. If you’re stating an opinion, make it clear it’s an opinion. Do NOT use “show me a link” as a way to try and bury an argument asking people for stuff that’s obvious. It’s easy to see what you’re doing there.
- Understand Media Bias. Get familiar and link often to the Ad Fontes Media Bias chart. It's not infallible. But it's pretty good and accepted. If you post an article from Daily Kos or Red State, understand those links carry a different weight from something from the AP. But worse is no link at all.
- Understand your own bias. It’s more than ok to have a viewpoint. It’s part of what makes discussion beneficial. But understand your bias. And understand the bias of others. So be as careful there as you can.
- Understand spin. It’s easy to compare Fox News to MSNBC and see how two organizations can spin the same story. Do better than both of those.
- Understand the little jabs. Everyone knows the little words that take a shot at the other side. Don’t do that.
Discuss The Issue. Not The Other Poster
This one is simple to see. Look at what you’ve typed. Before you press “send”, read the post and ask yourself if your words are about the issue or if they’re negative words about another poster. If they’re about another poster, don’t press send. It’s that simple.
Someone brought up the Eleanor Roosevelt quote and it’s spot on: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
And a few more specific ideas.
Maurile posted these a few days ago and they’ve been helpful. I get it these may not line up exactly with mine. Footballguys is big and sometimes contradictory. If you're in doubt, don't post it.
That’s pretty much it.Here are the rules:
1. If you want to discuss the moderation publicly, do it in the moderation thread. If you do it in a thread about infrastructure, you'll be banned for a week.
2. If you want to offer other posters tips on how they should or shouldn't be posting in this subforum, do it in the saving the PSF thread. If you do it in a thread about occupational licensing reform, you will be suspended for a week.
3. You may also use this thread to discuss moderation or good or bad posting habits.
4. You will be suspended for telling other posters "Don't" or anything similar. (PM them if you are sincerely trying to be helpful.)
5. You will be suspended for telling other posters that their posts are what's wrong with this forum.
6. You will be suspended for saying that somebody else started it.
7. You will be suspended for reminding others about these rules. (Again, send a PM if you are sincerely trying to help.)
8. You will also be suspended for doing all the normal suspension-worthy things like name-calling, etc.
9. You will be suspended.
10. It will no doubt be very unfair.
11. Moderators are exempt from these rules (except no. 8).
What to do if you're suspended:
Take a week off. Go for a walk. Read a book. Start a journal. I understand that gardening can be quite pleasant.
It's not the end of the world if you're suspended. Think of it as us shutting down the forum for a week to see how things go, except that we're shutting it down one poster at a time on a rolling basis instead of doing everybody en masse all at once.
What not to do if you're suspended:
Don't make or use an alias account. Don't come back and complain about your suspension in threads not designated for that topic. Don't urge that a dozen other people should also be suspended because what they did was worse, or because they started it.
I’m sorry this took a novel but this is important and personal to me.
It's my desire this forum remain alive. But it will not stay alive unless we change significantly. And that's up to you. My worry is we've done things somewhat like this in the past and things will be cool for a few days. Then it's right back to the old way. That part is up to you.
What I can say without question is if folks aren't able to keep it from getting back to the old way, it will close.
Thanks for being part of Footballguys and thanks for helping us have a forum we can be proud of. Rock on.
Last edited by a moderator: