Youth soccer referee dies after attack

On July 15, 2012, I did a Google search for Tim Stephens + CBS Sportsline as he had left the Orlando paper for a new job. The search led me to this thread: http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/90779/

I poked around the site and have been ever since. I am not a journalist and didn't really feel entitled to jump in, even though there were often discussions that I could have contributed to. I just lurked, read, and that was fine. It wasn't until I looked at the other site that I realized just how bad it had gotten here. It was a bit of a leap of faith to sign up in here and say something.

Maybe it's just that I'm an old Southern boy and my mama beat good manners into me, I don't know.

As to politics threads, there are currently no locked threads in Sports and News, you have to go all the way back to page two to find "Hobby Lobby victorious in SCOTUS ruling", "Another young leader touting faith, family, and freedom", and "BREAKING: US Economy shrank at 2.9 percent". Are you going to try to sell me that no one was talking politics in these threads, or that how the disagreements within were couched did not get the threads closed? Really?

Actually, there have been a number of political threads, and they start out with a "Let's just for once talk about this without getting the thread locked" and then they wind up locked. Sometimes they even make it for more than five pages first.

How about the Penn State thread after that blew up? That thing ran forever and there was all kind of political and ideological wrangling in it.

 

One tweet for a ball. Two tweets for a strike.

 

Dude, go back to lurking.

You can't handle what you're trying to handle here.

 

Shrug. I know. No one can. I've watched it go on for quite a while now.

It's become a sick dynamic, and nothing's gonna really change it, not unless there's a serious attempt at culture change, and that's rare. That does not mean that a few people acting like spoiled rotten six year olds should just be accepted though.

For what it's worth, I'm not trying to set up the other board for sainthood. It's just that there was a stark comparison that made the dysfunction here kinda pop.

 

YankeeFan and jr/shotglass - Thank you for the kind words.

 

You-know-who has told this lie before. But hey, I hope I'm wrong and we have a new contributor. Maybe you could actually contribute to the discussion first before whining about it, but it's still better than adding to the shit.

 

: : :

 

"Lupus, you didn't come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya? Now get your ass out there and do the best you can."

Never understood the point of lurking, watching other people argue for years like you're outside of some bell jar.
This is the Internet- go hard or go home.
We're not here to babysit.

 

@Fart. Looks like he did more than lurk and watch arguements, also lurked to read good conversation.

Some poeple don't have time/energy to argue on the internet, especially with people so entrenched in a position that while you know you won't change their mind, you also know there will be complete refusal to see the possibilty of validity of the other side.

The site has changed but is still worth visiting for discussion and links, etc. I think it is too bad how it has devolved but stll one of my fave places on the internet.

 

I don't understand the "devolution." This is a site where even in its grandest days of yore, posters were invited to die by violent means.
Death by burning- the mark of humor and high-mindedness.
One look at a kid in a burn ward will disabuse you of that particular amusement.
And, sorry, it's not acceptable to be lectured by someone with five posts like he's Moses coming down from the mount.

 

I guess we just have differing versions of what thew greatest "days of yore" were.

To me it was good writers having spirited discussion, not telling someone to diaf. Could be that more have taken to Twitter, I don't know.