jimdahl

Sorry I wasn't clear -- linking to interesting text someone else wrote is good, copying and pasting the text someone else wrote is bad.

Small D.C. just isn't a hockey town. The Skins are the one team everyone is behind. Drawing new residents primarily from New England/New York, everyone's a baseball fan (not to be confused with being a Nats fan, which no one really is yet). However, because most of the Caps fans are transplants who love hockey, my experience is that they're often reasonably knowledgeable and passionate. I definitely see way more Caps jerseys on the metro on game days than for any other local sport on their game days, and they were 95% this year's model on day 1.

This has actually been the Caps' gameplan since before the strike. Remember that just before the strike, the yhad a firesale, shedding all of their top talent and salaries. That was part of a shift toward trying to build talent instead of acquire it. Some may have misinterpreted their mediocrity the last couple years as unwillingness to spend money, but they actually have the money -- they had the 2nd highest payroll prestrike -- they just decided spending it on trying to buy stars wasn't working for them or the Rangers. Though the Caps certainly aren't yet living up to the potential of the talent they have, they are 11-6-4 since Bruce took over as head coach (if only they hadn't started in a 7-14-1 hole). My biggest fear is that its taking enough seasons to develop the offense that we may need a replacement for Kolzig by the time the offense is playoff-worthy again.

Another pillar in our efforts to improve the quality of discussion on the forum is you! The forum is busier than ever, and we need more eyes on the ground. When you see a problem post, particularly personal attacks against other members (attacking the messenger instead of the message), click report (in the lower left corner of each post) and let us know! Be a little judicious in its use, as each time we receive a report we're going to be predisposed to take that out on someone, so it's better for all of us if the post really is problematic.

We've done that a little -- part of your impression certainly comes from your having hung out primarily in the forums specifically created to contain controversies. The nickname forum was specifically formed when it was becoming a problem in the sports forums. Understanding that it's a very emotional issue for the people who post there and that most are interested in a, let's say vigorous, debate, we're definitely a bit more laissez faire (though do still try to keep people talking about the topic instead of each other). The D-I forum was similarly created to siphon off the UND/NDSU transition smack that was interfering with the football forums. There have been discussions in the past about the possibility of a smack forum. I've never loved the idea, but if it were overwhelmingly supported might oblige, because the whole point is that I wouldn't have to visit it anyway. That said, since we last discussed it I've seen it tried many times, and it's made every board at which it's tried worse in my opinion (though I have no familiarity the forum you cited above). No doubt -- that is the difficult part. There were no civility problems when it was 100 people making a couple dozen posts a day.

If you click the little post number in the upper-right, you can get a link directly into the desired post (instead of just the thread). While copying other people's posts from another board isn't cool, if someone wanted to start a "coach's show" thread each week and post the link to the post, I bet that would be appreciated by some

In my 3rd grade class.

The way the wikis work is that anyone who finds out anything can update the page (just like anyone posts in the forum thread). That way we all can look at the page at any time to see our collective knowledge (such as it may be )

Some photos of last night's game from the SCSU Center Ice Club.

I'm of the opinion that Bison and Sioux fans have lots of good, substantive discussions on this forum. There are certainly some disagreements, but rarely (anymore) do they devolve into the "you stink" name-calling fests. The key, frankly, is just to not let the "you stink" people join the conversation. Not only do they contribute nothing, but they cause otherwise sane people on the other side to devolve into "no you do". Attempting to drown them out doesn't work, they just get louder and make the real conversation even harder to find. The part of the column I found funny was the call-in Bison fan's indignance that they were discussing North Dakota football (in ND's largest city, a mere 70 miles from the University). I know there's a home-town team, but seriously, to try to pretend UND isn't news in Fargo?

If you feel that you're not suspended due to a moderation error, please forward those posts you think worthy of suspension to the administration and your situation will be addressed forthwith.

Within the last month Despite modestly playing devil's advocate over on PCM's blog post, I agree wholeheartedly and frequently try to remind people to think about how widely each post of theirs will be read. When you make a post you're not at the bar shooting the bull with your buddies; in addition to the usual suspects, your posts will be read by recruits, other school's administrators, potential employees, NCAA officials, etc... Unfortunately, that's what some people with personal grievances are counting on -- being able to use the forum to more broadly exert influence and denigrate their "enemy". The only realistic long-term remedy I can see is for the community to continue to self-police, such that reasonable fan voices drown out the minority pot-stirrers, leaving it clear where the majority lie. It's worked quite well at times in the past, less so other times. Wandering completely off into waxing philosophical now... one drawback to the disproportionate popularity of UND athletics and this site is that the forum reads much more like the forum for a pro team or major D-I team than a forum for a smaller market team.

While not specifically commenting on the mentioned poster (if we were certain that an account was primarily used by a previously banned member, we would close it), it's a good warning to look into the history of a relatively new poster making controversial or inflammatory statements. I can confirm that it has happened numerous times in the past that Bison fans have posed as Sioux fans to make inflammatory anti-Bison posts. Back to the quote that raised JackJD's (in my recollection, a pretty reasonable guy) ire -- a Bison fan asserted that a current NDSU coach would be far outside UND's price range. A Sioux fan rebutted by asserting that UND is the most prominent school in the Dakotas. One could certainly rebut that opinion if one cared to (I personally wouldn't find it worth the effort), but I view that sort of debate as typical message board fodder, and certainly don't see that single opinion as "extreme nastiness" on behalf of the Sioux fanbase against SDSU or NDSU

It took me a minute to figure that out myself; the slotting of games with unknown dates into dated slot confused me As far as I can tell, we already have everything they have on our 2008 football schedule page, right?

Public Reception for Dale Lennon at 2pm Today

I hate to ruin the fun, but I don't think everyone is properly suspicious of...

It's true, I've always kind of thought that one thread was pretty easy to ignore if you weren't interested. Certainly if people were continually creating new threads, which would then take up much more of the screen real estate, that would bug me. I asked a while back if people thought "for sale" was taking too much hockey forum space and the general response was that there wasn't a problem. Even if the topic is ok, there has been a bit too much empty "bumping" of the thread lately, which we usually frown on, but I hadn't noticed because I wasn't reading this thread I hereby request less bumping. Would it help if the name of the thread included "for sale" so people didn't accidentally stumble into it? Are other people now becoming anxious for a general "for sale" forum?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119143109983647814.html In short -- he stops all the straight shots in five-on-fives, but can't move to close the gaps in one-on-ones and wrap-arounds.

I certainly didn't mean to imply a vast conspiracy, and if I gave that impression, appreciate your giving me the opportunity to clarify that. Believe me, I'm the wrong guy to whom to try to sell conspiracies. My mentioning the Herald was in the context of wanting to note that I think a newspaper opinion page is a friendlier environment for someone who prefers giving a speech to engaging in a debate. If applicable in this case, that would be an indictment of Ms. Hofmann, not of the Herald. Her use of their pulpit doesn't reflect any unique failing of the Herald or its editors any more than a racist posting here reflects any unique failing of SiouxSports.com or me.

Ok, I completely agree that there are people here who get riled whenever they read something anti-nickname, and jump in to vehemently argue their side. However, that's to be expected in a forum where 1000s of different people with different personalities and viewpoints interact. It's not even nickname-specific, you'll get the same passionate response on posts about the AD, Coach Hakstol's performance, how Lee played, etc... On that basis, I continue to object to Ms. Hofmann's characterization of SiouxSports.com as "not unlike these [hate groups in the South in the 1960s]". This is an open forum where when she read something she disliked, she would have been more than welcome to hit reply and state her point of view. The worst she would have received would have been swift and ferocious argument, no acts or even threats of violence. I do think that ferocious argument is precisely what she wanted to avoid, and I'm not particularly sympathetic. As to the demographics, I was just responding to the suggestion that "this place does give off the impression that anyone who disagrees with the Sioux name should be drawn and quartered, or at least verbally badgered until they go away." At least half the voters, including me, think it's time to change, and the worst I've received was Sicatoka likening me to Neville Chamberlain

As PCM suggested, given that the site's target audience is Sioux fans, support for the name here is likely higher than in the general population (where it's quite high). While there are and have been plenty of people here who don't support the name, it's only reasonable to expect that any post specifically decrying the evils of the name will be met with argument. I don't think engaging such posts with debate constitutes "verbal badgering", but will repeat my observation that a lot of people against the nickname have favored controlled mediums where they can soliloquize (e.g. Herald opinion pieces with comments turned off) over forums in which their essays may be challenged and debated. FYI -- I do think you (and she) have your demographics wrong. The most recent informal poll of this forum indicates that 54% want to drop the name. A poll with broader participation, on the front page indicates that 23% want to drop the name immediately (it contains insufficient information to extract how many would favor dropping the name if it didn't gain tribal support).

To be fair, she lumped SiouxSports.com in with letters to the editor. Not necessarily picking on her, as I don't know her, a lot of self-declared intellectual elite particularly dislike forums that give a voice to the unwashed masses, instead preferring viewpoints filtered for correctness before dissemination by major media. The Internet is a great democratizer in that it allows people to be read based on others' interest in reading them instead of their ability to secure traditional publishing. The SiouxSports.com forum, in that way, is neither inherently good nor evil, but can be used for both. There are undoubtedly racists saying racist things on this part of the site, I would guess in a bit lower proportion than there are racists saying racist things in the general population (because of moderator and community pressure). If you come looking for any positive or negative personality trait, you can probably find it in the forum somewhere. To use such a discovery as an indictment of the entire site and medium is certainly inappropriate, and suggests to me that the author does fit in the category I described above -- concerned about her constituency's loss of control over what is said.

I went ahead and made the link. In addition to being easy to make, they're reasonably easy to move around later if we choose to. I just wanted to highlight this as a good example of how I think a forum like this can be useful for discussing layout of pages, topic ideas, etc...

One thing I imagined this forum being used for was discussions on layout and so forth. I'll use it for that intended purpose to respond with a question (for anyone who cares to answer): Would it make sense to pull "Quotes" out from hockey and make it page for any UND athletic quotes (instead of splitting it by sport)? My inclination is yes, which is why I ask the question.

Probably, since it was known to be a multi-year deal, but I couldn't find a reference. The whole point of it being a wiki was so anyone who has information to add can do so, feel free to hit the login/edit button at the bottom and make a change