jimdahl

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

I understand that computers at UND are having a tough time connecting to SiouxSports.com this morning. There's apparently a routing problem in Atlanta (where traffic between UND and SiouxSports.com passes through) causing the difficulty. Your computer is fine and SiouxSports.com is fine, so there's not much we can do other than wait for the people at the Atlanta data center to clear it up. It's not like there's anything big going on in Siouxland today, anyway, right?

Since the 2007 football schedule thread (along with the hockey recruits thread) was one of the two that inspired to me think there were topics better served by a combination of a page and a discussion thread, I've been tracking the discussion on the 2008 football schedule wiki page. I also added a link to that to the first post in the thread so newcomers don't need to parse the thread to discover everything currently known about the schedule.

That's a good way to put it. The message board organizes all information submitted to it in the same two ways: posts are listed in the order they were made, and threads are listed in the order of most recent post. The wiki allows you to create whatever organization of data is appropriate for the given information. A list of recruits, a table of games, a list of frequently asked questions, a narrative history of the nickel trophy, etc....

What's the wiki? Why? There are a lot of topics that don't lend themselves well to a message board thread, but are more useful in page format. I'll use hockey recruiting as an example. There's a lot of discussion about recruits in the message board and some news in Herald's blog, which are great for keeping up day-to-day on what the recruits are up to. But if you aren't reading those sources daily and just want to find a list of who is in the incoming class of 2009, that's really hard to extract from a message board thread. By instead making a wiki page for a topic like that, when a new recruit commits, someone in the community (anyone!) just pops over to the page and updates the list. It's no harder than posting in a thread, but provides a different view of that information. That's just one example, the wiki is a wide-open space for anyone interested in the Sioux to make any pages they think are useful.

I've linked to the Sioux recruits page from the hockey front page under People. The recruits page is a good example of where I think the wiki is highly useful. It's information best maintained in a page, instead of having to dig through a message board thread, but where there's an advantage to letting the entire community contribute. As some of the other pages mature, I hope to be able to similarly integrate them throughout the site. That should also help continue to raise the profile of the wiki as a resource, which is important given that the value of a wiki rises with the number of readers/contributors.

Oh, oh, I wanna play. Is the person you're thinking of Canadian? If so, it's not that hard to figure out if you dig deep enough.

Good question. I stole it and posted it with more choices, out on the Front Page. Continue to vote here, too, but that one should get a lot more foot traffic.

I remember a bit where the comedian said: "The Washington Bullets" are changing their name to try to shed the association with crime. From now on they will just be known as "The Bullets".

In short -- we could keep it, but wouldn't. The NCAA can punish UND for the actions of boosters (which could include media such as this), but in this instance has not expressed any interest in doing such. That said, I'm more prone to pragmatism than nostalgia, and can't currently think of any good reason to keep an obsolete name. We'll follow the wind.

The board will be down for an hour or so at about 7:00pm CT, Monday, November 26. To better deal with the ever-increasing traffic, I'm going to try to move the forum over to a new server. This is a rather experimental first step in what may be a series of changes, which you should only notice in the form of infrequent downtime like this.

Virg wants your nickname ideas I've already pointed out this thread and a couple others to him, but now's your chance to get personal credit for your idea.

I'd be pleasantly surprised if we kept possession into the 2nd, but if that's the only score GVSU gets in the 1st, I'll be pretty happy with the quarter. In contrast to some of the other opinions in the thread, the Sioux have generally looked a little tighter, IMHO.

The first decent snap on a punt and the punter shanks it almost straight to the sideline. Good stuff. Edit -- I love how the camera guys go crazy on the webcast during commercial breaks.

I have to admit, I don't understand this thread. NDSU is in the wrong division to be eligible for a bowl bid -- they're in FCS (football championship = the division that has a championship), not BCS (bowl championship = the division that gets invited to bowl games).

Then we can be just like Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook!

Haven't seen this linked yet in this thread: Chappell status will remain mystery Bakken's view is:

I assure you that I wasn't thinking of medium-density townhouses when I made that post. Sigh. Update: Oh, and we're only #3, behind New Hampshire and Nevada: http://www.time.com/time/2007/america_numbers/alcohol.html Only 36g/year? That's less than a pint a day. Our average must be dragged down by some teetotalers.

No surprises there -- the winner of the Winona @ UND game is treated with a trip to Grand Valley St. I'd almost rather have a #5 seed and get another shot at UNO earlier. Wouldn't a win at GVSU, to even the all-time series, be a nice way to leave D-II? Of course, I get ahead of myself, as Winona undoubtedly thinks a win at the Alerus would be a nice way to send us out of D-II...

You're easily a minute ahead of me. I'll have to stay away during the exciting plays