Brock Beauchamp

Lots of our sites have political forums and whatnot, but what I usually do is hide the political forum behind registration, and then often add a timeline after registration. For example, the political forum won't appear for anyone who isn't registered and logged in, and then they either have to wait six months, or they have to post 100 times, or whatever. I've found this helps weed out the kind of nonsense you get on Twitter or Facebook, where any political thread brings the stupidest person in the room out of the woodwork, just to argue and be insulting to everyone else.

There are thousands of archived threads, but they're all saved as individual HTML pages. They're not in the phpBB database format. No one has access to the server that contains the database? I will talk to the developer, and see what we can do with flat HTML files. Wait, what is the address of the archives? I see Ultimate Mets updated, and now the archives for this forum are missing, maybe?

Hah, no. Lots of Beauchamps from this area, and Canada. Maybe we share a way-back relative? Dunno.

I'd like to take over the forum, yes. I will update the software to our baseball-specific platform, but will make as few changes to the actual forums as possible. The point is to preserve these communities, not radically change them. I'll have to do a search to find conversations that are problematic, and remove them, but I've been friends with Ed on Facebook for a few weeks, and see how he conducts himself. I don't think I will find too many "uh-ohs". Basically, I'd be looking for stuff like the N-word, not common swears.

I... guess?

Yeah, they're a great group over there. Love that forum.

BrewerFan.net? That was the forum before we migrated it to Brewer Fanatic.

Ah, forgot something else. If anyone has access to the old forum instances from Ultimate Mets, I can merge those back together and create a single forum again, with all the history of the old site. But I have no idea if anyone has access to that old site.

From the forum side of things, there's a HUGE improvement, by the way. You get basic stuff like reactions to posts, but also a GIF library, simplified editor options, image uploads, attachments, etc.

One thing to be clear about when I call it a "super-site". You can literally ignore everything but the forums, lots of our users do. The other features draw in new users, who keep the forum populated. Maybe 1% of new users participate in the forums? It's a small number, but it builds over time. But we do have some pretty cool baseball-related features, like: Prospect voting: Sorry, you do not have permission for that! TWINSDAILY.COM Offseason blueprints: Payroll Blueprint Tool - Twins Daily TWINSDAILY.COM User polls: Polls - Twins Daily TWINSDAILY.COM

It depends on the site. Brewer Fanatic has about 4,000 unique visitors a day, but only a portion of them visit the forums. When we started, the old forum was pulling about 1,000 users a day. Talk Sox has shown the biggest growth. Like this place, it was a really small forum, only about 200 unique visitors a day. Now it's at about 1,500 unique visitors a day, with probably 500-ish visiting the forums.

Wait, I have a toilet avatar by default? See, that's why I love these legacy forums. They all have their own flavor and personalities.

I've been speaking to Ed for a few weeks, been trying to get registered here for a few months. I'm one of the owners of DiamondCentric.net, a network of baseball sites. Like many of you, I'm an internet 2.0 guy. I founded my first forum in 2005 (I think?), and I cut my teeth on the forum era of the internet, when every topic had its own little cubbyhole of enthusiasts. Then came Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. I spent much of my professional life as a web developer, so my career grew along with the various stages of the internet. Way back in 2012, I hooked up with four Twins bloggers, and we founded Twins Daily. We did that for years as a hobby, and never thought much of it. Fun side gig, but that's it. I adopted two children in 2017, and had a lottttttt of time at home. I started taking the site a little more seriously in 2019, and it became a real success. But simultaneously, I was losing interest in the Twins. I mean, not LOSING interest, as much as I wanted to do more. So, I went back to my roots (I was born in the upper peninsula of Michigan), and acquired a Brewers forum, much like this one. We turned that into BrewerFanatic.com, which is now probably the most respected Brewers analysis site on the internet. I'm super-proud of that one. We started having fun with this, and then acquired a Cubs forum, then a Red Sox forum, then a Blue Jays forum. We've sinced turned them all into team-specific super-sites in NorthSideBaseball.com, TalkSox.com, and JaysCentre.com. Why? Well, it's a pretty fun job. But I HATED seeing all these great communities be swallowed whole by these tech behemoths, because I knew that inevitably they'd all turn on us, which they have. Wrapping these cool legacy forums in a protective bubble of analysis articles, video, and original content keeps these forums thriving for years to come, and preserves some of the cool, old internet I loved. So if you're amenable to having a conversation about it, I'd love to do that. That's my spiel, so ask questions if you got 'em, I guess?