Dead sub-board standing still....? (What do you think? Discuss.)

[VanIslander]

Shall we ask the mods to pull the plug?

Run a MLD 2018 in July?

Have a marathon special era draft?

Chill until autumn then reboot the twice-a-year ATD (pre-2010) pattern?

Let it lay fallow until next year?

seventieslord? hedberg? ResilientBeast? Hobnobs? tony d? Iceman? Stoneberg? Wrigley?

Click to read more...

 

[ImporterExporter]

 

[VanIslander]

Are you being a piece of ****?

 

[ImporterExporter]

Are you being a piece of ****?

3:42 of video.

Somehow I picture you as Mr. Lahey Van....probably the greatest drunk in the history of TV.

 

[VanIslander]

I am a 7-time chess champion, ranked 11th in Canada in my group, my high school's English Lit student of the Year (Gr. 10), two-time Dean's Honor List undergrad, full grad school scholarship, professor thanked me in his book for my contributions to his research, David Black 20+ newspaper chain award winner for headlines and lede writing ( I worked my way up to head editor and ran a newsroom with 3 reporters), and for the last 15 years have taught and helped send students to three Ivy league schools (2 UPenn and 1 Yale ... plus u of Kentucky, ucla and a couple of other state schools) and three national debate champions in South Korea, have no shortage of school and career accomplishments.

Yeah, my only two children, two daughters, have died. My wife lost her younger brother in a camping accident during this period, so our marriage ended.

I lost my father and sister to cancer, mother to a heart attack, aunt to a stroke, and have no family now, am pushing 50 years old now, and spend my weeks teaching as awesome as I can, and spend the weekends drinking two or three weekends a month, sometimes two or three bottles, and unwisely post online then (today is Memorial Day in S. Korea a national holiday here to remember soldiers who died. My grandpa died in wwii and my dad was tortured as a young teen jew.).

Anyways,...

I am once again insulted by you IE... let's agree to AVOID all references to non-hockey and then we might continue to do something productive around here (I put a lot of dang effort into my final four team this year - though I didn't pimp it in the playoffs, the spring being a new school year here so I've been busy working 6 days a week.)

 

[ImporterExporter]

Well, I can certainly understand why you drink.

I'm sorry for your losses Van. Truly. No person should have to endure that.

No more references to drinking. I know you've sent me some nasty PM's and I've chalked it up to you having a few to many. Probably why that character made me think of you....but, at the end of the day you're a vital member to the ATD.

As to the questions you posed, I'm not interested in doing anything over the summer unless it's a quick, marathon type deal you mentioned.

 

[seventieslord]

I don't think there's an appetite for an MLD. I mean, I'm always up for one, but not one with 4-5 teams. I wish I had the magic formula to cultivate interest. I don't know why there are so many people (less than before) who want to draft the same players year after year, but so few who want to have the always eclectic MLD.

I think going to two ATDs a year is the complete opposite direction things should go in. One every two years. It's easy to pass when you can say "meh, I'll join the next one in 6 months". Harder when you know you have to join now or wait two years.

 

[ResilientBeast]

I'm ambivalent to whatever scheduling we move towards. I'll always be around for an all timer draft. The sub levels just don't excite me as much

 

[jarek]

I don't think there's an appetite for an MLD. I mean, I'm always up for one, but not one with 4-5 teams. I wish I had the magic formula to cultivate interest. I don't know why there are so many people (less than before) who want to draft the same players year after year, but so few who want to have the always eclectic MLD.

I think going to two ATDs a year is the complete opposite direction things should go in. One every two years. It's easy to pass when you can say "meh, I'll join the next one in 6 months". Harder when you know you have to join now or wait two years.

I'd like to think an ATD every two years is what VI meant, but mistyped.

 

[VanIslander]

Yeah, let's wait until 2021 to do anything on this sub-board.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Yeah, let's wait until 2021 to do anything on this sub-board.

Van, let's do some sort of marathon draft! I'm going to be free most of the weekend here in the States and have nothing better to do honestly. Divorced, no kid this weekend.

What kind of quick marathon deal you want to do?

 

[BenchBrawl]

I suspect one of the problem is that the learning curve has gotten too steep.The community knows too much compared to newcomers, yet the community is tired, and needs more newcomers.But if there's too many newcomers, the voting system is severely affected, because you cannot vote competently in the ATD if you don't know who Frank Nighbor is; but if you don't participate in the ATD, you will never learn who Nighbor is (in theory).

There's still a lot of work to be done, especially for anything that happened before the 50s, and particularly before the 40s.If we had as much momentum as we had circa 2011-2013, but with our current state of knowledge, we could almost cover EVERY game from EVERY player before the 40s and have a real "ballad throughout player X's career" in every bio.The totality of this would be the greatest consolidated source of early hockey history probably anywhere.

 

[VanIslander]

... you cannot vote competently in the ATD if you don't know who Frank Nighbor is; but if you don't participate in the ATD, you will never learn who Nighbor is.

Elegantly put.

Yet newbies learn who Nighbor is by the end of their first ATD, so they can vote with some knowledge of him by then.

 

[Iceman]

Had a hectic 2 or so weeks at work during the ATD Final, which made me forget to vote but before I forgot completely I think we had two deservedly finalists. The Americans were one of my favourite teams as the draft moved along and if I am completely honest, I don't think nobody saw it coming with the Pittsburgh Bankers. I think we all thought "what are you doing Importer... when you were making those first round trades" but I think we have to eat some crow... you made a risky gamble that only you probably believed in and it payed off very well. I think the final product turned out impressive too so good job both of you.

On to something else, I am up for any kind of project or casual 1 week "all over the place"-drafts to pass some time too.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I suspect one of the problem is that the learning curve has gotten too steep.The community knows too much compared to newcomers, yet the community is tired, and needs more newcomers.But if there's too many newcomers, the voting system is severely affected, because you cannot vote competently in the ATD if you don't know who Frank Nighbor is; but if you don't participate in the ATD, you will never learn who Nighbor is (in theory).

There's still a lot of work to be done, especially for anything that happened before the 50s, and particularly before the 40s.If we had as much momentum as we had circa 2011-2013, but with our current state of knowledge, we could almost cover EVERY game from EVERY player before the 40s and have a real "ballad throughout player X's career" in every bio.The totality of this would be the greatest consolidated source of early hockey history probably anywhere.

As a relative outsider (with a couple of MLDs under my belt from years back), here are my thoughts.

I don’t think this game is particularly friendly to newcomers. Longtime participants are drawing from sources of knowledge that can be very exclusive, and in some cases proprietary. Not everybody has a set of Trail, a Total Hockey, and a stack of 1975 trading cards. Not everybody has an Access database with original data analysis that can’t be found elsewhere on the internet.

So if you’re walking in the door as a first time player, you have almost no serious chance of competing. Not only are you likely to misunderstand the dynamics of the game itself, you are VERY likely to get blindsided by new information on your players that you couldn’t possibly have found on the internet. And at the end of the day, people don’t tend to stick with games that they don’t think they can win.

I think the participation rate in the ATD board is reflective of that phenomenon. The roster grew somewhat steadily for a few years, and plateaued for a while. But as veteran players have wandered off naturally over time, they haven’t been replaced. It seems to me that the drafts are dominated by much the same group of users who were doing this 5+ years ago. Which in turn makes it that much more discouraging for the newcomer who faces a murderer’s row of veteran opponents.

Just my thoughts. I don’t really have a suggestion for how to fix this. It’s more than just being friendly with first timers. The game itself is designed in a way that demands a large investment of time (and probably money) to really be competitive, and that’s a difficult sell for the majority of people. With HF’s traffic in general shrinking, and this being a super-specialized board to begin with, there’s a sustainability concern.

 

[BenchBrawl]

As a relative outsider (with a couple of MLDs under my belt from years back), here are my thoughts.

I don’t think this game is particularly friendly to newcomers. Longtime participants are drawing from sources of knowledge that can be very exclusive, and in some cases proprietary. Not everybody has a set of Trail, a Total Hockey, and a stack of 1975 trading cards. Not everybody has an Access database with original data analysis that can’t be found elsewhere on the internet.

So if you’re walking in the door as a first time player, you have almost no serious chance of competing. Not only are you likely to misunderstand the dynamics of the game itself, you are VERY likely to get blindsided by new information on your players that you couldn’t possibly have found on the internet. And at the end of the day, people don’t tend to stick with games that they don’t think they can win.

I think the participation rate in the ATD board is reflective of that phenomenon. The roster grew somewhat steadily for a few years, and plateaued for a while. But as veteran players have wandered off naturally over time, they haven’t been replaced. It seems to me that the drafts are dominated by much the same group of users who were doing this 5+ years ago. Which in turn makes it that much more discouraging for the newcomer who faces a murderer’s row of veteran opponents.

Just my thoughts. I don’t really have a suggestion for how to fix this. It’s more than just being friendly with first timers. The game itself is designed in a way that demands a large investment of time (and probably money) to really be competitive, and that’s a difficult sell for the majority of people. With HF’s traffic in general shrinking, and this being a super-specialized board to begin with, there’s a sustainability concern.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on that issue.

I agree with you; it is near impossible to win the ATD as a rookie.I'm not sure this is so problematic; it is near-impossible to be the best at anything when you're a rookie.

As for the exclusivity of knowledge, yes and no.I think it's never been easier to get all the knowledge you need online.I've done it successfully.I have no collection of hockey books or magazine, no subscription to any paying site.I did my research with free sources from newspapers online, but of course I used the research of others, and they might have used books and subscription sites.Still, it is possible to do it all online today.

This is why the effort to construct throughout biographies is so important.Everytime I make a big bio, everything I know about the player is in there.If you read it all, you know as much as me.

I've thought about doing a "pedagogical thread" for newcomers more than once, but it would require quite a bit of effort to vulgarize and summarize everything.The thread would include many visual timelines, one for the big changes in the structure of the game, another for who the best players were in each era and so on.

The real problem is that it's impossible to read everything in one year, or even two, and most veterans have 8+ years of learning under their belt, which wasn't true before.Hence the need for a pedagogical thread which at least gives a global perspective on hockey history.There are some threads that are more or less like this on the site, but it's all over the place.

It takes a lot of energy and time to win this thing, and if you just play casually your chances are slim.

I have no obvious solution.Perhaps the 2009-2014 era was just a perfect storm.

 

[Say Hey Kid]

Greater flexibility is what is needed. I have no interest in the traditional draft for many reasons, but competition and knowledge are not two of them.

Keep offering the traditional draft for the hardcore if you want, but offer an alternative for the thousands of posters who have different interests and opinions.

I'll give an example of an alternative that may attract new GMs. Remember that any negative replies by vets are irrelevant, because the whole point is to try something new to attract new GMs with new, different opinions.

If there was a draft for players who started from 1942 (such as The Rocket) to the present with no trades I'd do it every year. There's even a GM I'd like to work with, but not for competition and knowledge reasons. I like him and think we'd have fun. Start a conversation with me if you ever try this.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Less complaining is what is needed on this forum.

Edit: I should be clear; I'm not talking about this thread in particular

 

[jarek]

As a relative outsider (with a couple of MLDs under my belt from years back), here are my thoughts.

I don’t think this game is particularly friendly to newcomers. Longtime participants are drawing from sources of knowledge that can be very exclusive, and in some cases proprietary. Not everybody has a set of Trail, a Total Hockey, and a stack of 1975 trading cards. Not everybody has an Access database with original data analysis that can’t be found elsewhere on the internet.

So if you’re walking in the door as a first time player, you have almost no serious chance of competing. Not only are you likely to misunderstand the dynamics of the game itself, you are VERY likely to get blindsided by new information on your players that you couldn’t possibly have found on the internet. And at the end of the day, people don’t tend to stick with games that they don’t think they can win.

I think the participation rate in the ATD board is reflective of that phenomenon. The roster grew somewhat steadily for a few years, and plateaued for a while. But as veteran players have wandered off naturally over time, they haven’t been replaced. It seems to me that the drafts are dominated by much the same group of users who were doing this 5+ years ago. Which in turn makes it that much more discouraging for the newcomer who faces a murderer’s row of veteran opponents.

Just my thoughts. I don’t really have a suggestion for how to fix this. It’s more than just being friendly with first timers. The game itself is designed in a way that demands a large investment of time (and probably money) to really be competitive, and that’s a difficult sell for the majority of people. With HF’s traffic in general shrinking, and this being a super-specialized board to begin with, there’s a sustainability concern.

This shouldn't be an issue with the wealth of information available in bios.

 

[tarheelhockey]

This shouldn't be an issue with the wealth of information available in bios.

Think about what that sounds like to someone who’s never done this before.

It’s like going up against a veteran chess player, having only a vague idea of the rules of the game, and he says “there are plenty of books out there, shouldn’t be an issue”.

 

[jarek]

Think about what that sounds like to someone who’s never done this before.

It’s like going up against a veteran chess player, having only a vague idea of the rules of the game, and he says “there are plenty of books out there, shouldn’t be an issue”.

C'mon man.. it's not that bad, is it?

Not only are there so many bios out there, but previous years draft lists are a reasonable list to go by when it comes to who the BPAs are.

I would say it *should* be easier than ever for a newbie to join up.

The problem is if you go in expecting to win the first time, and get disheartened by either a 1st round exit or no playoffs at all.

 

[ck26]

The problem with this game is the payoff is so underwhelming. You do research, you learn a lot about hockey history, you have a vision in your head for what you want your team to be, you assemble players .............. and then after all that work and buildup and effort, the payoff is "Team A beat Team B 4-2."

I'm happy now that I know about Frank Nighbor and Bill Cowley and Frank McGee and Si Griffis and Battleship Leduc and the Bentley Brothers, but until I can actually see them play against Mike Modano and Keith Yandle and Jere Lehtinen and Justin Faulk, the desire to do this more than once every few years is minimal.