Hello, everyone. My name is Brock Beauchamp and I have big news about BF.net, please read

[Brock Beauchamp]

In relation to 'Core Content Creators'. It's been just the message board for a long time now, but it was more dynamic with the Power 50 and periodic feature articles back in the day. It's too bad I never took my writing that seriously back in the day as a career option. I figured the BP folks and Rob Neyer had it all locked up for years to come.

We are actively looking for writers so if you'd like to try your hand at it, please PM me a sample of your work. It certainly won't be a career but we pay as well as we can and it's a pretty fun side hustle if you're interested. We don't have min-max requirements for frequency so it's a "how much do you want to write?" scenario most of the time. If your stuff is good, you can write three times a week, once a month, or anywhere in between, your choice.

[Brock Beauchamp]

It is called constructive feedback so he doesn't ruin the website he just bought. What works on the Twins site may not work with this demographic. Not to mention a big part of the commenting/traffic here is a focused group of people. Probably don't want to make those people mad. If they leave you lose a lot of knowledge and activity.

All of this is absolutely true. I welcome the feedback. We may not see eye-to-eye on every issue but I will listen to feedback every single time. I cannot stress enough that our mission is community-based; all of you have a voice in how this website operates because without all of you, I'd be talking to myself.

 

And I already do enough of that in the shower, no need to also do it on the internet.

[CheezWizHed]

Need a react that says Woah Solvdd.

 

This would be the ultimate BF.net-ism! Definitely a +1 from me.

[Brock Beauchamp]

Need a react that says Woah Solvdd.

 

This would be the ultimate BF.net-ism! Definitely a +1 from me.

Okay, this will definitely happen. Love it. I've been browsing that forum and to quote my Yooper family, "uff da".

[CheeseheadInQC]

Sorry folks, looks like I will soon be out. I visited Blu-ray.com more often than here and stopped after the pop-up ads were introduced that covered the bottom of the screen and would creep up the right side of the screen. Looks like the forums at Twins Daily have the same thing. Also will add that I am always a bit weary when a forum gets an update because it always goes to being more user friendly for mobile users and I always look at forums while looking at a PC monitor.

 

This is definitely a whiney complaint but the real purpose of posting this is in hopes that more people will provide the same input and Mr. Beauchamp and company will consider keeping the forum as it is now.

 

The irony of this is, to me, the current stripped down look is great for mobile browsing for me because it satisfies my two criteria 1) No functionality lost and 2) It doesn't burn through my battery at breakneck speed (there are a couple of sports forums/sites that I basically can't look at if I'm not somewhere I can charge my phone immediately after). Anytime a site changes its look to seem prettier on mobile devices, it usually only succeeds in breaking one or the other.

[logan82]

I also disagree about 'Bro' being gender neutral. But even if it were, it changes the focus of the reaction. 'Yikes' is a reaction to the content of a post. 'Yikes bro' is a reaction to the poster as much as the post. In this forum we have strived (sometimes with great effort by the mods) to keep comments focused on topics and content and not on the posters. A 'yikes bro' reaction will throw that off.

 

This is a really good point. This community has always (tried) to remain focused on arguing the point, and not just taking personal shots at their fellow posters. It's easy to get frustrated with a person who doesn't agree with you, or see your side of things, but at the same time, name calling and one liners isn't going to bring them around to your side of things.

 

I think a lot of people will be happy/excited to see the inclusion of likes/reacts and other sorts of fun widgets, but I'd prefer (my own personal preference, to be sure) that single-click widgets and stuff like that to veer away from negative reactions.

Agreed. The best thing about this forum was the moderation always keeping the focus on the discussion and keeping internet speak off the site. I am not a fan of any buttons for like/dislike or anything else like that. There are plenty of other places around the web for that.

[Machu Peach]

I've enjoyed the discussions here for a long long time. Excited to see what's coming, but it does remind me of one of my favorite movie quotes.

[MadScientist]

This is a really good point. This community has always (tried) to remain focused on arguing the point, and not just taking personal shots at their fellow posters. It's easy to get frustrated with a person who doesn't agree with you, or see your side of things, but at the same time, name calling and one liners isn't going to bring them around to your side of things.

 

I think a lot of people will be happy/excited to see the inclusion of likes/reacts and other sorts of fun widgets, but I'd prefer (my own personal preference, to be sure) that single-click widgets and stuff like that to veer away from negative reactions.

Agreed. The best thing about this forum was the moderation always keeping the focus on the discussion and keeping internet speak off the site. I am not a fan of any buttons for like/dislike or anything else like that. There are plenty of other places around the web for that.

They are useful if you want to acknowledge a good or funny post but don't have anything substantive to add and don't want to clutter the board too much. We can probably do with like, +1, Yikes and Woah Solvdd. The negative ones should be skipped in favor of actual discussion.

[BlazingGunz]

If you don't like ads, just use the Brave Browser. Blocks all of that garbage. Works just like Chrome but way better. https://brave.com/

[GAME05]

I'm apprehensive about it, but of course everyone fears change. We're a smallish board where everyone tends to know each other and to some degree I think it makes people more open to saying somewhat more personal stuff here (or at least I am), but a lot more users here diluting that would make it harder. BF.net is a wonderful board even if you don't care about baseball.

 

But sure, we used to have a front page with really good articles and it's understandable that it didn't continue, so adding something like that back even if it had ads everywhere is great.

[AKCheesehead]

My main fear is if the ads come with pop up videos that auto play. If you look at your data usage in real time, you pretty much take the hit instantly even if you close the video. Up here, data is at a premium (I get 4 gb/month and it gets throttled severely after hitting 3.5 gb) so my participation from home will likely plummet, unfortunately.

[Brock Beauchamp]

My main fear is if the ads come with pop up videos that auto play. If you look at your data usage in real time, you pretty much take the hit instantly even if you close the video. Up here, data is at a premium (I get 4 gb/month and it gets throttled severely after hitting 3.5 gb) so my participation from home will likely plummet, unfortunately.

We can and will keep this in mind. On the upside, the new site will not launch with video. That's some ways down the road.

[TURBO]

When it comes to change, I'm neither for it or against it, however, I enjoy the simplicity of this site.

 

No frills, I like it that way.

 

The only 2 things I'd change is making the ability to post pics something everyone can do easily. It sees like you have to know secrets on this board to do it. The other I already mentioned, a LIKE button.

[ClosetBrewerFan]

Welcome Brock! I'm sure you will quickly find that this forum has a nice mix of new posters and those that have been around from the start and generally do a great job of having reasonable debate and conversation. I've been checking in on this site daily for a very long time. Heck, I remember when this site was called Brewerfan.com over 20 years ago.

 

I'll share my concern about excessive ads. Understand that you can run this the way you want but there are not a huge number of people that go on this site so it would be a shame to lose anyone. I have very little patience for ads though and its one of the main reasons why I continue to use this site. It will be nice to see some writers get a little compensation for what they do. There are a number of posters that provide insight and analysis that deserves to be paid. I hope they take you up on their offer to be contributing writers.

 

Can I ask what made you want to buy this site? Quite frankly, I did not think there would be much value in it. Maybe you see a business here that I dont.

 

Only real question I have left is how am I going to get the latest Shea Vucinich news now?

[brewmann04]

Welcome looking forward to the site. This site is to notch love especially the trade rumors page and more the Minor league forum.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I hear all of your concerns about ads. After some thought, here are some decent compromises I've come up with:

 

1. It looks like we're going to launch the new site in a more limited scope and earlier, which means we probably won't run ANY ads on the site at all for 60 days. I'll have more info on this as we figure out our plans and capabilities. One of my partners is in Europe for March (he usually covers spring training for TD and this was him getting back at baseball) and then I'm off to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks in April to visit friends. Our schedules are a bit of a mess right now.

 

2. Right now, there is a video popup on the Twins Daily forum index page. If you scroll, you'll see the video slide to the bottom right of the screen. I will remove this on *all* forum pages and I'll find a way to make up the difference to our video creators elsewhere on the site. Here's the page I'm talking about: https://twinsdaily.com/forums/ This means there won't be any pop-up ads in the forum section of the site.

 

3. If we stagger the launch, I think that will give me enough time to squeeze in a detailed analysis of our ad deliveries on Twins Daily and get those changed up a bit. Now, the number of ads won't *drastically* decrease but I fully expect to do two things: slightly decrease the number of ads per page and spread them out more effectively so there aren't weird things like no ads on half the page and then an ad between every post. That would make the ads, particularly on the forums, a lot less obtrusive.

 

As I said earlier, I've been meaning to address the ads for awhile but just haven't had time. This conversation has been a good impetus to get me moving on that particular item.

[Brock Beauchamp]

Can I ask what made you want to buy this site? Quite frankly, I did not think there would be much value in it. Maybe you see a business here that I dont.

 

This is a complex question but I'll try to answer as honestly as possible.

 

First, I really like doing this work. I don't make a living from Twins Daily but after chipping away at it for over ten years, it earns me a modest paycheck, which has been great while I'm raising young kids. Some background on me personally is that, like Brian, I'm a web developer by trade and have been for the past 20+ years. About five years ago, my wife and I became foster parents and I stopped taking contracts for a few years while I stayed home and raised kids, working part-time on contracts when I had the time. We ended up adopting and now the kids are older, the youngest heading to kindergarten next fall. So as my ability to work on Twins Daily increased (I had more time to work but not really to take dedicated full-time contracts), I started seeing a lot of different avenues where we could both make more money AND pay our content creators a lot better. So I got to work.

 

Second, I'm an old school internet guy. I love independent sites and forums. And, to be blunt, they're dying. Maybe not all of them but 90% of them are dead or dying. But at Twins Daily, we found that if we surround a community with daily news and content, it acts as a shield to constantly infuse new life into the community as existing members age out or just lose interest. This, coupled with my increased time and ability to monetize Twins Daily got my mind spinning...

 

Third, I like the Brewers. I was born in the UP, spent some of my very young childhood in northern WI, and then returned to Milwaukee for a year+ in 2009. Before I was a Twins fan, I had a Brewers hat and listened to them on the radio. Coming back to Milwaukee for a year only cemented that. I watch a lot of baseball and if there isn't a Twins game on, a Brewers game is my follow-up choice. And as opposed to when I was a child, the modern AL/NL split between the teams means that outside of those six games a year, cheering for both on any given night involves little to no conflict.

 

Fourth, and pardon my French for a moment, but I ******* despise SB Nation, Facebook groups, Reddit, and all the other mega-conglomerate trash that is killing independent communities, sucking the life out of the internet, all the while selling your personal information and giving the worst aspects of our society the loudest microphones. So yeah, any time I feel I have the chance to hand those bastards the "L", I'm going to leap at the chance. With Twins Daily, we've largely pushed those entities to irrelevancy when it comes to Twins coverage and I'm excited to try to do it again.

 

Combine all those things and that's how we end up where we are today!

[Fear The Chorizo]

I feel like we as posters on this board are the product and the reason anyone else on here comes trolling on the site looking for freezing cold takes and player debates using an alphabet soup of stat names (That's WAR and FIP kids, not WAP and FIB...)

 

Therefore, until the new board ownership sends us 50 percent of any revenues for the site and doles it out based solely on how long we've been posting here and not the quality of our contributions to the board, we won't post in new threads. Many of us have spent vast quantities of our professional careers contributing to this board for free instead of actually focusing on our "real" jobs, and we deserve to be compensated more appropriately for that time moving forward.

 

who's with me!

[jerichoholicninja]

Maybe this has been addressed already but why is there any need to change from the current site? I don't see any real complaints about its current state nor desire for something different. If it's about increasing traffic, I think us who have been here for years know what happens when there's a large influx of new members and it hasn't always created a better forum with most of those members being banned or leaving in short time.

[ClosetBrewerFan]

Thank you for the honest response. Obviously this news was a shock to us so the initial mixed reactions you are getting are a reflection of that. I can honestly say I have very little I would change about this site. The moderators do a great job of keeping the discussion respectful. If I had one wish it would be a wiki like place for identifying prospects and the latest news on them. Its always a challenge to find out info about a prospect I am unfamiliar with. What types of pitches does he throw, how hard does he throw, what positions does he play and can he field them competently, what do the scouts think... sort of a one stop shop on each prospect. That would be too hard for one person to create but would not be too hard if a community built and maintained it. Just a future wish list item. (Edit. Not unlike what Mass is doing with his birthday status thread. I dont know how he has time for that but literally that is the foundation for what I am talking about - just unfair for him to try to maintain it)

 

I spent some time on the twins talk forum and I'll be very happy if that is what your plans are for this site. Discourse is civil, simple forum to follow and some splashy front page stuff for news.

[Brock Beauchamp]

Thank you for the honest response. Obviously this news was a shock to us so the initial mixed reactions you are getting are a reflection of that. I can honestly say I have very little I would change about this site. The moderators do a great job of keeping the discussion respectful. If I had one wish it would be a wiki like place for identifying prospects and the latest news on them. Its always a challenge to find out info about a prospect I am unfamiliar with. What types of pitches does he throw, how hard does he throw, what positions does he play and can he field them competently, what do the scouts think... sort of a one stop shop on each prospect. That would be too hard for one person to create but would not be too hard if a community built and maintained it. Just a future wish list item. (Edit. Not unlike what Mass is doing with his birthday status thread. I dont know how he has time for that but literally that is the foundation for what I am talking about - just unfair for him to try to maintain it)

 

I spent some time on the twins talk forum and I'll be very happy if that is what your plans are for this site. Discourse is civil, simple forum to follow and some splashy front page stuff for news.

The moderators here at BF do a great job, IMO, so I don't see any reason I need to muck about with their work. They have the forums under control, which allows me to work on the technical aspect of the site, not wrangle community issues. Don't expect much to change about how conversations are handled, what posters are allowed to post, and how the community interacts with one another.

 

As for prospects, well... I have good news for you. I spent most of the winter working on this over at Twins Daily:

 

https://twinsdaily.com/minnesota-twins-top-prospects/2022/

 

It will be some time before we have the infrastructure and content creators here to maintain that type of project but it's a goal to have the Brewers equivalent to that page operational by mid-season or so.

[homer]

Maybe this has been addressed already but why is there any need to change from the current site? I don't see any real complaints about its current state nor desire for something different. If it's about increasing traffic, I think us who have been here for years know what happens when there's a large influx of new members and it hasn't always created a better forum with most of those members being banned or leaving in short time.

 

I think it boils down to the fact that Brian doesn't have time to maintain things.

[GAME05]

My main fear is if the ads come with pop up videos that auto play.

 

 

Ugh, the CBS Sports website does this and it's awful!

[trwi7]

I think I speak for everyone when I say, what would it take to get Johan Santana?

[ClosetBrewerFan]

I think I speak for everyone when I say, what would it take to get Johan Santana?

Huh? Are you posting in the right thread / decade?