A Question For The Board About Off-Season Discussion

A few weeks ago there was a long rumor mongering thread about Freddy Adu and some stadium developments. It was all basically rumor from Chris Bergin and, in the end, it didn’t turn out to be much at all. The anticlimactic nature of the thread pissed some people off and I can understand why. Some folks don’t want to hear the rumors. They just want hard news from sources they trust. On the other hand, I do think there’s a contingent on this board that has an interest in rumors and gossip. Perhaps it’s just entertaining to read the chatter and banter. Maybe they take it seriously. It doesn’t matter really, the point is that some folks would probably like have a place for such discussion on this board.

Towards the end of the earlier mentioned thread I suggested that during the off-season it might be a good idea to set up a thread to handle the “near news” and rumors. After all, there’s a whole lot going on with DC United right now. We’ve got the Hudson, Etcheverry, Hristo, Adu and Kasper situations just to name a few. Perhaps there’s some grapevine buzz about these things. Maybe some guy at the gym, your barber or your clairvoyant aunt has the scoop on Adu. Maybe you saw moving trucks in front of Hudson’s place. Maybe Bergin is dropping hints about a stadium. Who knows …

On the one hand I don’t think every rumor deserves its own thread but on the other hand I think it would be appropriate to have a dedicated thread to handle them. The thread itself could be modeled after the “Breaking News and Rumors” threads on Bergin’s website: no in-depth discussion, no lengthy analysis, just what you heard and a bit of banter about it. Perhaps it would be stuck at the top of the board. If a rumor petered out then we’d move on to the next bit of gossip. If it turned out to be true and stories started to appear in the Post and the Times etc. then, of course, we’d start a new thread for the hard news. That way those who are interested in “near news” and gossip can read the thread and participate in it and those who aren't can ignore it. It seems like a good compromise to me.

Good idea? Bad idea? Thoughts? Objections?

 

Generally if it's an article from the Post, the Times or one of the other reputable soccer news websites then it's hard news and should have it's own thread anyway. That's the way it usually works currently too.

I don't think it's a good idea to have a thread for every rumor. Just have one rumor "blog" (see, I'm up on the internet lingo and perhaps I even used the word correctly!) and go with that.

The question here is really about how to handle rumors and gossip - things that might be considered "near news" or "potential news" but aren't backed up by the usual journalistic standards. It's stuff at the level of tabloid stories or water-cooler chatter.

Here's my concern. Some of you undoubtedly remember a bit of gossip about a certain young player last year. If you don't it's just as well. Suffice it to say the folks at DC United weren't pleased, the rumor wasn't at all true and the whole thing was a big mess that eventually had to be deleted.

I want to avoid that in the future. I REALLY want to avoid that in the future.

So I think there have to be some limits here. I don't know if you can specify them up front but if we do this we'll probably have to make some judgment calls along the way about what's really appropriate.

That said, I'd bet 99% of what might be discussed under the rubric of rumor would probably be totally fine.

But are there any rules or guidelines you might suggest? They can always be changed and amended along the way if need be.

And yes, now that I think about it again it'd have to be a sticky for two reasons. 1) Ironically, it's actually easier for the uninterested to ignore a sticky than a regular thread. 2) Who knows how much this thing'll be used. Better to have it at the top and ready for use then to let it drift off the page.

 

Ha! Maybe I should just sticky The Official Freddy Adu to DC United Thread.

 

It's funny that you say this because I actually saw it the other way around. As I see it people who spread rumor on this board are often scolded and ridiculed. That's basically what happened in that thread I mentioned above. Some folks called it a nonsense and others complained that Bergin was the source. Indeed, a good deal of that thread amounts to nothing more than people complaining that someone had the audacity to post a rumor on the DC United board. There are other examples too. Anytime something is under-sourced or badly sourced on this board people get pissed off and admonish the poster for rumor-mongering. So my sense is that the tolerance of rumor on the DC United board is really fairly low.

So I thought a thread with less restrictive standards than those apparently generally agreed upon on this board might actually enable posters who wanted to post something unsourced or badly sourced the opportunity to do that while, at the same time, not infringing upon the usual news standards in other threads.

And that said, there is an Adu thread, there'll be innevitable coach and player threads etc. and, of course, all those things will feature rumor and gossip from time to time. But generally those threads really do concentrate on hard news from reputable sources.

Lastly, I don't even know if anyone really has anything to rumor monger about. But it's the off-season and, well, it's not like we've got games to talk about. If it falls into disuse then it falls into disuse. It's just a matter of whether we try it out and if we do how should we run it.

 

I'm not crazy about the [rumor] tag idea for five reasons.

1. It's another rule, so it's another headache. It's bad enough dealing with the [R] tag. I don't want to add anymore rules. There are already too many.

2. It's harder to ignore. As I said, I think the tolerance on this board for rumor is low. Part of the reason that I think a rumor thread is more desirable than a [rumor] tag is that it's so easy to ignore one thread.

3. Most rumors simply don't deserve their own thread. In my opinion, the Adu/Stadium thread I noted earlier didn't merit a thread of its own - at least not in its initial incarnation.

4. A [rumor] tag wouldn't lower the ante for posting but a rumors thread would. Not everyone would want to start a whole new thread to post some second-hand rumor they heard. But maybe they'd post it in an already ongoing thread dedicated to that sort of thing. The point is to make it easier to post, not harder. A [rumor] tag actually makes it harder because not only do you have to start a whole new thread but you've also gotta make sure you use a [rumor] tag in the title.

5. Posting rumors in individual threads doesn't help keep them in proper proportion. If a rumor has its own thread it automatically makes it into a bigger deal than it necessarily ought to be. The Adu/Stadium thread is a good example here too. A rumors thread would help keep things in proper proportion.

 

That's not at all what I'm suggesting. (Although I may have inadvertently implied something along those lines in my second post.)

In the first post I said not every rumor deserves its own thread. So perhaps some rumors do. Who knows. I don't think you can determine that on an a priori basis.

But, on the other hand, some rumors certainly don't deserve their own thread. I'm only saying there ought to be a place on this board where rumors that don't deserve their own threads can still be posted.