Should we consider breaking up YA by country/region?

Just wanted to follow up with the post above and reiterate that this is a very good suggestion.

 

So, here's my thought. What we're dealing with is an organization question and like most good organization systems something that makes life easier would be good. I have lurked here for more than a decade and would probably quit if I constantly had to recall whether or not the Allsvenskan was a second tier league or a first tier minor league or some such thing. However, I think this solution (though not at all sexy in a soccerball sense) would help organizationally. Make a list of the Yanks abroad. Divide them up into numerically equivalent quintiles. Then, when you click on Yanks Abroad you'd see 5 sub folders with titles like Aaronson, DeVries, Holmes etc. You know if the player you're interested in has a name that alphabetically is before DeVries, you know which folder to peruse. Over time, you may not even have to change the folder titles. I don't even think you need two names to show the range...Instead of names you could actually simplify even further. A-D, E-H, I-M, etc. This system should work well over time. Of course, the Reyna bloodline may eventually produce so many players that the folder will get bloated.

Truth be told, I would still use the search function and mostly lurk, so disregard my earlier claim. You guys are pretty entertaining.

 

Just noticed this. I voted for change.

By and large no matter how it's reorganized, we have far too many yanks abroad(and it'll only be more in the future) to not have it better categorized.

I think by country and leagues in a country could work.

Top leagues vs the rest could also work.

Frankly anything but a free for all (current) is better.

In my experience most who fight change come along and appreciate it later anyway. Still remember all the moaning when BS changed its interface and removed neg reg. Now no one mentions it.

P.S. Is there a better place for a coach like Marsch than the academy section?

 

I still think Dark Mode would be awesome, so I don't have to install an extension just for this site.

 

Good idea. Just add Mexico to top 6 UEFA , as it looks like level of our players there keeps on growing. And maybe Championship too.

 

I vote 'no.' There is going to be another vote before you do this, right? Is there
*any* other reason we're revisiting this besides the fact that Pulisic reached page 4 on one occasion? That's kind of half the fun, isn't it? Reflects the fact that we have a lot of decent guys out there.

So I suggest we have another vote--like the one we had before you guys split the gameday threads from the player threads.

I will point out that this proposed change didn't even come close to being approved when it was voted on the last time.

My 2 cents.

 

I also vote 'no'. Pulisic in the 4th page shouldn't be a reason for this. All our top players at some point have been in the 4th to 7th page and they go back to the 1st as soon as they play well. It's a meritocracy. Burying things deeper into more and more layers of clicks is inconvenient.

Also, with the number of people visiting the place dropping (we used to have 400+ registered people during weekdays, now we're lucky to hit half that many), compartmentalizing things is going to cause people to stick to the one big forum for the big names and leave the rest empty.

 

Pulisic on the 4th page isn't the problem. It's a symptom of the problem. Let's please make the change.

There are some things I would tweak with the proposal though. I don't like coaches and youth together. It's not intuitive. I also don't like highly promising youth player threads buried 10 pages below a bunch of tweens who are highly unlikely to ever become much of anything.

 

So you're saying that compartmentalizing will result in popular threads being popular and unpopular threads not being popular?

 

I hope it stays as it is. I don't want to be at the mercy of only my own interests, we already live in a world where more and more we can choose only to read what we want to read. I want to be surprised by threads of players I don't know much about, or have forgotten.

 

Can't you just go visit those types of threads in their new homes?

 

I'm also in the 'no' camp.

Players threads are usually active when the players are playing (and doing well) or when people are having an active discussion about the players. If I don't see a player I'm interested in on the front page, it's not hard to click to the next page.
--In short, having a player bump down a page or so isn't really an inconvenience.

I've also always liked getting a sense for all the Yanks Abroad, and it's easier to do that if they're all in one place. It's fun learning about their careers and hoping for them to grow and perform well (even if they're not at the top level).
--Creating sub-forums will make this a bit more tedious and harder to do.

And I appreciate the work some posters do to keep us updated on players like Rokas Pukstas (or Mike Lansing, or Bryan Okoh, or...). I'd hate for their efforts to be hidden in another sub-forum.

 

More buried in the tree = people less likely to visit.

Now some of the people visiting for the big names spill over to comment about less well-known players, since the thread pops at them once in a while. How often do you see a post saying "I didn't know he was playing today" referring to some guy like Gyau or Wright? That's someone who came to read about Pulisic or Weah and saw the thread for the other guy near the top.

 

I don't understand the practical complaint here... do other people just not use the "watched threads" feature on the account page?

https://www.bigsoccer.com/watched/threads

 

Does the functionality exist to have filtered folders?

So you could find the Pulisic thread on Yanks Abroad classic or the Yanks Abroad top 5 folder Or Yanks Abroad Italy folder but it's the same thread in all three places.

Just a different way of organize which threads you see.

Otherwise I like it as it is.

 

I don't really like the idea. However, if it is done, may I suggest going a little beyond the "Big 5" leagues? I think it may be better to use the leagues that frequently contain multiple real national team prospects, as that's what many people use this forum for. To my eyes, that means the big 5 plus Netherlands/Belgium/maybe Portugal/Championship.

Still a little awkward as there are five legitimate fringe national teamers in Serie B, good youth nats in 2.Bund and La Liga 2, but I'll be a little surprised if that persists.

I'm somewhat nervous that everywhere else will be a wasteland. Even the gameday forum, which has made some of the regular forums less cluttered with pbp, mostly only really perks up for Milan / Juve / Forest / PSV.

 

I don't know anything about how BS' XenForo instance is set up, but this is hypothetically as simple as installing a new XF theme. Looking at the client-side files, it looks like BS uses a ThemeHouse theme, and they currently offer a free dark-mode theme here: https://www.themehouse.com/xenforo/2/themes/ui-x-dark

However, BS has been around for a long long time and is seemingly maintained for free. It wouldn't surprise me if the version of XenForo that BS uses is so old that it doesn't look for "prefers-color-scheme: dark" media requests. If that's the case, then it's a whole thing just to add one measly little optional theme.

 

This is what the "Watched Threads" feature is supposed to be for, only it's site-wide instead of narrowed by sub-forum.

 

Now THAT would be useful, organizing your "My Threads" by sections. As is if you got 20 updates on the USMNT forum today, for example, you won't see the 5 you got yesterday in the Women's Soccer forum.

 

I can't remember the last time I went to the YA forum. I just use "watched threads." If I hear of a player that sounds interesting or a guy moves to Europe, I just search for his thread and then watch it. Who cares if Pulisic's thread is on page 4?

 

Well if that is the way you all use the forum then it makes little to no difference how it is organized for you, right?