Should we consider breaking up YA by country/region?

I use a combination of "Watched Forums" and "Watched Threads." If you're interested in a player, but don't post in his thread, it won't show up in "Watched Threads."

My wish list would include a "Hide" feature for players who are technically US citizens, but have chosen to play for another country. I'm rarely interested in them.

 

I think Yanks Abroad has a pretty great community of posters, and I worry this would be diminished by balkanizing the place. I've seen it happen before.

I don't think they would have bothered to post in this thread if it didn't matter to them? What I'm reading is most people like it as it is, but for those who (also) want to follow specific players without having to wade through the other threads, the tools already exist to do this.

 

Watched thread first, the forums after. They don't exclude one another.

 

Nope, it doesn't. But it also seems unnecessary.

 

I don't see how folders vs. scrolling/searching thread titles is worse, but we've also all been slogging through this org for a long time so either works. But I, for one, tend to check my footie results by league, so if I'm dipping into some soccer results, I usually do the EPL (or Bund or Ered etc.) in one shot - swinging by here after checking scores to catch up on performance, so folders make sense to me. I usually jump from, say, Bund results and standings page then come here to check Pefok et al to Aaronson to JAB to whoever else might still be in the league and have played that day, so organizing that makes jumping from players within the league easier works for my brain. But maybe not everyones.

 

It's extremely cluttered. Anyone who touches a 1st team pitch is lumped in with our top 5-10 players. This YA section has 586 pages going back to 2002 FFS. YA Academy classification has issues. Coaches being in the academy section make little sense.

Some people just fight change. I remember all the uproar about the new layout for the forum being too confusing.

 

The key NT players will drive the most interest either way so it’s not really needed. Plus it’s fun seeing random bumps like Michael Bradley or Giuseppe Rossi.

 

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Why is this an important distinction? The question this raises is the same one @TheFalseNine brought up earlier in this thread: is this a forum for tracking the careers of Yanks Abroad in order to evaluate their potential for the national team? If the answer to that question is "yes", then why bother with their own section, and why not fold YA into "USA Men"?

If you're frustrated when you have to click through to the 2nd page to find Pulisic's thread, then you should be leveraging "Watched Threads" more, as you don't seem to find value in YA's M.O, which is to follow and discuss the career for ANY American playing professional soccer abroad.

I agree that the "Academy vs main forum" division should be better fleshed out and more stringently enforced.

 

Because we have had hundreds of YA's over the years, and at any given time a minimum of 40-50+ throughout the various tiers. As is my opinion, it has become an incredibly bloated library of players.

I'm not frustrated in the least btw. The question is what is most efficient/effective. As with business it can be discussed without adding emotion as you are. Which appears to be why you misunderstood my post. I'm suggesting a superior catalogue to follow all YA abroad.

 

"efficient / effective" to what end??? And for whom is it more efficient? Any further division of the subforum will increase the labor required by the mods every transfer window...

I'm not "getting emotional" ( ), I'm pointing out logical inconsistencies: if this forum "isn't about the national team" then why is it important to stratify Yanks playing soccer abroad based on league strength? What is bad about "lumping in" obscure YAs with "our top 5-10 players" when the forum isn't about the national team?

If your "superior cataloging" isn't just broad geographic sub-forums and dissolving academy (which would allow youth players, senior players, and managers to coexist), then you're increasing complexity which will require more labor from the mods and result in even less accurate organization because soccer players move a lot and mods do a thankless job for no money.

Ultimately, this feels like a solution searching for a problem.

 

I don't think folding it in would be a good idea, nor would it solve the issues being discussed. I'm mostly using it to point out how subjective these organizational schemes are... is prioritizing "top YA players" (whatever that means) threads not just doing national team discussion by another name?

I agree that searching for a specific player page-by-page is tough and frustrating, but I think there are things we could do to make that easier without breaking up the forum. Ex: a standardized title formula would help our pattern seeking brains find specific information in a list of thread titles more than breaking up the forums by league strength, country, or region.

 

If there is a problem i would describe it as a high volume of player threads that have little to no discussion but are consistently updated by a small number of posters. So, the breadth and depth of interest in those players is minimal but due to the hard work of some posters their threads are updated regularly enough to “clutter” things.

i like your idea of patterned thread naming.

 

Yes please!!!

It doesn’t have to be every nation but some categories would help.

Let me recommend….

(1) England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany

(2) Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium

(3) Rest of Europe

(4) Outside Europe

…Just that would make YA so much easier to navigate.

 

Personally i would probably reduce to three because my brain likes things in 3s.

 

More clutter.

The Gameday threads are rarely used, I'm one of the few trying to push them. The Academy section is low-traffic, with the 1st page showing stuff from Saturday (we're turning Wednesday already).

What would be the criteria, then? Two forums, one for Top 5 leagues (leaving Pepi, Dest, and Tillman out) and one for the rest?

Three forums? Top 5, other NT and bubble guys, and a third for guys who're not part of the NT so far?

Isn't that conflating it with USMNT already?

So the first thread will have Turner (who doesn't play) but Horvath (who is playing now in the Ch'ship) will be in the second? Before voting we'd need to know exactly for what we're voting for.

What is the proposed structure of the sub-threads?

 

I see a poll here. My question is will it actually be used in determining the decision on what to do?

I'm not passionate one way or another about what is chosen in the end, but I am curious about the current results of the poll vis-à-vis the direction of the conversation at the moment.

 

I think this demonstrates the way that users come to the forum with different objectives. What you describe as clutter is one of the main reasons I visit YA. To me, "clutter" is (for example) debating Thomas Tuchel's job prospects for a half page in Pulisic's thread or constantly rehashing the various theories as to why Matthew Hoppe can't get playing time.

To be clear, I'm not criticizing people who primarily come here to participate that kind of discussion (lord knows I've lead threads WAY off topic with tangents!), I'm just pointing out that those different types of content are equally valuable to different users. Many of the suggested reorganizations serve a certain use-case, and I want to ask subjective questions about why that's more valuable than other use-cases in the hope of getting people to consider how other users think about and use the forums.

 

Too complicated, would get confusing.

I've been here for years, and I still don't know the difference between the "USA Men" and "USA Men: News and Analysis" threads.

 

Is the real problem here that a significant number of people don't want to see updates about less USMNT-relevant players, and consider that clutter?