sports should be split off from the game room.

[gonzomax]

The game room was a good idea but I think sports should have its own spot. It is a pain to run through all the posts trying to find the ones relevant to a sports happening. It is equally a drag to go through the sports posts looking for a game issue. The game room needs a bifurcation. I appreciate the division. I just think one more is needed.

[Zsofia]

Yeah, I don't think they go together at all. I mean, I know they were thinking, "well, it's all games" - but it isn't. Not at all.

[Asimovian]

Wow. I hate to be a Negative Nelly, but I just can't see it. And I'm so grateful for the Game Room that I couldn't bear to ask for another split.

But if you guys manage to convince TPTB, I won't complain.

[Busy Scissors]

I empathise with the OP - any other sports fans surprised how shite the game room forum is turning out to be? It just feels like a particularly lame version of MPSIMS (if that's the right acronym).

I guess the real problem is not enough sports threads full stop to fuel a forum, so there has to be all this D+D, finish the sentance bollocks mixed in.

A further splitting doesn't seem likely - maybe rename it the sports forum, thus quarantining all the penisvagina threads back into MPSIMS, and seeing how that does?

[Zsofia]

See, I think just the opposite - I see a thread that looks really interesting and then it turns out to be about baseball. WTF? Who gives a crap about baseball?

[Bosstone]

What about sports makes it so much more important than D&D or video games?

[Jeeves]

No, I am getting a little sick of all these forum splits. Sports should be in games, or I suppose maybe cafe society. We don't need another forum.

[Yorikke]

I guess the real problem is not enough sports threads full stop to fuel a forum, so there has to be all this D+D, finish the sentance bollocks mixed in.



It's the Game Room. People play games there. I like playing some of the games, and I like reading some of the sports threads. A split would mean another forum to read, as I'd want to read both the Game Room and the Locker Room (or whatever). No big deal, but I like 'em together.

Joe

[Antinor01]

Might as well leave them together, I don't mind wading past the sports threads to get to the interesting ones.


Just teasing guys, you sports folk have your place in this world too!

[Kiros]

They're bound to run out of classic rock bands eventually.

Aren't they? Please tell me they are. They have to.

[Geek Mecha]

I think sports fits fine in the game forum. If we need a split, it's to get the crafting/cooking stuff away from the TV shows, movies, and music.

I hate it when I get sauce splattered on my books. Don't even get me started on those knitting needles scratching my DVDs.

[garygnu]

I see The Game Room as like a giant rec room/basement with pinball machines and vintage arcade machines set up against the wall, couches and beanbags in front of multiple big-screens for both watching sports and playing console games. On the other side of the room are tables for board games and table top RPGs. There's a billiard table and foosball over there, and plenty of computers on a LAN...
All served by the same bar that hands out drinks in the Cafe next door.

[What Exit?]

I see The Game Room as like a giant rec room/basement with pinball machines and vintage arcade machines set up against the wall, couches and beanbags in front of multiple big-screens for both watching sports and playing console games. On the other side of the room are tables for board games and table top RPGs. There's a billiard table and foosball over there, and plenty of computers on a LAN...
All served by the same bar that hands out drinks in the Café next door.
Damn, that echoes my feelings exactly. If I go searching I even posted something similar in the introduction game room thread.

There is no need to a new split. This is much better than looking for the sports threads in the Café or lost in MPSIMS, IMHO, the pit and even GQ & GD.

Jim

[fluiddruid]

Well, I don't think it's necessarily ideal to have sports and games together, but I think it's a better marriage than cooking and movies is now, or that games and music was before. This isn't a forum where we have tons of little child forums, for better or for worse. I like the idea of the "rec room" - The Game Room is about recreation and activities. This can be anything from the Family Feud games to conversations about disc golf to D&D dorkfests to pro-sports discussion.

If there's anything I can do to make the sports folks feel more welcome, please let me know. If you all need stickies, updates to the rules, and so on - just speak up. I just won't pretend to know anything much about sports, because I really don't.

[Justin_Bailey]

I'm really enjoying The Game Room (and I should considering I was one of the loudest voices bitching about it), but I have to admit, I'm starting to feel overwhelmed by some of the game threads.

I almost wish we could limit the Madness threads to like 3 at a time.

Oh, now that I'm thinking about it, it would be really cool to tag each thread as Sports, Game Thread, Video Games or D&D.

[kevja]

Why should we limit madness threads?

The forum is new, it'll will still take a bit to determine the direction.

It's called the game room. Let the posters decide what games are to be played and discussed.

[fusoya]

As of this moment, it still takes more than 24 hours for dead threads to fall off the first page of The Game Room. You can't say that for any of the other forums on here, which goes to show that The Game Room is NOT overburdened. Cafe Society was HEAVILY overburdened before the split, and I am very glad it happened, but doing another split is not necessary. The only thing I WOULD recommend is to find a better place for food posts (even if it's bringing it back here), cuz they seem even more out of place in CS than the sports threads did.

And as someone moderating a Madness thread which isn't getting much steam yet, I think that whatever it takes to bring more people in The Game Room, the better!

[Bosstone]

Yes...food topics are out of place in Cafe Society... :dubious:

:D

Maybe we should only allow coffee and pastry related threads?

[Justin_Bailey]

Why should we limit madness threads?

Because out of 50 threads, 12 are related to Madness games. That's almost a quarter of all threads.

I just worry that The Game Room is quickly getting a reputation as The Game Thread Room and people who aren't interested in game threads (but are interested in sports or video games) won't go there.

[What Exit?]

Because out of 50 threads, 12 are related to Madness games. That's almost a quarter of all threads.

I just worry that The Game Room is quickly getting a reputation as The Game Thread Room and people who aren't interested in game threads (but are interested in sports or video games) won't go there.
I looked at the 1st page of the game room and I quickly found the sports threads. It still seems easier to find them in the game room than all over the board.

Maybe I am the exception as I am both a Sports Fan and Gamer, so I like the format. I think I spend most of my time in the Game Room now.

Jim

[fluiddruid]

I just worry that The Game Room is quickly getting a reputation as The Game Thread Room and people who aren't interested in game threads (but are interested in sports or video games) won't go there.Unless there's a really strong reason to do so, I don't want to shape the type of posts in the forum by moderating. It's not like it's one mook posting new games nobody plays - it's a group of very active players who want to run games. I don't think the role of moderating is to tell people "You need to post less because other people don't post as much."

Right now, for the most part, we are seeing a LOT of posts in the Game Room under a relatively few threads (under 700 threads accounting for 50k posts!). This means to me that we have plenty of room on the first page, and we're getting a lot of "bang for the buck" for each post, so there's no reason to ruin anybody's fun just yet. I tend to read a lot of the general gaming threads because of my personal interest, and it seems to me they're getting plenty of attention too.

I think a lot of the interest in on-forum games right now is specifically because they were throttled for so long. Now that it's more or less anything goes, we're seeing a flurry of activity. I don't think it's a bad thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if things settled down. Neither sports nor game discussion were throttled before the opening of the new forum.

Think of it like Cafe Society when Lord of the Rings fandom threatened to totally overrun it. A lot of people bitched and moaned and asked for threads to be closed. What happened? It faded away, for the most part. You still see LOTR threads but they're not constantly in your face. I think that's fine. Really, this is a community, and I don't think it's my role as a moderator to tell people what to talk about (within reason) because some folks don't like certain kinds of threads. If folks want more sports threads - great! Start more!

Give it time. Again, we're under 700 threads in The Game Room and that's including all the ones that were moved there when it opened.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

In my (ever so) humble opinion, it seems like sports stuff fits better in CS. A thread about Sporting Event/Team XYZ is more like a discussion of a television show or movie and its characters than it is like any sort of game for the thread's participants.

[Kiros]

Well, yes, Lord, but there are a number of us (judging from it, probably a third to half of the Game Room's regular participants, and possibly more since these threads are more likely to be perused and less likely to be posted repeatedly in) who see "The Game Room" and think:

(a) Cool, somewhere to talk about sports, gaming, PCs, consoles, whatever! All of our stuff that was getting hidden in CS or occasionally IMHO has a place!

instead of

(b) Cool, somewhere to play all of the thread games that weren't allowed in MPSIMS!

I won't argue that they aren't both valid interpretations, of course. But... it never even occurred to me that there would be "game" threads in that forum until I saw them there.

[bouv]

I think it's just fine the way it is. Would the old way be better? Where you have no idea if a baseball/football thread would be in IMHO, MPSIMS, Cafe Society, or even the off chance of GQ or the Pit? With them being all consolidated, it's MUCH easier to find a thread about a recent game or the playoffs, if need be.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

Well, yes, Lord, but there are a number of us (judging from it, probably a third to half of the Game Room's regular participants, and possibly more since these threads are more likely to be perused and less likely to be posted repeatedly in) who see "The Game Room" and think:

(a) Cool, somewhere to talk about sports, gaming, PCs, consoles, whatever! All of our stuff that was getting hidden in CS or occasionally IMHO has a place!

instead of

(b) Cool, somewhere to play all of the thread games that weren't allowed in MPSIMS!

I won't argue that they aren't both valid interpretations, of course. But... it never even occurred to me that there would be "game" threads in that forum until I saw them there.I'm not saying the Game Room should be given over entirely to game threads.
My point is that "gaming, PCs, consoles, whatever" has some aspect of audience participation. You play the video games, RPGs and whatever that are being discussed. Meanwhile, watching and discussing pro sports lacks the audience participation element and is thus more akin to the goings on in Cafe Society. Sorry if I didn't clarify well in my previous post.

[Darryl Lict]

i agree with the OP. Sports threads seem to get drowned out by the game threads. I say we call it the Sports Book. I'd be OK with moving sports back into Cafe Society though.

[Mesquite-oh]

It does not appear that the Dope is the place for a lot of sports topics anyway, especially compared to newpaper forums and sports websites where there are many more participants to discuss more specific and regional sports stuff. For example, I've wanted to start an NBA playoffs thread concerning Phoenix and San Antonio but I know that it probably would not get as much interest as posting to the Phoenix newspaper site. So to me, a split wouldn't matter.

[Busy Scissors]

True Mesquite-oh, but I think it's also true to say that a lot of sports sites on the web are absolute garbage, where you cannae move for dickheads. A respectful, decently moderated site like the SD could produce an unusually good sports forum IMO.

[Frank]

Moved from IMHO to ATMB.

[C K Dexter Haven]

When in doubt, back to basics. When these Message Boards were first started, Cecil thought there only needed to be two forums: "Comments on Cecil's Columns" and "Other." When we grew past that, we thought about dividing forums based on topics -- Economics, History, Arts, Agriculture, etc. That didn't seem to cover it. For one thing, we get discussions about topics that don't fit standard academic classifications. So, we sorted the forums based on the type of discussion -- debate (GD), question-answer (GQ), personal, (MPSIMS) and bitching (Pit.) The interjection of Cafe Society a few years later was a sort of experiment, because there were so many art/entertainment threads that they were dominating GQ and MPSIMS. Hence, we agreed to allow one forum dedicated to a particular topic, even though that topic was broad.

Now, we've added Games, and I like the "Rec Room" analogy. In principle, I would be against adding "Sports" as a forum -- why "Sports" and not "History"? Why not separate forums for cooking, movies, law, medicine, theology? I think it's more fun to have some hodge-podge.

[jacquilynne]

I think the failure of the Games Room is precisely because you've combined the two approaches -- subject and post type.

'Game threads' like mafia or whatever are *types* of posts. They should be separate from all the other types of posts, because of that difference. If allowed to run free, they're bound to overwhelm whatever forum they exist in because of their nature. They're not 'about' anything outside of the SDMB, they are their own raison d'etre. They're not post count parties, since they have a purpose, but the purpose is no larger than the posts themselves. To be clear, I'm not against game threads, I think they're interesting, but I think they're fundamentally different from discussion threads.

Sports and video games are subjects of posts. Whether you want to keep them in Cafe Society, along with the cooking and the movies and the what are you reading, or give them their own Cafe Society like cross-type forum is a toss-up. But where they probably don't belong is mixed up with the game threads.

[Justin_Bailey]

I think the failure of the Games Room is precisely because you've combined the two approaches -- subject and post type..

Whoa whoa whoa! The Game Room is nothing but a rousing success, where do you get this failure talk from?

'Game threads' like mafia or whatever are *types* of posts. They should be separate from all the other types of posts, because of that difference. If allowed to run free, they're bound to overwhelm whatever forum they exist in because of their nature. They're not 'about' anything outside of the SDMB, they are their own raison d'etre. They're not post count parties, since they have a purpose, but the purpose is no larger than the posts themselves. To be clear, I'm not against game threads, I think they're interesting, but I think they're fundamentally different from discussion threads.

Sports and video games are subjects of posts. Whether you want to keep them in Cafe Society, along with the cooking and the movies and the what are you reading, or give them their own Cafe Society like cross-type forum is a toss-up. But where they probably don't belong is mixed up with the game threads.

This, however, I agree with.

[gonzomax]

When in doubt, back to basics. When these Message Boards were first started, Cecil thought there only needed to be two forums: "Comments on Cecil's Columns" and "Other." When we grew past that, we thought about dividing forums based on topics -- Economics, History, Arts, Agriculture, etc. That didn't seem to cover it. For one thing, we get discussions about topics that don't fit standard academic classifications. So, we sorted the forums based on the type of discussion -- debate (GD), question-answer (GQ), personal, (MPSIMS) and bitching (Pit.) The interjection of Cafe Society a few years later was a sort of experiment, because there were so many art/entertainment threads that they were dominating GQ and MPSIMS. Hence, we agreed to allow one forum dedicated to a particular topic, even though that topic was broad.

Now, we've added Games, and I like the "Rec Room" analogy. In principle, I would be against adding "Sports" as a forum -- why "Sports" and not "History"? Why not separate forums for cooking, movies, law, medicine, theology? I think it's more fun to have some hodge-podge.
The board evolves. You made a change to add the game room and I approve. But even though I read the game and sports threads ,I still think sports requires its own .

[jacquilynne]

Whoa whoa whoa! The Game Room is nothing but a rousing success, where do you get this failure talk from?

From the existence of this thread. And also from the fact that I used to read some sports threads when they were in Cafe Society, but I don't bother reading Games Room because it's mostly game threads that I'm not participating in, so I don't see and read sports threads anymore.

[Justin_Bailey]

From the existence of this thread. And also from the fact that I used to read some sports threads when they were in Cafe Society, but I don't bother reading Games Room because it's mostly game threads that I'm not participating in, so I don't see and read sports threads anymore.

So because you choose not to participate, aren't you...

A) A part of the reason for the so-called "failure" of The Game Room

or

B) The failure is entirely on your end because you don't want to read threads you would normally read except they're in The Game Room.

[Rysto]

Frankly, there isn't enough discussion about sports on the SDMB to justify it getting its own forum. Airman Door's First Annual Steelers March to the Superbowl thread would probably still be on the front page. The fact is that wherever the sports threads go, they're going to be drowned out by other threads because there are so few sports threads. Better that they go in a forum with a relatively low number of live threads, so that they stay on the front page for longer.

[jacquilynne]

So because you choose not to participate, aren't you...

A) A part of the reason for the so-called "failure" of The Game Room

or

B) The failure is entirely on your end because you don't want to read threads you would normally read except they're in The Game Room.

I think we're splitting hairs on semantics here. If you don't like 'failure', can I use the word 'problem'? 'Opportunity for improvement'?

I think the Game Room, as it exists, is less than perfectly accommodating the needs of both game threads and threads about games.

[Justin_Bailey]

I think the Game Room, as it exists, is less than perfectly accommodating the needs of both game threads and threads about games.

Agreed. But I also agree it's ten times better than the old way where threads about sports were pushed from forum to forum like wandering beggars and video game threads were non-existant.

[What Exit?]

Agreed. But I also agree it's ten times better than the old way where threads about sports were pushed from forum to forum like wandering beggars and video game threads were non-existant.
Exactly. You can now go to a single forum and visually scan through the first two pages for all the active and recently active sports threads. This is a huge improvement.

I think jacquilynne’s and gonzomax's expectations are somewhat unreasonable as this has been a big improvement. I only participate in about 4 game threads, so the rest are effectively the same white noise to me that they are to the other sports fans. I just have no problem as now they are all consolidated in the game room.

Jim

[Skammer]

I don't mind the sports, videogames, boardgames, RPGs, CCGs, etc. all in one forum. But Lord, those "game threads" (like 'madness' ) are annoying. I keep hoping that whoever is posting in them will tire of them soon.

[Rysto]

But Lord, those "game threads" (like 'madness' ) are annoying. I keep hoping that whoever is posting in them will tire of them soon.
:dubious:

Without the game threads, I very much doubt that we'd have a game room.

[Justin_Bailey]

Without the game threads, I very much doubt that we'd have a game room.

Why would you say that? I was under the impression The Game Room was created for sports and video games, with game threads being thrown in because they're games you play on the board.

[What Exit?]

Why would you say that? I was under the impression The Game Room was created for sports and video games, with game threads being thrown in because they're games you play on the board.
That was not my impression.

There were two problems being resolved. A noisy minority asking for a sports forum instead of being all over the board with conflicting moderation of the sports threads and the orphan game threads that the MPSIMS mods did not want cluttering up too much of their forum.

So early on Frank hinted they were considering making one forum for both and would throw video and board games in with it.

I would have to search through many older threads, mostly in ATMB to show you what led up to this, but maybe Frank or fluiddruid will notice this and post.

Jim

[Thudlow Boink]

Because out of 50 threads, 12 are related to Madness games. That's almost a quarter of all threads.Yeah, but that won't last. Once the novelty and the "Hey, neat idea! I think I'll start one of those" factor wears off, and all the obvious good ideas have been used, they'll appear a lot less frequently. The same goes for other kinds of threads (game or otherwise) that have flashes of faddish popularity.

[Loach]

I would like it more if the sports watching threads were still in CS. The thread games are keeping me out of GR. The only reason I go there is because they threw the Death Pool in there. Not that anyone listens to me.

[Rysto]

Yeah, but that won't last. Once the novelty and the "Hey, neat idea! I think I'll start one of those" factor wears off, and all the obvious good ideas have been used, they'll appear a lot less frequently. The same goes for other kinds of threads (game or otherwise) that have flashes of faddish popularity.
The other thing to note is that there aren't 12 Madness games going on simultaneously -- several of those Madness threads are now dead(eg the Sweet Sixteen thread becomes dead when the game reaches the Elite Eight). Those dead threads aren't taking front-page space from live threads -- any thread that is still generating replies would be bumped over top of it. So the large number of Madness threads on the first page is as much a result of the low number of live threads in the Games Room as it is due to the number of Madness games running simultaneously.

[SkipMagic]

Why would you say that? I was under the impression The Game Room was created for sports and video games, with game threads being thrown in because they're games you play on the board.
The Game Room was initially suggested in the mod discussions because we curmudgeonly MPSIMS mods were severely limiting the number of game threads. (There are only so many "Words that start with the letter 'A'" threads a sane mod can stomach.) Unfortunately, our limits meant that the more involved games, like Mafia, could only be run one at a time. And there were a bunch of folks who wanted to play at the same time.

Sports threads were thrown in because they never seemed like a good fit in Cafe Society, and depending on how the threads were written, they could end up in the Pit, MPSIMS, etc... Very little consistency with the sports threads.

The video game threads... well, they were thrown in just to keep things tidy.

But in the beginning, we just really needed a place to put the game threads.

[Revenant Threshold]

I claim total responsibility.



;)

[Kat]

(There are only so many "Words that start with the letter 'A'" threads a sane mod can stomach.)

Are you trying to claim that any of the mods are sane?

:D

[SkipMagic]

We do like to pretend.

[Jake]

I don't give a damn about sports, and I'm glad these posts are being sent to the games forum. But, what if all the main categories in this board had 5 sub categories? Would we have more participation? Or would we just become a general, boring board with idiots of all ages? I'd like to see the board's readership expand, and participation along with it, but at what cost? Also, I can't see this board's readership increase significantly without more ads of some sort, which, in my opinion, would destroy the reason for the boards existence.

[appleciders]

I'm going to go against the flow a little here.

I like to browse. This site is great because I can browse here and get exposed to things I might not otherwise try. So my needs are best served when I see as many different threads as possible, and that means that the fewer forums we have, the better my experience here is. I'm opposed to shunting sports off to its own forum not just because I think there aren't enough sports threads to cover it but because I'll never check the sports forum, and so I'll miss things I might otherwise have read.

[alterego]

This board isn't much for the notion of hierarchy, but vBulletin does support subfora.

[Scissorjack]

Yeah, but that won't last. Once the novelty and the "Hey, neat idea! I think I'll start one of those" factor wears off, and all the obvious good ideas have been used, they'll appear a lot less frequently. The same goes for other kinds of threads (game or otherwise) that have flashes of faddish popularity.

Hopefully, because right now they're a moronic waste of bandwidth.

[Antinor01]

Hopefully, because right now they're a moronic waste of bandwidth.

That's how some of us feel about the sports threads. But I really don't see why the game threads, sports, "audience participation" and such can't get along in one forum.

[dalej42]

I've hesistated to start a lot of sports threads in The Game Room because I'm still trying to see where the "Don't be a jerk" line is in the new forum. I think I'd be a jerk starting 5 Harry Potter threads in Cafe Society in a month. The Game Room might be able to handle a larger number of threads from an individual member.

[What Exit?]

I've hesistated to start a lot of sports threads in The Game Room because I'm still trying to see where the "Don't be a jerk" line is in the new forum. I think I'd be a jerk starting 5 Harry Potter threads in Cafe Society in a month. The Game Room might be able to handle a larger number of threads from an individual member.
Please start them. We could use some more sports threads to balance out the games. We were the crowd that begged for a forum, lets use it.

I have my baseball thread going of course and Ellis Dee has had his NFL lead up to the draft. These are the sustained threads. I am surprised by how little the NHL & NBA playoffs are getting attention.

I think football season and late baseball season are usually when we have the most sports threads. I would say late August through February.

Jim

[fluiddruid]

I've hesistated to start a lot of sports threads in The Game Room because I'm still trying to see where the "Don't be a jerk" line is in the new forum. I think I'd be a jerk starting 5 Harry Potter threads in Cafe Society in a month. The Game Room might be able to handle a larger number of threads from an individual member.By all means, go ahead. We definitely are seeing a dominance of forum games right now, and my rule with them has been to go ahead unless we say otherwise. This applies to everyone else too.

As a non-sports example: I got a reported post about two World of Warcraft threads. Well, to me, they were on totally different topics - as far as I'm concerned, WoW PVP is different than on-board guild recruitment which is different from general discussion. The same thing applies to sports. More than one thread is fine unless we're talking about a particular topic (not a particular sport/game, a particular topic). This means we can probably merge threads about the same exact game or athelete, but if you want to make a bunch of threads about different topics within some sport, that's fine.

There really is no maximum number of threads you can start at once. Frankly I don't look at who's starting the threads. As long as people are having fun, go for it. I don't think we're in any danger of having too many threads in The Game Room for right now, particularly not on sports topics.

FWIW, I agree - we simply don't have enough sports threads to warrant its own forum, even if we were wanting to make a bunch of subforums.

[Cervaise]

I agree with what Jake and appleciders are saying in posts 51 and 52. The fewer fora, the better. We are a board of general interest; we don't specialize. One of the hallmarks of our membership is that most of us are interested in many things, and by organizing the boards by discussion type rather than subject, it's possible to stumble across stuff you'd never see otherwise. That's inherent to this board's character, and fine-graining the sections, I think, is a contradiction in tone.

Yeah, the dopey game threads are a bit overwhelming, but come on, the forum was set up, what, a day and a half ago? ;) Give it time, it'll self-correct. I've been around long enough to remember when IMHO was created, and it went through similar growing pains.

[MadTheSwine]

I like sports.

I like games.

I like the Game Room!

[NAF1138]

I claim total responsibility.



;)


I think you might not be wrong.

[silenus]

The Game Room is nice. A seperate Sports forum would not be. Too many subfora = bad.

[Ellis Dee]

I completely disagree with the premise of the OP. Having almost no interest whatsoever in playing mb games, I feel the pain of having to skim past so many game threads. However, I don't begrudge that at all. As one of the agitators for a sports forum, I consider the Game Room a rousing success.

And while I have more than my fair share of complaints around here, I won't hesitate to praise the administration for the new Game Room forum. It isn't exactly what I recommended; it's better. Way better.

Though I would agree that cooking threads feel out of place in the Cafe. In my original request for a sports forum, I recommended that cooking threads should all go into MPSIMS. What is more mundane than cooking?

Back to the topic of sports, bear in mind that the Game Room was created in the dead part of the sports calendar, as alluded to by Jim. (I'm not surprised by the lack of participation in the NHL and NBA threads; compared to MLB and the NFL, they're practically fringe sports.)

Note that over the years us sports fans have grown accustomed to having to maintain singular, monolithic threads in order to not get lost in the fray. That's why you'll see 10 page NFL threads with the ultra-general "offseason" and "draft" topics. As we get used to having an entire forum to play in, I'm sure we'll eventually start to see a nice splintering of the topics.

Mostly it's just the season. The only real problem is that some of the more prolific sports posters, including me and I suspect also RickJay, won't be resubscribing, but instead waiting for free posting. So after a couple weeks, there will be even fewer sports topics in the Game Room. But again, it'll be in the dead season and some of us won't be able to post anyway. Just give it time.

ETA: Consider that once the NFL season starts, there will be at least three fantasy football threads, a Steelers thread, an NFC East thread, probably a few pools and pickem threads, and no doubt several topical player-related threads, most of which may stay on the front page for an extended period of time.