Good evening, one and all. This is the memorial Pat Coleman post No. 10,000. Congrats, MAC Freedom board.I'm here to write about the state of Post Patterns and Posting Up. In seven short years, this message board has gone from out of control to totally wacky. And I love it.
How else would fans from opposing teams get to know each other and share … well, let’s just say it, beers, rather than insults, at your local tailgate?
How else would we “find out” which team is planning on starting a five-guard lineup against a key conference opponent?
How else would we learn that I hate any of about 100 schools in Division III? (That’s true, right?) Also, that I am biased towards about 100 schools? And a lot of names are on both lists, people.
How else would we know that St. John’s students have an unhealthy relationship with puppies and kittens?
And when is that College of Charleston transfer getting here, anyway?
When this place started, I had to go through every night and delete old posts by hand so it wouldn’t overload the server. (Hey, it was free software, all we could afford.) Then we splurged and bought the “pro” version, which did that for us. And then we found free software that did all that and more.
When we started the message board, getting 2,000 visits was nearly a record for a day. Now it’s a disappointing hour.
When the board first debuted, it was a madhouse. SIDs were posting under fake names (anyone remember Dub-C or Master P?), and you know that coaches were too.
Other great moments include an MIAC player posting something on the board, realizing his e-mail address was visible, then posting message after message of filler text to try to get the post to scroll off. Or the entire school’s posting population who took me to task (in varying forms of the English language) for predicting their team would get upset in the NCAA Tournament. (They did, in their first game.) Or the coach who basically insulted the entire board for his conference.
Of course, people still think that message board traffic drives the majority of our ad revenue. But that just isn’t true. Industry-wide, message boards provide some of the worst ad revenue available. Who’s clicking on an ad to leave a message board? Hmm, yeah.
And yet after seven years, some people can’t learn. We still have people logging in, saying they’re a fan of one team, when posting from another school’s e-mail account. (Seriously – happened in the past two hours.) We still have people trying to register with fake e-mail addresses. (Uhm, let’s think this over logically. If the password comes by e-mail, how am I going to access it at that fake e-mail account?) We still have PEOPLE POSTING IN ALL CAPS! WHAT’S THAT ABOUT?
So here’s to another decade of Division III coverage. Seriously. Let’s do it all again. And let’s practice safe posting.
