It now reads as follows:

No politics, no religion, no chatspeak (lol, ur, brb, and so forth), no unwarranted hostility. Please capitalize and use comprehensible grammar. Read this and this before posting. Follow the rules and you should be fine.

I always learn a lot, but rarely have time to participate or even read the comments.

But please do continue on the topic (and only on the topic). I appreciate all of your comments, and will address anything that needs addressing later this weekend.

As far as I’m concerned, Lookout Landing is the best baseball website on the Internet. It’s telling that moderators here end up being hired by FanGraphs or THT. I regularly implore friends of mine that follow other teams to check out one article or another here. I believe the mods, particularly Matthew, are fair and welcoming to new posters (seriously). I miss the halcyon days of 2006 and 2007 as much as anyone, but when I consider everything LL still has going for it right now, plus the number of truly wonderful people that I’ve met through this website, it’s easy for me to decide what my favorite destination on the Internet is.

That said, like everyone else, I have my concerns about LL. I don’t believe the attacks against, say, Coach or Taylor H are always justified. They can say something stupid, like “the trading deadline is another example of east coast bias” and be ridiculed, and that’s probably well deserved. But they also get attacked for things that no one would bat an eyelash at if written by a well-respected regular. Similarly, I believe a lot of good posters have been chased away because their viewpoints don’t match the current baseball statistics dogma. Several years ago people pointed to OPS and VORP as being key indicators of a player’s worth. More recently it was OPS+. Now it’s TRA and WOBA. I love TRA, but there’s a good shot that in three years there’s going to be an even better method to evaluate a pitcher. That doesn’t negate TRA’s value. Likewise, there’s still value in OPS, even if it isn’t optimal. People shouldn’t be dismissed just because they’re not up to date on (or because they prefer no to use) the latest statistics, and I feel like too many people are. The thread on Malcontent’s post about Griffey was a good example of healthy debate. Calling someone an idiot because they want to trade Morrow for Delmon Young is not.

Finally, I’d like to see off-topic discussions held to the off-topic thread. I never enjoy logging onto Lookout Landing, seeing a thread titled “Abreu to Seattle?” with 38 replies, and opening it to find a .jpg orgy. Lookout Landing should be first and foremost a baseball site.

I’m relatively new, and so I’ve certainly the recent experience of growing pains. I agree with some of the sentiment that there is certainly a bit of a click amongst the long time readers which leads to some occasional arrogant snark. However, the front page content is tremendous and the community as a whole is a tremendous beacon of good in a sea of blogarbage.

so suck one

I kid, I kid.

Just a few thoughts of my own…

The community as a whole I feel is pretty forgiving when it comes to the behavior of established regulars. In any other community, I would have never been able to show my face again after that stupid blowup (which I still feel terrible about) I had with a couple of regulars back in November. The community here was very receptive to my apology (I can’t even begin to tell you all how thankful I am for that) and for the most part didn’t speak of it again.

I agree as well that a regular or two should be given some limited mod powers to assist G/M/J. The sexy people have their own personal lives to deal with as well as coming up with content for this wonderful blog. I’m honestly amazed they have enough time to wade through the comment traffic here, so it makes sense for them to get some help with the moderation duties. I don’t think that these people have to be good baseball analysts, but rather I think they should be people who have shown they understand the commenting guidelines and have demonstrated that they are able to handle problems in a somewhat tactful manner I have one or two people in mind that I think would serve well in that role and I’ll be e-mailing those names to Jeff.

I have to echo sec108’s comments about the “sexy people inner cadre” and real-life groups of LL friends in general. I think it’s awesome that there are people here who are meeting eachother in real life. However, sometimes it feels like those people seem to form cliques that can be somewhat hard to penetrate and have become even confrontational at times. I think a lot of it has to do with (as Jeff pointed out) the inside jokes that tend to form amongst these groups. I imagine that people being a bit more self-aware about this issue is all it will really take to improve things.

Overall, LL is the most dynamic and engaging online community I’ve ever run into. I’ve met all sorts of wonderful people here who provide all sorts of insight into baseball and life. While I think everyone could afford to be a bit nicer at times, I still believe LL can be a very open and friendly community that can welcome and educate countless people.

There is intelligent conversation here, and the funny comments and references are what draws me in. But im not quite smart enough to get into some of the formulatic-mathish discussions and I feel like I add little when its simply ‘LL having fun’.

When gametime comes around, the place is focused more on that particular game so it doesn’t get outta whack.

I do think that people can be harsh at times. Given my personality im sorta glad I have been here for a couple years because most of the new ones now currently dont survive unless they speak ‘math’.

Now I have zero issue with all the intelligent stuff on here, im only saying I cant add much to those conversation because im only smart on rare occassions (again baseball-smarts). I just want to clarify that. If anything, im trying to learn stuff.

The humor is great at times but can be grating when I click on a post that looks interesting only to find the 20 comments have little to do with it. I think I fit in better in regards to the humor, which is prolly why I come here in the first place.

Im not for harsher moderation. Im more under ‘self policing’. There needs to be a better balance. I certainly like the majority of people on here but it does come off like a clique at times…not that I feel left out, I just lack interest in said clique.

To summarize, I gave the site a 4 simply because im perfectly fine with the commenters here, though I wish things were a bit more balanced. My lack of adding a ton to a conversation is more to do with me than the rest of you guys.

I still read LL very frequently, but honestly, I don’t feel the same about the community anymore. I was never a huge commenter, but I did participate in mostly on-topic discussions and have always enjoyed the combination of baseball analysis, game threads (a little less so), recaps and Jeff’s humor.

The good news is I believe this place will be boosted by the upcoming baseball season— Actual fucking baseball going on really does make this a better place.

I’m glad the community is tightening down on LLLJ aspects, but I still find it to be very cluttered these days. I feel like I can’t even participate properly in the discussions because I don’t stay at the computer all day commenting in the various front page and fan post threads. It’s hard to keep up with, and too much shit is moving between the sidebar and the main page— Its getting harder and harder to find good comments/discussions in the main page articles. I do feel there is a correlation my declining interest in the LL community with the rise of the off-topic posts of the day— I think it changed a lot more than the posts themselves.

I think the thing I notice the most is how I totally agree that many threads devolve into one-upsmanship (from Jeff above). It feels like nobody wants to have a good discussion, and they’re in a race to get in the next off joke/attack/meme comment that gets them props from the “community” at large. I think the problem is everyone’s trying to be funnier than they are all at the same time— It takes away from the humor that is truly funny and waters down the rest of the content.

It sucks though, I can’t even read USSM because of how many stupid fuckers come there and try to pick fights. At first I was frustrated with how much they started cracking down, but I totally get that they didn’t want it to turn into a locker room. Now all they get is trolling meta commentary on the site authors and moderators. I actually don’t have a problem with people around here being assholes to new people who repeatedly disobey the commenting guidelines— you reach a point where you’re not discouraging new people, you’re sticking up for how you want your community to be. I do get disappointed when I see shit like “you must be new here, read for a couple of months, then you can start commenting”. People that say that can go fuck themselves.

Anyways, enough rambling. I’m looking forward to actual baseball actually happening. I think it really makes this place shine.

I do think it is great and admirable to be somewhat self-critical, and yes, the inside jokes get old, and yes, at times the random attacks can get old. Still, at the end of the day this community (of which I am an often-reader, sometime participant) is far superior to most other fansites out there, regardless of the sport.

I would say that there have been a lot of comments recently made that read something like, “have you noticed how all the new fanposts or commentors are idiots?” and a bit of “my IQ is better than yours because I know more about ‘x’ subject”. Those get a little old and can make it more intimidating to be a new reader.

Overall though, this is really a great community. It’s never going to be “PG” rated, and people should get thicker skins at times.