The Children Are The Future-Cubs Minor League Update Sponsored by New Glarus

I’m really wishing I could have stayed in RI, just so I could have been listening to WEEI this season. Schadenfreude FTW

@ josh:

Apparently the Red Sox players met with ownership recently to express how much they fucking hate Bobby V (dying laughing). General Red Sox wheels falling off is entertaining enough, but that team always goes the extra mile when it happens.

At least the Astros are letting the Young Prospects like Moore get playing time, when the Cubs never gave him a chance.

Wallace has some power

@ GW:
His bat has sucked, but his defense has looked great since the callup

It looks like the fb app won’t accept my motto. Reposting here.

Last November I put up this post about FanPosts and FanShots, to try to explain the difference between them, and give some hints about what makes for a good post of each type, and what they are for.

Recently, though, I’ve noticed a spate of duplicate posts (last night, we had the third post about Nomar Garciaparra in the last three weeks), and so I thought it was time for a longer post giving much more detail about this site, how to post here, what constitutes good formatting, etc., especially with the first spring training game tomorrow, which will once again ramp up participation here.

Thanks to my colleagues at South Side Sox, Lookout Landing and Red Reporter, from whose outstanding guides I have borrowed much of what you see here and adapted to our community and what have become the norms here.

Many of you have been around since BCB was created in February 2005 and went through The Great Migration to the new platform last March. For those of you who are new, or still not quite acclimated to the system, this post is meant to be a guide to new members and a refresher course for power users. First, for new BCB’ers, take a look at the basic SB*Nation Welcome Guide. After that, read below for a more in-depth guide and specific expectations for Bleed Cubbie Blue.

BCB is NOT a message board. It isn’t a talk radio call-in show. The headline at the top of the page reads “A Chicago Cubs Fan Community Since February 9, 2005″, and that’s the most concise way I can describe this site. BCB itself is a blog, one which has built a community feel to it over the last 4 years. And unlike some blogs that talk at you, BCB offers FanPosts and FanShots where you can drive the conversation.

Follow me after the jump for an extended guide into FanPosts, FanShots and commenting.

Star-divide
FanShots

FanShots are quick posts, links, images or videos from around the internet — it’s not just for photos, as at least one person here mentioned to me; there are several different types of things you can put in a FanShot.

When Should You Post a FanShot?

Whenever you find a link, a quote, a video, a photo, around the internet that you think your fellow BCB’ers will enjoy.
When you don’t have any commentary to add other than your link, video, photo or quote.
When you can’t meet the 75 word minimum for a FanPost

How Do You Post a FanShot?

1. Click “New FanShot” — Seems simple, right? While logged in, visit any page of BCB and click the handy “New FanShot” button. Enter the link or pic URL in the proper place.

2. Use the FanShot Bookmarklet — Clicking and dragging the “Share on SB*Nation” button (which you can find here at the top of the FanShot section, right underneath the top ad bar; just click “FANSHOTS” on the front page to get there) to your bookmarks bar (the area under your address bar in your browser) will allow you to post to BCB quickly and easily while browsing the internet.

Once you have a “Share on SB*Nation” button in your browser, you have one-click posting of FanShots at your fingertips. Clicking the button will bring up a dialog box that looks like this:

FanShot dialogue box

Just select the type of FanShot you wish to post, apply the proper tags (more later) and hit publish (that “Front Page” check box is for me as the site admin, to put it on the front page if I choose — you’ve seen the blue box posts on the front page; those are FanShots that I’ve posted).
FanPosts

FanPosts are just like front page stories, except they’re written by you, the BCB reader. You can help keep the best FanPosts on the list longer by recommending them using the “Rec” link at the bottom of the post. Four recommendations puts a FanPost on the rec list.

What makes a good FanPost?

Make It Substantial. When I say “substantial”, I don’t mean it has to be a dissertation or manifesto. But if you see the dreaded 75 word warning, it’s either time to put some more thought into your FanPost or start over. If your post contains something like this:

words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words

… then it’s probably better as a FanShot.

Make It Relevant. Your FanPost should relate to the Cubs or baseball in some way. If you want to talk about the Bulls or the Bears or the Blackhawks there are sites on SB*Nation for that. If you want to do nothing more than post a link to your site, you’re probably a spammer, and should expect your FanPost to be swiftly removed. If all you want to do is post a link to a news story or other online article or page, try a FanShot.

I don’t want to completely discourage Off-Topic FanPosting, particularly during the offseason when many of us are thinking football or hockey. But if you’re new and if you haven’t made a FanPost before, your FanPost on tennis probably isn’t going to be received very well. If you do make an Off-Topic post (meaning, specifically, that it is not related to the Cubs or baseball), please put OT: in front of your post.

Off-topic conversations happen all the time at BCB. In some threads, half the comments wind up being off-topic. Some other SB*Nation sites have a Daily Link Dump FanPost or some other form of daily off-topic conversation. I’m not against starting something like that on BCB, but nobody has taken the lead. If anyone would like to do that — it would involve finding 10 or 15 relevant links each morning and making a FanPost — feel free to do so.

Make It Timely. This is something I feel very strongly about. If the link you’re posting is a day or two old, chances are it’s been posted once or twice before either in the comments or FanShots (more later). Check to see if it’s been posted before. Please use the search function (located at the upper right of the front page) to see if your topic has been covered in the last few days. If it has, your thoughts on that topic can and should be posted as a comment on the original post.

If you do have some breaking news, post away. Even though I try, there’s no way I can be the first to hear/read/see every piece of breaking Cubs news. That’s where you can help. See above, though; if there’s a Cubs trade or signing and you think that you are absolutely, positively the first one to hear about it, please take a look at the post list first; someone else may have beat you to it.

Make It Coherent. You are much more likely to get someone to read your post if you follow some very simple rules:

● Use proper spelling. You’re not sending a text message. There’s no need 4 U 2 use “time saving” abbreviations which only lessen the value of your post. It’s like writing a position paper in crayon.

● Use punctuation. You wouldn’t stand up and attempt to give a speech in one breath, and you shouldn’t try to make your FanPost one big sentence that never ends.

● Use multiple paragraphs. There is something about reading text on the internet that makes reading a large block of text unpleasant and occasionally difficult. The ENTER key can be your friend in comments. In posts, use the “P” button to make paragraphs; highlight the text you want in a paragraph and hit “P”; it will put the proper opening and closing tags there.

● Use proper formatting. You’d be amazed how much better your piece will be received if it’s formatted properly. If I’m greeted by a wall of text in your FanPost, I’m probably not going to make it all the way through. Break it up. Make it more than one paragraph. Use the ‘B’ and ‘I’ buttons for bold and italic text, respectively.

The tech team at SB*Nation has built a powerful WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, which I can’t tell you much about because I usually use the HTML editor (which is the default box you get if you’re making a FanPost). However, if you know how to format using Microsoft Word, you can make a perfectly formatted FanPost here at BCB.

● Start by opening Word.
● Write your post completely in Word, making all your formatting adjustments there.
● Highlight and Copy your work.
● Click New FanPost
● Click the “Paste From Word” icon (upper right icon in the WYSIWYG editor)
● Paste your content into the dialog box.

Give it a Descriptive Headline — “Question” may, in fact, be what you are posting, a question you want us to consider; but that doesn’t exactly inform us what the topic is about. Your headline should be informative, above all else, with bonus points for creativity.

Examples:

Poor Headline: Orlando Hudson (this is an actual FanPost headline from last weekend)
Good Headline: Should The Cubs Have Gone After Orlando Hudson?

Poor Headline: Nomar Garciaparra (this is an actual FanPost headline from yesterday)
Good Headline: Bringing Nomar Back: Pros & Cons

Poor Headline: What Do You Guys Make of This? (this is an actual FanPost headline from last week)
Good Headline: Brian Roberts And Jake Peavy: I Want ‘Em. Do You?

Stylistically, I have chosen to have all my headlines begin each word with a capital letter. You don’t have to do that, but if you do, you’ll match the site style and — well, it’d make me happier.
Tagging

Tagging dialogue box

To the right of the text area in both FanPosts and FanShots you’ll find the area for tagging your posts, as shown in the illustration above. Tagging is important because it helps your content show up in searches and in dynamically-rendered content areas, such as on a player page or in the new “More from Bleed Cubbie Blue” box at the bottom of each post. It helps increase your post’s exposure.

Tagging is simple. Just type the topics of your post into the area cleverly labeled “tags.” Use commas to separate tags, as shown above. If you type a tag that’s already been used at BCB, it’ll begin to autocomplete.

Players and Teams have their own dedicated area, which will help link your posts to the proper Player and Team Pages. These fields also auto complete, just begin typing the player’s name and it should fill in, as shown above; I typed “carlos marm” and Carlos Marmol’s name appeared. When this happens, just click on the name and it’ll stick with the post.

If you want to have a poll with your post — click “Attach Poll”. The options that come up are self-explanatory; just remember to save your poll when you’re done. The “Attach Event” option allows you to tie your post to a specific game. Clicking the “Attach Event” button will bring up a box that lists the Cubs’ past and future games — click the drop-down box to select “completed”, “upcoming” or “in progress”. Clicking the Add button will make sure you post appears on the page for that specific game.
Commenting

The basic layout of BCB is pretty simple: three colums, with links to various items on the left and and right sides and the primary site content down the middle. In the middle will be news items, Game Threads, game recaps, and other fun stuff like, well, this post.

One thing you may find in an article on the front page is a link that says “Continue reading this post” at the end. Be sure to click that to get to the remainder of the post (as you did with this one). If that link is not there, just click the “Comments” link to start reading the comments.
Navigating Comments

Right before the actual comments, you’ll see this:

Comment options

Display lets you change the view of the comments from Expanded (subjects and text) to Collapsed (just subjects are visible).

Checking the Auto-refresh box will toggle on and off the auto-refresh feature in the comments section. When checked on, new comments added to the thread will magically appear with a little note popping up in the corner with the name of the poster who made the latest comment.

Below those two boxes you’ll see keyboard commands for navigating a thread. They work as follows:

c – using the c key will take you to the first unread comment in the thread. This key does not mark a comment as read. Unread comments show up highlighted in light yellow.
x – using the x key will mark the current comment with focus as read. This is how I typically navigate the comments, using c and x in tandem.
z – the z key will combine the actions of c and x. One note of caution: often, if a new comment is added above the comment currently with focus (the one you’re on), using z or x will actually mark that comment as read before you’ve read it. I suggest that whenever you see a new comment box pop up in the corner, pushing the c-button before hitting z or x to make sure you don’t mark comments above your current point as read.
r – to reply to the current comment with focus, simply press the r key and a reply box will appear. Please try to use the r key (or click “reply”) when you are responding to a specific comment; this helps keep a conversation properly threaded.

Reading Comments

When you get into the comments section, you’ll see:

The subject line – the bolded area is the subject line. Clicking the subject will collapse the text below it down; click a second time to bring the text back.

Username/avatar – you can click the commenter’s username or their avatar on the far right of the screen and it will take you to that person’s SB*Nation profile page.

Date/time – after the username is the date/time of the comment. This is also where you will find a link for that specific comment. If you want to refer to a comment in another place, copy the link from the date of the comment and use that URL for your reference.

up – the up link only appears for comments that are a reply to another comment. Clicking up will take you to the “parent” comment to which the current comment is a reply. This is particularly useful in a long thread with many replies to a single comment.

reply – use this link to reply to that comment. Your response will be indented one level and put below the comment you reply to in order based on when responses happened.

actions – this is a special link that allows you to recommend or flag a post. When you click actions, two more links should become visible, labeled Flag and Rec:

The Flag link should be used if you find something offensive or if the commenter is being a troll or posting spam. I hope it won’t be necessary to use this button too much. If you Flag a comment, nothing will be visible to you or others, but I will see it in red.

The Rec link allows you to recognize a post that you find particularly informative, useful or that you think others would like to see. At the end of the commenter’s line, you’ll see a rec count (e.g. 2 Recs). If a comment gets three recommendations, it will turn green and get a big asterisk (not steroid-induced) in front of it.
Posting Comments

When it comes time for you to finally say something within a thread, you can do so via the comment box. This box is the bottom of every thread, or if you’d like to respond to a specific comment, it will magically appear when you click the reply link. As noted above, it would really help if you’d click the “reply” link if you are replying to a specific comment; this will help organize the comments in each post by thread and show each “conversation” as it develops.
Posting Images, Videos And Links In Threads

If you want to post a link in a thread, don’t just copy/paste the link into the posting box. Instead, first highlight the text you want to be linkable, and then click the icon at the top of the box that looks like a link. Doing that will call up a dialogue box that looks like this:

Put links here!

Then, copy/paste the URL into the box. If, say, you have highlighted text that says “Click here to go to cubs.com”, and then enter “http://www.cubs.com” into the dialogue box, you will get a clickable link that looks like this (don’t put the quote marks in the box or your highlighted text):

Click here to go to cubs.com

NOTE! Please check the “Open in new window” check box, so that your links don’t navigate away from your post.

For videos, if you find a YouTube video that you want to post in a thread or post (as opposed to a FanShot, where you can post it directly, using the Video tab), find the EMBED code on the YouTube page. It should look something like this:

Paste the above code into your post and you’ll get the following video:

About posting images, I know that many of you already post images in posts and game threads. Some of these are baseball-related, of players, and some aren’t. Images can greatly enhance your post and add to the information and/or enjoyment that others get. I ask only that you follow a few simple rules:

● Keep images small. When I say “small” I don’t necessarily mean the physical size of the image (although smaller is generally better); I mean the file size of the image you are posting. Large file size images can slow down threads, especially game threads. I ask for people to keep images in game threads to a minimum.

● Keep images clean. They need to be SFW. Just as I don’t want profanity on BCB, I don’t want images that you wouldn’t want to be seen viewing at work, or around your kids.

Thanks for reading this long and detailed post. If you can put some of these suggestions into your own posts and comments, they’ll look better and you’re more likely to get many more people reading them.

Now let’s play ball!
BCB is intended to feel primarily democratic, and most of the unwritten rules come by way of self-government by the community. These few official guidelines have been created and exist for a singular purpose: to help make BCB a place that is safe and enjoyable for everyone who participates. However, I would also like to remind you that BCB is my home on the Internet. Just as you wouldn’t go as a guest to someone else’s physical home and throw dirt all over the walls, please be respectful as a guest in my online home, both to me and to the other guests here.

Free Speech on BCB

At BCB, I believe strongly in free speech and in having a diversity of people participating, and sharing ideas that are relevant to the community. As a BCB member you are, in general, free to express your opinion without fear of retribution. The diversity of personalities, beliefs, and styles is exactly what makes BCB the strong and vibrant community that it has become. As proprietor of this site, I want to keep BCB free and open to everyone. However, I will remind you of what you all agree to when you first sign up for the site:

When posting at this blog, please follow this one simple rule: Before hitting “post” to post your remarks, ask yourself: “Would I be embarrassed to say this in front of strangers who were physically present in the room with me and could respond to my face?” If the answer is “yes,” then don’t post. BCB encourages and welcomes all opinions, no matter how strong; however, personal attacks, vulgarity, and other uncivilized forms of expression are not welcome. Also, to avoid trolling and spam posts, and due to past abuses by certain individuals, there is a 24-hour waiting period before you can make your first post after signing up. Thanks for understanding.

Under normal circumstances I will not delete posts or comments unless they are a blatant violation of these guidelines. However, in such cases, I reserve the right to delete posts without notice.

Since BCB IS a community, you should know that free speech does not mean the right to say what you want, when you want, how you want, without being sensitive to, and respectful towards, individuals and the community as a whole. In a community, speech is not completely free; it comes with responsibility.

The following are not acceptable nor permitted on BCB (excepting, in some cases, for obvious humor between people with an existing rapport) and are subject to sanction as outlined below:

Individual ticket posts are not permitted. If you have tickets to sell or are looking for tickets, post your request in the appropriate post in the Ticket Exchange section.
Posts created for the purpose of advertising or other commercial purposes will be deleted without notice.
Further to the above, posts created by users who have joined the community, not participated in discussions, and made their first (or among their first) posts self-promoting for their own book, website or other personal publication of any kind, will be deleted without notice. BCB does not exist to provide free advertising. If you want your book, website or other publication reviewed, contact the managing editor via the email address on the left sidebar. Further, in general your first post on BCB should not be a FanPost. Join in the conversation in the community before you make a FanPost.
In addition, posts that are thinly veiled press releases will be deleted without notice. If you want attention for your project, email a press release to the managing editor; all will be considered.
Gratuitous profanity is not permitted. I realize that in the heat of a game thread, occasional blue language may slip through. Please try to keep it to an absolute minimum. Further, language like this is not permitted in user signatures; if you put it there, it will be deleted without notice.
Creating multiple user names for the purpose of trolling, posting spam, impersonating a public figure (or well-known member of this community), returning after you have been banned, or disrupting the community is not permitted. Any such user names will be banned and/or deleted without notice. Further, user names created that contain profanity or drug references are not permitted; those will also be banned. Finally, posts made for such purposes will also be deleted without notice.
Personal attacks on community members, directly or through sarcasm/belittling, e.g., “You’re an idiot”, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, moron”, “Apparently, you’ve never seen a baseball game, or you’d know?”, “My Chihuahua knows more about baseball than you do”, or posts designed for the sole purpose of mocking any member of the community, are forbidden. Such posts will be deleted without notice and anyone making such posts will be banned.
Comments that are intolerant or prejudiced (sexist, racist, homophobic, etc.) in nature, e.g., “Why don’t you go play with your dolls?”, “The Cubs shouldn’t sign black players”, “Doesn’t Damon look like a fag?”, etc. are not permitted
Harassing/baiting of users, e.g., “How about that Heilman; isn’t he great?” posted five consecutive times after another Heilman homer allowed, “The Cubs will never win this game” posted 10 times in 3 minutes, etc. is not permitted.
Comments that bring politics or religion into BCB are also not permitted (which is a non-political, non-sectarian, non-religious blog), e.g., “Obama/Bush/Clinton ruined this country by”, “Check out this link about the war in Iraq,” etc. That said, you may occasionally see a political advertisement on BCB. Running such ads does not imply an endorsement of the candidate or views expressed in the ad, just as any such ad on a television station or network or in a newspaper does not imply endorsement by such an entity. Editorial and advertising at BCB are separate, and I do not have control over advertising.
Posting personal information about anyone — BCB member or not — without his or her permission is not permitted.
Finally, in very rare circumstances, if an individual is upsetting the majority of the members of the community, for various reasons, it may become necessary to ban an individual from the site for the sake of the greater good. The community almost always can police itself, but in unusual circumstances it may be necessary to step in. This would only be done on very rare occasions.

Consequences for Violating BCB’s Community Guidelines

Complaints about possible violations of the Community Guidelines should be directed to Al for review and consideration. My email address is prominently posted on the left sidebar. Feel free to contact me at any time.

I will aim to balance a high tolerance for the importance of free speech and low tolerance for minor or petty complaints, with enforcement of the stated guidelines on behalf of the entire BCB community. Here is the general procedure; there may be exceptions to this, at my sole discretion:

If you think a violation has occurred, either contact me, flag the post, or mention it in the thread. I will then contact the offending user privately, either by email or by issuing a formal warning on the site. No other action will be taken.

If a second violation is made by the same user, I reserve the right to take more serious action, up to and including a temporary ban (i.e., asking you to stay away for a few days).

A third violation through this process means some sort of action will definitely be taken. That might be as simple as another temporary ban — or, it might result in you being permanently banned from BCB.

In the event it seems clear to me that you have as your primary motive disrupting and/or upsetting specific individuals or the community as a whole, as noted above, I reserve the right to ban you before going through this process.

Procedure For Lodging An Official Complaint

If you believe a user has violated these guidelines and you want me to have a look at the situation, send an email to the address on the left sidebar, and also flag the post using the tools available on the site itself. Please include the following information:

Your BCB user name
The BCB user name of the user about whom you are complaining
The URL(s) of the post(s) in question

The last part is really important – this is a busy site, and if you can direct me directly by URL to the specific post you are making a complaint about, that makes dealing with it much easier. I’ll try to get back to you and at least let you know I received your complaint.

Finally, please don’t take any of these guidelines to mean that I am “clamping the hammer down” or any such thing. As noted above, BCB is intended to be a place for freewheeling exchange of ideas about the Cubs and baseball. Almost anything goes, if you are respectful of others.

FanPosts and FanShots

The guidelines for posting a FanPost are:

A FanPost must be at least 75 words long or it is considered to be unsubstantial and will not be accepted by the site.
A FanPost must in some way belong on BCB — in other words, it must relate to the Cubs, or to baseball, or to BCB, or to an existing thread, etc.
You can’t post more than 2 FanPosts or FanShots (you could have two of each, though) in any given day.
It is not permitted to use FanPosts, FanShots, comments or signatures for advertising. Anything posted in a FanPost, FanShot, comment or signature that contains commercial advertising is subject to deletion without notice.
Individual FanPosts or FanShots for the purpose of selling tickets or looking to buy tickets are not allowed. If you have extra tickets to sell (including season tickets) or are looking to buy tickets, posts will be provided for that purpose in the Ticket Exchange section. All posts for ticket sales at BCB must be for face value only.

Tips on writing good posts:

Some of the qualities that the most popular FanPosts often have in common are:

They expand upon the main idea with supporting examples, or statistical data, or a link to a relevant article, or a “thinking question” for others to consider, etc. — something beyond just the main idea itself. Don’t just post a large quote from an article and say “What do you think?” Post your own opinion, too.
They explore a topic, idea, or question that has not been explored recently, or at all, at BCB. Please check both the FanPost and FanShot recent post lists to see if your topic is already being discussed.

Keep in mind that if your post contains only one point or idea that is not developed, expanded on, or supported with arguments or data, it is really not a FanPost — it is a comment that should be posted in an existing thread, or posted as a FanShot. For more information on how to construct your posts, please see this post containing some suggestions and ideas on FanPosts and FanShots.

Since it’s a slow holiday week, I thought I’d post a few things about FanPosts and FanShots, what the difference is, and what’s suitable for each. There seems to be a bit of confusion — one reader here posted that he thought “FanShots” was for posting photos you take yourself. While you can do that (although we can’t host your photos; you’ll have to use something like Flickr or Photobucket), there are many other good uses for FanShots.

FanPosts are like the diaries used to be under the old BCB format. They’re intended to be on a topic that hasn’t been covered in, say, the last few days or a week, or something new to the site. If you’re thinking about posting something about a topic you’ve read about on one of the mainstream sports sites — please check the FanPost recent list on the right sidebar to see if your topic has been covered recently, or use the search function at the top of the right sidebar. If a FanPost gets hundreds of comments — like this one about Kerry Wood did — then it would be OK to start an overflow thread like we do for gameday threads, because at that point the post might start taking too long to load.

FanPosts have to have a minimum of 75 words. If your FanPost has a paragraph that looks something like this:

words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words

… that’s there just to bring it up to the minimum, then it’s probably better off in the FanShot section.

Some examples of well-written and thought-out recent FanPosts on interesting topics are here, here, here, and here. If I left yours out, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good — just wanted to give some quick examples.

If you something you want to post, and it’s related to a recently discussed topic — such as Kerry Wood being told goodbye, or Ryan Dempster signing — please take a look at the posts on those topics first. Your thoughts, in that case, might be better as a comment under one of those posts, unless you have some sort of new angle that hasn’t been posted yet on that topic. Just saying “I’m going to miss Kerry too” wouldn’t be considered a “new angle”.

FanShots are for things that aren’t long enough for a full FanPost, for example, if you find a link you think is interesting but don’t have anything more to add. Good examples of FanShots that have links in them are this one and this one. Or, it could be a photo you find on the internet. Take a look at this one and this one. You can use it to embed and post YouTube (or other) videos. Here’s one I posted last month.

You can also use the Recommend feature on FanShots and FanPosts to put them in the Recommended lists, which moves them to the top of each section and keeps them there longer. It takes four recommendations for a FanPost and three for a FanShot to get them in the Rec lists. You can also recommend a comment — this feature is sort of hidden, which is why a lot of people haven’t used it yet; under each comment there’s a link that says “Actions” — click on that and you’ll get the option to recommend a comment. Trei and the tech team say they’re working on making this easier to use (more obvious) in the future. A comment takes 4 recs to get it “recommended” — if this happens, the comment turns green and gets a big star next to it. Similarly, if you want to flag a comment as inappropriate, you can do that in the same way; it takes 4 flags to turn it red and put a little flag next to it.

When you are posting, just below the post box there is a link you can click, highlighted in yellow, that says “Show Editor Help”. The Editor Help will appear to the right of the posting box and has a short tutorial on how to use the editing features available here. Once you’ve looked through this you can click the “X” at the top right of the editor help box to restore the other options. I would encourage everyone to use the team and player name boxes; adding these to your post will create links to teams and players you mention in your posts. You can do the same for events (meaning, in general, specific games — click on “Attach Event” when you are making a post to see how it works) and also add tags (separated by commas if you have more than one).

I hope this clarifies what should go in each section and how you can make better use of the features available. This community has become the great place it is because of your participation. Please don’t take this as criticism — it’s intended to help you with some guidelines, to encourage more participation and to avoid duplication of topics, especially over the winter when we have no games to discuss. Enjoy and dive right in!
Since the SB Nation/Yahoo partnership was announced in February and BCB posts began to appear on the Cubs’ Yahoo page, we have had quite a number of new members sign up for the site through that page.

I want all of the new people to feel welcome here; also, there are a few things I want to remind previous users about, so that this site, which is among the largest SB Nation sites, can have both active and meaningful discussion about the Cubs. That’s why we’re all here, right?

First, a reminder: BCB is not a message board. While you can post comments like a message board, that does not mean that every thought that pops into your head should suddenly become a new post in the FanPost section. FanPosts should require some thought, some organization, and some formatting on your part — they’re supposed to be a “blog within the blog”. FanPosts have to be a minimum of 75 words. Really, that’s not that much of a requirement; there are more than 75 words in this paragraph up to the end of this sentence. If your FanPost contains something like this:

75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words

… as one recent FanPost did, then it’s not really a FanPost — it should be a FanShot. FanShots are for short little bites of Cubs baseball or related topics (if you do post off-topic things, please headline them with OT for off-topic). They can be written by you, or be links, photos or videos. What FanShots should not be are several posts in a row pimping your own site, no matter what it is. If your post is simply to say, “Hey, I’ll be at Thursday’s game!”, maybe your post would be better off as a comment under the previous day’s game thread or recap. And if you are looking for tickets or have extras, please post them in the appropriate post in the BCB Ticket Exchange section; you can find a link to the entire section on the left sidebar, and the latest posts in this section on the right sidebar. There’s one post for the entire season and there will be separate ones for each homestand. Individual ticket request posts will be deleted without notice. Reminder, face value only for ticket sales on this site. Thanks.

The next thing I’d like to mention about both FanPosts and FanShots is that, since this site is so active, I’d like to reduce the amount of duplication in posts. If you think you’re going to be the first one to post a major baseball or Cubs related news story (such as yesterday’s passing of Harry Kalas and Mark Fidrych), please check BOTH the FanPost and FanShot lists before you post. Or, search the site using the search function, which is located at the top of the right sidebar. Once you go into the search function, you can power search by phrases, words, user name, or date, or all of the above. If your topic has been covered in the last couple of days, your post might be better as a comment under the previous post. You can set the number of FanShots and FanPosts to show on the sidebar in your user settings.

Next, I’d like to address the various parody/satire posts that have appeared here in the last week. Parody or satire done well is funny. The first couple of these posts were funny. Parody or satire overdone or repetitive is annoying. I think the current run of such posts has run its course; let’s back off for a while on these. And while this is true, I also don’t need overdoing on the “fanpost police” posts. While I understand you are just trying to help, some people take offense at this. That’s one reason I made this post this morning, to clarify a number of things that perhaps weren’t clear. Thanks for understanding.

Finally, for old and new posters, checking out the following posts regarding formatting and content wouldn’t hurt, either if you’re new, or as a refresher course:

A Few Words About FanPosts And FanShots (posted last November)
BCB 101: An Overview Of Posting And Commenting (posted in February)

These posts and other useful information about this site can be found on the right sidebar under “BCB Specials And Site Info”. One final note, which is from the BCB Community Guidelines and which each new member agrees to when he or she signs up for this site:

When posting at this blog, please follow this one simple rule: Before hitting “post” to post your remarks, ask yourself: “Would I be embarrassed to say this in front of strangers who were physically present in the room with me and could respond to my face?” If the answer is “yes,” then don’t post. BCB encourages and welcomes all opinions, no matter how strong; however, personal attacks, vulgarity, and other uncivilized forms of expression are not welcome. Also, to avoid trolling and spam posts, there is a 48-hour waiting period before you can make your first post after signing up. Thanks for understanding.

All of this is so that we can, old and new members, get along better and everyone’s on the same page. If you’re new, one suggestion: read posts and comments for a few days before diving in; you’ll get a better idea of what this community is about if you do.