The Future of VMB

[mondry]

Being as bad as we've been under Childress and then Frazier brings a lot of "this" out imo. Losing sucks but what also happens is people analyze and try to figure out WHY we're losing and we all form our opinions. But arguing them is a little bit like religion or politics were I believe one thing, someone else believes another and since there's no real way to prove it in the offseason, we just think the other persons "blind" "being dumb" "wrong", etc.

I don't like it when we get nasty with each other, either. There's no reason for it, even though I honestly don't think it's that bad here (though admittedly not maybe as civil as it was a few years ago).

It's not that bad but it is worse than it was so I get that.

The rest of this is a personal message to Jim.

I think you're a great poster man, rarely do I read your stuff and think "what a waste of time!" You're obviously smart and articulate and VERY reasonable when it comes to analysing the present. You must love posting as well, at almost 28k of them it's clearly something you enjoy doing and it's a part of you now so I wouldn't suggest stopping.

However, I think sometimes that gets you into trouble though! A lot of people here are comfortable running off of "emotion" and predicting the future or guessing the outcome of something that hasn't happened yet, even if their isn't a lot of evidence for it yet. Like for example year 1 and 2 people were already comfortable saying Ponder was a bust. Being as reasonable as you are, you always give the team the benefit of the doubt and take a "wait and see" or "too early to tell" approach. Which is fine, it's smart, you'll pretty much never be "wrong" because you wait for all the data necessary to come in before making a conclusion. Now ultimately I think we can all agree that Ponder isn't the answer so those people saying it in year 1-2 end up being right but the way you handle your approach makes it hard for those kind of people to have a discussion with you. The ones who post on emotion and probably aren't as articulate or reasonable as you are.

Because your arguments can't really lose (you'll never be wrong, you just might not be right) people don't see a way they can "win" so they do the next best thing and "attack" you by making some kind of snide comment or being passive aggressive in your direction. Sometimes people don't want to hear that voice of reason that you usually are, they just want to come on and post "Ponder sucks!" or "Frazier sucks!" I'm not saying you're the cause of the problem, but I do think this is why you're feeling like things have regressed so much compared to say myself or Kapp.

I guess my advice would be to try and figure out which posters actually want to have a discussion and which are just venting / running on emotion / not going to respond well to your approach and try to avoid them, it's just not worth dealing with them. Obviously some people seem to go out of their way NOT to be avoided so it can be tough. I think it'll get better though as the team improves and we have a good year!

[Mothman]

The rest of this is a personal message to Jim.

I think you're a great poster man, rarely do I read your stuff and think "what a waste of time!" You're obviously smart and articulate and VERY reasonable when it comes to analysing the present. You must love posting as well, at almost 28k of them it's clearly something you enjoy doing and it's a part of you now so I wouldn't suggest stopping.

However, I think sometimes that gets you into trouble though! A lot of people here are comfortable running off of "emotion" and predicting the future or guessing the outcome of something that hasn't happened yet, even if their isn't a lot of evidence for it yet. Like for example year 1 and 2 people were already comfortable saying Ponder was a bust. Being as reasonable as you are, you always give the team the benefit of the doubt and take a "wait and see" or "too early to tell" approach. Which is fine, it's smart, you'll pretty much never be "wrong" because you wait for all the data necessary to come in before making a conclusion. Now ultimately I think we can all agree that Ponder isn't the answer so those people saying it in year 1-2 end up being right but the way you handle your approach makes it hard for those kind of people to have a discussion with you. The ones who post on emotion and probably aren't as articulate or reasonable as you are.

Because your arguments can't really lose (you'll never be wrong, you just might not be right) people don't see a way they can "win" so they do the next best thing and "attack" you by making some kind of snide comment or being passive aggressive in your direction. Sometimes people don't want to hear that voice of reason that you usually are, they just want to come on and post "Ponder sucks!" or "Frazier sucks!" I'm not saying you're the cause of the problem, but I do think this is why you're feeling like things have regressed so much compared to say myself or Kapp.

I guess my advice would be to try and figure out which posters actually want to have a discussion and which are just venting / running on emotion / not going to respond well to your approach and try to avoid them, it's just not worth dealing with them. Obviously some people seem to go out of their way NOT to be avoided so it can be tough. I think it'll get better though as the team improves and we have a good year!

Thanks for that insightful post, Mondry. I've reached some of the same conclusions you did and I resolved a while ago to try to engage primarily with posters who I feel are interested in discussing things with me. I try to avoid those that aren't because if they're not interested, why force the issue with them? However, it's not always an easy line to see until it's been crossed, if you know what I mean.

That said, I need to be very clear: this thread was never intended to simply be about my personal experience of the board, even though I opened it by approaching the subject through the lens of that experience. It was primarily a reaction to what I see happening between others, not how people are engaging with me. I made it in part because quite a few board members have expressed their frustration with the state of the board to me. Some have posted about it too. I just perceive a level of animosity that seems unhealthy and a lot more baiting and trolling, people posting to provoke others rather than to engage them in a dialogue (emotional, rational or otherwise). It's not horrible but to continue the message made throughout this thread now, I think we can do better.

It was also intended as a reminder that I think we all need once in a while: football should be fun. It's a game. We take it seriously because we love it but it's still just a game.

[maembe]

With Ponder (mostly) out of the picture, it's starting to lighten up a bit. For awhile there it was getting to the point where every thread devolved into an "I hate Ponder" thread no matter what the topic. As someone constantly labeled a "Ponder Apologist"™ this coupled with the fact that everyone was in an overall bad mood due to the suckitude of the team, made it a bit less fun to be here, but compared to other forums it's still been much better.
I used to post on a different Vikings message board but left mostly because of the quality of the posting and posters as well as lack of any sort of moderation.

[mosscarter]

ponder may be out of the picture, but our qb problems are far from solved. in fact, we really haven't figured out anything. if you think about it, over the past 9 years we had one really solid qb year and we had to bring in our biggest rival at 40 years old to get that result (and some people even complain about that for god sake). personally, that was one of my favorite years of watching the vikings because we had a legitimate shot at the super bowl starting with the qb play of favre. we play in a division with 3 gunslingers and yet we can't seem to get anything figured out and it simply frustrates everyone from the top down. will bridgewater work out; like everyone else i hope but only time will tell. zimmer will get this defense turned around and where it needs to be, in fact i expect big improvements this year. like always, it boils down to our qb position. cassel went 5/6 on his first drive the other night, but he's liable to turn around and go 3/8 his next start we saw that all of last year. i just think everyone is fed up with rehashing the same thing off season after off season, especially considering the offensive talent on this squad.

[jackal]

ponder may be out of the picture, but our qb problems are far from solved. in fact, we really haven't figured out anything. if you think about it, over the past 9 years we had one really solid qb year and we had to bring in our biggest rival at 40 years old to get that result (and some people even complain about that for god sake).

I think Cassel will be fine ... Remember too we still have the best runner in the game.

[Purple bruise]

ponder may be out of the picture, but our qb problems are far from solved. in fact, we really haven't figured out anything. if you think about it, over the past 9 years we had one really solid qb year and we had to bring in our biggest rival at 40 years old to get that result (and some people even complain about that for god sake). personally, that was one of my favorite years of watching the vikings because we had a legitimate shot at the super bowl starting with the qb play of favre. we play in a division with 3 gunslingers and yet we can't seem to get anything figured out and it simply frustrates everyone from the top down. will bridgewater work out; like everyone else i hope but only time will tell. zimmer will get this defense turned around and where it needs to be, in fact i expect big improvements this year. like always, it boils down to our qb position. cassel went 5/6 on his first drive the other night, but he's liable to turn around and go 3/8 his next start we saw that all of last year. i just think everyone is fed up with rehashing the same thing off season after off season, especially considering the offensive talent on this squad.

Just out out curiousity, and I agree with your assesment of Cassel, who would have you drafted and please do not say Kaepernick or Wilson.

[mosscarter]

its a good question purple bruise. even looking back to the draft when we took ponder, both gabbert and locker were complete busts and if one of them fell to us we probably would have taken them. who would have thought andy daulton would have been the most successful qb out of those 5 so far (griffin went)? i'm as baffled as the next person i just thought we would be in a better position qb wise after all this time and really we aren't.

[Purple bruise]

its a good question purple bruise. even looking back to the draft when we took ponder, both gabbert and locker were complete busts and if one of them fell to us we probably would have taken them. who would have thought andy daulton would have been the most successful qb out of those 5 so far (griffin went)? i'm as baffled as the next person i just thought we would be in a better position qb wise after all this time and really we aren't.

Yeah that is my point exactly. You just never know. It is hard to say but some times teams luck out and get a Brady a kaepernick, or a Wilson. There have been tons of "cant miss Qbs" over the years that have turned out to be huge dissapointments all over the league. I am hard pressed to recall a really great QB that the Vikings passed on especially when they really needed to find a QB like they did the year Ponder was drafted.
The team seemed to be satisfied with bringing in stop gap type QBs like Cunningham, George, Favre, and that goes clear back to the time they brought in Archie Manning, Jim Mcmann, etc. etc..
Maybe they lucked out getting back into the first round and getting Teddy but although it is so early I am concerned that this might not work out either.

[mansquatch]

I've been here most of the 10 years, I think I started posting in 2005.

The board is who its users are. Literally. For me there are folks who post here who I really enjoy reading and whom I learned and continue to learn a lot from. There are others who post things that are less insightful. It is what it is. To me people come to the board for different reasons and that is each individual’s prerogative.

I do think at times this board over the past few years has gotten far more hysterical than in years past. I like to think that losing probably had something to do with it as well as maybe the board has gotten younger? Who knows though, maybe I just got older and notice it more? Regardless, I think more aggressive moderation would likely do more harm than good. I think the mods do a solid job of maintaining the balance here. AS was said above, just Foe somebody if they get under your skin.

One other thing you can do is what I have done: Develop a stronger sense of “forum radar” which is literally a form of snobbery where I decide which posts are worthy of my response and which are not. Yes, my nose is in the air, LOL! Mostly towards Jim. HAHA! (actually he is one of my favorite posters.)

Alas, another season of suffering, I mean Vikings football is upon us. REJOICE!

[acb13013]

I pretty much fit the definition of "lurker", and I've been lurking around this particular group of Viking fans since the old Usenet group. That forum became a target of a very prolific troll (with a number of Tarkenton-related handles), which led to Kansas Viking setting up this site. I followed over here because, like the Usenet group before the Tark Wars, this group has the most reasoned, intelligent, and polite football discussion about the Vikings.

The Daily Norseman produces good content, and it's great they've turned their popularity into Training Camp access, but my favorite discussions to read have usually been here. I see Mothman's point and I really hope that civility will reign and people will respect that some may have differing opinions.

Also, I have a feeling that things will really lighten up after the Vikes surprise everyone with a good start!

[mosscarter]

"Maybe they lucked out getting back into the first round and getting Teddy but although it is so early I am concerned that this might not work out either." i share the same feeling. it is because we are so conditioned to having qb's not work out. it just goes to show you how good moss really was back in the day, the moment he left culpepper never recovered. it is early, but the one thing you would like to see early on is a solid/decent performance to start with and teddy's showing last friday has gotten mixed reviews to say the least.

[Purple bruise]

"Maybe they lucked out getting back into the first round and getting Teddy but although it is so early I am concerned that this might not work out either." i share the same feeling. it is because we are so conditioned to having qb's not work out. it just goes to show you how good moss really was back in the day, the moment he left culpepper never recovered. it is early, but the one thing you would like to see early on is a solid/decent performance to start with and teddy's showing last friday has gotten mixed reviews to say the least.

I am hoping that Patterson will be the same type of threat that Moss was and along with Rudoplh just maybe whoever plays QB will work out especially if the defense is half as good as I think it will be

[indianation65]

I'd surmise those who like to throw punches can't do it in a Vikings uniform, so they do it here! All in all, no matter, we all want Vikings wins!

...wisdom

[Demi]

I'd surmise those who like to throw punches can't do it in a Vikings uniform, so they do it here! All in all, no matter, we all want Vikings wins!

...wisdom

I'll throw punches in a uniform! Right at Joseph's calf!

[Funkytown]

Regardless, I think more aggressive moderation would likely do more harm than good.

I agree.