Tical21":1kfy7283 said:
How about I agree to start a thread every week and put my name on it and amuse myself with my incoherent ramblings, and then you can come in about three posts later and do your thing? Everybody wins, right?
I would love it if you did that. Kearly first called my attention to your writings, no doubt in an RT thread, and I quickly noticed about you (other than your classic Al Bundy avatar) the terrific insight, football knowledge, and constructive nature of your posts.
Kearly also pointed out ScotteMojo's posts, and boom! there was another guy I always paid special attention to. There are probably at least half a dozen or more posters most .Netters would include in that rarified air; it just happens you and Scotte are the ones I took special note of due to Kearly.
Expanding on that idea... If NFL teams can have a "running back by committee", why can't Seahawks.Net have a "Random Thoughts by committee?"* A couple-three of our prize .NET'ers could PM an article back and forth after a game, with additions and edits, by areas of specialty, e.g., offense, defense, position groups, or whatever organization aproach made sense, and one to call it done and send it out. I bet we'd have a pretty darn good result.
* I don't think we should call it Random Thoughts. Like Seahawks retiring the #80 jersey, there is only one Kearly and Random Thoughts (tm) should always be associated with him.
Really, what Kearly has been, is our own beloved .NET "columnist" with a regular and much-awaited weekly Random Thoughts article.
The columnist approach gets a bit tricky because part of the appeal of .NET is being able to interact in such threads, even for posters who write ridiculous things and make ad hominem attacks. Ridiculous things can be amusing, or a waste of space, but ongoing ad hominem attacks take the fun right out of everything.
Another factor is the need to keep things SIMPLE on the .NET administrative side. We all have complex lives, so I would hope there would be a SIMPLE way to have a football-knowledge-oriented, constructive thread "column", that was well within the technology capabilities of the .NET board software.
Perhaps our board moderators/admins can come up with both a technical, political, and board-content-organization structure approach for "regular columns", that makes contributing more satisfying for columnists. Possibly the columnist and a few of his (or her!) delegates are the admins, and can remove any posts or comments that violate the spirit of their column space. In Kearly's case, he would have no doubt erred on the side of being too kind and too fair to knuckleheads, and not want to spend his attention and energy that way. "He's just all about creating that great content, boss." A delegate-admin approach would be the better choice for his columns. Possibly the approach could feature the columnists' content in a way that limits the "attack surface" for angry and intoxicated knuckleheads to chime in with their ad hominem spew.
I'm sure there are numerous people in the .NET community who could figure out better ways than I've thought of to make the regular-featured columnist approach work within .NET. I would love to see that happen, and for more "columnists" to emerge with insightful content, with less ad hominem attacks involved. If this posts helps trigger some ideas, wonderful.