A Long Meandering Series of Thoughts on Game Threads
As someone who (gently) nudged the mods into doing the actual hard work of getting a gamebot together for r/ncaaw... I’m certainly an advocate and applaud them for doing so!
I think routine and consistently-made game threads help expand the audience of the sub (and hopefully therefore the sport) because it helps normalize how and where to discuss things for people who are not already regulars of the sub. It's a chicken-and-the-egg situation - were threads not being made because no one cared about a specific game, or was no one commenting in the general day discussion post about their game because it's drowned out by an Iowa (sorry) or Virginia Tech (I'm self-aware) mass deluge of comments?
In the less-than two weeks since the gamebot started, there’s as many 100+ comment game thread (20+) and game day posts (5) as there were in the entire month preceding it, and realistically with the current auto-generated rules of using the sub poll, we're talking about at most 10 threads a day on average when it's busy (~30-35 teams, 2x games a week, assuming none of them are ranked matchups).
In that 2 weeks there have also only been 5 non-game posts that got 100+ comments -
- Mid-Season Thoughts
- Why UConn is Stuck in the Big East
- Kiyomi McMiller Flips Out
- 2x non-basketball Hannah Hidalgo metas
I'm not saying comment count is the metric for whether a post is worthwhile or not, but I do think splitting out game threads - even if some, yes, don’t get much traffic (yet!) - helps make it easier to have discussion for people who may care about their school and feel like they’re not just shouting into a void in (or getting lost in the volume of) the general thread. But potentially seeing their school pop up in r/all can also draw them to the sub and engage even if they’re not subscribers to begin with, and perhaps a Quinnipiac thread will get busy, now that it exists.
What’s more difficult, scrolling past the game thread you don’t care about or wading through 200+ comments on a busy game day thread where you frequently have at most someone’s flair to figure out context, or having a bunch of user-made game threads that are inconsistently presented (or wondering if you can make one yourself, and not wanting to overstep because you're a casual and assume the mods know what they're doing)?
There's no ban in the game day post on commenting on games that have their own post, and I’m sure most people are doing so still when it's brief summary or post-game opionion type of observation. But aren’t less-watched games without a thread significantly also benefitted by having the main game day thread not get cluttered up by someone arguing ten replies deep about how USC (either coast) is doing or why Kenny Brooks is leaving starters in up 30 points (sorry, that one was probably me)?
(RV) Nebraska at Iowa has 402 comments, #17 Cal at #16 Duke has 16.
There’s not a solid metric for what games (or schools) “deserve” a thread or not at this point (or for requesting one that won’t automatically be generated), but it’s been 13 whole days and the world hasn’t ended. Let’s give it (and the mods) a little time to smooth out the wrinkles before we start worrying about bloat, because I don't think they need to be put in the position of worrying about "Iowa and VT fans need a game thread, but screw Quinnipiac (sorry), we can't clutter up the sub or no one will know Hannah Hildago broke the fourth wall!"
Personally, I'm all for making the sub as easy to get into as possible for encouraging new fans (of the sub) to actually comment on things, and I think that starts with more straight-forward access to actually talking about games their schools are playing.