What I'm going to do to make MHR a better place

awesome advice that I’m going to do my best to take to heart.

thanks & rec’d SaT

Let’s face it, we the fans won’t help the Broncos if we’re completely divided. I’m not saying we should all have the same point of view, but a strong dose of unitednessization (needed to create a word) would surely help. Rec’d

Very well said.

I catch myself attaching to the team, the game, trolls, etc. and I just have to remind myself that it really isn’t that important.

Thanks Tack. Thoughtful, with nice execution.

Please don’t deprive us of your personal perspective and great writing though…

just what I needed. thanks.

plus 2 pts conversion. Must be a moment of truth for you :)

Especially, points 2, 6, and 10. Lately, I’ve been thinking someone should do a psychology experiment of the internet blogger and call it “Internet Blogging: Why I absolutely have to convince everyone of my opinion”.

;)

(no offense meant… almost all of us are guilty of this to some extent at one point or another during this crazy offseason)

The world would be a better place if we all approached all of life from this sort of responsible place.

•Imagine this: someone posts a Fanshot with the intent to make MHR get upset. The line below it: “0 comments, 0 recs”. B-E-A-utiful.

You get a rec from me. That one line would get you a second rec (if I could do it).

Great job!

Imagine this: someone posts a Fanshot with the intent to make MHR get upset. The line below it: “0 comments, 0 recs”. B-E-A-utiful.

That would be so fantastic. Thanks for the great article :)

I’m certainly guilty of #3 and #6 and hereby vow to better adhere to #7.

and now i expect to be flogged for pretension! ^^

Love the fact that you look inward first, when approaching this issue.

1. Just a game, just some fans: I appreciate what you are saying about objectivity, and I agree, it isn’t the key to the site. There are some voices here that are known for their objectivity, and they are some of the most respected posters here, but even they would tell you that objectivity isn’t the only way to fly. I also agree completely with not trying to objectify a viewpoint if you aren’t specifically dealing with facts that require that kind of handling. Lots of the discussion here is off the cuff, and every statement should be afforded the opportunity for amnesty, to allow the commenter to clarify if need be. Forcing a viewoint on a statement is a critical error, whether it is your own viewpoint or someone else’s… Having said that, i hold posts to a higher standard than comments by this criteria.

2, 6, 10. Stop trying to convince people. Like with objectivity, there is a time and a place for convincing sessions. What should probably be recognized about them is that convincing a rational person is very easy, and if it is difficult you are either A) dealing with someone who won’t or can’t be rational or B)need to come to a better understanding of the issue yourself. In general is just sounds like what you’re highlighting with these points (2, 6, 10) is the classic case of confidence in one’s own ability to reason. We argue and debate as a means of intellectually sparring and developing this ability, learning to approach an idea from multiple viewpoints, even learning to create those viewpoints if necessary to fully grasp the issue at hand. It is ok to engage in this kind of debate, in fact it is encouraged. Please don’t stop. It is the source of growth that this site provides in spades. Everything else here is just much needed comraderie, rest and relaxation (ideally). The key to convincing someone is to remember that the point is not to convince them. IF you are as prepared to be convinced as to convince someone, then you are in the right frame of mind for a debate.

(I once read a letter to the editor of a philosophic journal where a lady was writing in to question why there were not more forums and meetups for solipsists. I found it quite humorous. Her job title? Logician!)

3. Brevity is always nice. It is a good standard to hold yourself to personally, but a better standard is precision, and concision (see sig); a function of how you think, and a function of how you express yourself. They are both learned skills, and not everyone will be fluent in them. Brevity alone means shortness of comment. But sometimes a comment should not be short, and whatever length you sacrifice costs us, the reader, as you are denying us the proper level of insight. Quips are one thing, and a good quip is always appreciated, but in general the weight of an idea should be reflected in its density. A powerful or moving idea should have a lot to it, and the greatest artists are the ones who have shortened those ideas down into the smalles conceptually graspable units. I used to comment when tired: I don’t do that anymore, because rereading the brief, dense comments later, they were like gibberish. If you can be concise, by all means, do so, but don’t apply any generalizations of size to your comment word count. Better to have a stack of pointless words with only a single good point clumsily made than to have no words at all, or worse yet, a stillborn thought that ceases to exist once it is out.

4. Nothing wrong with self-importance, but I agree completely with what you are saying in this item. I don’t presume to know what motivates anyone here, not even the ones I am very close to. Its ok to guess or ask what makes someone tick, but it should never be delivered as an item of your absolute knowledge. We just can’t know that about others unless they disclose it themselves. The classic blunder of assumption. I also agree with the deeper point of appreciating the fact that everyone here is a unique voice, with an unrepeatable tenor if we just listen for it. I have found that when listening for that uniqueness, it confirms a personal bias I hold that people are basically “born good.” When you see just how different and varied all the different forms of “good” are, it makes it hard to buy into the notion that somehow the world has gone all wacky and depraved. I swear, its like good people are everywhere!

5. Blanket terminology. AGREED. Nothing so lazy as ignoring an individual voice in order to categorize them. This is rooted in our conceptual prediliciton for “unit reduction”, i.e. reducing what we know to a hierarchicaly (think pyramid) stacked pile of concepts that could potentially subsume an infinite number of individual concepts under them. Unit reduction is a key to remembering and knowing, but abstraction (looking at something separate from those unit reducing groups) is the key to understanding. Lumping someone into one group or another is just an excuse to not deal with them and what they have to say specifically, which begs the question, why deal with them at all?

7. Beautifully said. Imagine indeed. You don’t have to imagine it, either, as it happens regularly around here, where a poor argument or inciteful post is simply ignored (so much so that it makes a terrible example here!) ~100% ignored is a lofty goal, but individuals in this community have proven time and again that they are up to it. At worst, there is the almost artistic flaming that gets unloaded on the worst offenders. C’est la vie and all that french sounding stuff. Sometimes people are just asking for it… What I like most about the “ignore” is that it can recharge your faith in others, a useful side effect.

8. This is a wonderfully high standard. Personal growth from a football fan blog… who woulda thunk it? :) But it is possible and members comment every day on it. MHR is too awesome for words sometimes…. Its why I can’t stop coming back.

9. Good luck with that! I’m so far behind on my MHR reading, let alone my re-reading that I couldn’t catch up with a month of Sundays, a source of newfound dissappointment for me. I rely so much on the community rec’s to keep me informed on the best discussions and topics, that I worry that I might be missing something good… but then I remember what kind of poster makes up MHR and I feel like if I miss soemthing good, it will be the exception to the rule….

erm…so much for concision….

eschew arcane formulations, as alluded to in your point number four.

All 10 of them are pertinent. Thanks for taking the time Sharpe. Rec’d.

Thanks for the compliment. You are learning to abide, man. I like your comment about my “persona.” I’ll have to keep you guessing on that one, but generally I am that way.

I think you are evolving, ha!

I’m going to do a full post on this, but you touch on it nicely. This is a game. It’s not Nam or Iraq or your mortgage payment. Take a breath and enjoy the “process” of being a fan. Once you get to this point, the games become even more fun, and you can also rightly recognize as you have here that Philip Rivers is a human being (not really, but we’ll let him have it for today)/.

Too many folks have their emotional well being tied up in what happens on Sundays. Perhaps this is why the domestic violence index goes through the roof on Sundays as well. Scary.

•I’ll still use the occasional “big word” because, well, that’s just who I am.

I often get accused of ‘thinking I’m smarter’ just because of the vocabulary I use.

Sorry, I guess.

Awesome post. The fact is, even the most knowledgable and literate people on this sight are saddled with bias and crediblitity issues. If people operate from that foundation, the urge to engage in undesirable behavior diminishes greatly.

well put!!!

let no man think more of himself than he ought
                                         THE Apostle Paul