Gameday Open Thread / Cubs @ Mariners
The Cubs travel to beautiful Peoria (Arizona) to take on the not-as-good-as-they-think Seattle Mariners. Jon Lieber and Sean Marshall will see the mound for the Cubs. Jarrod Washburn (I've been told we bear a resemblance minus his goofy facial hair) will start, but definitely not finish, for the Mariners. Some site info after the jump....
I appreciate all the suggestions to improve the look of the site and I'll do my best to address all of them. Of course, they have to make sense with the overall site design and all of us writers have to agree on them. I did want to mention something on the "Subject" line in the comments. I know it'll take some time to get use to, but in the end, it should make for a better reading experience.
While the subject line is automatically filled in either with the title of the article or the subject of the comment you are replying to, we do encourage that you change the subject if you are NOT directly replying to a comment. Let's face it, there's maybe 10-20 comments that are directly related to the article written and then the rest are usually folks going off on different tangents. Let's try and use the subject line appropriately. On most sites that I've come across that do use a subject line for their comments, readers usually type the first few words of whatever they were going to type anyway in the subject box and finish the rest in the body section of the comment. Sometimes if it's a short comment, there won't even be anything in the body section of the comment. What I most want to avoid is situations like this (and not to pick on anyone, I just need an example and there are plenty just like this one):
http://www.thecubreporter.com/2008/03/03/cubs-weekend-review#comment-460
It's a comment with an update on the Brian Roberts talks but the subject is: Re: Cubs Weekend in Review. It would be better to just take the first few words of the comment: More on the Roberts trade situation as the subject and go on from there.
Now, when you do actually reply to a comment, it's probably best to leave the subject with whatever is automatically filled in. That way folks that are viewing in the "flat" versions will know what is being discussed. Of course, if someone didn't change the subject in the first place, that sort of defeats the purpose. So if you are replying to a certain comment and the subject line wasn't changed to reflect the body of the comment, go ahead and modify it to something more appropriate(leaving the Re:) and go on from there.
I realize it's all kind of new and different and it'll take some getting used to, but I do think it will make for a better commenting system...that is, once we all get a handle on it. So I appreciate if you all try to work with us on this and in return we won't completely ignore your site design ideas (I kid, I kid).
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