Fish here

[Kammrath]

I had a long visit with SI today about trying to make 'Community' feel like it's own separate thing, and not connected to each story. I'm finding that to be y'all's biggest gripe. (Right?)

Now, the stuff about, 'I can't post a GIF' or whatever is universal. Every system has stuff I like or you hate or whatever.

I think what Magik has come up with here is fine; since I own the logo and stuff, nobody but me can get mad about it.

I'm told that direct URL here won't work in a beneficial way to what SI is trying to do with me ... But that doesn't mean this cannot exist ... or co-exist ... or be a transition through the pain

Hey Fish, thanks for taking the time to respond. 

I want to start by saying I love your work as a reporter for the Mavs and will always read your stuff as long as you are putting it out (and I think the vast majority of us feel the same). 

However, I think the importance of the user-friendly nature of the platform by which we discuss the Mavs is being undervalued. I think the "biggest gripe" (IMO and from my seat of observing and listening to others) is much bigger than being a "separate thing." The "biggest gripe" is that the basic setup of the Maven place is not user-friendly for how we as a community have done basketball discussion in the past...i.e, it is not a message board, it is something else altogether different. I believe it is so UN-user-friendly that many, many people would rather just walk away from discussing there than to try and make it work (since it is unintuitive and confusing at best when trying to track with what has been posted and how to find what has been posted and where). It is not conducive to the level of interaction and posts that your forums and boards get. I think it is conducive to low activity (and would work at low activity), but for high activity I think it is basically a complete non-starter. With a ton of activity and traffic I think it cannot function to meet the needs of what we are used to doing during peak seasons. To summarize: the high traffic/posting nature of our message board community requires a very high level of user-friendliness to be sustainable.

I for one, am willing to be somewhat patient on this, though training camp is really right around the corner and this is the most exciting Mavs season in almost a decade. I will personally squat here for discussion (as long as it exists) unless I see a massive reworking of the platform over at Maven. Of course I will go over there to always read your main content though. It is just SO much easier to track what is going on here and to me it is THAT big of a deal. 

Anyways, those are my two cents, if they are even worth that.