In addition to Tom's recent post about the Site Guidelines, we thought it would be a good opportunity to go over some of the great features that the SBNation group of site provides for each user. In addition to being a normal blog that writes about this and that we have the ability to host user created content for any registered member, basically everyone and anyone becomes a reporter that can post news for other users. We can host live game threads that update automatically and give a great place for fellow fans to join and talk about the game and general baseball information and facts. Basically what the site can become is a hub of information that can provide a one stop shop for all of the information and discussions you need.
Commenting in Game Threads and other articles
Really one of my favorite parts of this site is the fact that you can join a game thread or any other thread of comments and they update automatically. You don't need to keep hitting refresh to see the new comments and see if someone has replied to you. In addition there are some handy tools to navigate your way through the thread. First of all whenever you first go into the thread all new comments that you have not seen before will have a yellowish tinge to them. Simple enough reason why, so you can tell exactly what you need to read to catch up. The hot keys for navigating the threads are listed at the top of each comment section. They look a little like this:
Next up each individual comment has some individual features that make things easier to read along with. Here is an sample comment that you are likely to see around the site:
One of the best features of the live comment threads is the ability to reply directly to someone, This keeps conversations in one thread and easier to follow, Much nicer then having to the @ button to talk to a commentator that said something about 100 comments back. The second thing you will notice is next to the reply button is a button marked actions, If you click that button you will have the option to Rec (recommend) the comment or flag it. Recommend a comment is a way to agree with the comment, if enough people recommend a comment it will turn it green so anyone looking at the thread will be see it standing out. Flagging a comment can be done if you find something offensive or if someone is trolling, The site admins can see these comments and deal with them if necessary. Lastly to the left of the reply button is the up button, you can use that button to scan up to the comment that the current comment is in reply to. This comes in handy if the the thread is getting a bit long and you can't see the comments on the same screen without scrolling.
In each comment you have the ability to post links, and images, as a courtesy it is considered a good idea to put a title on any comment that you are posting a picture to. If you put a title on a comment people can click on the title and minimize the comment. Therefore if people don't like the picture they can minimize it and if the picture is large it can be minimize and stop the lag on any thread.
Fanposts and Fanshots
As I mentioned earlier there site has the ability to host user created content, that would be the fanposts and fanshots. There is a very distinct difference between the two and knowing and using the difference will help out users and everyone on the site.
Fanposts are your own article. Use them when you have an idea or discussion piece that you want to talk about. They should not be used to post a link nor should they be used to post an article from another site in its entirety. Be sure to use tags for each post, that way it if someone searches for posts on a player it will pull up fanposts regarding that player or topic as well.
Fanshots are your one shot posts for things like Links, Quotes, Pictures, Videos, Lists and Chats. Got a an article from another site that you think deserves mention? Post a link in fanshots. That way their site will get the visits and traffic numbers. Same thing goes for the tags, be sure to tag everything as it will make the whole SBnation group stronger.
The last thing you need to know about Fanposts and Fanshots is that they have the ability to be recommended much like any individual comment, If a fanpost or fanshot receives enough recommends they will be promoted to the top of their individual list. That way people can see them right away.
Hope people found this post helpful, Please remember if someone points out features in a thread that you may have missed like how to reply and what not, Don't take it as an insult we are just trying to help out, Everyone here was new to SBnation at some point and there is a lot to learn.
Welcome and Go Jays Go.