Our beloved Avalanche played perhaps their best game of the season the other night against Anaheim, we could have had a recap of joy, thoughtful discussion and fun at Minnesota's expense, and by and large that's what happened. Interspersed with that was a sub-thread that has become a little too common involving some trolling and personal arguments. Personally I missed most of it and only saw it yesterday morning, my first thought was to hack it off and throw it away but there were salient points in there that I hoped would get through to a few folks. In retrospect, I should have hacked it because it only continued and got worse.
When issues like this crop up, as a mod I'm put in the position of making arbitrary and unilateral moves that affect a fairly large group of people. Sound fun? It isn't. I come here like most of you to share things I'm interested in and jaw about hockey and other (sometime) related topics, not discipline poor behavior. Whatever I do here, action/no action, is going to upset people but it's to the point where continuing to give a few folks the benefit of the doubt is pointless. If some more posters leave because of that I'm truly sorry, but the feedback I get constantly is that situations like this drive long-time contributors and potential new ones away by the dozen. I liken MHH to a hockey discussion donut shop, if we can make a good donut, people will come here for the donuts and the other shit takes care of itself.
I talked with a former staff member at length last night and received some needed clarity on why this place exists and why it was and still could be one of the best places for Avs fans to interact on the internet. The reason people like this site is for the intelligent hockey discussion and posters with a wide variety of viewpoints and sources of information to share. Nobody comes here for flame wars and rehashing the same vile arguments ad infinitum and it's counter-productive to let that continue. It won't.
During one of the myriad previous incarnations of this situation I asked everyone to remember that this isn't a collection of words on a computer screen, there are real people with feelings and emotions behind each username, please treat them as such and think before you type out the first thing that comes to mind. I'm cautioning anyone that took part in the aforementioned sub-thread or any of the ones previous to try their damnedest not to let things go that far again, as difficult as it may be. Some folks are going to be missing, for a while or perhaps permanently. That saddens me, but for the good of everyone something had to change.
Please feel free to reply with any concerns in the thread below or email me or Ryan directly with more subtle matters.
Bonne chance,
earl