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Creating a great message board experience (also, RICO BEARD IS BACK)

DavidHarns

All-Van Pelt
Staff
Oct 29, 2013
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Spartans Illustrated has been part of the Rivals Network for two months now and we’ve learned a lot about what Spartan fans want and how we can best provide it to you. We've requested and received a lot of feedback from both long-time Rivals subscribers and our new subscribers.

In the last 62 days, as a Spartans Illustrated team, we’ve produced nearly 200 pieces of content – previews, recaps, analysis, recruiting profiles, live coverage, videos, photo galleries, and more – and I can’t tell you how many times I have been thanked by Spartan fans for covering as many of the sports at Michigan State as we possibly can.

In addition to our in-depth coverage of football, men’s basketball, and hockey, focusing our attention on more than just the main revenue sports has been an important part of our mission here at Spartans Illustrated, and we are glad to see that it is important to you as well.

In addition to high quality content, Spartan fans want a mature message board experience, where diversity of thought is welcome, censorship is minimal, and Spartans of all backgrounds can come together and discuss the topics of the day, without fear of overly harsh criticism, name-calling, or a heavy-handed moderator presence.

That is our goal here at Spartans Illustrated.

With our purposeful approach to our message board, we are hoping to give subscribers and readers a better experience while also elevating our coverage/discussion of all MSU student-athletes.

I’ve had discussions with many former message board posters and have learned a lot about why they’ve left. I’m happy to welcome many of them back now, including a friend and colleague of mine, Rico Beard.

Rico and I have agreed that it is worth the effort it’s going to take to create a message board experience that can positively impact Spartan sports fans. I am happy that Rico has agreed to return to the Spartans Illustrated Message Board – I look forward to his comments and his insights.

Effective today, we have combined the three boards (Munn, Breslin, and the main board) into one central message board, aptly titled “Spartans Illustrated Message Board.” We have also implemented a clear visual way to mark which posts are focused on football, basketball, hockey, and other topics as well. We now have labels for women's sports, other MSU sports, and more. If you are interested in a specific topic, click the label to bring all the conversations about that topic to the top of the board. When you want to go back to the broader conversation, simply click the X next to the topic and you're right back at the main board.
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This new message board approach will allow all of us to congregate in one spot and see what conversations are happening throughout the site without having to hop from board to board to board.

We have also created a spot on the front page of SpartansIllustrated.com to feature the most popular message board threads and create an easy entry way to the message board.

We crave your thoughts and your input. How can we make Spartans Illustrated even better? Feel free to give us any feedback or suggestions you may have via email at SpartansIllustrated@gmail.com and please consider subscribing or renewing your subscription to help us bring you even more coverage of MSU athletics.

We appreciate your support.
 
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