Hi there, and hello again. I think after a bit of a rough start yesterday, things seemed to get better as our new friends started to migrate over here. Thanks for your patience as we adjusted to the influx of all the new folks, and thanks to Lincoln Park Wildcat, who took the time to head over to your neck of the woods to answer questions and help give you guys a lay of the land. A lot of this was covered in the comment section of several posts over a couple different websites yesterday, but hopefully by consolidating things here you won't have to go looking through over 1,000 comments to find what you're looking for. Feel free to add your own info or to ask questions in the comment section.
Site Navigation Stuff:
So, how is commenting on OTE/SB Nation different than your old home?
Well, first off, our commenting goes oldest-newest from top to bottom, which I believe is directly opposite from what ESPN was like. Our comment box has two sections, subject and message. Think of the subject as kind of like a preview, where you have a brief intro to your comment, and then the message with the rest of your post.
If you want to make a stand alone comment in the post, go ahead and do so, and when it posts it will appear at the left edge of the comment section below the original story, in chronological order oldest to newest. if you want to reply to a specific comment, click on the reply button within that particular comment box, and your comment will appear indented below and to the right of the comment you replied to. You'll also notice a couple of other functions--'up', 'rec', and 'flag'. By clicking 'up, you'll be taken to the parent comment in a sub-thread. If you like a comment, click on rec, or recommend. Three recs on a comment and it turns green, which helps it stand out so people can quickly get to the most popular comments on long threads.
The 'flag' button is to notify the moderators of inappropriate comments. If somebody writes something inappropriate, click on flag, and the moderators will take care of it. Don't feed the trolls, and don't get into a flame war and make it worse. We try to take care of that business behind the scenes and not on the board, so if something needs to be done, it won't be done in the comment section.
So what are all those symbols in the comment box?
In the comment box, below the word ‘message’, you’ll see nine buttons. The first four are to bold, italicize, strike through or block quote text. The middle two are for numbering or bullet pointing sentences, and the last three are for pictures, hyperlinks, or spoilers. If you want to embed a pic, click on the picture icon, third one from the right. You’ll get a separate text box that pops up called ‘source’. Copy and paste the URL of the pic you want to post (sorry, but you can’t upload personal pics from your computer). Once the URL is in the source box, click on OK. To make sure it worked, click on ‘preview’ right next to ‘post’ in the bottom of the comment box.
What the heck are fanposts and fanshots? What's the difference?
Fanposts are posts created by you, which is something that is unique to SB Nation. Instead of just being limited to commenting, you can write your own blog on something that interests you. OTE started out as a football-only blog, but last year we expanded our coverage to basketball, and I would bet with all the Minnesotans on here we'll start up with some pretty good hockey talk once the Big Ten starts up their hockey conference next year. A couple folks had a fantastic idea of creating fan posts that were similar to stuff you are familiar with over at the other site. Please do so! Toobaboy already waded into the fanpost with some ideas on how to make your transition smoother--go check it out.
Fanshots are nothing more than links to relevant stories, tweets, etc. The links pretty much stand alone, with comments on the linked material.
So is this the only Big Ten blog on SB Nation?
As far as conference centric, yeah. But each school does have their own blog, and they are:
Illinois' The Champaign Room
Indiana's Crimson Quarry
OSU's Land Grant Holy Land
Purdue's Hammer and Rails
PSU's Black Shoes Diaries
Wisconsin's Bucky's 5th Quarter
Iowa's Black Heart Gold Pants
Michigan's Maize ‘N Brew
MSU's The Only Colors
Minnesota's The Daily Gopher
Northwestern's Sippin' On Purple
Nebraska's Corn Nation
They're all fantastic blogs, and some of us who write here at OTE also write at our school's blog. One of us even writes for the SB Nation blog about the Minnesota Vikings, but really, that guy is a friggin' moron. If you are interested in college football in general, at the top of the website, next to Gen Billy, you'll see the different sections within OTE. If you run your mouse over to the SB Nation tab at the far right, the heading bar changes to all the different sections within SB Nation, and within those sections you'll find links to blogs for over 300 different teams or sports. Check it out when you get the chance, because there's some great writing here in the Nation.
So what are some of the more popular memes?
Graham, the overall Grand Poobah around here, did a great oral history of OTE earlier this year, with some of our best pieces and our memes at the bottom of the article. It's a great starting point to get to know OTE, but there are a couple I'll highlight below, because they seem to be the most recurring, and I think they were all mentioned yesterday.
Illinois can't have nice things. It all started here, with this post by Chad.
//sobs, tears ACL. I'll take credit for that one. It's also an introduction to something we call 'floating/disembodied heads pieces', which I blatantly ripped off from BHGP (Black Heart Gold Pants)...with their permission.
Fuck Michigan. Self explanatory, really. But as crude as it sounds, we don't mean it in a bad way. No, really.
Michigan State conspiracy theory. Read the post, but read the comments. You'll understand what I'm talking about.
ATO//banned. ATO stands for Along the Olentangy, which was the SB Nation Ohio State blog before LGHL (and really, SB Nation goes through OSU blogs like Spinal Tap goes through drummers, although I think LGHL is here to stay). They had a peculiar rule of forbidding folks to use the subject line when making a post, which is just weird to 90% of folks that are regular posters across SB Nation. They even banned folks for it, which killed what little community they had...but South Bay Buckeye can give you the full low down on that, amirite SBB?
Anyway, that's kind of the introduction to OTE. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.