I hear you on the community thing. But without all the great information these communities tend to dry up. Full stop. And then it's just "pause" jokes and booty gifs (to be clear, I really like one of those things).
Also, there is an immense chasm between calling people goats/Gods and disrespectfully calling people out. IMO, people shouldn't do either. I also do not believe there is an "expectation that everyone" placate these posters/insiders with tons of praise and borderline worship. Everyone can legit just read it and scroll past. That is always an option. Speaking for myself, my expectation is that posters will say thanks for the information (or not), discuss the information (or not), compare it to other information (or not), speculate about what it could mean (or not), talk about those recruits/prospects and how they'd look lining up at UM (or not), or say nothing at all.
What I truly consider "all kinds of weird ****" is the way some posters follow these posters/insiders around like jealous middle school girls saying slick **** out the side of their mouth. In the case you referenced, I wasn't the maude who temporarily band the poster (who comes off band tomorrow, I think) for the Jason Marshall comment, but had I seen it first I likely would have deleted the post and given him a day or two off the board to think about why he felt the need to say anything at all. Because if we're being honest, the only purpose for that comment is to stir **** up, and the only thing it can accomplish (other than ****ing off someone who was trying to convey info to the board) is to further disincentivize people with information from sharing it. And when that happens, we all lose.
Your last point is fair, though I wouldn't quite call it "diplomatic immunity status". It's not that one-sided a level of protection, but admittedly we do look out for our insiders. And I can tell you the moderators/admins/owners have had discussions on this topic and it's not easy to define or police. We struggle with the question, because it's obviously something that is achieved over time and based on solid, accurate information, and because there has to be an available avenue to (respectfully) challenge information, especially when it turns out to be wrong or there is conflicting information circulating. Personally, I think there are people we all mostly know as insiders (I named a few of them) and people we know as having great access to athletes/camps and football information (people like
@Liberty City El,
@Coach Macho, and @gogeta, just to name a few). Then there's people we are less certain about, but who seems to sometimes have decent info/access. And then there's most of us (myself included, as outside this website I usually have better access to inside info about UiF than I do UM) who clearly don't know what the fvck is going on with the program unless we read it here. As a good general rule, if you're in the last group, do not disrespectfully start **** with people in the first group.
At the end of the day, if I have to choose between a poster who brings information to the board and one who doesn't, I am going to choose the poster who has information to share. But, I'd rather not be forced to make that choice. And, ironically, 9/10 times it's the poster without the info who is instigating the confrontation.
