Tuesday Roundup

Some favorites and very few duds from Tuesday's commenting.

Favorites, in no particular order:

In the Wake Up Deadspin post, Hatey McLife had perhaps the comment of the day with this ruthless dig at Arkansas' genetic diversity.

Also in the Wake Up Deadspin post, unstarred commenter djneuro earned some love for a well-made Deadspin joke. For his effort, the comment was promoted. He's been coming on strong of late and is someone to keep an eye on.

In the 106mph Pitch post, David Hume dropped by with a funny-but-ultimately-depressing Stephen Strasburg prediction, much to the delight of his fellow commenters.

Steve U cracked me up with a well-constructed Star Wars joke in the Own Goal post. Look, I'm a sucker for this kind of humor. I laughed out loud at this.

Vodkanaut's contribution to Drew's Mailbag post was good for a giggle. That's an example of a fairly simple observation turned into a successful joke by proper adherence to the premise/set-up/punchline format.

In the Bob Knight post, Gamboa Constrictor earned a round of applause for cleverly delivering a rather astute observation. I'll be honest, I wasn't sure at first what he was talking about, but I laughed quite a bit once my brain kicked into gear.

Unstarred commenter NoirJuggling earned a promotion and some well-deserved praise for a flat-out tremendous historical reference in the Bad Refs post. That's an excellent, excellent comment.

And finally, MattinglysSideburns checked back in with his own clever, astute movie reference, also in the Bad Refs post. Great job.

Total Fucking Duds:

Two duds today, both from unstarred commenters, but in truth, there were any number of comments and conversations today that I hated, mostly because they violated the "be funny" rule. I'm encouraged by the bump in daytime commenting that seems to have taken place lately, but an unfortunate byproduct of that development has been a major increase in on-topic chat-room style conversation threads in nearly all daytime posts, and a disappointing increase in promotions of such comments by featured commenters. I have no problem with the odd content-based discussion thread popping up in daytime posts, but it seems to have gotten a bit out of hand in the past few days. Unstarred commenters are barely even making jokes these days, and a handful of featured commenters are engaging them over and over again, to my great annoyance.

Okay, now for the duds. Unstarred commenter WitDickman was slapped with a one-week suspension for posting an unadorned photo in the NHL TV Deal post. What makes this situation unusually frustrating is that the comment was promoted, by featured commenter THEGINOCIMOLICONSPIRACY. Featured commenters have got to know better and have got to do better. The quality of comments from current unstarred commenters is a reflection of the apparent standards of commenting of featured commenters. It's appropriate that the ninja should start cracking the whip on this kind of lazy commenting by unstarred folks, but again, the most important job (and most effective method) of the ninja is regulating featured content and those who provide it. I know I've been beating the drum on this one for a while, but especially now that commenting seems to be coming back to life, it's time to hold the featured folks to a higher standard.

The second dud today comes from the Funbag post, and it's from unstarred commenter Gord., who was approved today, by Gottlieb's Cards, who really ought to have his star removed immediately for this. Gord. was approved for making a bad comment. Apparently, Gottlieb's Cards thought it was so bad that it should be approved, and the commenter allowed to submit visible comments, in the interests of pointing out how bad it is. How is this different from Gottlieb's Cards posting that exact same comment himself? To me, Gottlieb's Cards should be held responsible for this awful comment, and for the several dozen subsequent terrible comments we're sure to get from Gord. before he is inevitably mocked and banned. Cautionary tales like shuttledik and Gord. would not exist if not for careless ass-clowns like Gottlieb's Cards, who approve them for no good reason whatsoever. This drives me absolutely fucking insane.

Alrighty then! Have a great DUAN!