Who reads the TSM content site?

[Steviekick 0]

I've only read the shoot tape reviews regulary and the occassional Diatribe if I missed watching it live. Since they stopped, I've stopped reading the site's columns.

[godthedog 0]

occasionally i'll read some of al's stuff (which is really weird considering i have no interest in the topics), i used to read the shoot interviews and coey's stuff when they were semiregular items, and i'm still waiting for the next part of loss's revised history of the wwf (which is probably the most perceptive and wellwritten piece this site's ever posted).

 

it's really a shame that there isn't more interest than there is, cause we've got some very fine writers and a lot of potential, but motivation and free time are very sporadic. the stuff that mostly got people talking was the really thick, in-depth, dense stuff that takes a lot of time to put together, and the fire kind of burned out. (i know i myself had about a half-dozen half-finished reviews to my credit after starting grad school, but just didn't have the "oomph" to follow through.) i think a lot of that has to do with the lack of substantial feedback we get, but at the same time i think we'd GET more feedback if we just put stuff out there with more regularity & did more pimping.

 

sass got a good buzz going with the summer changes that were made, but we just didn't keep the momentum going.

 

i lobbied to get edwin on to beef up the pop culture section, but to no avail.

 

i've started doing reviews again, but only because i've found myself with massive amounts of free time to where i can spend an afternoon or 2 just kicking back and cranking out fifteen hundred words. i doubt i'll be able to keep it up when classes start again.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I sent an article to Tom back when you asked me about pop culture stuff, actually, but he never got back to me. Missed opportunities, bitches!

[Sass 0]

Loss, Chris Coey, Nik, Dames, Teke, JHawk, PK, on wrestling would be like the closest thing to fan nirvana. These guys are passionate about the things they enjoy. Good wrestling falls under this. These guys enjoyed watching good wrestling. But most of all, they will tell you why they thought it was good or why it was bad. These guys have explained their thoughts and feelings better than any others I've seen in years. If guys like Tim Cooke or Michrome would have agreed to come on after things with the guys above had worked out for a while, then I feel TSM would have been loaded with the best wrestling writers on the net. If you wanted quality writing, then come to TSM where the best write. With those guys on board, I feel it would have been difficult to argue against this. They're some of the best writers I've read in years.

 

I really just wanted to help remind others, as well as myself, why I even came to post on a wrestling message board in the first place. TSM had the people to do it but lacked the resources.

 

The Pop Culture section was also the second part of the front site that I wanted to see improve. Both the Wrestling and Pop Culture unit changes were top priority. Having Incandenza, gtd, Spree, Chong, Al, Tom, and other non-wrestling guys on board, who can write, was something I felt the site had a shot at succeeding with. The talent's there. I was thinking about going out around the net and checking out other writers who looked like they knew what they were talking about but I never got around to it. The core of guys we had were more than enough I felt. Maybe later on I'd look around but the writers we had under the Pop Culture banner carried themselves well in their articles for the most part.

 

Unfortunately, I had eyes bigger than my stomach and the whole revamp was poorly handled by me. I didn't check in with the right people at the right times and I never could devote enough time to staying online long enough to see everything go through right. I delegated the technical side of setting things up for writers to the guy who busted his ass for this site for years and knew what to do (goodhelmet) but never returned the favor myself by taking some of the work off his shoulders and cutting him a break. The lack of support on my end is still a disappointment to me.

 

When Will told me he was the most psyched up he had been in a while over wrestling writing, that's when I knew that the passion for it was still inside of him. I was stoked and so was he. Unfortunately, that momentum was slowed down by my incompetence and poor time management skills. That comment meant a lot to me though. Will's one of the coolest guys I've had the pleasure of conversing with online.

 

I was hoping to redecorate and change the front site page to mark the big revamp but that was one of the biggest hurdles that stood in the way. I had no idea the changes would be so involved and time consuming and when IllOne told me about them, I felt like a prick for not being able to take some weight off his shoulders and get some help for him with the front site. I knew he was capable of it. But from the descriptions of code crap that he told me about, those changes made me cringe when I'd ask him if he was working on setting up the changes.

 

Of course, what those changes would be was the obstacle course for fat kids as nothing got done on this end. How could it too when no one knew what the front site was going to look like? Taking full responsibility for this, I felt that I had bungled up the best thing that could have happened to this site by missing the hand-off with the front site changes. Chris Coey called me out on here and I don't blame him. I just wish that I would have allocated more time towards the details.

 

There were some good times this summer along with the bad. The front site revamp was definitely something I had hoped would work but I haven't lost any sleep over it. It’s still a major bummer for me though. It was a hell of a crazy ride while Dames gave us kids the keys to the liquor cabinet but I am glad that we didn't end up burning the board down in the process.

 

Ah, well, it was fun while it lasted. Still, I apologize to everyone for muddling things up. Sorry guys.

[Guest Failed Mascot]

Wow Sass...we haven't spoken in months and shit but to take the bullet like that was an admirable thing. It wasn't all your fault though ya know. All the fighting that was going on between everybody when I decided to just say fuck it and leave didn't help you or others with this. It was like you had to do daycare while trying to fix things up.

 

I appologise for taking things so seriously and not having fun with this place. In the end myself and others took time away from this getting done with our petty shit.

 

You once told me "The road to hell was paved with good intentions"...this might have been a case of that, but I still say don't give up. You're the type of person that if you keep at it you can get things done.

[Nighthawk 0]

You once told me "The road to hell was paved with good intentions"...

I don't think he was the first one to say that.

[Guest Failed Mascot]

Sass is a philosipher. He may have come up with it.

[Sass 0]

My mom was the one who would tell me that. It just stuck. I think it's a good saying.

[godthedog 0]

incidentally, i originated that saying in an NYT review of 'birth of a nation', talking about how it had all these grand ambitions of making film a respectable art form, but turned out to be a hokey and racist piece of shit. i guess it just clicked with people, and everybody just started ripping it off left and right.

 

chris's departure wasn't that big of a blow, as his stuff wasn't a TSM exclusive anyway, and he didn't contribute often enough to make it a really big feature. i think loss's contribution would've done much more and been the little south american kid of the captain planet team, so to speak. i don't know what made him leave it incomplete, but it probably had to do with a lack of free time, as my burnout did. don't think it's his fault or anything, since he's such a stand-up guy who goes out of his way to not let people down, but god damn if that article didn't get people talking.

 

will's good people. i think he'd be a better choice for newbie submissions. tom seems constantly pressed for time, and will kept telling me about how easy his job is, and it's not like he wouldn't be qualified. i feel like the ball got dropped on the edwin situation. the site hasn't had a music critic in forever, and all the music folder regulars like him, so that would be another easy 20+ readers easy.

 

speaking of pop culture, what the hell ever happened to castleman? i liked him a lot, in a "respectfully irritated" way.

[Vanhalen 0]

I voted for reading the columns then the forum, but I only read JHawk, and I used to love Brandon Truitts shoot interviews, but since he sadly died thats no longer possible

[Guest Loss]

i think loss's contribution would've done much more and been the little south american kid of the captain planet team, so to speak. i don't know what made him leave it incomplete, but it probably had to do with a lack of free time, as my burnout did. don't think it's his fault or anything, since he's such a stand-up guy who goes out of his way to not let people down, but god damn if that article didn't get people talking.

Thank you. That really does mean a lot.

 

I still have every intention of doing this, but I tend to get very ambitious when I set my sights on something, and because I aim to do everything huge, if I don't think I can meet my own personal standards, I won't do it at all.

 

I need to just get started on it. My plan, believe it or not, is to go back as far as tape availability can take me and cover things in yearly increments, probably about four hours of footage at a time. I think I made the first piece a little too long, and I do want whatever I write to be easily read in one sitting. My reason for wanting to go in chronological order is so I can watch the footage in the order it's intended to be watched. If a match looks good on paper, or interesting, or makes me curious, I'll review it. I wanted to start with 2001 WWF so I could go back to it after watching all the other footage and compare my original thoughts to my new ones. It's a daunting task, but I think I could have fun with it, as long as I didn't try to do too much at once.

 

This thread has me motivated to kick it in gear again. The oldest match I know of that exists on tape is Joe Stetcher v Earl Caddock from 01/30/20. It's amazing that such footage even exists, but that seems like a great starting point. Volumes have been written on the stylistic changes in popular music over the course of a long period of time, and it was my goal to do the same for wrestling.

 

Doing so would mean setting aside at least an hour a day to watch tapes and also purchasing as much footage as I can as often as I can. I can take notes while I watch and write everything the next day at work. I just need to make it a priority.

 

I really enjoyed your work as well, and your feedback was so helpful and constructive that I think it will make the rest of the work I do all the better. I wish I could have offered as much help to you, but you seemed to have a better command of your style than I did.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

Is there any interest in my weekly forecasts of fortune/lucky lotto numbers/various facts/word of the week?

[Spaceman Spiff 0]

I'm down.

[BHK 0]

I don't understand why nikjohns and JHawk both recap RAW- isn't one enough?

I'm under the impression that nik is basically covering Raw when the mood fits him and it's probably not a permanent thing. Raw is still officially me one month and PK the next with the other doing SmackDown.

 

Personally, I'd like to see nik become the PPV guy since we're in more urgent need of one of those.

You guys tend to have the Recap up before WWE even updates its own site. This speed is greatly appreciated, especially when I haven't watched Raw and I feel impatient.

[godthedog 0]

I really enjoyed your work as well, and your feedback was so helpful and constructive that I think it will make the rest of the work I do all the better. I wish I could have offered as much help to you, but you seemed to have a better command of your style than I did.

you write better articles than i. i can just edit someone else's work a lot better than i can write my own.

 

if i were you i'd use a plan of attack that's more piecemeal; go for the anthology approach rather than the linear history approach, so to speak. answer smaller questions, like how good ric flair really is, or the mid-90s wwf style v. the mid-90s ecw style, etc., before you barrel into THE HISTORY OF PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING AS WE KNOW IT. you can hone and revise the big plan as you go, but think of it in small pieces that can stand on their own, stuff you can crank out in a couple days for posting. just so that you can have something to point to that's substantial and out there while're you're working, and so that it doesn't feel like such a big impossible undertaking. like how dickens and joyce published chapters of their novels in serials as they went. or something.

[godthedog 0]

Is there any interest in my weekly forecasts of fortune/lucky lotto numbers/various facts/word of the week?

fuck yeah, you could pull that off. as long as it was something that could stand on its own and didn't read as "music folder people fucking around with each other on the content site."

[TheFranchise 0]

I read the Raw and SD! recaps, and the Push-Me polls when they're updated.

 

And of course use the forum.

[Guest Failed Mascot]

Is there any interest in my weekly forecasts of fortune/lucky lotto numbers/various facts/word of the week?

I would say do it every 2 weeks or once a month that way you can emphasise quality over quantity. I have no doubt you could pull it off and I would read it, but I fear that after awhile you may just end up trying to throw shit down and see if it sticks.

 

Also you need to write each one while intoxicated.

[Dr. Tom 0]

speaking of pop culture, what the hell ever happened to castleman? i liked him a lot, in a "respectfully irritated" way.

I don't know. I guess he was really "Lethargic" after all. :-/ It's hardly unique, though: we've had many mainpage writers quit over the years, most of them doing so without notice. I've been quite high on some of them, and they've just stopped writing. I guess that's inevitable when you're a small website that can't pay anyone to write for you, but it sucks nonetheless.

 

I wish I could have done more in the proposed front-page revamp, too. We talked about it a lot, but I didn't have a wealth of time to commit to it, between work and school, and my technical knowledge of what was required was limited. I know more now, but I'm still not a code guru or anything of the sort. My share of the blame in this is at least as large as Sass', if not higher, since I was the one everyone looked to sign off on things and put it together. So I'll take my lumps from that and move on.

 

Incidentally, I'd still like to overhaul the front page completely and get away from Article Manager, even if it means I (or just a few people) have to do all the article posting. It'd be great to find a few folks to do this for us (since trying to dump it all on Josh is both unfair and unrealistic, though I'd certainly like him to be involved), but it would obviously be pro-bono work.

 

Edwin, if you want to submit something to me again, go ahead. I'll actually read it and get back to you this time, and my apologies for not doing so the first time. drtomfowler at yahoo dot com

 

Like others, I tend to get excited about projects I'm involved with, and I end up biting off more than I can chew. Maybe this time, with realistic and tempered expectations, we can get the main site looking more presentable, and then we can draw in more readers, not just from the forums, but from the 'net as a whole.

[Guest Failed Mascot]

When everything does start getting revamped is there a way to get OAOAST and SWF shows linked on the main page? Perhaps it could bring in a larger audience and maybe even some more people to contribute.

 

Just thinking aloud and even then the people running both things would have to sign off on it.

[godthedog 0]

are there difficulties the site has with using the article manager that i don't know about? i never had any problems with it.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

In response to Loss' idea, I don't know how many of you have read Bill James' Historical Abstract. Basically it covers baseball through the decades. I'd love to see that kind of thing done with wrestling. Wrestling by the decades. Who were the stars? The workers? The flakes? The comedy act? Wrestling history is undercovered, and I'd love to see some more light shed on the subject.

[Nighthawk 0]

Is there any interest in my weekly forecasts of fortune/lucky lotto numbers/various facts/word of the week?

fuck yeah, you could pull that off. as long as it was something that could stand on its own and didn't read as "music folder people fucking around with each other on the content site."

I think music folder people fucking around with each other on the content site would be better.

[Nighthawk 0]

Seriously though, you'd probably run out of ways to make it interesting fairly quickly. Do it monthly if at all.

 

Ok, now I know a column I could do. The Hot Button! where I present the counterpoint for commonly held views and force you to admit that Avril Lavigne is a respectable musician, or that religion makes as much sense as anything else.

[Red Hot Thumbtack In The Eye 0]

In response to Loss' idea, I don't know how many of you have read Bill James' Historical Abstract. Basically it covers baseball through the decades. I'd love to see that kind of thing done with wrestling. Wrestling by the decades. Who were the stars? The workers? The flakes? The comedy act? Wrestling history is undercovered, and I'd love to see some more light shed on the subject.

 

Didn't Yohe and JDW and some others already do something like this?

[Sass 0]

Sorta.

[Guest Dazed]

Hi Sass

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

Out of curiousity, how many hits do you guys get for the articles that people write? I was wondering, because I assumed that if a lot of the people on the board don't read it, then who does?

 

Anyways, I'd write them

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Ok, now I know a column I could do. The Hot Button! where I present the counterpoint for commonly held views and force you to admit that Avril Lavigne is a respectable musician, or that religion makes as much sense as anything else.

[Dr. Tom 0]

When everything does start getting revamped is there a way to get OAOAST and SWF shows linked on the main page?

Probably, but I honestly wouldn't want to do it. With wrestling in decline and interest waning, putting actual show reviews on the main page is as far as I want to go. Heck, I'd love to ditch the rasslin' altogether and just be a pop culture site, but our wrestling writers are good and dedicated, and I'm not going to do that to them.

 

(Yet.)

 

(Muahahahaha.)

 

So posting "shows" where people are pretending to be wrestlers -- which means they're pretending to be people who pretend to beat each other up -- is not something I want us to get into on the mainpage. I think we posted one or two before, and the reaction was not positive.