We're 10 games deep into this loveliest of seasons (so far) and it's time for a wee bit o' the housekeeping.
First of all, thank you for making Bright Side of the Sun your Phoenix Suns destination of choice. Two weeks into the season and traffic here is over twice what it was last year! Our year-to-date numbers are even better having grown by almost three times what they were for 2008. In other words, we blowin' up.
A lot of the credit for that goes to you in our community who keep our comment threads and Fan Post sections active, entertaining and insightful. Without your participation, BSOTS would be a lonely and oddly-colored place. But let's take a second to thank the guy who is the reason everyone comes here in the first place: Phoenix Stan.
For those of you who don't know, Phoenix Stan is the Steve Nash of BSOTS. He generates the bulk of the original content on the site. That includes practice reports, game reports, Summer League coverage and most of the original commentary. He also is responsible for securing the site's partnership with KTAR in Phoenix and bringing in Max Simbron and his amazing photos as exclusive BSOTS content. Without his hard work and dedication to Suns fandom, we'd be sports fans writing in our mom's basement instead of this rad Suns-cave. And he manages to do all this while holding down a full-time job and raising a family. So, big ups to yourselves and please give some props to Mr. Stan.
As I was saying before I got lost in my Phoenix Stan reverie, more and more folks are joining our community here at BSOTS. As such, I think it's time for a little refresher on the Community Guidelines. If you haven't done so, please read through them. Consider it your Bright Side of the Sun civic duty to know and memorize them. (What? You don't know the Constitution by heart? Or the Patriot Act? Traitor!) But seriously, they're there to make everyone feel comfortable in our corner of the interwebs and you'd do well to familiarize yourself with them. Beyond that, here are a couple of notes on some stuff we've been seeing the comments:
- The REC button: Use it! Seriously, there's nothing cooler than seeing that your fellow Bright Siders have given you their seal of approval than by having your comment, Fan Post, Story or Fanshot REC'd enough to make it turn green or bumped up to the top of the right side of the page. +1s are cool, but RECs have effects!
- Profanity: Just try and keep it PGish. We don't want to have to be the language police. This is pretty much spelled out in the guidelines, but it's come up a couple of times.
- Fans of other teams: Just because someone is a Spurs fan or Lakers fan does NOT necessarily make them a troll or an intruder on our site. SBNation is a community for fans of all stripes. Mutual appreciation of the game from opposite sides of the court makes our sports community that much richer. A couple of years ago, we had a great back and forth with the guys over at Pounding The Rock and as a result, I think it made those losses that much more of a learning experience as basketball fans. Please make fans of other teams welcome here at Bright Side of the Sun.
- The FLAG button: If someone is, in fact, trolling, it is not on you to be a BSOTS Suns Pride enforcer. Generally, Phoenix Stan or one of the other active contributors are vigilant enough to catch trolling fairly quickly. However, if that doesn't seem to be the case, please FLAG the offending comments and drop Phoenix Stan a line. At the bottom of the main page there's an e-mail link for Phoenix Stan and all the BSOTS contributing writers.