The death of the Buffalo Bills Message Board - how did it happen?

[Brianmoorman4jesus]

I loved the BBMB and still sometimes can’t believe it’s gone. I appreciate that there was a place for us to land, but at the same time it still was home for a lot of us. It was an amazing source for news. If something happened Bills related, within seconds you would know. In that sense it was truly a 1 stop shop for all things bills. For all the bull **** that you had to deal with over there in game day threads, it was still a family. It’s sickening that it was taken away from us.  This place is similar in a lot of ways and it’s very nice to see a lot of familiar faces migrated over. Go Bills!

[Real McClappy]

This forum/site is honestly 10X better than BBMB and happy to be here now.

 

Really glad they shut down in all honestly. Tip toeing around mods there was really annoying.

[Brianmoorman4jesus]

I think that town and country was a mod and maybe Bills chick? I remember having a few back and fourths after warnings. 

[Real McClappy]

13 minutes ago, Brianmoorman4jesus said:

I loved the BBMB and still sometimes can’t believe it’s gone. I appreciate that there was a place for us to land, but at the same time it still was home for a lot of us. It was an amazing source for news. If something happened Bills related, within seconds you would know. In that sense it was truly a 1 stop shop for all things bills. For all the bull **** that you had to deal with over there in game day threads, it was still a family. It’s sickening that it was taken away from us.  This place is similar in a lot of ways and it’s very nice to see a lot of familiar faces migrated over. Go Bills!

Your are prob one of the few that might say that.  I do agree about the familiar faces though.

BBMB straight up was run like trash, mods would do whatever the hell they felt.  God forgive if they disagreed with anything you wrote, walking on needles anytime you post in fear of a infraction is not healthy. 

This place is legit, wish I found it before BBMB in all honesty.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Real McCoy

[Comebackkid]

10 minutes ago, Brianmoorman4jesus said:

I think that town and country was a mod and maybe Bills chick? I remember having a few back and fourths after warnings. 

I don't think bills chick was ever a mod

[PrimeTime101]

3 hours ago, Patrick_Duffy said:

I'm not sure, but I was told that the mods there were taking advantage of their power and just banning people for no reason on a regular basis. Made any new comers feel unwelcomed and what not. But I'm not totally sure, just passing what I heard it to be. You probably will never really find out to be honest. In any event, this site is much, much better.

Taking advantage of there powers and just banning people for no reason?  This didn't happen.. and you are wrong.. Did the mods play favoritism? YES. Did they ban people for no good reasons? NO.

 

Here are some facts.

1. The administrators were getting spam mailed by many sources

2. There forums were unstable and during game play at times it would lock down.

3. The Mods had second accounts and you dare challenge them you got warnings.

 

My guess the admin gave up on it and FO didn't want to bother with it anymore.

[Real McClappy]

50 minutes ago, PrimeTime101 said:

Taking advantage of there powers and just banning people for no reason?  This didn't happen.. and you are wrong.. Did the mods play favoritism? YES. Did they ban people for no good reasons? NO.

 

Here are some facts.

1. The administrators were getting spam mailed by many sources

2. There forums were unstable and during game play at times it would lock down.

3. The Mods had second accounts and you dare challenge them you got warnings.

 

My guess the admin gave up on it and FO didn't want to bother with it anymore.

Bolded above is 100% false and you are wrong. They Banned new members for absolutely nothing. They banned new members for saying anything more than once negative about the FO or coaches. How I know it 100% false? My first 2 accounts there were banned as a new member for basically nothing at all, healthy convo (my negativity) about Fitzpatrick, coaching and FO (which I was right about for the record). My 3rd account I learned to walk the BS Mod line until I hit 1K posts and they would stop with the perm bans and send out infractions whenever they pleased finding the most minor loophole in their bible CoC if they disagreed with you.

The site flat out sucked IMO, the only reason I went there was after ESPN team forums shutdown was due to the "Official BB Team message board" from a google search and honestly wish I came here from day1.

 

Are you a EX mod there as well? Knowing the favoritism and your first couple lines it sounds like it. BBMB was not your stereo type of "all good things come to and end".

 

This site, mods, people and discussions are flat out better. Thank you SDS and company for taking us in and running a legit forum that lets fans opinions or thoughts roll even though some topics are debatable or wrong.

 

 

Edited December 1, 2017 by Real McCoy

[Jay_Fixit]

3 hours ago, Binghamton Beast said:

 

You mean Town and Country?

 

Worst human being that walked this planet. Worse than Hitler.

Definitely the worst mod I’ve ever seen on any forum in my life. The. Worst.

 

[Nick the Greek]

Too many trolls.. to much negativity because the team always sucks. Why host a forum on an official team website so fans can trash the team?

 

It makes sense they shut it down.

[Roundybout]

3 hours ago, GoBills808 said:

It's sad that you're only slightly joking, too. Those guys were just terrible.

 

Good riddance.

 

I always thought MASH was a cool guy. The rest of them either got drunk with power or couldn't handle mild insults. 

[hmsmystic]

Don't understand why this topic keeps coming up.  I've been here on this site getting news and updates for over 8 years and had never been to that BB message board.  Heard it was a bunch of nasty negatively all day every day, so it got shut down.

People who wanted to can now post and get news here.  The end?

[unbillievable]

I know many people worshiped Wyo, but she was the ringleader that started the downfall. Her "good intentions" got the ball rolling.

 

It started in the cesspool of the politics subforum. It was ignored by the mods (or given free reign) until one of the Mod's pals (Dennis) did some really bad things that got him reported. In response the Mods banned the posters who reported their friend. This caused a revolution that got that sub-forum banned.

 

The remaining members, understandably, protested which led to more "rules" to stifle speech. WYO made her famous, "Don't post anything argumentative" rant. And told everyone to find another site. Jayhawk felt compelled to defend the mods and got even more brutally hard handed. Many left. and the "but" was no more.

 

After the purge, the Mods turned their attention to the football side. Their power assured, they implemented the same stifling rules to "make their jobs easier" ; No criticizing mods. No talk about the owners. Nothing mentioning anything about women (which was even enforced when the Bills had the first woman coordinator)... the rules list went on, and kept getting longer, and murkier.

 

People retaliated by trolling. Bans were handed out. More trolling in response to the mod's stranglehold, it drove the traffic numbers down to dozens, until it was an easy decision to shut the place down.

Edited December 1, 2017 by unbillievable

[Heitz]

Colonel Mustard, in the Server Room, with a Lead Pipe is my guess...

[Kelly the Dog]

It certainly wasn't a result of anyone from here, I can tell you that.

[BadLandsMeanie]

What is interesting to me is that it went down so suddenly. It was like, noon or something on a Wednesday.

Just, BOOM , gone. And the didn't even make an announcement for a day or so. (After the phone had been ringing or some such)

 

So, it either went down suddenly for a reason, or they had no reason to just pull the plug with no notice to anyone.

 

Both possibilities interest me. If they did that for no reason, then it was "Billsy". Because that place had I think at most 2 thousand active members.

So in a sense, percentage wise, nobody knew it was there or saw whatever ugliness was on it.

 

Then those people went to places like Facebook, with 860,000 followers. And a good many were very angry. All their stuff was gone, fantasy leagues gone, etc. And the backlash happened on Facebook where 860,00 people could see it and it went on for months. So if that was a PR guy's decision, it doesn't get any Billsier than that :).

 

To me it is even more interesting if there was a reason they needed or wanted that board to go down "right this minute".  So instead of just being rude or not caring, or whatever, they instead had to have it gone quickly and just yanked the plug. There was a rumor or two about a reason for that but I don't think it held any water. But it is juicy to wonder why they would have to do it that way, of they had to do it that way.

2 minutes ago, Kelly the Dog said:

It certainly wasn't a result of anyone from here, I can tell you that.

Guilty conscience?

[Rob's House]

The demise of BBMB is no great loss. I perused the forum from time to time but never thought much of it. The conversation was watered down by an abundance of inane posts and crusaders who polluted every thread with the same empty opinions repeated over and over. 

 

The moderation as a whole was absolutely abysmal. I never got banned, but I noticed that those who shared the opinion of certain mods stuck around while those who didn't got the boot for similar behavior.

 

Some of it was just silly. I once got an infraction from T&C for typing "lmao" because the a was an abbreviation for ass.

 

And Squatting Buffalo once hit me with a racial infraction because he claimed using the phonetic spelling of Manuel (Manwell) was somehow racist against Hispanics. Seriously.

 

I get that it was the official team site, but come on.

 

I'm not saying that TBD has never had a temperamental mod, but for the most part the moderators here do a great job and the level of discussion, analysis, and humor is on another level.

 

[Knicks&Bills]

The other board sucked. They would hand out infractions like candy on Halloween, and they wouldn’t let you discuss anything. The only thing I miss about the other place was all the different threads going on during the course of the game. This board wants everything about the game in the first half thread and the second half thread. It’s less fun that way.

[Dr.Sack]

I blame Bon Jovi & Donald Trump 

[Big Turk]

Too many posters that make you feel like you lose brain cells every time you read their posts...unfortunately too many of them have started posting here now...

 

But if you really want to see stupidity at its finest, start posting in the Bills Mafia group on Facebook...I want to jump off a bridge half the time reading stuff on there

Edited December 1, 2017 by matter2003

[papazoid]

would you support financially $$ any individual or group who mostly trashed you and your family ?

 

the bills killed a cesspool of discontent that in their opinion encouraged protest boycotts, low attendance and hindered ticket sales.

 

unfortunately for them, those so inclined can easily find an alternative forum to vent

[Bills4everNY]

4 hours ago, Real McCoy said:

This forum/site is honestly 10X better than BBMB and happy to be here now.

 

Really glad they shut down in all honestly. Tip toeing around mods there was really annoying.

Ditto.

[Doc Brown]

8 hours ago, JinxedBill1 said:

I don't miss it.  A lot of the same craziness is here now and the message board operating system is better here.

I'm with you on that especially after this latest upgrade.  I'm not a huge fan of them merging as many threads as they do together instead of just letting the stupid ones die out like they did on bbmb, but beggars can't be choosers as at least I can now say vague without a warning from the mods.  Jay Fiedler is still the funniest and creative troll poster of all time.  Other than that, it's the same old same old with a slightly enhanced experienced with the upgrades.   Also, I like that they have a politics section here as football and politics are increasingly intersecting.  Also, I can now use the word vague without getting a warning.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Doc Brown

[GETTOTHE50]

I don't see too much of a difference between here and the old BBMB. 

 

The savior troll still exists. So does the Green Bay troll. Wish they would just get banned already. I didn't care for the mods over there, but I did like how they banned trolls when they became overbearing. 

 

kinda surprised they took it down though, since the boards brought a lot of traffic to the website. 

[tlfcbb]

8 hours ago, buffaloboyinATL said:

Why is that offensive? I would be happy if someone said my wife was attractive and I was lucky to have her......because neither is true.

 

just kidding dear.    

 

This is hilarious .  I hope your good lady doesn't read this site LOL

[Buffalo Barbarian]

9 hours ago, BuffaloRush said:

It's been quite some time since the Buffalo Bills Message Board was shut down.  In fact, that's how I landed here.  My question is - how did it all go down.  From my understanding the moderators were all volunteers and the head moderator was named Z-man.    How they became moderators and who made them moderators?  I have no idea.  I believe that Chris Brown oversaw the BBMB at one time but had very limited involvement with it. 

 

From what I can surmise, the board went down very shortly after Derek Boyko was hired.  So my guess is that he evaluated the website and decided the website had to go.  Clearly this was one area that Scott Berchtold must have not really paid much attention to.  

 

All I know is that one day, I went to log in and then there was a message that it was gone.

 

Here are my questions:

 

- Who was from the Bills organization was responsible for the BBMB?

- Who picked the moderators?

- Did anyone from the Bills even know or care that the BBMB existed?

- Who were the moderators exactly?

- How did the death of the BBMB occur and why was the decision made?

 -Who made the call and how were the moderators notified?

 

So many questions - but hopefully with the knowledge of this board we can get some answers.  I am really loving Two Bills Drive by the way.  Way better people and better conversation overall

 

Social media killed it.

 

 

[Klaista2k]

I don't know for sure but my gut instinct tells me Pegula wasn't a fan of the message board and decided to shut it down. 

[T-Bomb]

The MOD Mash was one of the !@#$ Mod's.

[Patrick Duffy]

6 hours ago, PrimeTime101 said:

Taking advantage of there powers and just banning people for no reason?  This didn't happen.. and you are wrong.. Did the mods play favoritism? YES. Did they ban people for no good reasons? NO.

 

Here are some facts.

1. The administrators were getting spam mailed by many sources

2. There forums were unstable and during game play at times it would lock down.

3. The Mods had second accounts and you dare challenge them you got warnings.

 

My guess the admin gave up on it and FO didn't want to bother with it anymore.

No, I can tell you that you are 100% wrong. For example, I had a good friend that was a Big Bills fan and told him about BBMB and asked him to join up. Finally one day he decided to join, was a member for 2 hours, then his account got banned. Guy never even got a chance to post anything. So yes, they DID in fact ban ppl for nothing. Now THAT is a FACT, so how bout checking yours before calling someone else wrong.

[BringBackFergy]

6 hours ago, unbillievable said:

I know many people worshiped Wyo, but she was the ringleader that started the downfall. Her "good intentions" got the ball rolling.

 

It started in the cesspool of the politics subforum. It was ignored by the mods (or given free reign) until one of the Mod's pals (Dennis) did some really bad things that got him reported. In response the Mods banned the posters who reported their friend. This caused a revolution that got that sub-forum banned.

 

The remaining members, understandably, protested which led to more "rules" to stifle speech. WYO made her famous, "Don't post anything argumentative" rant. And told everyone to find another site. Jayhawk felt compelled to defend the mods and got even more brutally hard handed. Many left. and the "but" was no more.

 

After the purge, the Mods turned their attention to the football side. Their power assured, they implemented the same stifling rules to "make their jobs easier" ; No criticizing mods. No talk about the owners. Nothing mentioning anything about women (which was even enforced when the Bills had the first woman coordinator)... the rules list went on, and kept getting longer, and murkier.

 

People retaliated by trolling. Bans were handed out. More trolling in response to the mod's stranglehold, it drove the traffic numbers down to dozens, until it was an easy decision to shut the place down.

This would be a perfect answer for an 11th grade History exam essay question: “Compare and contrast the 1936-1938 Stalin led Russia Show Trials to the demise of the BBMB and explain how the two events changed the course of history for those who were either executed or fled to neighboring countries. Use correct spelling, dates and quote two sources”

[The Crowing Rooster]

I love this site and the members give really good information. My ex-son-in-law got banned from this site for trolling the fans here because he was a Dallas fan. He thought it was a joke to get under the skin of other posters. Boy! was I glad when my daughter divorced his you know what.  

[plenzmd1]

10 hours ago, SDS said:

 

Disagree. A lot of good people have joined. A few others weren’t a god fit. No worries. ?

I would say I really enjoy about 90% of the new folks who came over from the BBMB,

 

But that's a hell of an improvement on the 12% I liked on here for the last 14 years

[Flutie Flakes]

53 minutes ago, BringBackFergy said:

This would be a perfect answer for an 11th grade History exam essay question: “Compare and contrast the 1936-1938 Stalin led Russia Show Trials to the demise of the BBMB and explain how the two events changed the course of history for those who were either executed or fled to neighboring countries. Use correct spelling, dates and quote two sources”

 

Power to the People!!!

 

I really think that the OP might be able to find out more about the rise and fall of BBMB as well as some of life's other mysteries in the Off the Wall blog titled "UFO found on ocean floor".    

[HOUSE]

Many ,many teams don't have a message board. Too many fans and way to much player abuse.

 

The main reason is Twitter, Fish face (Facebook) & Chat rooms, nobody is interested in reading anything longer the one paragraph now days

 

Its all cell phones....

Edited December 1, 2017 by HOUSE

[CLTbills]

Honestly, it's a good thing. I didn't know anything about it at the time, and was kind of pissed... But it led me to TBD, and I like it way better over here!

[jimmy10]

The only thing that surprised me about that wretched hive was that the Bills allowed it to run on their own dime for so long. 

[Gugny]

8 hours ago, unbillievable said:

It started in the cesspool of the politics subforum.

 

Luckily for all of us, we don't have one of these! 

[hemma]

It was determined to be a Training Camp for Eastern European trolls.

[bobobonators]

All i know is I preferred the old TBD,  before the influx of new users from BBMB. 

Edited December 1, 2017 by bobobonators

[plenzmd1]

2 minutes ago, bobobonators said:

All i know is I preferred the old TBD,  before the influx of new users from BBMB. 

I disagree with that, new guys bring new opinions, new fresh ideas, some very funny stuff too!

 

But give it a year, I will hate all of them like I hate all of you

[Marty McFly]

8 hours ago, unbillievable said:

I know many people worshiped Wyo, but she was the ringleader that started the downfall. Her "good intentions" got the ball rolling.

 

It started in the cesspool of the politics subforum. It was ignored by the mods (or given free reign) until one of the Mod's pals (Dennis) did some really bad things that got him reported. In response the Mods banned the posters who reported their friend. This caused a revolution that got that sub-forum banned.

 

The remaining members, understandably, protested which led to more "rules" to stifle speech. WYO made her famous, "Don't post anything argumentative" rant. And told everyone to find another site. Jayhawk felt compelled to defend the mods and got even more brutally hard handed. Many left. and the "but" was no more.

 

After the purge, the Mods turned their attention to the football side. Their power assured, they implemented the same stifling rules to "make their jobs easier" ; No criticizing mods. No talk about the owners. Nothing mentioning anything about women (which was even enforced when the Bills had the first woman coordinator)... the rules list went on, and kept getting longer, and murkier.

 

People retaliated by trolling. Bans were handed out. More trolling in response to the mod's stranglehold, it drove the traffic numbers down to dozens, until it was an easy decision to shut the place down.

 

That was a really cool breakdown.

 

I could picture it being read in epic movie talk by gandalf or some sht.

 

Refugees and renegade trolls. Awesome.