Gymnast Social Media Megathread

[RedBirdie]

I don't know what episode I'm watching. I walked in after putting dinner away and the kid had it on Peacock.

 

[KristyJ]

Barf. Watching American Ninja Warrior, because my kid loves it. Jonas Harmer, "husband of Olympic hero MyKayla Skinner" is on it. WTF?

They did some YouTubes on it back in the day. He tried to get MyKayla to train with him but she wanted nothing to do with the training, really. But he was going super hard with it. Say what you will about him and MyKayla, I can't fault him for the work ethic he's had at it.

 

[Passion]

Sina Visitor System

Video of Shang Chunsong's training and conditioning for Parkour.

 

[Snowfan]

Dang she works hard. Does anyone know how she got into parkour? Did someone come after her or did she seek it out?

 

[Denn]

Someone pointed out that this thread (like a few others!) has gotten veeeeery long. That does have disadvantages:

1. it gets hard to track multiple conversations sometimes
2. the broad title doesn't really welcome new users so immediately
3. people like titles that reflect current news usually — just look at other fora
4. it makes it hard to find topics while searching information
5. doesn't play nice with Google / search results so much (and maybe also is a little bit of a drag on new membership?)

Suppose we made a folder called "Gymnastics in Social Media" and had lots of smaller threads. That would address all of the issues above, maybe? Thoughts? Any real drawback to that besides the fact that we got used to things the way they are?

 

[KathySantoni]

Someone pointed out that this thread (like a few others!) has gotten veeeeery long. That does have disadvantages:

1. it gets hard to track multiple conversations sometimes
2. the broad title doesn't really welcome new users so immediately
3. people like titles that reflect current news usually — just look at other fora
4. it makes it hard to find topics while searching information
5. doesn't play nice with Google / search results so much (and maybe also is a little bit of a drag on new membership?)

Suppose we made a folder called "Gymnastics in Social Media" and had lots of smaller threads. That would address all of the issues above, maybe? Thoughts? Any real drawback to that besides the fact that we got used to things the way they are?

I like this idea. It would work well to have a social media thread for different gymnastics categories like NCAA, retired gymnasts etc. My only request would be that it remain gendere less and we can post about both mag and wag in the same threads. Like NCAA social media posts would include both men and women.

 

[Passion]

Someone pointed out that this thread (like a few others!) has gotten veeeeery long. That does have disadvantages:

1. it gets hard to track multiple conversations sometimes
2. the broad title doesn't really welcome new users so immediately
3. people like titles that reflect current news usually — just look at other fora
4. it makes it hard to find topics while searching information
5. doesn't play nice with Google / search results so much (and maybe also is a little bit of a drag on new membership?)

Suppose we made a folder called "Gymnastics in Social Media" and had lots of smaller threads. That would address all of the issues above, maybe? Thoughts? Any real drawback to that besides the fact that we got used to things the way they are?

I hate this giant thread so much lol. This and the British mag/wag talk that's been going for over 3 years.

I don't think it needs it's own social media "folder." Outside of a handful of articles we're getting pretty much all of our gymn news from social media of some sort already, this whole board is social media.

We just need to be making more new threads in general for things, in the subcategories that already exist. For example page 79 in this thread is entirely discussion about Andrade's TTY. That could have been a thread in the Women's Gymnastics category titled "Andrade Training TTY - Video!" or whatever and then it's discussed there. Does it need to be specified that the information came from social media?

 

[FrolovasDoubleLayout]

Sina Visitor System

Video of Shang Chunsong's training and conditioning for Parkour.

Loved her then and love her now. I hope she has great great success in her new sport.

 

[MaryClare]

I hate this giant thread so much lol. This and the British mag/wag talk that's been going for over 3 years.

I don't think it needs it's own social media "folder." Outside of a handful of articles we're getting pretty much all of our gymn news from social media of some sort already, this whole board is social media.

We just need to be making more new threads in general for things, in the subcategories that already exist. For example page 79 in this thread is entirely discussion about Andrade's TTY. That could have been a thread in the Women's Gymnastics category titled "Andrade Training TTY - Video!" or whatever and then it's discussed there. Does it need to be specified that the information came from social media?

I agree, I hate it with a @Passion

New or infrequent users are never going to engage with it and it makes the board look less active than it is. Because fairly major stories, like Ondine getting injured, are going into threads that are years old

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Maybe the answer is for some threads to be locked? We as a collective, me definitely included, seem to have an irresistible attraction to posting in the megathreads.

With the GB thread, I think we need to decide how we want to manage GB discussion going forward. The pool of gymnasts is small enough that most threads about specific developments outside major competitions will be quite short, unlike say the US, but the interest is high enough that one thread is unwieldy. Perhaps we could consider annual threads? Team GB 2025, Team GB 2026 etc.

 

[QuietColours]

I'm on some.other forums that do subject threads to prevent dozens of microthreads, but the thread is locked when it hits 20 pages and a new one is started. It's worked well.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I'm on some.other forums that do subject threads to prevent dozens of microthreads, but the thread is locked when it hits 20 pages and a new one is started. It's worked well.

That's not a bad idea. We don't want lots of microthreads either.

With the GB one, we could agree a rota amongst ourselves for someone to come in every 10 pages and ask if Kelly Simm has retired yet.

 

[MaryClare]

That's not a bad idea. We don't want lots of microthreads either.

With the GB one, we could agree a rota amongst ourselves for someone to come in every 10 pages and ask if Kelly Simm has retired yet.

Has she?

 

[Passion]

Multiple micro threads actually increases the chances of people finding this board and joining. If I do a search in google for “Chinese gymnastics results” a thread from this board is one of the top results. If I search “Olympic trials international feed” Mary Clare’s thread is the first result.

If I search “Andrade TTY” or “Rebeca Andrade new vault” we don’t come up at all, even though it was discussed heavily here, because it’s buried in an unrelated thread. Reddit comes straight up though, because they had a thread dedicated to just that news.

More threads with specific titles gives us more search results, resulting in more people discovering we exist.

 

[MaryClare]

Multiple micro threads actually increases the chances of people finding this board and joining. If I do a search in google for “Chinese gymnastics results” a thread from this board is one of the top results. If I search “Olympic trials international feed” Mary Clare’s thread is the first result.

If I search “Andrade TTY” or “Rebeca Andrade new vault” we don’t come up at all, even though it was discussed heavily here, because it’s buried in an unrelated thread. Reddit comes straight up though, because they had a thread dedicated to just that news.

More threads with specific titles gives us more search results, resulting in more people discovering we exist.

This is a really good point

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Multiple micro threads actually increases the chances of people finding this board and joining. If I do a search in google for “Chinese gymnastics results” a thread from this board is one of the top results. If I search “Olympic trials international feed” Mary Clare’s thread is the first result.

If I search “Andrade TTY” or “Rebeca Andrade new vault” we don’t come up at all, even though it was discussed heavily here, because it’s buried in an unrelated thread. Reddit comes straight up though, because they had a thread dedicated to just that news.

More threads with specific titles gives us more search results, resulting in more people discovering we exist.

It's a balance.

Nice for people to be able to find us. But lots of very short threads with only a couple of posts can be annoying and offputting too. That happened a lot on TAAF, and while I really liked that board, I didn't like that aspect of it.

Subjects like Andrade's TTY aren't really the problem, because that wouldn't be a microthread. She's one of the biggest names in the sport, there have already been a number of posts about it and the issue will probably come up again during Paris. So it's clear that would be better with a dedicated thread, or a wider what is Rebeca doing on vault thread at least.

It's more about what we do with stuff like, say, Jen Gadirova has posted video of her throwing a double double into a pit. Not likely to yield more than a couple of posts in itself, but of interest to anyone following the GB programme while not really keeping an eye on the social media.

 

[wishfulgoddess]

Maybe one thread can be specifically for social media videos of new skills.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Could be an option.

I think it's difficult because we end up blurring things that we've heard about on social media but aren't really otherwise SM with stuff that gymnasts do that is specifically SM.

So skill updates are in the first category. Skinner's recent outburst is in the latter, as is Simone telling people to shut up about her husband. It also includes nearly all of people's influencer efforts, including retired gymnasts who are trying to make a living that way like eg Nile Wilson. Those are the easy ones to distinguish. And I think the purely social media content is most comparable to something like the leotard threads, where it does relate somewhat to the sport but it's also a thing that not every fan actually cares about.

But there's also a middle ground where things have a foot in both camps. For example, what Seitz wrote about the German selection event.

 

[Denn]

okay, let's try locking this thread and creating new ones.

but be careful not to create microthreads... If that happens... we'll merge

 

[irichluck21]

I like the idea of creating updated threads.

I merged a few micro-threads into one, such as all the separate Olympics articles threads into one Olympic article thread.