Yesterday, one of Grant's highly paid professional sycophants suggested an "Off-Topic" post in which folks could post their, well, "off-topic" comments, thus saving innocent readers naively seeking baseball-related content at McC from seeing pictures of male orifices posted by moderators or finding out what time PiKA is leaving for Chico and with whom he will consume barbecued meat-related products.

As Natto pointed out, many SBN sites (especially those with high traffic) do something like this to keep the "content" free from the "chatter" or "raise the signal-to-noise ratio"). It's sound site management. But I fear that which I love might be somehow negatively affected. McC like San Francisco itself, is fantastic partly (or largely) because anyone can do just about anything just about anywhere at just about any time. Like the three naked guys eating ice cream cones outside Harvest last Saturday afternoon. But, again like SF itself, those who abuse their freedom to do anything anywhere anytime risk being publicly ridiculed or shouted down for doing so in a way irritating to the larger community (for example, like smoking a tobacco cigarette at a Stern Grove Country Joe and the Fish show and violating the sanctity of the medically-related cloud). So I post this with a sad resignation that things like the epic Star Wars Marathon communal watching will not be quite as spontaneous (although I hope they will still happen in these OT threads, if they continue). Natto noted in yesterday's post that OT fanposts are still totally fine, if not encouraged, for discussion on an off-topic topic (book reviews, Lost spoilers, etc.).

I'd like to suggest, as a topic for the off-topic discussion, that McC consider a daily post of this type, maybe along the lines of that at California Golden Blogs. Each day some poster puts up a topic, really just as a prop for discussion, about... well, anything. It might be pictures from a hiking trip, or a brief story about a family event, or whatever. It's not on forbidden subjects (i.e. politics, religion, or the Fodgers) and not "on-topic" for the blog (again, kind of hard for McC but probably not things about the Giants or baseball). I don't think it's all that organized- whoever is on early in the morning that notices it hasn't happened yet throws one up. Some are well-thought out, and some are dumb. It doesn't matter that much, kind of like everyone taking a turn at karaoke. It probably shouldn't be posted before 12:01AM Pacific time, just so it can really be a daily link dump/OT thread. It's nice and anarchic if done in this fashion, which would fit well with the chaos here at McC in my opinion.

I'd also like to plead for a better name for the feature than "Off-Topic". At California Golden Blogs it's abbreviated DBD. I expect Lookout Landing has a name for theirs, and I think the New Jersey Athletics' fan site has a similar feature with a tarp-related name. I hope, between discussions of sandwich fillers and Journey sing-alongs, that the inquisitive, enterprising, dirty minds of McC will come up with a good name for this daily collection of TWSS set-ups and lame recycled .gifs and llama pictures. Preferably something that will ensure Grant never, ever, ever gets a press pass from the Giants.

Now is the part where you start talking about recipes or GrahamCrackaLicka's mom or your Out of the Park dynasty or whatever else you people have to say that no one you have actual face-to-face contact with will talk about with you.