Cup of Chowder State of the Blog: 2014-2015 Season

Hi Everyone!

With the season just a few short days away, we thought it'd be a good time to update everyone on the changes that have gone on at your friendly home blog over the last few months. We've all been preoccupied with lots of stuff since the Bruins bowed out against the Habs in May - whether it's been the World Cup or F1 or street hockey or vacations, it was a great summer but we're all super excited to get back into things around here. Your feedback is super important, so let's talk a little bit about the changes we're implementing to make things even more awesome around here.

New Writers

Since the season ended, we've bolstered our staff a bit!

Mark Duarte, Nolan Cardwell, and Mike Leonard joined us in late May/early June. They've been putting in work on our report cards, our "players we love/love to hate", and our Top 25 Under 25 series, and you'll be seeing them writing feature stuff in the near future.

Mark is a Tufts grad student who will be writing about the finances of the NHL (and possible occasional french recaps of Bruins/Habs games); in true SCoC tradition, we poached Mike Leonard from the former HubHockey.com, and Nolan Cardwell from houndsports.com. If you have a chance and you haven't been around for a few months, go back and check out some of their stuff from the summer - it's been pretty great.

For game day coverage, Sara Civian joins us from Penn State - she'll be doing your game day previews. Mike Grinnell will be joining us to be our in-game social poster - he'll be grabbing fanshots of relevant game stuff and posting them here for you to find.

We're hoping to bring our game coverage to a new level this year - Public Skates will be the same, but our postgame coverage will hopefully be through the roof.

Coverage: What are we going to be doing?

Like last year, we're super lucky in that we have a press pass with the Bruins. Pretty excellent. This year, we're going to try to increase our use of that access - expect to see more postgame quotes and video from the locker room. We'll be at all 41 home games, weather and life permitting; we'll be trying to get boots on the ground in a few other cities during the year as well. We'll be keeping up with the gif game, of course - we'll also try to have as much coverage on the Providence Bruins as well. If you or anyone you know is interested in covering Providence, please reach out - we're still trying to shore up our work on that front.

In non-writing plans: we're going to try to start a regular podcast again. The success of the Jewelcast over at Jewels from the Crown has been inspiring, and the few times we did our own last year was a lot of fun. We've also got plans in the works for a SCoC Boston get-together at some point during the season, likely during away games, and likely at the Fours, so keep an eye out for that as well.

If you have any requests for pieces examining any aspect of the team, let us know on twitter - we're always looking for story ideas!

Community Guidelines and Moderation - the Hard Line

SCoC has grown in leaps and bounds over the last year and that's pretty fucking awesome. We strive to be a places where everyone, regardless of where you're from or who you are, can come and discuss our favorite team in-depth. We want you all to dissect or fret over or celebrate everything this team does, from trades to winning the Cup to injuries to fights and fancystats and charts and gifs and infographics. We want your opinion to be heard. We love you!

That said, in the past we have had some members cross the line into behavior we don't find acceptable.

We'd like to remind everyone of the guidelines for posting here on Chowder.

• Swearing and good-natured chirping is PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE. We're Boston fans, obviously we have no fucking problem with language around here. You are all adults, you should know perfectly well what the line between good-natured teasing and actual meanness is, but in case you're not sure:
• PERSONAL ATTACKS ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE. Before you click post, think about this: would you say these words to a friend or to someone you respect in your day to day life? If the answer is no, delete your post and try again. This is a community built on respect, and if you can't abide by that, you're going to be forcibly ejected from the site.
• Blatant trolling will result in an automatic ban. So will bots, posts advertising anything that isn't relevant to Chowder, etc. If you get banned for perpetual asshattery and you create multiple accounts, we will ban your IP address! So don't bother with that.
• Comments that are intolerant and offensive - ie. anything sexist, racist, homophobic - will be swiftly and harshly dealt with. This should be pretty self-eplanatory. Don't make jokes about "Cindy Crosby" or the "Sedin Sisters." Don't refer to things as "so gay". Don't be Adrian Dater. You get one warning. If behavior is not corrected after one warning, you're gone. Do not ask to be reinstated, because honestly, if you're not adult enough to fix the way you treat people, we don't want you around.
• We encourage healthy debate over hockey-related things! We don't encourage debate over things like politics or religion. If you want to talk about those things, go check out Vox.com. We're affiliated with them, but we're not them. Keep it (mostly) on topic.
• Bottom line: we're proud of our community, we're proud to be a part of SB Nation, who have set a high standard as a network of sites whose comments sections are actually....enjoyable to participate in! Let's keep it that way.

The Last Word

I'm psyched about this season. I'm psyched that I get to keep editing this site for you all. I'm pumped about our new staff, about our expanded coverage, and about hanging out and talking sports with all you crazy kids for another year. If you have feedback, always let us know - comments and questions are always appreciated.

And of course, the most important thing: Go Bruins!