Relax, AN isn't changing that much more. I've just been doing a lot of thinking about how to make the site better this past offseason. It's where the Staturdays idea came from and I think it's been an excellent addition to the site as devo, grover and sal have done a magnificent job. So Staturdays is becoming a regular three-man rotation between those ANers. I'm really happy to have them contributing and increasing the stat presence on the site.
I also discussed how to make sure that the front page writers for AN continue to stay inspired. They came back to me and made some excellent suggestions. First and foremost, we're changing how the front pagers post. The only responsibilities that will be assigned to people are game threads and any regular features like Staturdays or ANtics.
That means that you could hear from any of the front page group on any day. Nico, baseballgirl, monkeyball, louismg and myself are going to have the ability to essentially write whenever they see fit. I'm hoping this means that we'll be writing and updating the site more frequently this year. And the writers will be free to write whenever inspiration hits rather than being forced to write on particular days (other than the game threads and game wraps). The goal is to give our writers more free reign to be able to write when creativity hits. We're going to move to this starting when the spring training games start next week.
That being said, I'd like to officially announce that notsellingjeans is officially joining the front page crew. I think he's going to be a fantastic addition to the front page as he has some great experience in writing about baseball and understands the game really well.
We're also planning on having Brad Ziegler back for a diary this year and hopefully he somehow winds up making it with the big club. That one is TBD.
Regardless, I'm hoping that you embrace the new AN. Everything we've been doing from the new platform to the changes to the front page rotation has been to try and improve the community.
Speaking of which I noticed the discussion of AN's numbers yesterday in the DLD. The numbers are actually very skewed downward for two reasons. First and foremost, the numbers took a big hit when we switched to AN 2.0 (the way the comments regenerated affected page views badly). Sitemeter also made some changes in how they calculated numbers recently as well, which led to the visits being more of a reflection of what the site is really doing.
So you don't have to worry. It actually hasn't changed all that much judging from our google analytics numbers.
Trust me, if the changes to the front page posting don't have a good overall impact on AN, it won't last. But I think it will be for the better. I hope you like them too.
