senators69 asked this question on the post The game ends at 12-10 but started at 9-2 in the 2nd inning.
Steve replied that he was not sure of the exact date and suggested that I might know. Well . . . . I didn’t, but I did a little searching and Steve then asked me to write a post recognizing our anniversary with the details. So here goes.
TalkNats grew out of a frustration by some NatsInsider readers at the tenor of many of the comments there. Mark Zuckerman wrote great posts; but there were a lot what some folks referred to as trolls or folks who belonged to what came to be know as the LOD (short for Legion Of Doom) – they saw disaster around every corner. That was a point of frustration for many loyal NatsInsider readers, and that site was not really moderated which was a must have for this site.
And in August of 2015, Steve (aka Ghost of Steve M.) decided to start his own blog, Going Deep With the Nats at http://squeezeplay2.wordpress.com. In fact, if you click on that link, you end up at the TalkNats site.
The first article that we can find (and is the first one Steve remembers writing) was What’s right with the Nats, and what’s wrong with the Nats? 8/16/15 – which was published on August 17, 2015, but given the date in the title was likely written the day before. And August 17, 2015 is exactly one year before the date that senators69 asked the above question – talk about clairvoyance! And there are perhaps some folks who would like to revisit that subject today.
The possibility that August 17 was, in fact, the first post, is reinforced by this note I found in my email on August 17, 2015.
I have posted some blog posts on my WordPress Squeezeplay2. Let me know what you think.
Between August 17 and August 31 there were 47 posts/articles written – with the load shared by 8 writers. As is still the case, the vast majority were written by Steve.
We know that TalkNats as the name of the site came into being on September 2, 2015 as it was announced in this post: Moving to TalkNats.com (September 2nd).
The entire TalkNats team recognizes that every blog is dependent on its readers. And so, please cast your vote for what date you think should be celebrated as the official start of the TalkNats blog.
At this point, I will hand the rest of this post over to Steve for any comments he would like to make.
Here are some of my (Steve’s) thoughts, and it is hard to believe that we are 1 year from those days where two of the finest people I have met in Don H. and Ray W. were very encouraging that if we built it, people would come—-and we did and they did. It is incredible how it has organically grown from the tight knit NI group to now being a real community.
Don and Ray helped to build the infrastructure on WordPress and we grew so big and so fast that we brought in Andrew and Scott who took over the back office and IT and eventually paying the cost and taking over the site ownership.
Others were joining in to write and contribute that the traffic per day grew from hundreds to the thousands. Scott at Image Works Creative came up with the Talk Nats name, and before you knew it we had our own domain.
All of the upgrades we wanted like the edit button and sort features (oldest and newest) and the ability to easily have a Moderation system was what the community wanted in a no troll community, and we got it all thanks to Don’s leadership and the fine people at Image Works.
It all looks easy now but the amount of work that went into the humble beginnings took a lot of work and collaboration. The founders in Going Deep With The Nats jumped in and like Don wrote we had 8 people writing to start and it certainly has grown from there.
This is like a forest with that tree falling and you wonder if it makes noise if there is nobody around to hear it. We started like that tree falling in the forest and we wondered if there would be anybody around to hear it or in this case read it. It’s humbling to see the traffic that now comes in worldwide, and how the little tree in the community has branched out. The interaction has been amazing to where every night our traffic is in the thousands, and the interaction has been incredible in depth and thought.
We have feature pieces like the 18 gamers that have become must reads and first-hand accounts from events and Spring Training that Laura has added with amazing poetry.
We have over-come much of what we can’t change, and accepted what we are which is a site supported by so many people behind the scenes who do so much and we thank them for everything they do.
This is about community and our love of the Nats and it all starts from there. Thanks again from the bottom of my heart. Steve
