The hell with you, too, Sports Reference

Not quite two weeks ago, I wrote a post about the dangers of Russia-cancelling. I linked at the sports stats site Hockey Reference to Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitols, as a Russian athlete facing this danger as well as conductors, opera starts, etc. I also linked to Enes Freedom and his ongoing yuks. You'll see neither listed here. Stand by.

Well, if you're familiar with any of the Sports Reference sites, above all Baseball Reference, you know that it has a program for bloggers where if they link to players, and they're a signed-up blog, your blog post, after SR has scraped the web, will be listed below the first set of stats.

Well, mine wasn't. I had not originally signed up for Hockey Reference. Just BR, plus the pro basketball and pro football sites. 

But, about two years ago, I guess due to complaints from teh Google, they changed the program. No longer could you just link the HTML of a player's site. Instead, you had to create a reference link, using a Javascript tool, that had a "no follow" as part of the code.

I didn't know if I had to sign up for Hockey Reference or not. After a few days, I figured I did, and asked.

My bad.

Tuesday, a Sports Reference email said I was being delisted for violating terms of service.

One is profanity.

And, I guess my post from earlier this week, "Oh, hell no, the Cards just did it and signed Pujols," since it wasn't my first F- or H-bomb, was over the line.  Now, it wasn't my first, but it's not like I did it every week. Three times in the last six months, I think. (If memory serves me right, it was one F, one H and one S over about six months.)

And, when they delist you, they delist you. 

All former blog post links gone.

And, not even a warning. 

Just, "bye."

Well, I'll link to Fangraphs in the future. And, Fangraphs used to have a guest blogging feature on site that I used a couple of times. That said, Fangraphs is baseball only. But, I can write a guest blog there, then post it here later, in an expanded version and link back there, if I'm still in good standing.

Scratch that, no I won't. I posted a community blog there, like not one but two different ones I did eight years ago. Two weeks later, it has yet to be approved, so the hell with you, too, Fangraphs. And, if only paying contributors can blog there now, at least tell me. (I both emailed and Tweeted Fangraphs more than a week ago, and zip on the response.) That said, both those old blog posts have an "urgent" message at the top, asking for support so that Fangraphs can cover the 2021 season. Yes, you read that boldface right. Sounds like there's maybe a fair amount of "phoning it in" there? I would try to jingle them on Hucksterman, too, but they don't even have a Facebook page. (B-Ref does.)

Update, June 11: Clicking the "one" link and loading that blog post again? The "Community Research" on the right-hand rail shows NOTHING dated after the end of March, so I guess Fangraphs killed that. And, there's still the big picture asking for "2021 (and beyond)" help. When I log in and go to my profile page, neither of the old posts, nor that "pending" one from April, show up on my "dashboard." So, fuck it, too, I guess. Dinosaur land.

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Sidebar 1: I have been dropping a few more four-letter words on Twitter recently. So, maybe something to watch. Or maybe not.

Sidebar 2: That said, Sports Reference XXX's out an f-bomb, or maybe even an h-bomb, in the header and any body text in the first 25 words or whatever their "capture" length is. So, it's not like family bloggers saw the actual word.

Sidebar 3: A warning would have been great. A deletion of the blog posts in violation of the policy, along with the warning, would have been fine. A deletion of the offending posts without a warning would have been acceptable. A full blog deletion — and without a response indicating this was why, and this was the only reason why? Not acceptable. And, maybe it wasn't the only reason why. Maybe they run Ukraine up the flagpole and salute it, and considered my Russian cancel culture post unpatriotic spamming.

Sidebar 3: I had done a lot of sports blogging recently. And, with getting older and no longer being a Green, either, had been thinking about doing more outside of political blogging. Maybe this is a push I needed.