Come try out Maize n Brew’s March Madness live chat on Saturday!

Dearest readers, trusted friends and fans of the Michigan Wolverines,

Maize n Brew has been selected as an exclusive test of a brand new Game Day Thread experience that is in the process of being developed by Vox Media and SB Nation. Threads have been a staple of ours during football season and portions of basketball seasons, but we’re excited about the opportunity to be the first community to take part in testing this new feature.

The goal of the new platform is to create a more engaging and free-flowing commenting experience that resembles more of a live chat feel compared to our current setup. We are not expecting it to be perfect or universally beloved, but this is simply a test and a feedback-gathering experiment. We hope that means you’ll come in and participate with an open mind and have fun with it!

Here are some additional details:

• The live chat will run just in the Game Day post and will take the place of a traditional game thread. The post will go live 30 minutes before Saturday’s Michigan vs. Mount St. Mary’s/Texas Southern game, which is scheduled for a 3 p.m. ET tipoff.
• Participants may be asked to confirm their email addresses, but there should not be any additional steps needed to join the chat.
• There will be a survey for you to share your feedback, good, bad or otherwise. The new chat system is very much a work in progress and all constructive feedback is welcome. You get to help us and potentially shape how this looks moving forward! That’s pretty awesome.
• As far as our site goes, there will be Maize n Brew staff members in the chat engaging with you. We’re excited to test it out, as well.
• If the test goes well and is received positively, this may be something that pops up again in the next round. That will be determined based on how Saturday afternoon’s run-through goes.

I was allowed to test it out myself earlier Wednesday and think there’s a ton to like here, so I’m excited for you guys to give it a shot, too. This should help make for much more inclusive conversations and also provide us with enhanced tools for moderation.

Feel free to ask any questions below! I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes and hope that you’ll come with an open mind and help us move the development forward of something we hope will help all of our communities evolve further.

See you Saturday!

Anthony Broome