Buffalo Rumblings Metathread, 2/8: NFL Draft Chat Next Week

Good morning, Buffalo Rumblings! As we brace for a day's worth of dirty, rotten snow up here in Western New York, we thought we'd start our Friday morning off with a little blog-specific discussion in our weekly METATHREAD. Let's get right to it, since we've got a lot to cover this week:

Live draft chat: Tuesday 2/12, 8:30 PM ET

Have 2013 NFL Draft questions burning a hole in your pocket? Queue them up and be here at Buffalo Rumblings on Tuesday, February 12 (that's this coming Tuesday) at 8:30 PM ET. At that time, we'll have Dan Kadar - SB Nation's NFL Draft expert and lead blogger at Mocking the Draft - live here at Buffalo Rumblings, fielding draft questions from the community in what should end up being a very interesting discussion.

FanShot changes coming soon

In the next round of changes coming to SB Nation United, making FanShots a better experience is the top priority. The FanShot page itself will be re-designed, and now when FanShots are promoted to our front page layout (i.e. what you see at buffalorumblings.com), the content of the FanShot (i.e. the video, photo, Tweet, etc.) will be visible right on the home page, meaning you'll be able to view its content (unless it's a link to another site) without leaving the home page.

The changes are still being tested by SB Nation's bloggers, but when they do go live, we'll let you know - and we strongly encourage experimentation with the new functionality on your part so that we can make FanShots a bigger part of our site once again. One way we definitely plan on using them is to share tweets from Bills players; we're open to other suggestions, as well.

Our GIF policy

Lately, there has been an increase in the number of GIFs posted in our comments sections. That's good; GIFs are pretty much the lifeblood of the Internet. They can, however, bog down the functionality of our comment sections, especially on busier threads (like, say, the "Bills hire Doug Marrone" thread).

As such, we're going to ask that if you post a GIF in a comment, that you also include a comment title (the clickable part of the comment that's bolded when published). Doing that will allow other Rumblers to collapse the GIF if they've seen it, or if they are experience commenting lag and wish to speed up site performance. We reserve the right to remove GIF comments if they don't have a comment title from this point forward (but probably won't unless it's causing problems for just about everyone). Please be courteous to your fellow community members and toss a title in - even a simple "X" would suffice.

Brandon/Nix/Marrone approval polls

Earlier this week, we ran our three monthly approval polls - one each for Russ Brandon, Buddy Nix and Doug Marrone - simultaneously on the same day. That's a departure from our normal posting routine, which is to do one poll one day, and the others in subsequent consecutive days. Is everyone okay with slamming through them all in one fell swoop from this point forward, or did you prefer them spaced out as in years past?

Any interest in apparel?

UPDATED: Thanks, everyone, for the feedback about apparel. There was sufficient interest, so we have officially set up the Buffalo Rumblings Store!

Right now, the selection is limited to t-shirts; we're going to start off small and build up as we see fit. There are four designs and nine total offerings at the moment, but we're always looking for new design ideas if there are any aspiring artists out there! Enjoy your merchandise, faithful Rumblers - and I can't thank all of you enough for your steadfast and enthusiastic support over the years.

Thanks, as always, for reading. Any other blog-specific feedback is welcome in this post. On to Buffalo Bills talk!