You now have the ability to report an abusive user in a mock draft.  There is a new box below the chat box where you can send an abuse message against a particular user.  It automatically records information about that user and a copy of the chat transcript up until that point.

Don’t take it lightly though.  If you disagree with someone taking a player in round 2 when they could last until round 3, don’t report them.  However, if they take Taco Wallce in round 1, don’t hesitate to report them.

If a person gets enough reports filed on them, they can be banned.  The process for determining who gets banned is complex, and may change over time.  If you’re doing a draft and chatting normally then you don’t have anything to worry about, even if someone accidentally clicks the report button on you.  This is designed to keep out the extreme outlyiers who insist on actively destroying the drafts.

If you report a person, they will remain in that draft, but they may be prevented from joining future drafts.  If there’s a need to actively remove people from the draft they’re initially reported in, then that could be added later.  I think this solution should help solve most of the problem with abusive drafters.

If you think you may have been banned, send an email to support@fantasyfootballcalculator.com, and we’ll get it sorted out.  There may occasionally be times when a good user is accidentally banned, but if you send an email to support, your account can be whitelisted for the drafts.

I would also like to take this time to thank everyone who does participate appropriately in the mock drafts.  The vast majority of you take your drafts seriously and make the discussions fun and insightful.

The Twitter feed on the news page now includes new NFL players:

• Andre Johnson
• Pierre Thomas
• Ray Rice
• Greg Olsen
• Dustin Keller
• Darren McFadden
• Reggie Bush
• Eddie Royal

Also, to avoid Chad or T.O. from clogging up the whole page with their massive tweets, it’s now limited to the 5 most recent tweets per person. That’s resulted in a better mix of players’ tweets.

The fantasy football news aggregation page is back up after being down for over a day.  There had been some problems on Twitter’s end last week that caused the Twitter feed to be disabled, but everything is running smoothly now.

The top two posts from Fantasy Football Chatter right now are articles from 12-step drop on revised QB rankings with Favre back in the mix, and a great summary from Fantasy Football Fools on Broncos, Bills, Bears and Bowe.

Then there is of course the live Twitter feed of select fantasy-relevant NFL players.  Here is Matt Hasselbeck snapping a picture of one of his offensive lineman on a boat:

Due to the high demand and the draft rooms filling up very quickly, the drafts have now increased from one every 45 seconds to one every 30 seconds. That’s an increase from 80 drafts an hour to 120 drafts an hour.

So far they’re still filling up, but the wait time is cut down to about 5 minutes or less. If they start filling up too quickly, more can be added.

There were over 1,300 live mock drafts yesterday, but even that wasn’t enough to satisfy everyone trying to draft. At peak times, the drafts have been filling up quickly, even at a rate of 1 draft per minute.

Tonight, the draft frequency just bumped up to 1 new draft every 45 seconds which should help allevieate the congestion.  They’ll continue to be monitored to make sure that there is enough space to fill the demand.

You can now see ADP data from 2008 and 2007 on the Average Draft Position page.  Browsing through it really brings back memories.

Remember when Shaun Alexander was a top 6 pick?  How about taking Travis Henry at the end of the 1st round?  Anyone feel like making either of those picks this year?

Top 20 Running Backs From 2007:

You can use the filters on the ADP page to view by year.  For the impatient, here is the 2008 ADP and the 2007 ADP.

The graphs still show just 2009 data.  The archived data is only a snapshot of the last ADP before the season started, and is only available for 12-team leagues now.

Trend Spotting

The most noticeable trend over the years has been a rush of non-RBs into the first round.  In 2007, 11 out of 12 first-round picks were RBs.  In 2008 that dropped to 9 out of 12, and in 2009 it’s holding at 9 out of 12 also.

Go nuts!  See what trends or interesting facts you can find by digging through the ADP data.

Just launched!  A new way to keep up with fantasy football news.

On the news page, you can see two things:

Fantasy Football Chatter List

The left side shows a list of the top news items directly from Fantasy Football Chatter.  Click through on the item to go to the full discussion.

NFL Players on Twitter

A brand new feature is a Twitter stream on the right of the page.  There are a lot of NFL players with active Twitter accounts, but this list only includes ones with significant fantasy value.  Sure, they don’t always talk about football, but it’s fun to see what your first round draft pick is doing right now.

Start Reading!

So check it out here!  I’m sure they’ll start tweeting more about their practices once the season gets underway soon.

Here’s a summary of some recent blog posts here on the Fantasy Football Calculator Blog, just in case you missed some.

Things will move fast once training camp starts later this week.  Stay on the ball by refreshing yourself with these articles:

ADP Updates and Player Analysis:

QB Showdown: Rivers or Warner?

Which Packer Do You Want?

Westbrook Drops, But Not Far

Wide Receivers Still Workhorses of the NFL

Pierre Thomas beats Reggie Bush

Romo’s Value Still Declining

Fitzgerald Leads Elite WRs

Site Updates and Other Cool Stuff:

Draft Sound Alerts and Improved Dashboard

5 Ways to use Twitter for Fantasy Football

Fantasy Football Headlines On iGoogle

New Site: Fantasy Football Chatter

Ready, Go!

There, now you’re up to speed and ready to draft smart this year.

The freezing problem has been fixed.  Users with Internet Explorer should no longer have the occasional draft freeze.

Thanks for giving your comments in the feedback box in the draft rooms.  Your input was very helpful in diagnosing and fixing the problem.

If you encounter problems with the draft, please leave feedback in the draft room (it all gets read) or use the contact page for help.

There have been several reports of the mock drafts freezing up on people in the middle of the draft.  This issue is being looked at and there should be a fix for it soon.  The problem seems to affect only Internet Explorer (all versions).

Sorry for the inconvenience.  This will be fixed as soon as possible.