Board discussion and feedback

[847badgerfan]

Seems like it might be time to look at a few things here. First I will explain my position, from the perspective of an owner/investor in this place.


I really hope it hasn't gone un-noticed, but maybe so? @ELA  worked pretty hard a while back to get us organized, and he still does. He initiated season threads, which morph from off-season threads, for miscellaneous information on each team. He initiated game week threads, and even went so far as to organize titles of them to include records and rankings. There are many more examples of the work he's done here. And then there's @medinabuckeye1  . Holy crap that guy...



I choose to respect the work these guys do and try to help them maintain it. I and others truly believe it makes our board better than most, despite our small membership. We also have zero moderation - we don't need it. So... Is being organized/structured a problem? Do we not have enough off-topic threads, or team threads?



Of course, feedback is always welcome.

[Brutus Buckeye]

Very organized and nice. Thanks for keeping it alive. 

I second the kudos to medina for allowing us access to his statistical mind. 

[Cincydawg]

I'm surprised we have not gained more members, for better or worse.  We used to see new members come in fairly often.  Maybe folks are all over at 247 or wherever where they can scream and yell and pound their chest.

New members of course can come at a price.

I'm not sure the SEC, ACC, and Pac Boards have enough traffic to really be needed.  I don't have a good idea as to how to merge to get to more of a critical mass though.

[medinabuckeye1]

Thanks!  

I really think ELA contributes a lot more than I do.  His all-team rundown and weekly projections take a lot more work than what I do.  

I focus where I am most suited, tiebreakers and other statistical stuff.  

[847badgerfan]

I'm surprised we have not gained more members, for better or worse.  We used to see new members come in fairly often.  Maybe folks are all over at 247 or wherever where they can scream and yell and pound their chest.

New members of course can come at a price.

I'm not sure the SEC, ACC, and Pac Boards have enough traffic to really be needed.  I don't have a good idea as to how to merge to get to more of a critical mass though.

I've been thinking about this a lot, as has @Drew4UTk . When he started this thing, we discussed having a layout similar to what we had at Scout. Even there, toward the later years, we didn't have a lot of members on those other sites. 
As for more members, I do spend some time searching for old ones - mostly on the 247 boards. I've found a few and some have joined, but they don't post much, if at all. I think you're right in that a lot of people like to pound the chest and get in shit show fights. I'm glad we don't have that.
You want me to go find Crunch? Something for you to play with? Heh.

[ELA]

I think it's a good idea to keep them there.  No harm in having them, and it might look more welcoming to increased membership to see for fans of those teams that they have a home here.

[MarqHusker]

Technical question.  On my android, I can't see or click to other pages within a multipage thread. I have to go back out and find page 7 if I was on page 8.

[Cincydawg]

I wish we had more decent SEC posters (if that isn't an oxymoron!).

Fortunately, the B1G Board is very good.

[847badgerfan]

I think it's a good idea to keep them there.  No harm in having them, and it might look more welcoming to increased membership to see for fans of those teams that they have a home here.

That's exactly why I haven't given too much more thought to making a change. Are there really fans of the ACC and PAC? If so, where the hell do they hang out?

[ELA]

I think it's a good idea to keep them there.  No harm in having them, and it might look more welcoming to increased membership to see for fans of those teams that they have a home here.

This also might be the most poorly worded sentence to say so little I've ever written.

[Drew4UTk]

Technical question.  On my android, I can't see or click to other pages within a multipage thread. I have to go back out and find page 7 if I was on page 8.

I'm on this- i did some work last weekend on the mobile version and inadvertently hid these things... they'll be back soon.

That's exactly why I haven't given too much more thought to making a change. Are there really fans of the ACC and PAC? If so, where the hell do they hang out?

yup- have it and not need it rather than....... but it's also considered that a 'dead' board makes a visitor think the whole place is so... so there is that, too... 

I wish we had more decent SEC posters (if that isn't an oxymoron!).

Fortunately, the B1G Board is very good.

something i'm torn on.........
we could drive traffic and get a LOT of it, as you can see in the 'visitors online' section... there are a LOT of legit visitors here.  if we were to pull a stunt a lot of sites do and allow visitors to only read the first three or four posts and then require them to register, we'd have a lot more participation- but the question is: "what quality of participation?"... .

as it is, and in my opinion, we have a small group to be sure, but it is a QUALITY small group, and one worth preserving.  I fear voices will be lost in the noise that are highly valued here if we were to run 'high percentage plays' to get more members.  I've thought about this to the point (and not knowing what to expects in the very beginning) I've already planned out (yet to implement) a 'private' board- or one that only 'original members' can access... this is something that absolutely would have happened if we'd had been 'occupied' during the closure of Scout.  


~break~

I DO feel like the place could be cleaned up some.  and... I'll get around to it I swear.  Right now I need to focus on the mobile site and get it squared away, as we have about 40% usage either mobile or tablet.  Once that is done i can start consolidating boards and reorganizing topics- but to be honest, unless you guys feel otherwise, it may be something that should await the off-season.  this would allow there to be no major bugs to work out that may impact usage, and not break anyone's familiarity with how it works now.   I know of three major bugs that remain, and one is out of my control and awaiting release of new function (they decided NOT to 'fix' but to totally rewrite).  

a CROWD will certainly pay for this place better- but at what cost to quality? 

I'm flirting with doubling down with my investment here right now, and something i can get the entire board involved with if they (you) choose.  it would be fun and profitable.  

also............ this is pretty interesting, and i haven;t shared it before:

the publisher is 99.9% aggregate right now, with the only original offerings done by me (horrible attempts) and @ELA (which drew some attention)...... this is the good part:  people (writers) research message boards for subjects of interest- it's just a modern way of doing things- they take news broke by others, gauge interest and opinions from message boards, and they write articles..... this place is a good source for that- and something i'd like to see if anyone here wants to put forth the effort... basically "promote a thread to an article" the thread author takes credit for.  this would allow us to attack the search engines/news reels with a two pointed attack- increasing both the message board index as well as the original articles index... 

[Brutus Buckeye]

On the technical side sometimes my phone has a really skinny column for the text. Like one word per line, and if it's a long word it drifts off the side of the margin. Only certain threads though. Like the power ranking thread. So maybe it has to do with the way some of the lists get posted. 

[medinabuckeye1]

On the technical side sometimes my phone has a really skinny column for the text. Like one word per line, and if it's a long word it drifts off the side of the margin. Only certain threads though. Like the power ranking thread. So maybe it has to do with the way some of the lists get posted.

I think that is because of the tables that I post in that one.  Those screw up the formatting.  

[Drew4UTk]

On the technical side sometimes my phone has a really skinny column for the text. Like one word per line, and if it's a long word it drifts off the side of the margin. Only certain threads though. Like the power ranking thread. So maybe it has to do with the way some of the lists get posted.

that's ALL on me... i set to work on the mobile theme and, in my haste to get it launched, went willy-nilly w/o consistency while building the format... sizing, in cascading style sheets, can be accomplished using several units of measure... though many of them seem to do the same thing there are nuances between them, making one better to use than all the others... right now the mobile theme is a victim of my confusion, using %, using pixels, using em's, using pt's, and visible widths/heights (vw,vh) all in some sort of salad that makes sense in some instances but not others... it's all part of what i'm now seeking to fix.