Forum suggestions?

jamesgould

jamesgould

Danny 'Bedsy' Buderus
Staff member
Admin
Since it's just me running the site these days, I don't have anyone to throw a few ideas around with. So I thought I'd just open it up to anyone - does anyone have any suggestions/ideas/plans/schemes for the forum? I'd love to see us get more members and posts on here ... while still maintaining the high quality of conversation (which can be a tricky thing to do - look at facebook discussion on the Knights - there's a ton of it, but a lot of it is pretty braindead).

Without wanting to be too backslapping, we are a pretty awesome, thoughtful, intelligent and respectful crew on here, and I would never want to change that.

But it would be cool to get even more people contributing! So if anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them. 😊

Out of interest, here's the average posts per day for the forum, going back to its inception in late 2005. We are on an upward trend over the last few years, I think! Facebook and twitter definitely destroyed things back in the day lol.

Screenshot 2023-04-16 at 3.07.17 PM.png
 
Like most forums, women hate all the **** measuring "banter" that goes on, and basically stay away.
Can't work out why.
I've tried to think of ways to get women interested and all I can think of is to have a section where the internet heros are excluded.
On other forums you see sections where only some members can post.
I feel the women's section you have already set up could be very restricted to women and posters who can behave themselves in civil society and you might actually get some women in here.
It would be good if everyone could read it though.
 
Billy said:
Like most forums, women hate all the **** measuring "banter" that goes on, and basically stay away.
Can't work out why.
I've tried to think of ways to get women interested and all I can think of is to have a section where the internet heros are excluded.
On other forums you see sections where only some members can post.
I feel the women's section you have already set up could be very restricted to women and posters who can behave themselves in civil society and you might actually get some women in here.
It would be good if everyone could read it though.
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It’s funny when the forum first started it was more females who posted than males, I’d say. That’s definitely changed over the years.

I do think our women’s section is awesome though, people are really knowledgeable and passionate about it already. I haven’t looked but I’d guess we have one of the more active WNRL sections of all the various club’s forums.
 
James, maybe you can conduct a closed survey of those existing and former female members to ask their opinion on what may increase participation and contribution from women to this forum?

Not sure what the current numbers are but there could be some practical insights and suggestions there?
 
Billy said:
Like most forums, women hate all the **** measuring "banter" that goes on, and basically stay away.
Can't work out why.
I've tried to think of ways to get women interested and all I can think of is to have a section where the internet heros are excluded.
On other forums you see sections where only some members can post.
I feel the women's section you have already set up could be very restricted to women and posters who can behave themselves in civil society and you might actually get some women in here.
It would be good if everyone could read it though.
Click to expand...
Counterpoint: Men are strong, like King Kong. Girls are weak, chuck ‘em in the creek.
 
My only serious suggestion for the women's section is to immediately delete or at least edit any post where some genius makes what they seem to think is the profound observation that the standard of play in a 5 year old semi-professional league is lower than in the 115 year old men's professional league. Always such a useless, annoying contribution.

Other than that (and I realise this is a huge generalisation), I don't know whether women are that much more interested in women's sports than men's, that they'd join an Internet forum in great numbers to discuss it specifically. Anecdotally, I would say women who are already into the NRL, are more likely to get into the NRLW than male NRL fans, but women who don't like footy aren't having their heads turned by it. I'm not convinced restricting that part of the forum to women and well-behaved gents would increase the number of posts in there. For a start, a lot of the posts are from me, and I think I'd probably fall afoul of any reasonable 'good behaviour' standard.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
My only serious suggestion for the women's section is to immediately delete or at least edit any post where some genius makes what they seem to think is the profound observation that the standard of play in a 5 year old semi-professional league is lower than in the 115 year old men's professional league. Always such a useless, annoying contribution.

Other than that (and I realise this is a huge generalisation), I don't know whether women are that much more interested in women's sports than men's, that they'd join an Internet forum in great numbers to discuss it specifically. Anecdotally, I would say women who are already into the NRL, are more likely to get into the NRLW than male NRL fans, but women who don't like footy aren't having their heads turned by it. I'm not convinced restricting that part of the forum to women and well-behaved gents would increase the number of posts in there. For a start, a lot of the posts are from me, and I think I'd probably fall afoul of any reasonable 'good behaviour' standard.
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I can only remember one or two posts along those lines, which has been one of the really pleasing things about the subforum for me, and they've been shot down pretty quickly. But totally point them out if they're there and I'll get rid of them, because it's really not what I think people posting there want to debate or discuss - it's pointless and insulting.

All I can say about the appeal of women's sport to women is in NZ we have the Super Smash T20 cricket competition, and the women play before the men in every game (well, sometimes the order is reversed, but usually it's men first). And when I go to a game and don't have time to go to the women's one first, or it's too early and I can't be bothered getting up, I've been surprised a few times to see a big stream of mainly girls with their parents leaving the ground as the women's game ends. That's a pretty small sample size, but based on that it wouldn't surprise me if the Women's NRL isn't getting a lot of support from females that wouldn't otherwise bother. Maybe it's still a bit early for the WNRL - it only lasts around six weeks after all - but if it's not there already then I think it will come.
 
The crowds at the early womens SOO games held at smallish grounds was mostly women and a lot larger crowds than expected. A lot of them looked young enough to be players or potential players.
Since then a lot more men and older people have bulked up the crowds, but early crowds looked like people wanting to see if the sport was for them.
 
I noticed that 16 of the top 20 posters on here have the nickname of Danny ‘Bedsy’ Buderus. Is there anyway to change this?
 
Lefty said:
I noticed that 16 of the top 20 posters on here have the nickname of Danny ‘Bedsy’ Buderus. Is there anyway to change this?
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I could redo the player list and the number of posts you need to get to reach each level … or we could go for some more generic things, like “Knights Legend”, “First Grade Regular”, etc. Although as I type that, it’s a bit boring lol. Happy to hear any other suggestions! Also people could just have the ability to create a custom one, that’s another option.
 
Some people like, mozza, found a way around it, but I couldn’t.

I’ll suggest when you feel like it, redo the number of posts to reach each level as virtually all the top posters are ‘Bedsy’. Strangely I can’t recall anyone with Joey as their nickname.
 
Maybe if possible, when you reach the top level you can customise it? Or pick from a list of 20 etc. That may be too tricky to organise though
 
Can we have a period of time each off season when no one can post? Maybe call it an annual forum shut-down, or something similar.
 
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