inside you will find the most in depth dissertation of clutchfansology ever conducted

Yeah I agree those Shane b**** threads are annoying. I'm glad you are above the name calling like The Teflon Don and Shane's limo driver kinda childish stuff...

 

I have to say I am genuinely impressed by this thread because it basically outlines how I have felt about the GARM for a long time. I support DarkHorse's ideas because I feel they have the best chance to turn the forum around.

One point that I have not seen made so far is that the creation of his new forum would also improve the quality of posts written by old timers. I know personally that I care much more about the opinions of people that have been on this board and know their basketball. It gives incentives for intelligent fans to take a deep breath and really think out what they want to say.

My only fear is that this will somehow stunt the growth of our young posters. I grew up on this forum, signing up at the age 12 and creating this handle when I was 14. I was a huge jackass then that had no business throwing my opinion in with people who had more common sense stuck in their dental floss than I had in my whole body. I developed a lot of my writing and debating skills here and learned other valuable lessons such as when to ignore trolls and how to appreciate people that aren't like me and my dirt ball friends. I'm not even claiming to be a solid contributor; I just know that this forum has made me a better person.

If we make this move are we in any way scuttling this experience to future clutchfans? Are they going to see this "elitist forum" and leave the site in favor of lolcats and youtube videos of backyard brawls?

 

Clutch,

I've run a forum for years now (emailed you once about it) and I just want to throw out my personal experience. We went through a period where we lost a lot of our veteran posters and we started implementing things to bring them back, get rid of annoying rookies, etc. It never worked. It just made the overall posting base smaller. When we would implement some wholesale change we would see a temporary spike in activity and then it would die off.

 

I would think/hope that allowing all registered users to view the threads in the new forum would not only draw a lot of interest to the discussion, but would also provide some incentive for new posters/non-contributors to get their posts "recognized" in the discussion. If we're saying that all threads appearing in the new forum also appear in the GARM, and that all users can post reply's in the GARM, then it wouldn't be hard to allow the OP the ability to be able to elevate posts from the GARM into the "new forum's" discussion.

It's similar to the idea now where Rookies are encouraged to make good posts, and when they do, Clutch has asked that veteran posters help point out the cream of the crop so that they can given full Member-ship.

As a side bonus, it should also help drive incentive for people to contribute so that they can participate from the get go.

Another obvious benefit is that if the quality of threads can return to it's previous level of goodness, then Clutchfans can once again become the premier source of legitimate, well-thought out Rockets discussion. For years, most people who read the BBS were lurkers because the discussion was so good, the site was better than any other website, news outlet, or television show out there. It would be nice if we could recapture some of that.

But again... this is obviously not my site, not my decision, and there are probably other considerations I'm not taking into account. But superficially, I imagine that at worst, traffic would remain the same.

 

Suggestion (if there is a software that could handle this):

Just put a daily post limit (1-2 posts daily) on those who are not contributing members. And only contributing members can start threads.
Define contributing members as min $10 annually

This accomplishes 2 things-
1. Helps financially
2. Limits the senseless posts and threads from those who do not contribute

I thing this would encourage more thoughtful discussion, might lure more of the better posters back... somewhat

This way someone who cannot afford to contribute can still post on a limited basis.

This way those who could afford about 1$ per week could be contributing members within a short time.

This way contribution to the site might increase also.

And lurkers would always be welcome to come and lurk.

 

How about points system?

A rookie earn points if his posts are contributing to the forum. When he reaches a certain limit of points, he can become a "Member".

What do you think?

 

Would that just apply to GARM, or all the forums?

That would be quite a drastic change.

 

Would there be a way for users to rate the posters comment inside a particular thread. If the rating goes down then their post is muted, if the poster constantly gets muted in various threads then he/she has their thread making and posting abilities removed for a pre defined set of time.

 

This feels like a crusade to get rid of the rookies and non-contributing members

 

I think that would be an excellent idea.

 

How about putting together a list of the members who have shown thru their past history that they care about the quality of the forum and would not mind helping out by reading thru the forum and assigning rep points(voting) as they see fit. The impact of those votes would be all basically the same(with your impact being highest and the rest of the initial voters adjusted from there)

The list of who is allowed to vote would be updated as rep points levels increase among the ones that can't vote to a pre-determined level, once they reach that level they can also assign rep points, but the impact of those rep points woudl be determined by the values you outlined.

This allows you to get the system rolling without the fear that a block of voters would cause undue damage to a member's rep. If any of the existing voters show signs of abusing the system in that fashion, they are no longer allowed to assign reps.

I know Im probably not getting myself across clearly, so...

Thoughts or Questions?

 

Rep points is an interesting idea and I am fine with any attempt...but why can't I get the image of "Clutchfans: the RPG" out of my head?

 

-3 vorpal sword.

 

The only thing I hate about rep points is every thread being filled with "+1 rep" posts, or "will give rep for head" or whatever other stupid things get posted regarding rep on the net.

 

that would be an example of what *not* to do.



It would have to be made clear that asking for reps will result in you not getting what you ask for. The whole point to the rep system is to encourage good quality posting AND to punish for bad posting. Something must be done to weed out the crap without making this a full time job for the moderators. As was noted earlier in this thread, most boards with the number of members we have normally have whole teams of mods, I know the big ones I go to all have multiple levels of mods to help keep the quality high.

A properly implemented rep system would help Clutch do the work of a team of mods without actually having tons of mods.

 

There should be a break down of the GARM into :

1. User Analysis - completely created by the user
2. Breaking News -breaking news
3. Game Analysis - self explanatory
4. Media/Writers opinions - for all the articles by writers, TV people, Barkley, Feigan etc
5. Old School - to educate the youth

 

I thought it was a good idea before, when it was first mentioned and continue to believe that something has to be done to fix the GARM. Good idea about the REP feature.

Question: What about someone like me, Who hasn't been here years but like to think i am quality poster. Would someone who has been registered longer but, isn't a good poster be able to knowck my rep down?

 

I hope the reputation thing isn't like the one on xbox when you play street fighter. people give low ratings if beat the crap out of them no holds bared.

ps.. throwing is not cheap, never has been, not knowing how to get out of corner traps etc

 

This is what I'm worried may happen. The quality of the old GARM won't improve, you may have a 2nd forum where nobody's really posting, and the GARM will still be the GARM.