Posted tis on eL MB, might as well do it here

**Dodge** · 10/10/2002, 8:45 AM

A member posted on Johnny Ward's old Mb, telling people to move over here. I responded with this below. I know you want to create the community effect and the club by club section is a big part of that but these are my opinions, and I thought I might as well share them with you

I like foot.ie but there are too many categories.

If I was setting up an eicom League MB (which isn't going to happen by the way)

I'd have eircom League, International, non Irish Football and Off topic (where you can have all the discussions about music, films etc you want) as four separte forums. Thats all

I wouldn't have club sections. I know the Cork lads pretty much dominate the board so maybe if foot.ie wants a Cork section, that'd be OK but keep it separate from the rest

I would have members only and all the other UBB features that foot.ie uses well. (I might have more avatars but I suppose space might be an issue)

**pete** · 10/10/2002, 9:10 AM

I disagree.

I'll only use the eL mb or the eL general section here for general eL topics. I see no point in city fans posting rants about Gunther on the eL mb as will be of little interest to non-city people.

The reason fans from more clubs don't use foot.ie is cos they seem to have their own reliable forums or msg boards already.

**Dodge** · 10/10/2002, 10:00 AM

Sorry yeah, meant to add that in there, but the main point of the post was if I was setting up a General forum, thats what I'd have. I'm not saying thats what foot.ie should do but the club by club section would, in my opinion, be unneccesary on a general meassage Board.

I know Cork fans use this as their main Message Board, thats why I put that bit in but mot club sections are pretty uneventful

**pete** · 10/10/2002, 10:33 AM

Could probably drop the World Cup forum here now...

**Schumi** · 10/10/2002, 11:00 AM

But if you didn't have the club by club sections, you could end up reading one of those Limerick rants by mistake

**Dodge** · 10/10/2002, 1:02 PM

True but you'll miss them when they're gone...

**dahamsta** · 10/10/2002, 1:21 PM

I appreciate the feedback Dodge, but...

I see no point in city fans posting rants about Gunther on the eL mb as will be of little interest to non-city people.

This is the problem. The signal to noise ratio is so bad on JW's forum that I just don't go there any more unless there's a specific reason. It's simply too difficult to find anything, and that's on top of the high muppet count, and poor useability.

Granted, the club forums don't get much traffic aside from City, but that doesn't bother me, they can just sit there empty for all I care, they're not harming anyone. However, if I migrate everything into just one forum, all we're going to have here is a prettier, slightly more well behaved JW forum. But still with high signal-to-noise. What's the point?

I suppose one option is to let people post into the General forum, and move posts into relevant forums afterwards, leaving a redirect, but it adds an admin overhead that I can't afford, and it would only be required if we had new users, which we don't. Any new users we do get learn pretty fast how to use the site. So you see it's a Catch 22.

To come back to the empty club forums, they're empty, obviously, because people don't use them; and they don't use them because the Irish soccer webmasters don't want to use Foot.ie for their forum. It's bizarre when you consider that they're using remote sites with poor software and an abundance of banner ads, but it's up to them, not me.

What am I supposed to do, pay them to use the free service I provide? I don't think so. It's their loss, and it's no loss to me either way.

adam

**Dodge** · 10/10/2002, 2:12 PM

Fair enough, and like I said I do enjoy foot.ie The main problem with the eL is anonymous posters which is cut out instantly here.

And obviously the cork forum will be strong, not arguing about that

I just think that having a general MB first (and then the club boards) would maybe make it more interesting for casual poster

Also I think webmasters may not want to come here due to small things like the colour scheme and may feel like foot.ie will be too involved in their sites. Not positive but just guessing

**pete** · 10/10/2002, 3:17 PM

Originally posted by Dodge
Also I think webmasters may not want to come here due to small things like the colour scheme and may feel like foot.ie will be too involved in their sites. Not positive but just guessing

I don't remember exactely but i think Adam basically offered full admin rights to webmasters (is that term still used

) for their sections.

As Adam says ain't really much difference between foot.ie & notwork54 except you have no anonymous posting or pop ups & banner ads.

**dahamsta** · 10/10/2002, 4:15 PM

I don't remember exactely but i think Adam basically offered full admin rights to webmasters (is that term still used ) for their sections.

That's right pete, although it's moderation rights -- too many admins spoil the broth!

Dodge, any webmaster that wants to switch from their current forum to Foot.ie will be made a moderator of the relevant forum, and they'll effectively take control of it. The only other people who'll be able to moderate their forums will be the admins (me & joe) and the supermods (pete, neil & james), and we'll only do that if things get totally out of control, or if the moderator isn't around.

If another webmaster comes over, they're also made a mod. Considering the size of the soccer fanbase in Ireland, I think this is a good thing, but I respect that some webmasters may have a problem with it, and for that reason I'll also create specific forums on demand, in a Community section much like the one on Boards.ie.

As to colours, well, I see it like this: I provide the service free of charge, and I don't run banner ads, so I think it's pretty fair to ask that I be allowed retain the brand -- a brand I had to buy, I might add, and IE domain names don't come cheap. That said, since we're trying to promote community here, I'm open to discussions, if they come to Foot.ie and talk to me about it, I'll consider their input and make a decision. I can't say fairer than that*.

Finally, there is a general board, el General. It's far quieter than it should be, so over the next month or so I'll take an easier line on off-topic posting. It won't last forever, but maybe it'll help people settle into the different system. Fair enough?

Again, thanks for your feedback, it's much appreciated.

adam

* Yes I can: "Fairer than that." <- See!

**Dodge** · 10/10/2002, 4:31 PM

Of course you have a right to keep your brand, and a fine brand it is too, and it was all conjecture on my behalf to say thats why "Moderators" don't bring their MBs here.

Just trying to give some feedback for you

Basically what I was trying to say was that if http://foot.ie/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=14
was the front page rather than http://foot.ie/index.php?s=
a lot more might be temptied to post on the general page

Anyway I think I've given enough unsolicated advice for one day

Keep up the fine work

**Xlex** · 11/10/2002, 1:29 PM

Independant Saints have relocated to an alternative which is far inferior to this fine board. It carries the same log-in requirement, etc. as here... Someone asked why they didn't use here and they said the Cork lads would be coming on to the board with their 'dub' ****... Now I disagree, that it may occur... but there is no point in it happening either... Such stupid abuse should constitute a 'strike', The Indpendant Saints Message board would have been a real coup on foot.ie... Its a busy board...

Dodge, I know your involved on that board, Is their any chance ye might consider locating here??

The real beauty of Foot.ie is that is is a one stop shop for eL topics within clubs... It stops the requirement of floating around the place... as for those pesky pop-ups, thats another thing...

Quote from the IS board:

its basically for cork city fans and as such if we were there we'd have countless "f*** the dubs" messages to sift thru, its not worth the hassle, great for them but no good for us

**dahamsta** · 11/10/2002, 1:42 PM

I think pretty much everyone here knows that that kind of behaviour wouldn't be tolerated here on Foot.ie, that I'd be knocking heads if it did. As you know, Foot.ie was never, ever meant to be about City, it just turned out that way because the more... lucid City fans needed somewhere to go when corkcityfc.com died.

Like I've said before, Foot.ie is a community, and it's a community that wants to grow. If people are concerned about how things operate here, there's a very simple solution, join the community and come and talk to us. We're pretty easygoing on the whole.

To be honest, I find the whole "City'll go on the attack" thing kinda funny. I hope the team is more confident in the supporters that they are themselves*.

adam

[size=1]* Reverse phsychology!?[/size]

**Dodge** · 11/10/2002, 3:17 PM

I'm not that involved on the IS thing (despite what some may suggest) and in the longer term we may move here but we canvassed our members and most didn't want to locate to foot.ie, preferring to set up our own

Any regular user of foot.ie knows what it's like but the casual "passer by" who may be a Pats fans may see nothing but posts by Cork fans and think, this isn't for me

Oh and colour was an issue...

By the way the IS site only links to 3 sites, one of which is foot.ie

**dahamsta** · 11/10/2002, 4:20 PM

Oh and colour was an issue...

Foot.ie forums can be skinned, and colour is something I'm willing to discuss. However there are some issues, mainly with regard to branding and aesthetics.

Obviously we'll want to keep the Foot.ie brand on the site, but there's a simple fix for that, we can just change the colour of the logo and buttons. However, some webmasters will want to put their own brands on the forums, and this gets messy if we bring another webmaster on board -- for example, Dundalk currently has two moderators and another webmaster has just applied. A possible workaround here is to include the club logo in the template in a static position (probably on the right-hand side).

The other thing is aesthetics, we want to keep the site looking good, keep it easy to use, and we want to make sure that there's some level of consistency across the site. In other words, we want to avoid bright, loud colours, and we want the transition from one set of colours to another to be nice and smooth. That means using toned-down colours, and only editing the colours around the edges.

So, assuming IS came over here, it would mean that the top section colours would change, a Pats logo would be added on the right-hand side, and the table border colours and scrollbars would change too. However, the main colours in the middle, the white background and alternating grey post panels, would stay the same. That's the way I see it anyway.

By the way the IS site only links to 3 sites, one of which is foot.ie

Good stuff Dodge, thanks.

adam

**dahamsta** · 11/10/2002, 4:34 PM

PS. Yes, that was me fscking with the styles. Yes, I made a boo-boo. You're welcome.

adam

**Éanna** · 12/10/2002, 1:47 PM

Originally posted by Xlex
Quote from the IS board:

its basically for cork city fans and as such if we were there we'd have countless "f*** the dubs" messages to sift thru, its not worth the hassle, great for them but no good for us

strikes me as a cop-out. I´m sure there´d be a bit of banter(BOTH WAYS!), but nothing on the scale suggested above.

**Dodge** · 14/10/2002, 11:27 AM

In fairness that was one person's opinion, the majority of us are members here and of course there is nothing stopping Cork fans signing up on our board and calling us Dub C**** ( We have censored some words too) We actively support banter between sets of fans (its one of the best features of this little league)