There's been some talk of whether or not our humble Casual could serve as a general forum for the ultimate community. I know what you're thinking - everyone's on RSD, why reinvent the wheel - but I think our forum/this type of forum would have several advantages over RSD. This would be <forum only> clearly the rest of the world doesn't care about what jess and i do to keep ourselves entertained (why not, i cannot imagine). We'd have to talk about what direction the site as a whole should go in, but this is really about the forum.
Here are the pros and cons in my opinion, it'd be good to hear from others; if no one posts anything for days I will simply assume it's not viable! The question is, can the biggest con be overcome:
CONS
- RSD already has the critical mass, might be hard to attract and is necessary for the success of any forum. This is absolutely the biggest hurdle. - Folks would have to register for another site (but seriously, it takes two seconds and people register online all the time without thinking twice) - The Casual would no longer be personal - it's kind of segregated by Category now, but we'd lose that - On this note, do we want to make this a Chicago-centric forum, or more broad? One of the categories could be Chicago-only, where we'd discuss teams, summer league, rules, etc. - Potentially more of an administrative and cost burden; we'd have to work this out. - Would potentially steal traffic from the better ulty blogs, which themselves are facing consolidation issues (or so I hear)
PROS
- Would consolidate the chatting that takes place on the blogs, currently in the form of comments spread out over a dozen or more serious ulty blogs. I'm talking about comments that actually link to comments on other blogs and to RSD, which is ridiculous. With a forum that has 2-tiered organization (category, discussion) I think we could filter a lot of that into a setup that makes sense. It would be my hope that the forum would attract this traffic, as opposed to the college student who writes to RSD asking if anyone found his bowl that he left on the sideline at OMIT. Clearly we're going to get some of that, but by keeping the categories focused we should be able to raise the general level of conversation (and if misses C and U aren't examples of high-minded conversation, I don't know what is).
- Clearly our forum would have to establish some street cred and attract some of the better bloggers and players for this to work
- 100% dedicated space, hosted by ulty players
- No screenspace taken up by annoying Google ads, no fear of big brother looking at your search terms (unless Akira's doing something we don't know about)
- Ability to post images - pics of hot plays, strategy/play diagrams, etc.
- Ability to make hotlinks (are they still called that? is is 1999?) Probably not the most important "pro" in the world, but still.
- Cleaner look (these aesthetic elements are added bonuses, but I think we do have the advantage there)
- More of the 10,000 emoticons our IT dept. installed will get used.
Casual Ultimate. I read it for entertainment. I'm not an ultimate player, anymore. So I'm in it for the casual. Not the ultimate. If it went all ultimate, it probably shouldn't be called casual ultimate anymore.
I like it because I get to keep tabs on some of the people I hardly get to see anymore, because I stopped playing, because I'm getting married, because I've always lived on the wrong side of town.
I'd suggest if you're interested in something more ultimate related, go for it, but it doesn't seem like that should fall under the casual ultimate brand name. That's just my opinion though.
I think the biggest problem with trying to provide the community with a good forum to chat on is that why would people come here
what is the hook?
i think you touched on the genre casual ultimate should go for in your post. reach out to other communities that might not have a well setup web presence and allow each one of those cities to have their own casual ultimate forum. you could even get into the blog hosting game for them (poor akira is cringing at this).
more thoughts later have to roll this around in the ole noggin for a while
on one hand i think its a great idea to have some more ultimate centered discussion and a broader audience.
on the other hand getting and keeping peoples' attention is difficult and god knows i wouldnt read threads about breakmark this and zone that. chuck has pointed out to me that thats essentially what most ultimate blogs are like. which makes us different. not necessarily better or worse but different. also i think a lot of the ultimate of this forum will come back once it gets warmer and people are playing again.
i guess my personal ideal situation would be more of a 'chicago ultimate forum' as opposed to a national one. i think itd be nice to have a broad readership in chicago so people could post pick up games or look for a fall league team or talk about a call that happened during play locally and not just within our particular circle of friends. we will always have threads about our VIPs and stuff we are doing but getting more of the CUSL crowd and other chicago ultimate people would be awesome.
i know i always reference this but i just thought the forum on the atlanta flying disc club page was awesome and we could potentially fill a role like that since CUSL has not.
Ok... trying to restrain myself... but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...
Your blog and the attached forums are awesome because they're attuned to our community. Each and every time bring up the website I feel like I am catching up on those I hold near and dear. Call me close-minded, but this is why I check your blog 15 times a day and scan RSD for relevant search terms every 2 months ("Tufts," "Chicago," "Beach').
So I guess point one is that I have great associations with your blog and I don't want it to change.
Point two is that I have very bad associations with RSD and to a certain extent the community that comprises it. This isn't an uniformed opinion either - I read RSD religiously throughout college and as I mentioned above I've been known to check it periodically since then. I feel like there are maybe three types of posts - tournament annoucements, flaming/angry/pissy opinions on the future of ultimate, and incredibly over-analytical, dry discussions of the rules. I don't see why that needs a new forum or especially why it needs to merge with ours.
I guess my best suggestion if you still feel the need to reach out would be to use the software you're employing to create a designated page for cusl players/the chicago ultimate community. Or at worst try to make casualultimate a chicago-wide forum. But whatever you do, please don't go national. I'd be so sad if this blog degenerated into a forum for discussions of whether or not you can throw from the ground and how many college teams are going to BEASTERNS 2007.
The people have spoken. All four of them. Fair enough, cas (pronounced caj?) and i have plans to make this the chicago forum to the extent that we can, so hopefully that will happen. actually, we should probably talk to the cusl web folks soon. we'll still have the c.u. staff-only stuff, regardless of what happens. it's easier for us if things just evolve rather than forcing it anyways, and i'm all for easy. easy is really the only thing that will exist in my post-job, pre-grad school life, where my daily itinerary will be something like: wake up, coffee, email, bike, stop and peoplewatch, bike, eat lunch, make friends with strangers, ultimate, beach, beer, bike, movie, sleep. that cannot happen soon enough.