This forum needs a makeover

[DinkinFlicka]

I read the OP and the last post and a few in between. I have lurked these boards for a couple years and the Sports Betting section should be redone. It's not just a matter of threads for sports, it should be organized into multiple boards. Sports Betting shouldn't be listed under General Gambling as 1 board. Sports Betting should have a few subcategories under it:

Sports Bettings
-Football
-Basketball
-Baseball
-Other (UFC, Boxing, Soccer, etc)
-Daily Picks (All Sports)

This is the basic idea. You can divide each of those categories further if you want. ie - NBA/NCAA as sub categories to Basketball.

Having a separate board for picks will get rid of a lot of clutter and you will see more information and discussion. I'm not saying that people can't pick games, but that kind of stuff gets in the way when you are just looking for good information. This way, if you want to follow a certain person you can find all their picks quicker in the appropriate forum. It's better for everyone that way. You can't just click on those threads and find information without sorting through tons of units and roi % jargon, not to mention the bragging/trolling. If people want to do that stuff, 2+2 should just host it like a myspace page because that's what it is basically.

I don't get why poker is broken down into a million different boards and sub boards, but Sports Betting is 1 board. There are so many different types of bets, I could see an ATS, moneyline, totals, exotics, props, whatever sub board for each sport if you wanted to do it that way. Doing it this way just clutters things too much, makes it harder to find what you want, makes it harder to learn, and makers it more likely that users are just getting and giving sport information from other boards on the Internet that are more organized.

There are plenty of intelligent posters around here who would contribute much more sports betting insight if the organization were better, but for the most part you click the link see the first page is full of clutter and just move on. For the most part people don't have the time to sort through page 2,3,4 just to find a topic that interests them because they know that it's going to get buried in 20 minutes anyways by all the new posts ranging from So & So's Hot Picks to UFC 2387 to 4 team WNBA parlays.

Imagine if each week you can just click on Football over on the left panel and up pops a page with each game that week listed and each thread is the latest news, information & analysis, not individual picks from people you've never heard of. Maybe a link within the forum to go back to the list of Week 3 games. And moderate the threads so Johnny Punchclock isn't posting BEARS RULE!!! everywhere. That way people will learn just because they read a thread they don't have to post unless they add an idea or value to it.

[lucksack]

[ QUOTE ]
Sports Betting should have a few subcategories under it:

Sports Bettings
-General discussion (includes other sports)
-Football
-Basketball
-Baseball
-Daily Picks (All Sports)


[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds good to me.

[Performify]

I always appreciate the feedback, but personally I think you're significantly overstating things.

Most forums here on 2p2 are much higher traffic with higher daily post counts, and they're not segmented anywhere near the level you're talking about. The segmentation you're talking about might make sense for a high-traffic sports betting only forum, or if we had 10x the traffic or 5x the posts. But right now, I really think you're overstating a lot. Most of the segmented poker boards get 3x - 5x the posts per day that we do and some get significantly more. The forums here are as segmented as they have to be. we're not anywhere near the traffic level where we'd need to segment the forum.

You may need to change your forum settings. With the forum set at 30 parent posts per page and 99 posts per page in flat mode, this forum gets about one full page of active posts a day during its busiest season (now, during the NFL). many days, less than a full page. Things are a bit crazier during peak activities (superbowl, NCAA tourney) but in general there aren't that many posts here that its hard to keep up with.

We conducted a poll of the forum to vote on B00T's proposal of moving to individual threads per event and the majority was not in favor of that move. I can't imagine we'd get forum consensus to move to individual forums per sport when we don't have people wanting to change to a thread per sport.

[ QUOTE ]
There are plenty of intelligent posters around here who would contribute much more sports betting insight if the organization were better, but for the most part you click the link see the first page is full of clutter and just move on.

[/ QUOTE ]

I especially don't buy this. There aren't hordes of people waiting in the wings to make interesting and insightful posts but who aren't based on the forum software or setup. Good information floats its way to the top of any board here, and boards here with significantly more traffic don't have this problem.

[ QUOTE ]
And moderate the threads so Johnny Punchclock isn't posting BEARS RULE!!! everywhere. That way people will learn just because they read a thread they don't have to post unless they add an idea or value to it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Threads are moderated today. People aren't currently posting "BEARS RULE!!!" everywhere and I'd challenge you to point to a glut of these types of "Sporting Events" flavored posts (obviously outside the Chatter thread where anything goes).

This board is moderated from a philosophical perspective in that it's most heavily policed by the userbase. There is a "notify moderator" button on every post on this site. If you -- or anyone else -- finds a post that they think needs to be moderated in any way, you need to click on that button and file a report. The community sets the standards for what types of posts are allowed and which are not. The moderator notifications are the major tool for the community to police itself. And I especially pay close attention to moderator notifications which come from established, respected posters. People like Homer or Lori or Dank or MT2R or Bob or (whoever I'm leaving out) don't have to be a moderator to mod the board -- someone like that hits "notify mod" and I see the name and take immediate action almost always.


===

But as always with all that said, I'm very interested to see what everyone else thinks. I'm always interested in discussing ways to make this place better, and regardless with the fact that I disagree with your opinion, I greatly appreciate that you've made an effort to bring it up and hope you'll continue to participate in the forum. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

-P

[B00T]

The board seems to be taking the turn to what Naj and Lori have posted about. Each week, there are separate threads being made for each game that has interest.

Maybe if you have one thread as the official records thread, people could post their picks as they make them there and keep their records stated there. It will also keep the actual discussions in only the game discussion threads. That way you won't see analysis on the Cowboys/Bears game in 9 different threads like it was.

[NajdorfDefense]

I'm starting to think there should just be one 'Official' game thread per game, OR - and maybe this is better and seems more in like with B00t's suggestion - for NFL a Sun early Afternoon thread, Sun 4pm thread, Sun nite, and MNF Thread. Instead of 1 or 16 threads [or 100] you get 4 threads with analysis.

College you'd have Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat early, Sat late threads. So 5 or so. Good/Bad/Let's do It!/Awful?

Every week a poster[s] would post one thread he'd be responsible for, MT2R, for example could post the *** Official Wed Nite CFB Analysis Thread ***

That way, if Joe Random McPix sees it, and wants other people to read and leave feedback on his analysis, he knows where to post.

We would still have the 'Guess the opening line' threads, of course. Just trying to avoid the 5+ threads on the Sun nite game as others have mentioned. That is a waste. [Plus, we'd all get an immediate sense of what the board thought as a whole, those that posted that is.]

[New001]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm starting to think there should just be one 'Official' game thread per game, OR - and maybe this is better and seems more in like with B00t's suggestion - for NFL a Sun early Afternoon thread, Sun 4pm thread, Sun nite, and MNF Thread. Instead of 1 or 16 threads [or 100] you get 4 threads with analysis.

College you'd have Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat early, Sat late threads. So 5 or so. Good/Bad/Let's do It!/Awful?

[/ QUOTE ]
I like it. Chopping it up like that makes the in-game comments, 2H plays, etc. more relevant too IMO.

[Jazzy3113]

B00T, how long has that been there?????

[Performify]

I think I'd be open to this concept, at least trying it.

So what are we saying:

*** OFFICIAL 9/30/07 NFL EARLY GAME THREAD ***
*** OFFICIAL 9/30/07 NFL AFTERNOON GAME THREAD ***
*** OFFICIAL 9/30/07 NFL SNF GAME THREAD ***
*** OFFICIAL 10/01/07 NFL MNF GAME THREAD ***

what would be the suggestion on out-of thread posting?

i.e. can someone continue to post their own picks in their own thread? Say Paper or MyTurn who currently have their own thread.

i.e. what's the requested recommended action for out-of-thread posts on the game? Lock any thread on the game and link back to the official? Delete with a PM to the offender?

any other issues or concerns?

I'd suggest we start with just the NFL and if its successful we'll try that for CFB as well.

-P

[B00T]

[ QUOTE ]
B00T, how long has that been there?????

[/ QUOTE ]

I gots no clue what you are talkin about [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[DinkinFlicka]

Maybe the traffic isn't so high because people come here and don't come back. Set it up so it's organized to promote the higher traffic. Serious bettors are usually segmented in the way they bet. I am personally an NBA Totals bettor, that is my specialty. I don't know too many bettors who can just bet on any event and/or style of bet intelligently.

I am not saying everything has to be broken down into sub categories of sub categories, but at least by sport. You can sticky 1 thread per NFL game each week. Things will be much smoother. Put a little blurb on the main 2+2 page that the Sports Betting section is new and improved and the traffic will increase and people will be more likely to keep coming back because they can find what they want quickly.

I don't understand why the amount of traffic should determine if the forum needs to be segmented. Shouldn't the nature of the bets do that like it does for poker? If you build it they will come. Imagine going to the NL Holdem forum and having to dodge 10 PLO threads, 4 Limit HE threads, and some pineapple threads. That's basically what's it's like in Sports betting, because it is not segmented there is going to be a high percentage of irrelevant material to navigate around for almost everyone.

The way the board is set up now it doesn't lend itself to encouraging new users to return as much as it could. Don't take it personally that I'm saying this, I don't mean to have a knowitall tone or anything like that. I'm just saying that organization and segmentation is a good thing in regards to sports betting. Why not try it out?