This forum needs a makeover

[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?

[Performify]

Not taking it personal in the slightest. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Why not try it out?

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The changes you're suggesting are actually incredibly hard to make happen.

I don't own this place. I'm just an unpaid volunteer who runs one small section of the site within the rules and guidance handed down from above and according to the will of the people.

We're maybe the 10th-15th largest forum on the board from the last numbers I've seen, and there's a huge fall-off from the top five or so. When the largest forum wanted to split off one additional forum, it took several weeks of discussion to make it happen.

I can certainly propose that we create a whole host of subforums. But i really don't think its going to be well received. You're talking about a fundamental change from the way the rest of the site is run.

I've personally been involved with building and monetizing forums and web properties for a long time. "Build it and they will come" is a very common misconception with forums.

People don't use forums because they look pretty or they are organized well or any of that. They use forums for the community and the content. Its one of the huge dangers of segmenting a forum -- forum value is defined by the network effect, which is to say that the value is exponential to the number of users. A forum with 1000 users is exponentially (not linearly) more valuable than a forum with 100 users as long as its well moderated and well run.

I'm certainly interested and open to suggestions to improve things. If there's an overwhelming consensus of people proposing and supporting this sort of massive split and segmentation, we can carry it forward. But "why not try it out" isn't going to fly. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Sporting Events makes this fly with significantly more traffic and only a single place to discuss all sports. I think we can make the forum fly with one forum for all sports betting. Again, if there were a ton of posts per day I could see fighting for segmenetation -- but there are only one or two total pages worth of active threads per day. You should be able to scan at least the active topics for the day in 5 minutes or less and only head in to the NFL or NBA or whatever threads you're interested in. Especially so if we consolodate the total number of threads with this "official whatevertime whateversport whateverdate" thread concept.

-P

[BennettBrauer]

Like the new thread idea. Try it for a month and see what sticks. Plus, you can always consolidate Sunday into 1 thread. But I think, later in season, having Thu, Sat, Sun, Sun nite, Mon nite will be better.

[Thremp]

Quality > Quantity

Hooray I'm again 1-0 on the year on my posted picks... Perhaps I should post all picks to guarantee winnerz or just bet double down after I post?

Granted sample size is like 5 picks I've made in like 10 months since I took a short retirement.