Future of the footy forum

[Lods]

Some really good points being made and it's pleasing that the discussion is largely concerned with preserving and enhancing the site

We have talked about setting up a facebook page that would run in conjunction with the site.
Just not completely sure how that would work but it's something to consider.
There would be a loss of anonymity on that platform...but we'd have to see how that impacted.

Some of the technical changes suggested would best be run past Spanner and would be largely dependent on his having the time to consider them.

10 years from now it's hard to determine how folk will get their football discussion fix.
Yep...
We do have to move with the times.
We do have to work strategies to attract younger folk
...but as cookie suggests the changes may have to be small gradual evolutionary steps rather than radical changes.

[PaulP]

I think it's important that the site be kept to a size that can be managed effectively. I can imagine the main reason that fb etc. become chaotic and unpleasant is that the mods are called on to do too much, and lose interest and motivation after a while. Once you let too many crazy people in......... forget it Marge, it's Chinatown (as Homer once put it). 

[mateinone]

The other point is that it is okay to keep it how it is and let it run it's gradual course.
What I don't think that we should be scared about though is enticing the wrong crowd.
Change is good in most situations, but it is also scary in most. Better the devil you know...

I spoke to an admin a while ago about this and gave some thoughts, but they never went anywhere, which is completely fine as the site needs to determine it's own direction. The only thing that concerns me is someone coming in with a much better site and legitimately overtaking this site as the best place to get Carlton news.

At the moment (at least for me) Carlton SC is a very long way ahead of Talking Carlton (but then the folks there probably think the same), but what we do have is a bunch of members who have been here over 10 years.

I think Ray, Spanner, Sheik, Brettie & Lods(?) might have all been here longer than I. I have a suspicion that Tribey, Jim, MBB, Crash, Sandsmere, EB1, LP, Kruddler & Thryleon might have all been somewhere between about 2003 & 2007 when they joined so would be in the 10 year plus club (and no doubt I have missed more and it is not intentional, but there are others such as Cookie & GTC that I can't remember when they joined, but they do seem to have been here forever also).

So it does point to some of the most prolific posters coming back and chatting, which is fine, but it has struggled in say the last 5 years to attract many regular (say weekly) posters.

Btw as I said, it is okay for that to be the main purpose of the site, but it would be great imo to see the next generation come in and keep the fire burning.

[Thryleon]

Yep that's about right.  Ten years or thereabouts for me.  I think I jumped on board this forum the trade period before Judd.

I met TUB in person and he got me onto this site.

I'm happy for the site to do what it needs to to remain relevant.

What I think will occur in time is the decline of social media.   It's not as fulfilling as a forum like this.

Also in lengthy topics too many posts to read means you have to come back too regularly to read them all or skip them.  That's not great either.

[ElwoodBlues1]

The Sheik got me onboard after we started at the Club website chat forum, think my old mate Java Blue might have started there too....
That folded after most there got tired of waiting for the forum admins to ok every post...it was a bit like North Korea in terms of criticising the club.
So then Talking Carlton started and most found there way there.....good site, plenty of info from inside the club on players, board challenges and most other gossip but
it ended up being a pissing contest for some and there was more bickering than chat in the end. The Sheik then decided he was over it and was starting his own forum more designed for the Carlton tragics...stuck with TC initially even though the Sheik pestered me to switch  but there were issues with TC, it shut down, reopened from memory, some of the best posters left and CSC was getting some of that traffic so I decided TC wasnt the place for me and I could ply my biases much better on CSC...

Not real keen on the social media apps so if this forum went down that path in any great way then I would be out.....

[Rational_Expectations]

Bring back Gozza.

[cookie2]

Must be getting on for 10 years since I found this site. Early on I also had a short spell on TC (only posted there a couple of times) but found CarltonsSC much more to my taste so I dropped off TC altogether. I don't use social media at all - find it quite banal as a matter of fact, so I personally would not be interested in going down that track.

Not really into other sports these days but I follow a few other sites/blogs that are mainly relating to world events and geopolitics.

[Spanner]

This is a really interesting discussion and something I have been thinking about for the past 12 months. I've been wondering what I can do to modernise the place to make it more inviting to new users and how we can incorporate some new features like Social media plugins etc.

The main issue is finding time to do these things as data migration for a forum of this size is no trivial matter. My business takes up a majority of my time now, yet my love and passion for the Blues (not Gibbs  ) is unrelenting. There are a number of new open source forums out there that look really cool and have most of the features that people have been requesting.

But the time to do the data validation and import is daunting, let alone the learning curve required to learn the new forums nuances for not only myself, but for the great people who run this place on a daily basis. The Mods of CSC are the people who make this place great and should be highly commended on the giving CSC the "feel" it has.

A list of Open Source forums I've been looking at are below. People should take a look at them and test them out (don't worry about the way they look, we can change the colours etc), just test them out for functionality and see which one everyone prefers. We can then have a discussion on what we should do next. Check them out from the following links:

https://discuss.flarum.org/

https://vanillaforums.com/en/showcase/

http://www.yabbforum.com/

https://codoforum.com/                        (This one looks really cool)

I'm sure there are others out there that I'm not aware of, so if anyone has some suggestions, I'm more than happy to have a look at them.

Spanner...

[flyboy77]

If it's not broken, why change it.

[mateinone]

Hi Spanner

On the surface I do like the look of a couple of those forums.
I particularly like how the last 2 seem to have reasonably seamless integration into Social Media.

The 2nd one you need to inject the blocks of code, but it seems pretty straight forward

EB has talked about walking away if further integration with Social Media and everyone has a choice, but I don't understand that at all. Integrating with social media doesn't mean turning the site into Facebook or the like, it means using those sites to drive more traffic and hitting audiences that may not otherwise know of the forum. Personally I would think that is a positive thing.
Also just enabling SSO. It is less passwords for people to remember or save for those that want to use their other tools to log into the site and for those that don't, well that is okay also.

For example if someone likes and shares a post on Facebook, that doesn't alter the discussion on the forum at all, it just let's others know about the discussion.

I liked that the last one on Spanner's list allowed for code to be injected, which gives a lot of options for implementing widgets tools over time, simple tools perhaps showing when a player is coming up for an anniversary match or links into stories in the media etc.

I also like that it had options for tags. you could tag a poster or tag say a player. When looking for stories on Murphy (for example) you could click on the tag for Murphy and go to all stories where he is tagged. Looking at avenues to move a site forward doesn't mean the current site isn't good or doesn't server a purpose, not at all. It is just saying... the IT world has changed astronomically in the last 5-10 years, should we be looking at what else we can do?

I admit I am firmly in the basket of wishing there was some change, but that doesn't mean I don't think Spanner & the mods have done a brilliant job here, because they have

[spf]

If the forum was to go the social media route I would not use it anymore.

[BlueAvenger]

Bring back Gozza.

He was a character that's for sure. I echo the sentiments of the majority. Love CSC, I've been around since '09. CSC is much better than TC and BF imo.
I only go to BigFooty.com during the trade period as they have 2-3 in the know type posters but in general and overall CSC is much more like a little community.

[sandsmere]

If the forum was to go the social media route I would not use it anymore.

x2.

Social media is all over the place. I'd prefer to keep this site free of it.

[cookie2]

If the forum was to go the social media route I would not use it anymore.

Tend to feel the same way. I want nothing to do with Facebook or Twitter and studiously avoid both.

[Thryleon]

There's other problems with social media.

Imagine half the stuff said about Gibbs was to make it to social media platform where he could actually read it.

We'd have to moderate that more heavily meaning people won't be allowed to be as critical.  Before anyone says no to that, it absolutely would have to happen because common decency prevails.

I'd rather we get people being able to voice it, and discuss accordingly.