I'm having a pretty interesting conversation with Krstic over at the old board: http://www.basketballforum.com/portland-off-topic-forum/411271-links-other-boards-2.html#post5693833 I'm already sold that the folks who run this site are really bending over backwards (during the honeymoon period, at least!) to accommodate us, and I really appreciate it. And it's good business for them. I'm really curious as to how the owners (and my fellow posters here) view my comments. I don't expect the owners to comment on the other board--it'd be bad taste and bad for business. I'm more curious as to whether they see it the same way as I do (doubtful), like BBF does (also fairly doubtful) or in some third way. Would it make sense to brand this board as "BlazersBoard.com (or whatever), a SportsTwo.com community." ? Would it make sense to eventually split out multiple OT forums if it could grow that way? If, for example, Minstrel started a new forum like he used to have, should it go under SportsTwo or in here as another OT? Would you buy a baseball cap that said "BlazersBoard.com" (or whatever) on it? I'm not interested in complaining about the old site in this thread. I'm more curious about if such a re-branding is both feasible and desirable, from both the community and the ownership's perspective.
For the record, even though in the first post of that thread, it says you are allowed to have links to other sites in your signature. That is not the case over there. I was first asked to remove a link from my signature from a niche sports site, aka not the same type of site as bbf. Secondly, I was asked to remove a link from my signature linking to a completely non-sports site. Well not asked to, they removed it from me while telling me in their pm's to remove it. Basel says not for CM's to decide, but a CM decided on that for me, because he had a personal vendetta against me (see him trolling me to PSD).
Someone should bring up that post and ehmunro and Naked Circus. I had no problem with him linking his site, and found quite a bit of that site pretty damn funny. But there shouldn't be a half standard for Moderators and Community Moderators when it comes to following the rules. I was also told by ehmunro, what the rules that Basel is spouting off in that thread in regards to links is not the rule. (and again, I never had any problem with ehmunro's posting).
For starters, I don't believe that this is some honeymoon period. What you've seen from us is what you're going to get from us as long as we are around. We really think we're onto something with the Radical Trust thing, and frankly, I don't see the point in putting in a lot of hard work and time to build an amusement park (pardon my metaphor) and not let people ride the rides. I mean, it's your playground, not mine, not the staff's... The "Two" in our name is inspired by the "2" in Web 2.0. It's hard to explain without going into a dissertation, but it's basically a philosophy that hugely favors user created content and empowers the users as fully as possible. We embrace this concept and see it as the present and future of the Internet and WWW sites in general. The Web 1.0 generation is about owning users and controlling their actions, worrying about giving links out to other sites because you lose page views, etc. It's not unusual, but it's just not my thing or what S2 is about. We're really working with what this vB3 software provides and we've added Drupal to it so there's even more fun rides at our amusement park. We're doing everything we can within the confines of what the software functions do, to promote the Web 2.0 spirit. As admin, I don't want to be the constant decision maker, I want to be the facilitator. I want people to tell me what they need, and I'll do what I can to make it happen. This is basically what we ask of all the staff, in terms of their role in the community - help the posters do what they want to do. So you ask about branding the board. Not opposed to it, not for it. I'd need to think about all the technical issues involved. I don't think we want S2 to become a network of sports sites or sports team fan sites - something I'm sure you've seen elsewhere. Single signon to access everything is a technical thing I see as important, and I hope everyone who understands what I mean agrees. Changing the banner at the top and the forum colors and that kind of thing, even as a form of branding, is entirely possible and I see no issues with it. You ask about adding more subforums. Not an issue. I have a long time relationship with Minstrel and am a huge fan of his. I already PMed him and asked if he wanted his own subforum in the Blazers section of the site. The offer stands. Give me good ideas like this! I want to see them happen. Same for your other subforum ideas. If the rest of the people in the forum want the subforums, why wouldn't we make them? Seems like a silly question My hope is that everyone will settle in and get used to the vB3 part of the site, and then branch out and explore the Drupal side of things. We could offer personal forums, but Drupal provides even better features that ultimatley blow forums out of the water. Even the simplest concept of everyone getting their own blog via Drupal is roughly the same as a personal forum. More rides for the amusement park I want to address one other thing I read in that thread you linked to. Freedom of speech. I know KAS quite well, and he's a very good guy in person. He's making a perfectly valid point in lawyerspeak. The 1st amendment doesn't apply to private ventures like a message board. That said, you can shop around and I seriously doubt you're going to find one with rules that are as pro free speech as ours are. We consider ourselves an OPEN and free site.
Yes they do. I guess what I'm envisioning is something like BlazersEdge.com, except it's focused on a bulletin board (and the graphic design is more professional looking). TwoSports would own the board, but it'd be branded as a separate but related identity.
It could look a lot like the NBA.com sites, where each team's is different, but they have a common link (sportstwo?). The benefit would be that it could become recognized as the primary site, but could also draw a pretty big crowd. Many other forum sites have such forum t-shirts and hats so they can see each other at games, etc. I could imagine a nice business model coming out of this, as long as you don't screw up the customer service side like BBF is doing. You would have to be careful about working with/around the issues around the "Blazer" trademark with the team and NBA. That in itself could make it too big a problem to overcome.
it does sound like a cool idea. Maybe someone could come up with a web address that could be part of the board, but not part of the board. So when you type in "www.blazerfans.com" or something, it links to this site. It'd be easier than repeating the address by name. Too many back-slashes for my liking!
I meant if you were trying to tell someone out in public where you post at. it's why you can type "blazers.com" and get to the blazers website http://www.nba.com/blazers/ which is easier to tell someone to go to? "Yah, I post at forward-slash forward slash sportstwo...no, sports TWO, not the number 2. anyway, sportstwo dot com forward slash no, you don't need a www. As I was saying, sportstwo dot com forward slash forums forward slash forumdisplay (one word) dot php question mark f equals one hundred and twenty three" or "blazerfans.com"?
Putting the blazers logo on a fan site doesn't offend the league, but putting it on something that's sold is going to cost a hefty license fee.
http://sportstwo.com See this work in progress: http://sportstwo.com/NBA/Chicago Needs skinning, but it's the kind of thing we can get going with Drupal.
I appreciate that, and I didn't want to offend by using the term "honeymoon." It's just that, having run my own business, I notice we all tend to treat the newest customers best. Just human nature. I really like this philosophy. I've got no problem with single signon. Definitely makes things more user-friendly. I just think that overriding domain names are going to become less and less important. Nobody cares about Johnson & Johnson, but everybody can use one of their Bandaids. Similarly, I don't think most posters will ever feel a strong allegiance to SportsTwo.com. (Sorry!) They feel allegiance to their team, their favorite posters and that localized community. If you brand that localized community under your own site with a new name, suddenly you are allowing them to invest good will in your products. It becomes a little harder to "follow the herd" in the next bulletin board migration, because part of their identity is wrapped up in the logo and the domain name. People mostly didn't buy Air Jordans because they liked the Taiwanese shoe plant or the engineers at Nike. They wanted to Be Like Mike. As great as SportsTwo appears to be, it really can't go beyond being Johnson & Johnson or a combination of shoe plant/engineer. Forcing me to type in SportsTwo.com and then browsing to the Blazers board is like telling somebody in a grocery store to go to the Johnson & Johnson section to get a BandAid. It just doesn't logically follow. Maybe just buy up all the domain names for the teams with the word "Two" after it. You'd have BlazersTwo.com, for example. I'd like to be able to tell my friends to check out BlazersTwo.com. It's a lot easier than telling them to go to SportsTwo.com and then go find the Blazer board. Anyway, I'm a marketing guy by trade, so I think about this crap probably a lot more than I should. I appreciate you taking the time to chat about this.
That's true. You could evade this entire issue by not using the team name at all. Just nicknames. Portland's could be "RipCityTwo.com" or something like that.
This is a great philosophy. Web 2.0 was really what discussion forums and early blogs tried to do crudely...allow dynamic, user-generated content. It's really the promise of the Internet...a big dynamic fluid interaction of content from everyone and anyone. Obviously, the entire Internet isn't going to connect together like that, but the more individual sites create that fluid, user-driven atmosphere, the better.
