Can We Please Revive Modified?

[cd]

When this discussion about updating the forums first came around, I think it was Rory who brought up hoopcity.ca as an example of a successful community built around a similar activity to footbag. The way it is set up seems to encourage more activity and traffic. The home page which acts as a news feed for new videos, posts, events, etc is great. The menu tabs for things like groups, events, tips, videos, would replace many of our sub-forums. Journals (akin to our footblogs) have a much more social aspect. It puts more of the important things up front, with discussion forums and journals acting almost as an afterthought.

Currently shredglobal.com is set up similar to this, and is more appropriate to compare to hoopcity. Modified is linked to in one of the tabs, but it isn't part of the website like hoopcity's forum. One of the most important things that shredglobal is missing is user-generated content where you can login as a member with a profile, start/join a club, post a video, start an online comp, etc which shows up on the front page feed. And those same credentials are what you use to post on the forum.

The most important hurdle to improving the modified situation is having those motivated individuals to actually put in the work. I'm guilty of not being one of those people; even posting my thoughts here seems like backseat driving. I have very limited web design skills but might be willing to help out in the future if I have time (unlikely). But I strongly feel that improving the format would help revive modified, and having a site similar to shredglobal (or maybe even merging with shredglobal) that runs on user-generated content would encourage more traffic and participation, and feed off its own momentum.

Maybe running ads on the site for a small amount of income would motivate someone to step up and work on this?

[Muffinman]

Fourkast supports user-generated content.

[boyle]

I think Jeremy has an interesting point about removing the footblogs. While that is where I mainly post on here, it may be better to bring the discussion more into the open. I don't know if it would be best to get rid of them, but to have everyone actively posting in other sections of the forum would be an improvement.

[Outsider]

I'm just playing devil's advocate a little here, but...

I've never really been a big fan of the footblogs. I suppose I could live without them.

HOWEVER ---

Modified is pretty slow, and the Footblogs is one of the few areas of this forum with frequent updates.
Just imagine for a moment --- the rest of the forum is slow, so we decided to get rid of the one part of the forum that is NOT slow.
This MIGHT have the result of getting people to post in other parts of the forum instead, or...
This might instead be the final nail in our coffin.

Lets be very careful before we actually remove one of the few parts of this forum that is doing okay.

[Sporatical_Distractions]

I would be furious if the footblogs were removed. I have a crappy memory and I can look back through the footblog for reminders of milestones or things to work on, as well as funny stories or recipes I forgot to write down on paper.

[rjadamson]

I have mixed feelings about Jeremy's post even though I can see the logic in it. As a relatively new addition to the forums I have noticed I'm far less interested in following new posts in public milestone threads with dozens of pages spanning ten years than I am in following peoples' personal blogs. In any case I don't think the assumed redistribution of activity would stop the forums from bleeding out.

I too feel bad suggesting remedies I am unable to help with, but it really does come down to renovating the whole platform of this community.

[Will Digges]

I'm still here, watching from a distance mostly.

I don't play nearly as much as I use to in 04-08', but I still watch all of the new videos that come out all the time and enjoy seeing what the community is up to. It still amazes me to watch certain players get better and also random new players make their debut.

I guess the lack of communication on the forums has to do with losing my infatuation with the sport. Back in 04'-08' I was completely obsessed with eating, sleeping, and drinking footbag everyday. I was also 15-19 years old at the time so I didn't really have to focus on anything else.

I miss those days and hope I can get back into the sport like I use to be once I find some more stability and constant flow in my life. Of all things, I miss the people of footbag the most. Perhaps it's time to start making a solid effort to get to some of these gatherings to spark the flame.

Anywho, I just wanted to say Footbag is awesome and awesome it sha'll stay forever in my mind no matter how active I am in the sport/forums. Footbag has given me some of the happiest moments I've ever had in my life.

Peace!

[PoisonTaffy]

So how about some conclusions and action items from this thread? Let's not rant and be done with it. I want to see if there's anything I can do to actually change things for the better.

If it is agreed that one action item is that we need to mature Modified to a more modern community site a-la hoop city in order to sustain and grow the community and participation, I am sure that among us there are people with the necessary skill and enthusiasm to build a team that can pull that off.

Regarding existing solutions, fourkast's entire front page is a store, irrelevant to community, and shredglobal is a great one man effort, but it's obviously not catching on and any attempt to build a new solution will have to look into why. To me it looks only half done in terms of community features and the design could be revamped.

We'd need Allan's blessing to do that, and we'd have to find a way to either incorporate or migrate the existing forum's content to any solution that is chosen, including the existing user base for extra points.

As a web developer, I'd be happy to donate my time to help build something to inherit modified, but I can't do it alone. I want to make a call for action for it on modified and facebook, but I at least want the backing of the people of Modified and of Allan.

[Allan]

We'd need Allan's blessing to do that, [...], but I at least want the backing of the people of Modified and of Allan.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! I sincerely apologize if I've not been clear about this, so let me do that now: my "blessing" is not needed to do anything with this site. I do not want to be in a position of authority. I'm just trying to help out by hosting the site on my server and give my input where I think it makes sense. I suppose this makes me look like a gatekeeper, but that's not a role I'm comfortable with and it's not one I want to be in. Yes, I did the upgrade to phpBB3 because it made sense to do so (and I seemed to have support in that endeavour), but I'm really (really) not interested in getting involved with the politics of how the forum is run or where we go from here. If the community makes some sort of decision about what they'd like to do with modified.in, then I'm more than happy to give appropriate access to whomever is elected to implement those changes. If I like the proposed changes and can help, I'll certainly try to, but please don't anyone think that I need convincing about any course of action.

Thanks.

[sen]

Regarding existing solutions, fourkast's entire front page is a store, irrelevant to community, and shredglobal is a great one man effort, but it's obviously not catching on and any attempt to build a new solution will have to look into why. To me it looks only half done in terms of community features and the design could be revamped.

I really like ShredGlobal. But I don't visit it often. I don't visit Shred Global often because most things of of interest pop up either here or on Facebook. I think for our community (Footbag in general, but especially the active online communitiy) we are spread too thin over several sites. Modified, Facebook (where people visit regardless, not just for Footbag), Fourkast, Youtube (again people will go here regardless), ShredGlobal, and a few others.

If one of these sites could be upgraded to support a community site with journals/blogs, video's, articles, ect it might be able to gain ground.

[PoisonTaffy]

I definitely agree that adding yet another new site is not a good idea. What I had in mind is leveraging the various sites' popularity - building the new site on modified.in, automatically importing activity from Facebook and youtube, while of course maintaining the forum within the site.

If we pull all the current online activity of the footbag community into a new site, we would easily generate enough interesting content to keep a very live front page stream. For example, I've been collecting freestyle vids from youtube and vimeo for nearly 6 months now and they average over the entire period to 5 serious videos a week(!!)

The challenge is garnering support for a solution as a community, as the time investment and commitment required to pull it off is not trivial.

[sen]

The time commitment is huge. I don't have the time or skills required at present. But I'm happy to give ideas.

I think using YouTube and Vimeo for videos is the way to go for a few reasons: It keeps the video's on a public, easy to find spot that could get new people interested in the sport, and it means we don't have to host all the video's. But I think a standard template could be made for video's on "The New Modified" where Youtube/Vimeo could be embedded in a clean manner that allows commenting so we can keep comments from serious players together in one spot in addition to the comments on whatever video site it is hosted. Tags like Erik has done at FourKast would also be great.

That's one aspect that I would like to see.

[Jeremy]

I think a big issue raised here, perhaps bigger than the ones I mentioned, is governance. Without any process for making decisions, it's hard for things to be done. It's really difficult to come up with good governance policies for forums. Certainly it's always been my opinion that the community owns the forum, and should be making decisions as a whole, but in practice that philosophy didn't work very well. The other problem though is that the mods and admins are mainly inactive, but have no authority within the community either (I don't mean they're not respected, or have power, but rather they aren't selected by the community, or represent it, or have any kind of intrinsic reason or qualification to demonstrate why they're in that position - they're just in it because arbitrarily selected people arbitrarily selected them) - which is the typical way of appointing those kinds of positions on php forums, but hugely problematic.

One of the ways of getting around this is my current life philosophy - if you see things you'd like to be changed, take responsibility yourself for making that change happen. A lot of the solutions I tried to put forward are things that those who are convinced can merely choose to do - we don't need a government, or a committee, or Allan's blessing to stop posting in blogs and to try to be more active across the forum. We can just decide individually to do it, and if we can make a convincing case, over time we'll build a community of people who agree with us.

[PoisonTaffy]

* I'm starting a new thread for discussing how modified could be upgraded.

I tend to agree with the notion that the forum is inherently problematic, in that it's an obsolete community technology. People (especially new comers) will choose the easier platform of the facebook footbag group.

Posting more will serve to temporarily increase the participation of existing active members, but won't attract new ones. The front page's only indication that there's anything new going on here is that the date indicator of the last post on the subforum is closer to today's date, and that just isn't a very attractive force in an internet dominated by vivid timelines.