Scottish Athletics forum closure
Posted by: Richard in Media, Running, Scotland, Sport, tags: forums, Running, scottish athleticsThe Scottish Athletics forum closed down rather abruptly over the weekend, but I’ve just seen this rather ominously worded news item:
In order to protect sponsors and public partners, the forum section of the scottishathletics website is now closed.
Whilst the forum did sometimes feel a bit opinionated, and not particularly ‘relaxed’, it still seems rather a shame to take this rather drastic action, and shut it down completely.
Building an on-line community, particularly from one that is already well established off-line, can be a very hard thing to do. Sometimes discussions that might seem quite harmless off-line, can seem quite hostile on-line. Without a bottle of beer and a smirk to highlight somebody is making light of something, conversations can rapidly become far too serious. Plus, of course, there’s nothing quite like an empty or poorly populated forum to generate an empty, chill, wind, publicly emphasising few people care as much as you’d hoped.
In the Scottish Athletics case, it seems a bit harsh to shut it down entirely, and then to be public about its reasoning. I’d have thought it might have been a better first step to move to moderate posts, or review the forum setup (fewer categories etc). As it is, they’ve cut off a forum that was already being used by a fair number of people, and known about by a lot more. It may well be a calculated decision based on a number of factors (not least that it’s not hugely widely known about in the wider community), but I fear their abrupt closure, they really risk annoying athletics supports that – from what I’d seen on the forum at least – had valid contributions to make, even if it wasn’t always to the benefit of Scottish Athletics.
I’d certainly be interested to hear what others think.
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April 16th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Looks like an unofficial forum has been set up to replace it – http://s3.invisionfree.com/Unofficial_SAL/index.php
There’s a bit of discussion going on at http://www.eightlane.com about this.
April 20th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Coverage in The Herald:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2502809.0.scottishathleticsgags_critics.php
April 20th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I don’t think Scottish Athletics has done itself any favours over this; the way to sort out inappropriate comment, or even comment you don’t agree with as a body, on a forum of this sort is by moderation. I think the forum lost a lot of its vitality when it barred the use of pseudonyms, and I for one contributed far less to it subsequently.
The present situation, whatever the reasons for it, just looks like the blazerati telling Alf Tupper* to get off the track in the hope that he’ll go away;we all know how that one will end.