CAFC appear to be considering scrapping the 'Your Views' section of the website and reccommend Charlton Life as an alternative. Read on :
'During a summer and pre-season in which little of any significance has happened so far, I thought this would be an opportune time to ask for fans’ views on the future of this forum.
As one of the two ‘editors’ who monitor Your Views on a regular basis, I keep a close eye on the submissions of the select group of fans who use the forum. And, to be honest, there is much to concern me – and, in turn, the club.
Let’s start with what Your Views was designed for. When the forum was created, we wanted an area of the official website which fans would visit regularly, partly in order to drive traffic to other parts of the website.
Given Charlton’s reputation as a fan-orientated club, with the elected supporters’ director and so on, we wanted an area of the ‘official’ website devoted to the most important part of any club, the fans, where supporters could have their say, where we could allow fans a little freedom to even criticise the club should they wish, and where fans could come together to interact with one another.
In light of the club’s longstanding policy not to comment on any transfer speculation until deals are tied up, it was also a useful part of the ‘official’ website where fans could discuss transfer speculation and ponder who might be coming and going, allowing the website to combine its ‘official’ stance with still providing ‘unofficial’ (via its fans) news about the club from a variety of sources.
The forum has allowed the club to clarify and elucidate on some matters, as head of club development Rick Everitt did recently regarding season-ticket figures, for example – and those situations, plus the occasional ‘messages from the editor’, have led to Your Views helping the club to interact more directly and personally with its fans.
Of course, it also allows us to track fans’ general views on the club, its practices and even its staff etc, although I would add that, as with all messageboards, it’s easy to come to the, wrong, conclusion that because the majority of fans in one forum are united in one opinion, that is also the opinion of the club’s wider fanbase. In fact, those supporters who post on messageboards, (and are still highly valued, I should stress) are actually merely a vocal minority when put into the wider context of the club’s entire support.
Generally, it’s worked well. Fans have come to know one another, old friends have been tracked down, new friends have been made, opinions have been discussed and debated, transfer speculation has been posted and pondered, and ideas and potential improvements have been suggested.
But…
The above is probably all well and good while things are going well on the pitch, but, as we all know, that hasn’t been so much the case for the last couple of seasons, and during that time the general level of debate on the forum has diminished.
Too often, particularly after a defeat at the weekend, there has been a deluge of negative comments offering no constructive comment or criticism, with fans taking opportunity of an avenue freely available to vent steam, show frustration and the like, while petty arguments and squabbles between fans have also been common.
What’s more, it’s evident that while all posters are obviously entitled to hold whatever opinions they like, some posters seem to have clear agendas that are endlessly pursued and repeated regardless of the topic being discussed.
Of course, the fact that us ‘editors’ are posting these messages does make us collaborators in this general diminishment of standards somewhat.
However, in our defence, we can only post what is sent in, and if we ever dare not to post something, perhaps because we are aware that the same subject is being done to death, to try to move the debate on to another topic, we are quickly, and often very rudely, accused of favouritism towards other posters.
Therefore, my question now is whether supporters believe we should be offering such a service on the club’s ‘official’ website.
I’ll be completely honest about the situation. Much as everyone connected with the website would like to update it, in the current Championship climate we don’t currently have the resources to do so. Technology has obviously moved on since the current site was developed three or four years ago, and we want to add such things as video and podcasts etc, but these all have a cost implication, both in terms of set-up and staff resources.
At present, Your Views takes a lot of time to moderate – not only to remove any racism/sexism/libels etc (of which there are thankfully very few), but to filter out the more aggressive attacks on other fans, to try to move debates on, and to make the comments more readable, ie removing all the upper case words, correcting spellings, improving grammar and so on.
It should come as no surprise that many senior club officials are not keen on the Your Views section of the website. They ask ‘why are we broadcasting criticism of the club on its own official site’, and it’s a fair question.
The argument that has won the day so far, and happens to be my own opinion, is because Charlton is special. As a club, we are big and confident enough in our ethos to handle criticism, to admit that very few things are perfect, to listen to our fans, to reply and explain where it would be helpful (while also directing questions to the relevant members of staff), and to generally provide a forum that fans simply won’t find elsewhere at other clubs. At what other club could you read fans’ views suggesting the manager should be sacked, as has been the case over the last few years, for example?
However, is that enough? After all, there are many other messageboards (such as Charlton Life et al) out there doing a similar job.
Perhaps the official site should leave fans’ views to such fans’ sites. Perhaps staff resources could be better spent doing other things. Perhaps we should ignore most of the moderation and simply post what is sent in. Perhaps there is another, better way of doing things.
As we near the start of the season, decisions are starting to be taken that will decide courses of action throughout 2008/09……so, what do fans think?'
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Comments
Leave the moaners there. We have enough here already.
And CAFC aren't thinking of closing it down, Matt Wright is just floating the idea.
The fact its an officially linked to the club, yet is filled with anti-club posts serves no puropse whatsoever in my opinion.
Long may it continue !
Fleetwood, Dickson possibly Canham
he must think he's died and gone to Heaven with all those non-league players :-)
This annoyed me immensely and is not the sort of drivel I'd like to read on here!
Could you imagine the response from Curb_it & Sooz................doesn't bare thinking of ;-)
yeah, sometimes us blokes like to do a spot of cooking too. (Celebrity Masterchef has been great btw)
I'm all for a bit of banter but by-and-large this is a football discussion forum to talk about our club - not really a place for knucklescraping neanderthals
rant over - guess who didn't get much sleep last night
They knew less about football than the posters on here
Imagine that . . . .
I saw that 'Greggoodwholesomefood' bloke the other week in Clerkenwell at a doo. Surprisingly a big old lump (must be all those puddings)
Oh yeah, it was Austin Reed, not Dunhill, memories bad, that was me.
I just hope all of the numpties don't end up on here!
Actually, I reckon a great load of the comments that come to Your Views are simply from people who are intimidated by other forms of internet discussion; for it does read a bit like a local paper letters page from time to time.
What is difficult for that forum is that say on here, we can to some extent, be self policing if somebody is so opening hostile to the club, without the moderators necessarily having to step in. It's because most if not all the posters on here have bought into CL's raison d'etre. On the OS forum though, I suspect that this doesn't happen and it's just left to Matt and Co to try and ensure things don't get too out of hand.
From my perspective, unique though it maybe, I tend to agree with AFKA. I wonder how the club can justify the money spent on staff editing the sort of dross/criticism that to often appears there.
This, i feel, is the success of this board- obviously we have to have moderators, but the amount of physical moderating- ie deleting/ sinking etc is very small compared to the traffic. the main reason i feel is that purile and "shock-jock" posts tend to just get ignored. That's the best form of self- policing and if any new members join us they'll have to fit in. A good number of people have joined us to try and wind people up and we haven't even had to ban- they've just gone away......