12/22/24
March 10, 2003
Owillis tells SportsFilter about the success of "conspicuously white" NASCAR. 2 comments total. Owillis tells Metafilter. 78 comments total. Lack of critical mass on SportsFilter makes Touchdown Jesus cry.
posted by rcade to navel gazing at 10:39 AM - 21 comments
Right you are. Noticed that myself. But what to do? Ever try a Metafilter text-ad? On preview - while I am in total agreement with worldcup on quality vs. quantity, there are too many potentially good discussions that peter out too quickly because the community is too small. We need to get some more members, not 17,000 but maybe 1,700 would be a start
posted by vito90 at 10:47 AM on March 10, 2003
I used to read MeFi voraciously, but it's got too much like Newsfilter over the last year. It's also increased it's active membership a great deal so that there's information overload going on over there. It's reaching critical mass and may go the way of /. Personally, I prefer this little backwater blog over the hurly-burly of metafilter. I've tried searching for "Sports Blog" on google, but could not find us in the first twenty pages. They do list us in their directory though. Let's all backward link to sportsfilter from our home pages to boost our page rank eh? A metafilter text-ad would be a great idea.
posted by BigCalm at 10:55 AM on March 10, 2003
I bought an ad on Metafilter last July ($10, 10,000 impressions, and 107 clickthroughs). It's probably a good idea to advertise there from time to time, but we probably get as many clicks from the occasional mention there in discussions. The next ad I buy will probably be on Fark. I can't speak for the other founders, but I'm patient enough to run the site for several years as it slowly builds a following. I think there's a Goldilocks period ahead of us in which Sportsfilter is neither too small nor too big. Right now, though, I'm a bit surprised that so many of our discussions lay eggs.
posted by rcade at 11:47 AM on March 10, 2003
I know I am not alone on this one: work blocks MeFi. not the case with SpoFi. Plus, I agree with worldcup about the friendlier, more focused, easier to manage stuff. And I don't know if things have changed recently, so I'll go on what I last observed. On MeFi there's a lot of attention given to the user number you are. And there's that ever present threat that if you say something on MeFi that even slightly rubs someone the wrong way, several hundred people with user numbers under 8000 are going to find you, rip your head off and shove it up your ass. Not good times.
posted by jerseygirl at 12:06 PM on March 10, 2003
I've taken out a couple of MetaFilter TextAds (same $10/10,000 impressions plan as rcade; sorry, no stats) and one on DayPop (10,000 impressions, 98 click-throughs), but it's been a while. I may take out more ads on MetaFilter, but after a certain point (and maybe it's already past?) we'll have gotten all of the crossover users we're going to, and we'll have to get members from other places. I'm also patient enough for the slow-but-sure growth we've had so far. I've been very impressed and happy with the overall high quality of the posts and commentary so far, which is why it's a little disappointing that posts like the NASCAR one don't get a lot of attention. I've tried searching for 'Sports Blog' on google, but could not find us in the first twenty pages
Part of the reason for that is that we didn't have meta tags until err...about 30 seconds ago. (Although meta tags aren't as important for search engine placement as they used to be.)
posted by kirkaracha at 12:21 PM on March 10, 2003
Yeah, that holier-than-thou, I was here before you, attitude is so prevalent on MeFi, and tends to quickly derail any constructive, or even interesting, discussion. Also, what's the point of having a lot of clueless comments, furious flames, partisan pissing, when one well-written paragraph will do? And I'm not going to sift through 5, let alone 25, shitty statements just to get to that one pearl. There are two levels of filtering that SpoFi is serving nicely right now: How many posts and How many comments. MeFi has failed in both respects. Not anything about MeFi specifically. Just that getting big will cause us problems both in the ability to filter posts, and have worthwhile discussions. I don't care about getting to MeFi proportions, or even close to it. In fact, as soon as it even gets to the flavor (odor?) of MeFi, I'm out of here.
posted by worldcup2002 at 12:27 PM on March 10, 2003
I think you're being a little unfair to MeFi. One of the reasons MeFi has so many crap posts is because MeFi covers the gamut of everything that's going on, from politics to pop culture, to sports. Anything is fair game pretty much. Not so with SpoFi, the reservoir of stuff that's relevant to post is smaller, therefore even with exponential growth there are unlikely to be posts that are wildly off base (obviously comments are another matter). As for low user numbers, I think on Mefi if somebody with a high user number posts crap then their number gets mentioned and derided. But only because they posted crap. A low user number won't save a crap post from getting ripped on, and a high user number person who posts well will be praised despite being a latecomer.
posted by vito90 at 12:32 PM on March 10, 2003
Yeah. Sorry. It's not MeFi, just the experience. Basically, it's no longer worth the effort -- to me -- to go through it. I hope you're right about our fairly narrow subject matter protecting us from wildly off-base posts.
posted by worldcup2002 at 12:34 PM on March 10, 2003
I'm for the slow, steady growth as well. It seems like that's been happening more over the last month or so, by my speculative watching of the member numbers. Is anybody keeping stats on the new member sign-ups?
posted by Ufez Jones at 12:55 PM on March 10, 2003
Are we on metatalk here?
posted by BigCalm at 02:55 PM on March 10, 2003
What I genuinely like about this site as compared to Metafilter is the lack of personal attacking (prominent just today in a couple instances), instant post bashing (i.e. newsfilter, iraqfilter, etc...) and the like. Anything about sports is fair game, and every now and then you get a pretty good discussion going. I also noticed the difference in comments to that one particular post between the two sites. I chose to comment here only, purely for the subject matter and to help ensure my comment would not get lost in a sea of bashing and snarkafied commentary. This site looks like it can eventually get to the point where most posts will have many comments (a la MeFi). I just hope it can keep what it already has in terms of post integrity and well-thought-out commentary.
posted by bcb2k2 at 04:08 PM on March 10, 2003
I'm hoping that the lack of an etiquette forum and the relative scarcity of polarized political discussion will help SportsFilter stay relatively friendly.
posted by rcade at 06:06 PM on March 10, 2003
As a statistician, errr kinda, I feel I should point out that if you assume that each comment was one individual member then .45% of MeFi members commented as opposed to .27% of SpoFi members. This isn't such a major disparity, especially if you consider that some of the replies on MeFi may have been replies (possibly snarky) to other comments. Seems to me that this place is more easy-going and certainly proportionally less prone to pointless name-calling. I don't worry about the response some of my (often drunken) posts would have here either, whereas I feel to an extent that I have to think about every word I use on MeFi. Also, in other news, God is in his heaven and all is well with the world. :-)
posted by squealy at 06:10 PM on March 10, 2003
squealy said: Seems to me that this place is more easy-going and certainly proportionally less prone to pointless name-calling. Get the fack out of here, ya facking brummy bog bandit! Hyar hyar hyar!
posted by worldcup2002 at 06:15 PM on March 10, 2003
But seriously folks: I agree with rcade's comment from way back ...
Metafilter's great, but no one would ever call it low-key. That's the vibe we're hoping for here, and it won't happen if we regularly offer up different people to a public flogging -- even when it is deserved.Hear! Hear! Let's keep that low-key vibe.
posted by worldcup2002 at 06:19 PM on March 10, 2003
Of course, I'd forgotten Mr ShiteSports. OK, in terms of name-calling me personally this place sucks a big one. Enjoy the UEFA Cup wc2002. Ha ha.
posted by squealy at 06:30 PM on March 10, 2003
now i'm off to find out what 'brummy bog bandit' is.
posted by jerseygirl at 09:26 AM on March 11, 2003
Honestly rcade, if you post anything with "conspicuously white" in the title at Metafilter, it's going to get a billion comments. It's like putting president Bush or Israel in a Front Page Post over there. Average Metafilter User: "Conspicuously white? I'm outraged for some reason!" Average Sportsfilter User: "Oh... something about Nascar. Next!" See? It's probably better this way.
posted by Samsonov14 at 09:33 AM on March 11, 2003
if you post anything with "conspicuously white" in the title at Metafilter, it's going to get a billion comments. It's like putting president Bush or Israel in a Front Page Post over there. I think you hit the nail on the head. Further more, when a nascar post does get 25 comments on sportsfilter, we'll know we've arrived. That's a demographic bringing up the rear of the line on the march towards sportsfilter domination.
posted by justgary at 08:38 PM on March 11, 2003
Right...just to piggyback justgary - there's no point comparing MeFi to SpoFi for comment quantity. MeFi is 17,000 members with almost daily mention in the press. I'm not disappointed that Mefi got 90 comments to SpoFi's 2, I'm disappointed that SpoFi got 2 period.
posted by vito90 at 10:20 PM on March 11, 2003
I think it's been said before: Quality trumps quantity. I don't go to MeFi anymore. High noise-to-signal ratio. It's overwhelming, and not necessarily useful. I find SpoFi more focused, more friendly, and easier to manage. Go SpoFi!