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Top 5 Site Improvements
Cliff Rancho chatted to me (big surprise) between games,
stating he had a lot of great ideas for the site. He wanted to discuss
his "novel" ideas in greater detail, in a setting more fitting for
deep discussion. I told him I don't do lunch, and I don't care for
McDonald's. Nonetheless, he seemed to take rejection with a smile and
I thank him for that. He reminded me of all the blessings I've had:
braces, a dentist, etc. More importantly, our short chat made me take a
more critical gaze at our site. I've thought of five things our page that
should be brought to attention: forums, live chat, articles, personal
web pages, game updates.
(1) Forums. If you haven't, you should view our guestbook. I'm
afraid to even call it a "guestbook" anymore. If you see the
entries, it's obvious that we rarely have "guests." Certainly,
we have our friends drop a line, but I'm talking about people who have no
relation to us or our site, other than people who operate their own wiffle
ball sites, pages, or share our love for the game. It seems as though
the "guestbook" is more of a forum. A forum full of trash
talkers from this league and other leagues and organizations too. I
suggest that we put up a forum, so that we can have a place to leave our trash
talking. What I would like to see in the guestbook is name after name of
commissioners, players, fans (I suppose we will have to include are close
friends, because, sadly, they are our only fans at the time), and the
occasional web surfer.
(2) Live Chat. This is really an extension of the forum idea presented
above. Forums are useful, in so much as, they could clear out the stupid
trash talking entries in the guestbook. Even if we add a forum, I think
the action on this page is really stale. Sure, you have movie and audio
clips that give audiences an inside look, but they are so small and of poor
quality. How much can you learn about the players from those itty bitty
clips, anyhow? I think there would be nothing more exciting than to have
a live chat once a month. A monthly, live chat featuring a few players,
so that audiences can shoot their own burning questions at our players.
That's not to say that Commish's interviews are not cutting it, but I know that
even I have questions for some of the players of the league. For
example, I'd like to know exactly how Morrison is feeling about his 6-0
record? Does he think he can keep it up? Also, What does he eat
for breakfast? What's his favorite color? You know, the kind of
stuff that really matters, and the stuff that does not but you where kind of
wondering.
(3) Articles. Well, with summer closing in, many of us players will have
more free time than we know what to do with. Popular things to do during
summer is to watch MTV, swim, drink, and sleep and eat. This might be a
stretch for some of us, but I thought I'd challenge my colleagues in writing
articles for the page. Why? When I look at the columnist, here at
WB2K, I see a... very interesting group of writers. Not that their bad,
they're great and have inspired me to write, but it's always these guys who
seem to really care about anything. They seemed to be more engaged in
the site then the players, and I find that ironic. Maybe, we should
write up some columnist profiles and keep stats for them. We could keep
track of how many hits each column receives, the average number of words per
column, and the reading level at which they write. Then, we will give
out awards: Most Improved Columnist, Most Valuable Columnist, etc.
Really, why don't we get more participation from our players? I know
they have their own thoughts and opinions. I challenge them to write
about them, other than the chicken scratch in the "guestbook."
(4) Personal Web Pages. Recently, Cliff ol' boy launched his own
personal site. Simple and sweet, his site is. I suggest all our
players do the same. It gives me the impression that were not just
athletes, but people deep down inside. The idea is that simple, it's
another ploy for audiences to learn more about our players and another place
they can bookmark.
(5) Game Updates. After seeing ESPN's site I was drawn close to a
fantastic idea. If you ever noticed, they do a play by play of all the
baseball games in text as it's being played out. It's the closest thing
to a radio, without the actual audio. Anyway, I thought we should bring
that technology to WB2K. However, I'm pretty certain we couldn't afford
it, so I rethought the idea. I'm suggesting we do a fifteen minute game
update. Fifteen minutes after the completion of a game brief stats will
be uploaded to our page. These stats would include just the essentials,
such as batting average, doubles, triples, homeruns, runs, rbi's, and
win-loses. Pitching stats could be optional, depending on how much work
this takes. I'm not sure how helpful these 15 minute updates would be
for our fans and what real service they would play. It's just another
idea.
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