Rant (its been a while!)

Well i have to be brutally honest, this year is by far the worst i have ever seen in terms of staffing. A new game has just been released and there is absolutely fuck all anywhere in the FM sections from the FM staffers (as always i do not include the GFX people). In fact i believe the only content of any sort posted up are from a member from another site, but not only that, he even links people to the site content is on. You may as well pay their taxi fare for the journey ffs! Not only that, but i rarely if ever see one of you even post ffs, this time of year the site is full of new users asking for help and i at least expect the staff to be able to provide it? I mean i am by no means an expert on this game anymore, but i reckon in the last week my post count must have nearly doubled from what it was simply by replying to people who need help. 9 times outta 10 i don't even know the answer, but a simple Google search will usually give me the answer! Or, i'll send them in the direction of the SI forums where they should certainly find an answer.

If you can't be bothered to do even that, then simply step down as staff as all you are doing is bringing the site down, especially at a time where there has been massive change to the forums and that alone can scare people away as its not exactly the easiest place to navigate at the moment.

Anyway, rant over for now or i'll just end up going on and on! Where the fuck is Bian too, at least he posts and creates discussion.

I hate to endorse Bian but his FM posts have been noticeably missing.

In most ways I completely agree and i'm glad this discussion can be in here and not in the staff room.

I've always come from the perspective that this is a fansite and nobody should be forced to do anything, I really detest the idea of telling people to do this or that just to increase activity. In terms of the current staff i'm not going to turn around and lay the blame at anyone, there are alot of people on the staff team now who are here because they're good guys who can be relied upon to do a bit of housekeeping while coming here for pleasure rather than out of some desire to create the best fm fansite in the world. There's nothing wrong with that in my eyes and i'm not going to start taking their roles away from them because of that.

However, I do agree that more can and needs to be done. I'd like to turn around and say it's up to the members to make the site good, but really I know that's a tad idealistic and not how things really work (unfortunately). However now that we've got a solid mainsite rather than just the forums the actual number of visitors per day is alot higher than last year, o certainly the opportunity is there for a bright turn. It's just a case of pulling fingers out both as members and as staff. It's all well and good saying the staff don't do enough, but what's the solution? Force staff to create discussion on a site they contribute to for free as a hobby? Bring in new staff members? That's what we've always done in the past, tried to give the active contributors an official role, yet look where we are now.

At the end of the day this site is my baby these days, I dedicate most of my free time to it and if nothing happens rest assured i'll be the one pushing discussion left, right and centre. But aside from that i'm not sure what to do, i'm not going to come out and criticise people who have given alot of time and effort to the site over the years, yet I do completely agree with you that the response and activity levels are a bit depressing.

I think what VP mentioned about the member from another site posting content linking to his site is something very important to take note of. If you go on the site itself you will see it has close to 5,000 likes on Facebook (which is a pretty good indicator of the success he has had) and shows the importance of content on a site. If that site had a forum I like to think it would be doing rather well and all of this has been done by what looks like one guy.

When I was a 'staff member' (I use the word staff loosely when it comes to these things) at Throw-In 6 or 7 years ago written content was a much bigger influence in the football manager community. There was even a dedicated website that linked to new content (FM-Portal?) from across different fansites. What is very important to remember is that a very large majority of people who post on fansites, initially only had the intention of finding something out, and content on who are the best players to buy and how to make a good tactic with the team you have etc. were the example methods of bringing in the punters and hoping they would then stay.

Whats important though rightly, is that you don't force people who volunteer to help run the site to create content and do things they are uncomfortable with or uninterested in. This is after all just a bit of fun and once things begin to get political or autocratic it stops becoming a hobby and the purpose of the entire site has been ruined.

So I guess the jist of what I'm saying is not to make radical changes and piss people off, but at the same time try to encourage content for the site, even if a staff member isn't posting 24/7, if he takes some time out to help with content, then that will in the long term boost the activity of regular and new members.

I couldn't agree with you all more to be honest, each one of you makes a good point or two. As Rob said, it is voluntary that we're here and we try what we can. In fairness a lot of us have said in the past we could do more and we've had plenty of ideas for contect but just never carried them out (I'm one of the main culprits for this)

Part of my reasoning of late for not putting something up is the reaction in gets, about 3 weeks back I spent some time getting a topic idea down only to recieve 2 comments and watch it fly down the active topics list, beaten by a sky diver, numerous other game threads and Max changing his name.

For the site to thrive again it's a case of everyone digging in and pushing on rather than the staff dragging in. And in fairness I think the careers section is as busy as it ever has been if not more so, we just need to build on the way people are starting to use the site

I think there's a few reasons as to why the FM side of things lacks compared to a few years ago.

• The main contributors over past years are now older, have less time and more non-FM related commitments. Hence the material that was once offered is now no longer here or has simply been minimised to a far smaller amount.
• Now that FM has switched over to using Steam, it also divided a section of players who have no longer followed the game and stuck with past Steam-less versions. I know personally that since the switch I really don't have the interest in it anymore as I once did. I played FM11 minimally (compared to past versions), FM12 I didn't bother with and I didn't even know FM13 was released until a few days ago. This means I'm not inclined to read the FM areas or offer anything I know, others will also be in this same boat.
• With FM becoming more in-depth it's lost the casual players. From what I've heard FM13 is meant to have a casual mode or something, that might encourage past players to pick it up again, it might not. Again, this has affected FM content and activity.

I could mention more but I feel the basic idea is there.

A lot of the main posters here simply attend for the Off-Topic related matters, the game itself has taken a back seat with age and all that jazz. With there being other FM sites around, there really isn't that incentive (I feel) for members to talk FM here that they can't get elsewhere and in greater supply.

There just isn't the influx of younger members keen on the game staying around to replace the older ones who've moved on.

Some very valid points there (my worklife has taken over a bit and find it difficult to contribute as much myself), however this last bit about an influx of young members....

We have had a butt-load of young new members come, due to the graphic Megapacks we offer, unfortunately they tend to register (often for Premium, which is great) download and then disappear.

So I think it key that we find a way of encouraging those to contribute to the FM sections too, most questions that are posted get answered quickly, and we're good with that, but the discussion side of things could do with help from new users & staff alike.

I don't think things are too bad tbh, but agree they could be a little better.

I'll get some content for ya.