Hi. I am the moderator here and frankly my job is too easy. It's too easy because so few people post here. I want to make my job more difficult, but how? That's where you come in. What do you think of this little forum? How can we improve it? What are the biggest obstacles towards improving it? What are the biggest problems? Why do you come to this forum? What do you most want to see here- results? More focusing on players? More talk about countries? Clubs? If you can, take time and reply. I'd really appreciate it.
Maybe it would help if the Africa forum was listed in the 'Big Soccer Features' area, on the top left hand side of the page when your first enter the site. Then people may realise there is actual an area to discuss African football! The Big Soccer Feature area, and more specifically the list of Soccer boards consist of every continent apart from Africa and Oceania, why is that? I believe if not to boost the popularity of the forum, then for shear equality, the BigSoccer Moderators should list both the Africa forum and Oceania forum below the Soccer Boards colum. What do you think?
Have to agree on that. I came to look at some CAN info, and I had to navigate the board to find this place...
This forum is nice, shame there are not a lot of posters. Hopefully that improves with the ANC and the newbies stay afterwards. Spreading the word should hopefully increase exposure, however I am not so sure how to. I suppose the previous suggestions on 'moving' this forum may be a credible one. Want to see - sticky on ANC (dates of games). Definite must. - sticky on 'African players'. Every so often someone comes up with a thread "Do you know so & so who is playing 2nd Div in my country?" Well, hello!! We need to see more posts on results and more posts on clubs back home, but that is more for US to post, no! Anyway, I enjoy this forum and visit everyday.
I'll be honest, I've never ventured into the African forum before today, and I'm looking into info on Ghana...I bet I'm not alone in being a USA fan interested in finding out more on Ghana because of the World Cup. BigSoccer should really advertise the forum more, but people need a reason to stay...like it was suggested earlier, maybe some stickied threads on African players, the Nations Cup, World Cup preparations, etc. Good luck!
I used to visit this forum every day, but this is the first time I have been on it for a few monts i think! The biggest problem is that there are so few people on it, and tbh, its a vicious circle. People post here, and there aren't any replies, so they don't come on here. Then other people come here, and see no new topics, so they don't come back. I am actually South African, so there you go! Perhaps you could start a thread where you profile different African clubs and teams. This way, people will become more interested and accustomed to African football. TBH, most of the topics are quite bland, and boring. People generally come here to ask a question, and people don't usually know the answer, so it goes dormant. I would be willing to help yoyu make this forum more interesting...just PM me, and we can try to work something out!
I think this forum is so "quiet" because most people from other continents "look down" on African football. I know this is a broad generalization, but just read posts here on BigSoccer about Africa from people in the USA, England, Portugal, Brazil, Japan, Germany, or even Iran... there is almost nothing positive about it. In one thread I saw earlier (I forget which one) people were debating capacity of stadiums and a main point as to why FIFA didn't need to have a rule for a min. capacity was because of "games like Mexico vs Angola, Saudi Arabia vs Tunisia, or South Korea vs Togo won't sell out"... subtly implying that games involving African teams are unimportant. I have even seen threads debating whether African teams should even be allowed to participate in the World Cup with the main arguement being that "they take spots that would go to good Europe teams who didn't qualify"... I don't know why this is; I certainly find African football interesting (and have no connection to it)... but the arrogant 'Eurosnobs', among others, don't... and thus they don't bother to come to this forum. Hell, some Dutch guy in the Group C forum was angry because he found out Cote d'Ivoire wears the color orange, which he apparently believed was reserved only for Holland. It's just ignorance, and nothing really can change that.
Yeah, I really wish this forum would get going too. It's the first one I check whenever I get on. I really like African soccer despite having no connection to it, but I don't really get to see many games because they just aren't on that much. Most of what I know is from what I read, so I've posted a little (mostly on lineups, player information - stuff that gohb reports except that he does it a lot better than I do) but I don't have much expertise on the subject other than that. I could post more but I don't like to post stupid things if I have nothing interesting to say. Oh well, we've got the Nations Cup coming up. Hopefully we can get some discussion going for that.
FYI- It's a happy coincidence that I started this thread right before the grand poo-bahs of BS wanted all us mods to start a "rate your mod" thread too. Between the two threads I think we can do some good stuff here. However on that thread I have to wait 7 days until I can comment so I might as well do that here too. (7 days is Wednesday coming up.) So please add more comments like the ones above here or in that other thread. I really appreciate the input.