RealGM

Obviously, the basketball forum is the most popular forum on RealGM and it's really not even close. The basketball board has a total of 415,996 topics with a total of 18,582,697 posts. The next highest forum, baseball, has 20,975 topics and 516,310 posts. That means basketball has nearly 20x the posts of topics and nearly 40x the amount of posts. Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to see more posts and discussion in other areas of the forum so I can not only have a lively and ongoing discussion in the oh-so-popular General NBA Board, but I can head over to the nearly barren General NFL Board. So here's my somewhat solution that I think can help solve this, or at least help it.

Super Bowl time last year, if I remember correctly, there was a popular thread in the Golden State Warriors board dedicated to discussing the Super Bowl, since San Fran was playing the Baltimore Ravens. There's really no need for people to be discussing the Super Bowl in a Golden State Warriors forum. We have a General NFL Forum, a San Francisco 49ers Forum, and if you want to go taunt the opponent (not advisable) go visit the Baltimore Ravens forum. It's only a few clicks away and the discussion goes where it needs to and where other people can find it.

Now here's a more recent example. Let's take a quick look at the New York Knicks Forum. I simply went through the first 3 pages of the forum and this is what I found:

Here's the first one.
-Why is there a Pro Bowl change thread? There is a thread currently going on in the General NFL forum about the exact same thing.

-Why is there a major league baseball thread? I'm sure all of that could go to the New York Mets or Yankees forum. Hell, even go to the General Baseball forum.

-There's also a thread about the Jets going 8-8. Why not just post that in the New York Jets forum?


- "Messing Around With Married Women?" Wait, what? Really?

-Big Brother Thread. Go over to the media lounge. There;s already a Big Brother thread there.

Here's the last one, I won't bore you further:

-A thread on a poster's new tablet. Why not go to the media lounge were there's a technology thread started?

-Anime. Don't quote me on this one, but I believe there is also an anime thread there too. And if not, start one in the appropriate section, not the New York Knicks forum!

-A thread on George Zimmerman. A huge thread (8 parts already) has been started in the Current Affairs thread. No need for one in the New York Knicks forum.

So now I'll wrap this all up (I'm sorry for making this so long): If RealGM actually wants to make the rest of it's forums popular outside of basketball, make OT threads more strictly watched and if it's totally off-topic, just lock it and refer people to the right thread or forum. There's nothing wrong with a post about Deshawn Stevenson on a Knicks board because he may be a target for the Knicks. A George Zimmerman thread or a Super Bowl thread is quite another story.

So basically all I'm saying is this: use the right forum and that'll solve the problem of the barren forums for the most part.

Jake,

Thank you for making this thread.

Some forums do allow OT threads but threads for The 49ers and Jets do get moved to the appropriate forum.

We do have a plan to eliminate some of the clutter and will address this in a future phase of the board upgrades.

Totally agreed with Jake. The Sixers forum has an OT thread about the Eagles once a month at least, especially during the season. The real problem is that if I want to talk about the Eagles on realgm, I'm looking to do it with the posters on the Sixers board that I frequent more often so I can talk to the ones I know there. I don't know the posters on the Eagles forum if it even has any (some of the most recent threads include, "Westbrook gone", "McNabb era over", "2008 Schedule Thread", and the 3rd most recent thread with a last post in 2012 is "Andy Reid Gone"... If I posted there, I wouldn't get a single view. The most recent post 3 posts (one in July, one in February, and one in December) have a collective 2 replies... I think one major problem is that realgm.com redirects you to basketball.realgm.com. This makes it seem to newcomers that this is a basketball only site. That's just my 2 cents though.

Every board is moderated differently of course. On the Bucks board we try to limit OT threads but we do allow some. We are more tolerant in the offseason when things are slow. We don't allow threads that discuss anything political/religious, etc... those always turn into personal attacks. In those cases we point them to the CA board. Threads about the Brewers or Packers are redirected to the proper board. But those are rare. Most of our guys are aware of the other boards.

eliasrapp98: We are definitely going to the navigation issue. This is one of the biggest things I want to do with the next phase of the upgrades.

I do want the success of our Wisconsin forums to spread to our other communities and think that will happen if we do this right.

MD: That is a great summary of things.