This is not a post for sycophantic fanfooty users, who praise the work of Monty and Mitch irrespective of the quality, and will not allow dissent. For you guys: head back to Maths class - you'll get detention if you stay on the school computers too long.
This is a post for hardcore AFL fantasy footballers and for Monty and Mitch themselves.
Lads, what has happened? This used to be the greatest site getting around for AFL dreamteamers / supercoachers. Now? It is a pain.
- It is difficult to access this site all weekend, every weekend.
- There are fewer and fewer numbers of blogs released.
- Members who question what has gone wrong are not answered by Monty, even though he will respond to most other inane comments thrown his way.
- Only response? A Live Match Blog that we can't access 'cause of bandwidth issues and still with no explanation as to why the site isn't available.
Now, considering you are receiving advertising revenue (and thanks to gambling revenue, I presume that has increased recently), and presuming you are not paying Mitch (child labour laws, and grammar issues), I think you owe something to the public that creates the hits that generates your income.
WHAT IS GOING ON?
I believe the following solutions may assist:
- transparency as to connection / bandwidth issues (and please not hidden in a forum);
- users tend to enjoy the written summaries the most (besides the excellent statistical data available), consider more regular posts. If you don't have the time, ask regular users if they'd like to contribute. As the site grows, consider paying contributors a small stipend to guarantee quality output;
Anyone agree, disagree (respectfully), have further suggestions?
I do love fanfooty, but it has seriously gone of the boil this season, and I was expecting so much after the lead-up - particularly in content. Guess I really should take my own advice, pre-season form means nothing when picking your side!
Im not sure of the demograhics of the FanFooty users in regard to age and income, but i would be happy to contribute a 'subscription fee' if that would help to improve the quality of the service. Thoughts?
Would love to help blogs and even matchday blogs, but im probably a little time pressed with work commitments!
No expert on the topic, but maybe the reason for the lack of posts on the main page could be because of the success of the fanfooty forum. Anything that m0nty would cover in a post is already done several times before hand on here. Just a guess, but would make sense.
The match day scoring systems pages have been a bit slow this year, but I'm not complaining as m0nty already provides priceless dt stats and has done his fair shair to help us dt'ers out.
It would be good if we could get the active scores for SC as they do for DT.
It's a pain to wait until after the game has finished and then find out your player scored 110 in DT but only 55 in SC! hahahaha
I agree for god sake write something you useless pricks....
This site is/will very soon be a gold mine. If you losers dont clean up your act n get off you arses i will start a site doing exactly the same thing but with more stuff to throw back at the users...
how long does it take to write the wrap?? should be all finished sunday night before mitch does his maths sheet and packs his play lunch.pathetic. I could knock it up in an hour.
each day there should be a new topic either on a player, a thought, a tactic or anything SERIOUSLY IS IT THAT MUCH WORK??!!
If these things don't start happining I WILL start another site and your dream of retiring early into your XL hammock will be over m0nty.
Why should we lose good contributors? Volunteer your services, provide a draft, and see if m0nty can share it with us all. Improve the good before starting from scratch.
Just with things like injuries to popular players (Ablett, Higgins, Raines), there should be more about them
Even if you just write a blog with links to good articles by Herald Sun/Afl.com/FFForum, this would be a good help
And it won't take long...
i'm sure m0nty does more of the work but how much does mitch do?
maybe m0nty could pick people to do blog posts or even the live blog?
how do some people get to do that anyway?
i think it's stupid that we need to come to an external site like this in the first place. all these stats and resources should be on the DT site (or SC site, i guess)
No reply from the mediators.
Not shocked.
No wrap up yet...
For those sick of the silence coming from Monty and Mitch, or simply looking for a fix, the Footy Tragic boys do a great write-up.
http://www.footytragic.com/category/weekend-wrap-up/
Better yet, no apparent typos.
Yeah a good wrap, thanks Sammy.
Quote from: SammyH on May 13, 2009, 07:11:53 AM
This is not a post for sycophantic fanfooty users, who praise the work of Monty and Mitch irrespective of the quality, and will not allow dissent. For you guys: head back to Maths class - you'll get detention if you stay on the school computers too long.
This is a post for hardcore AFL fantasy footballers and for Monty and Mitch themselves.
Lads, what has happened? This used to be the greatest site getting around for AFL dreamteamers / supercoachers. Now? It is a pain.
- It is difficult to access this site all weekend, every weekend.
- There are fewer and fewer numbers of blogs released.
- Members who question what has gone wrong are not answered by Monty, even though he will respond to most other inane comments thrown his way.
- Only response? A Live Match Blog that we can't access 'cause of bandwidth issues and still with no explanation as to why the site isn't available.
Now, considering you are receiving advertising revenue (and thanks to gambling revenue, I presume that has increased recently), and presuming you are not paying Mitch (child labour laws, and grammar issues), I think you owe something to the public that creates the hits that generates your income.
WHAT IS GOING ON?
I believe the following solutions may assist:
- transparency as to connection / bandwidth issues (and please not hidden in a forum);
- users tend to enjoy the written summaries the most (besides the excellent statistical data available), consider more regular posts. If you don't have the time, ask regular users if they'd like to contribute. As the site grows, consider paying contributors a small stipend to guarantee quality output;
Anyone agree, disagree (respectfully), have further suggestions?
I do love fanfooty, but it has seriously gone of the boil this season, and I was expecting so much after the lead-up - particularly in content. Guess I really should take my own advice, pre-season form means nothing when picking your side!
I agree with the points you've raised. I'd like to think that this is a hobby for Monty, as he's most likely got a F/T job. The site may reach a tipoping point where big decisions will need to be made. To me - 3 main issues need to be adressed
1. The server/s. This site is run on what would appear to be inadequate hardware. I guess you could level the same accusation at the AFL DT site and SC when it's being pumped like on friday pregame and the end of matches over the weekend where 400,000 impatient types like me want to see the progressives.
2. A hobby or a job for Monty? As yet it's 6.29 on a Wednesday evening and we're still yet to see a sage wrap on R7. He may have very pressing matters to attend to. I would suggest that the IP (intellectual property) value of this site is quite valuable and will be more so over the next few years. If no-ones offered him a buy-out yet, it's only a matter of time. This fantasy footy thing is gonna be massive in 10 years. Just look the the US, where it's a multi-billion $$ industry. The NFL made over $120 million last FY from their dream team site in advertising and sponsorship. make Monty an offer he cannot refuse, develop the brand and flog it to newscorp in 5 years for $50 million.
3. Content - the quality of the content on this site seems to be focussed on quality, rather than quantity. How much BS do you get from the main sites like the AFL anf Foxports? At least on this site you get an unbiased opinion, regardless on how tardy Monty and his colleagues my be. Some of Monty's calls are from left field but this is a specialist site and in my opinion, no-one currently offers what Monty offer's fantasy footy people like us. To increase the content and not lose the quality - no BS approach is a risk that many smaller web based media organistions have had to contend with as they grow. Conflicts of interests arise as you grow. It's how you manage those conflicts that define the great from the ordinary.
Unreal thread this!
It staggers me what a bunch of White Goodmans the majority of posters are on this website are:
Complaint 1 "child labour laws, and grammar issues"
Answer - flowering get a tissue :'(, must be hard living life so anal .... you cant understand the slang used on this site?? , leave !!
Complaint 2 "Members who question what has gone wrong are not answered by Monty"
Answer - this site does not owe you any answers
Complaint 3 -This used to be the greatest site getting around for AFL dreamteamers / supercoachers. Now? It is a pain.
Answer - Stop living in the past.Some peope have a life and might have better things to do than the demands of a bunch of screwballs and anally retentive muppets, maybe time to reflect on your own life perhaps ??? ...... he second part: " its a pain now? " awwww suck it up nancy boy..... some people using 56k dial up from iraq to come here, and i dont hear them crying because it takes 20mins to load up everypage. no its all about what YOU want and expect..... get over yourself moron for flowers sake "it used to be so good, so nice but now its such a pain" well when douch bags complain daily and dont respect the service that was so highly regarded, why should they maintain past standards??
Complaint 4 - "There are fewer and fewer numbers of blogs released"
Answer - this site owes you nothing, does not need to make daily blogs for impatient school kid twats to get their jollys.(you must get hard when the grammar is perfect and well presented) :o
and your opening was a classic !!! "This is not a post for sycophantic fanfooty users" no its a post for complaining spoilt pricks who have no life and have FanFooty as their homepage and login every 20 mins hunting something to read....... or are you past this and using f5 button every 5mins! .......... geta life sunshine
1 - This is a FREE website, no memberships/Subscriptions paid
2 - Blogs and content are for members and players and not specially made for YOU
3 - Runners of this site do not owe any reader a qualiy of service
4 - If your unhappy with his website just click the X button on the top right hand corner of your browser and get the flower out.
5 - site runs slow due to popularity - so when retards like you leave it will be faster for all of us......so dont let the door hit you on the way out DOUCHE
sammyh - yeah this site needed your input, place back the dummy in your mouth maybe make sure you have a box of tissues handy when you decide to grace us when you visit FanFooty to read any blog ...... maybe you are past the tissue phase in your life and have moved into Towels
seriously you are the type of person who complains at every restaurant about their meal, ask your self what the chunky bits are when you get your replacement :-X
those of you in total agreement with sammy need to take along hard look at yourselves!
Sorry to SammyH and others, I only saw this thread today. I have been answering some questions like this over on BigFooty, but I suppose I should set it all out in full here.
On the servers: myself and Tai, my business partner, decided to try running FanFooty on one big server in 2009, rather than two smaller servers as we had been doing over the past year. That experiment failed, obviously. We are now back on two servers, but even that configuration is struggling now under the weight of a 100%+ increase in traffic over last year. We have now upgraded both servers this week - these things take time - and we are hopeful that the new configuration will handle the vast majority of traffic situations.
You have to understand that it's very difficult to handle the sort of traffic that fantasy footy demands. Take Monday night, for instance. We had been going along fairly sedately all weekend without a hitch, pretty much, until suddenly the Channel Seven coverage in Melbourne goes to half time and BOOM, tens of thousands of people all want to access FanFooty at once. The problem was compounded by the fact that the game had actually just finished in real time, so we were getting the other tens of thousands who were listening to the radio also hitting the site at the same time. It's no wonder that both FanFooty and the VirtualSports sites couldn't handle that kind of sudden spike in demand. Monday nights are a test this year by the AFL, and one of the lessons is that Web sites are going to struggle on school nights.
On the blogs, I apologise for not writing Rollercoaster and Boys on the Bubble features last week. I am going to try to get those two done, if nothing else, each week this season. I am busy during the week, partly on paid contract work that supplements my income up to something I can actually live on. I can assure you that I'm not rolling in cash by any stretch of the imagination from what FanFooty generates, at least at the moment. Also, I do take one day out to play golf each week on a Monday or Tuesday... a man's got to have a day off when he works weekends!
I know Mitch has come under a lot of fire for the quality of his blogs. For that I partially blame myself, because I should really be editing his stuff before it appears. I am prepared to give him a go, however, because I think it's important for young journalists to be given opportunities to see their name up in lights at an early age to give them confidence that they are good enough to make a career out of journalism. Mitch can't always write his wraps on the Sunday night due to school work and what have you, but I'm willing to wait for him because he puts a lot of work into them and I'm very happy with his output... especially on the match blogs, where he has been an absolute champ on several occasions.
(As an aside, I still need help with the match blogs. Please email me at m0nty at fanfooty com au if you want to help out, and please specify your preferred nickname colour!)
I am a feature writer by training, so my own blog posts are focused on quality not quantity, as Hitman said. I'm not in the habit of squirting out those short and sharp 50-word posts like the DT Talk boys do. Again, it's rather time-consuming. Warnie obviously isn't working hard enough at his teaching job! :P
Beyond Mitch's and my own contributions, I am conscious of being part of a wider fantasy footy community, so in some ways I think it's actually a good thing that FanFooty doesn't have three 1500-word features per weekday. I am perfectly happy for all of you to visit DT Talk, Your Super Coach Coach, DT Ruined My Life, Footy Tragic, AllFooty.info, Too Serious, SnooperCoach, TFKG=14 and all the other blogs and podcasts out there during the week. I don't want to monopolise your time.
One other aspect of that is that I am tending to fit all my midweek analysis into the Coaches Box at the moment. If you download and listen to that, it contains most of my thoughts on the week. The show runs to somewhere between 90 to 120 minutes each Wednesday, so that should be more than enough content for you to handle!
On the subject of regular injury updates and such, I built a system for that a couple of years ago. Like some of you, I really like the way Rotoworld does it, and my system was a pretty shameless copy. It's still operational, but at the moment all I'm doing is pumping through match report copy. To be brutally honest, it is too much work for me to handle at the moment. The other option would be to resurrect the news aggregation code that I had running a couple of years ago, which took headlines off other sites. Maybe in the offseason, depending on what happens with the site.
Finally, on subscription fees, I don't believe in that at all. We tried that back in 2005 (IIRC) and it was a complete failure. It's my responsibility to make enough money to deliver a solid free service. I have not been doing that of late, but I'm working on it.
I hope that answers all of your questions. Sorry again for not answering earlier.
m0nty
Good response there m0nty.
Be very happy if the servers arw fixed for this weekend, much more of a SCer and livid that your not allowed to display live SC scores but any live fantasy scores is better than nothing.
Be good if this could be linked sonehow to the front page, sick of seeing the complaining in the blogs "where is the round wrap", "why are the servers crashing"
Your doing a good job, not sure how long the ban is on not being able to show live SC scores, but that'd make it even better
Pip pip to you Monty and Mitch and all of the other behind the scenes cronies.
Like someone said, even when no articles are up, the site is a good central site for general banter.
As a fellow writer, i know how long quality takes and will always prefer it over quantity.
Get those SC scores up and when the servers settle down, you'll be laughing.
I think you said what we are all thinking Master Blaster. Well done!!
Go Hawks!!! Let's get back to the footy...
Great response m0nty. Thanks.
Surely there's someone who could volunteer to do the injury list etc? Speak up ppl.!
Is "I'm here all day" really there all day?
I bet somebody is.
i'm going to email you soon m0nty but i'm happy to do live match blogs, even a small part like eg:
Fletcher is working on bradshaw moving onto brown and stuff like that.
Email You Soon.
(Green For My Personal Colour)
Waiting to be Unbanned anyway from doing something very light.
just a note for you m0nty if you are reading this and haven't checked your emails, i sent you some details about doing things on this site.
if you have questions reply to me on the email.
Wow cop that!