Do we communicate well enough?

[Sunlit Forres]

To stop SeanC's thread being hijacked I propose that we continue the discussion here.

[AndyC]

To answer the question IMHO No but at least we try!

[Clive Coles]

Transferred from Sean's SEOA website - help needed post
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Yes Andy ~ I thought I might be burned at the stake when i mentioned Facebook at my club committee meeting.

The problem I find with a web page you only see what you are given. Each club has a different style ~ finding relevent information from other club site can be a challenge. Some webmasters are good at providing news and keeping their site up to date. Some sadly are tired and overworked. But it's a thankless task ~ you rarly find a volunteer to take over the role. So there is a reluctance to suggest change.

I think FB can provide a complementary facility to the traditional web site. It can be interactive as well as informative. You probably need someone to moderate content but you do not need to rely on one person to actually make a posting. It's far quicker for a club member to make a FB announcement. Postings can be in the form of a question? ~ you could even get a response.

I actually find it is not just youngsters who use facebook. It's more a question as to how receptive your members are to embrace new ways.

In East Anglia about half our clubs have active facebook pages. Far be it to me to draw conclusions as whether these clubs find FB an effective way of staying engaged with their members.

[Paul Frost]

...I think FB can provide a complementary facility to the traditional web site. It can be interactive as well as informative. You probably need someone to moderate content but you do not need to rely on one person to actually make a posting. It's far quicker for a club member to make a FB announcement...

I actually find it is not just youngsters who use facebook. It's more a question as to how receptive your members are to embrace new ways...

I think you are right in it being complementary, but it's only good for here and now, one paragraph type stuff.

You can't moderate it, the whole concept of being able to control what happens on facebook would kill it. The only option is not to allow other users content on the official club page, but that's the whole point of using FB.

You can have club websites that allow many people to add content, and even allow comments to be made by visitors.

One of the downsides of facebook is that your page looks like everybody else's (not brilliant).
The other is that there are still a lot of people that are not interested in sharing (or hearing about) all the little details of life, so you will not be able to engage with them.

[SeanC]

Twitter has some potential. Have a look at my clubs website (http://www.dfok.co.uk). One of our members tweets irregularly to a few followers, but it's also fed onto the front page of our website. The result is that the content is up to date and it softens the website... making it less formal/more welcoming. Also good for publicity.

Facebook. I must admit one of the attractions of my local running club is that they have an active facebook group, it makes me feel welcome to be able to post a question and get two or three instant responses (rather than waiting a few days/possibly weeks for a club secretary or designated such person to respond via email). I find orienteering can be cliquey. Eg, someone organises a trip to a multi-day event. Rather than going through the hassle of emailing the club and making it an "official" trip, it's easy to just ask your friends... which probably don't include someone new to the club or someone who's never been on a big trip away. With Facebook everyone can be involved much easier and can invite themselves.

The problem with Facebook is that it needs a critical number of users for it to be active. I get the impression that a few clubs have started one but the pages are fairly quiet. It's probably the sport, an individual sport where people are spread out geographically doesn't help. The traditional "start on your own, finish on your own, go home on your own" type event doesn't help either and probably filters out the more sociable new people, leaving mostly introverts who are happy with the status quo. As well as Facebook I think clubs should introduce more events that encourage sociability/competing in teams etc, even if they make a loss or aren't what the existing members want.

[Clive Coles]

I think you will find Paul a Facebook page can be moderated by the Admistrator https://www.facebook.com/help/323502271070625/

I am administrator for a FB page though until now have never needed to moderate anyones comment. Have just tried to delete an old message that no longer needs to be retained ~ can confirm the zapping works.

[Paul Frost]

But that's after it's posted you can hide it as spam, but not not check it before it's public.
Someone needs to be checking and reacting almost constantly if you are going to police it. Look at how long sometimes the NopeSport spam stays live if the moderator isn't online.

But that's the reality of facebook and twitter, sometimes people post stupid/critical/rude stuff, what I'm saying is that you can't control that, only react to it after the event.

On a normal website that the club controls, you don't have that risk. If you do allow comments you can hold them as pending until checked, but that can stifle debate.

There is no simple answer if you want stuff to be controlled, organised and searchable and at the same time be casual and unstructured.

[roadrunner]

The problem of control is a difficult one, and my running club had some issues with this. Originally our Facebook group was open, meaning anyone could see it and post to it; it was changed to closed (and restricted to current members, which in itself was somewhat controversial) because of people advertising events, rather than the sort of "spam" you might expect (and indeed get on Nopesport etc from time to time). With that restriction, posts aren't moderated (and I've never seen one which I felt needed to be); we just have some basic guidelines, not to post anything that clashes with club events, plus the usual disclaimer that postings represent the views of individuals and not the club. It seems to work fine, and I notice that one quite often gets posts from new members.

[Sunlit Forres]

Have a look at my clubs website (http://www.dfok.co.uk). One of our members tweets irregularly to a few followers, but it's also fed onto the front page of our website.

If only Nopesport had a 'Like' button. I'm getting on to our web developer right now.

[Clive Coles]

Would be interested to hear from Clubs which have facebook pages what their experience has been regarding the posting of inappropriate messages. I notice some clubs have gone down the "closed" group route, others have "open" pages.

I actually don't really think there is a real spam issue, i.e sufficient to require someone to vet postings before they become public. I think reactive moderation is all that is required. I would start with an open group but be prepared to make it closed if it gets extensively spammed.

A club can appoint multiple FB managers who would have the power to zap where necessary. This could be something a small group of club committee members could undertake. In my experience however I have never had to do this in 2 years of managing a FB site. Hardly a time consuming undertaking.

People use these sites if they find them useful. If they fill up the pages with rubbish the site will cease to be of any use to anyone. You need therefore to establish some concensus over what the clubs wishes to publicise and agree guidelines of good practice. It is something where every club or event official can play a part by making appropriate timely postings. You don't need to rely on just one person to be available.

Many club websites suffer from websites being too controlled. The webmaster is not always available to make an urgent posting: they are not necessarily in the loop when decisions are made. This can result in updates being made late in the day. Formal commmunication is compromised by this single point of responsibility. We resort to word of mouth or even ask the question of Nopesport !

Facebook and Twitter are just two of the facilities that, if used responsibly, can help us to communicate more successfully.

[Paul Frost]

You need to be cautious about adding the "like" and "tweet me" buttons to pages, they can add a considerable delay to the page loading time. There is a lot of stuff(code) that needs to downloaded from the facebook and twitter sites every time your club page is requested. People with slower connections and mobile will not thank you for the extra load.

Adding a twitter feed can be a good way to make more static pages more dynamic. I've done it with the SOA Elite (SEDS) sub-pages and on a recent club website for Pendle Forest Orienteers. Ideally you need to cache the tweets, so that there is content even if twitter is down.

FYI the way the DFOK site is displaying tweets is not allowed by twitter, they have very strict policy on how tweets should be presented.

An advantage of twitter over facebook is that content is always visible by anyone, whilst facebook often demands or infers that you need to be logged in. I get really p*** off when I click a facebook link and I get the login screen. Whilst I have an account because I need to, I don't stay logged in as I don't want them tracking everything I do.

[NFKleanne]

We had issue with spammers posting about things they were selling on our facebook page - I deleted them and the problem has been resolved. I just check result now to check people wishing to join are legitamate. to be honest though the page doesn't get a lot of traffic, its more photos.

[Paul Frost]

People use these sites if they find them useful. If they fill up the pages with rubbish the site will cease to be of any use to anyone. You need therefore to establish some concensus over what the clubs wishes to publicise and agree guidelines of good practice. It is something where every club or event official can play a part by making appropriate timely postings. You don't need to rely on just one person to be available.

It's not generally members that fill up the page with rubbish, it's the rest of the world, who won't have read your guidelines. I agree about more people, see below. I also accept that not every site suffers from abuse, it seems random, just like the sudden bursts of it you get on Nope, then it goes quiet.

Many club websites suffer from websites being too controlled. The webmaster is not always available to make an urgent posting: they are not necessarily in the loop when decisions are made. This can result in updates being made late in the day. Formal commmunication is compromised by this single point of responsibility...

Sounds like you need to get the webmaster more involved in the loop then, and at the same time give at least one other person (preferably more) access to post stuff.

[Ali Wood]

Apologies if this is not strictly on topic, but I look after a website for a non-orienteering society, is there a person out there (amongst you guys and your friends) who could give me some pointers as to how to enhance the website from being bog-standard html to some interaction (like a forum, like forms to request info, etc.)?

[Paul Frost]

Ali, your question doesn't have a simple answer, but here are a few things to think about.

Good websites have been getting much more complicated to build and maintain recently. The massive increase in devices that are capable of viewing web pages has changed the way they need to work. With umpteen different screen sizes and operating systems on phones and tablets at the small screen end and then people using their 40+inch TV at the other end, it's impossible to know the screen size.
Webpages in the past tended to be built around fitting on a 1024x768 desktop screen, and the layout would be fixed, now they need to be 'responsive' to whichever screen screen is being used.
Latest statistics from the Scottish 6 Days and Scottish Orienteering websites that I manage are that about 15% of visitors are using some sort of mobile device (phone or tablet). Some sites are getting much higher numbers, so it depends on the demographic for your site.

Then throw in the facebook, twitter, instagram etc. social networks that keep changing the method that you can display or link their content on your own site and it starts becoming a skilled job that needs constant updating.

Forums are a dying method of communication for many groups. You need a reasonable number of very active people posting regularly to keep it alive. Look at this forum, it's not as active as it was and the number of us that visit and post regularly has gone down significantly over the last year or two. Sometimes it goes several days without much action, so you don't bother to visit it every day, and then the downward spiral starts.

Facebook works well if you have a majority of your group/club that are using it as part of their daily lives. But beware of alienating those who don't think facebook is the best thing since...

Twitter is very easy to use to send quick text updates along with a photo that could be shown on the club site or direct to people that are 'Following' you or a #tag and doesn't require the level of 'buy-in' that facebook does.

Forms can be useful but can attract spammers, so need to be set up with defensive measures to avoid abuse. This again requires a certain level of skill.