The Ohio Quizbowl Forum

Yes, the forum has been down. It took quite a bit of time and more money than I want to think about right now. It wasn't quite as simple as just taking over the payments. I have spent way more money than I expected. That being said, we are back up and I don't foresee anymore issues in the near future.

Ouch! My wallet hurts.

As I said in a previous post, Josh is taking over as the primary administrator of the forum. I will still have administrator privileges to help out with anything he needs, but all questions should go through him. Thanks for taking the reins!

I just hope that people will continue to use this forum to share information like they always have.

I think part of that is getting the word out there again. It used to have a lot more active players on here, but I don't think its a surprise that died down, especially when a lot of them were my players back in the day and other locals.

That said, I think mentioning it at various tournaments or putting the web address in paperwork passed out at tournaments and stuff would be a good way to get more coaches to join again.

I thought it was because Lowellville stopped being sweet.

Popping by to give some thanks, thoughts, and whatnot...

Thank you to Josh for stepping in and keeping the forum alive. I was somewhat interested in committing to the renewal/taking it over, but the cost of it made me reluctant to pull the trigger. I'm definitely interested in putting some $$$ (maybe there can be a Patreon/GoFundMe or even a PayPal that willing individuals can put donations toward the cost taken on to keep this bad boy alive) together for the cause. I'm kind of, well, not certain what really the role is that the forum serves today- I'm led to believe that at worst it serves as a simple window for new coaches/teams to glimpse through into structure of Ohio quizbowl as an activity (one of the first hits or so one finds in a Google search), and at best it is a link to tournament announcements with some discussion sprinkled in every 5-6 months. That doesn't mean the forum has no purpose. Rather, over time it has been a good site with decreasing activity with a resulting decrease in content and what-can-be-offered. That's not a bad thing! But it can also be changed. I'm just not entirely sure what the code to be cracked is, to break through the seemingly impregnable barrier of "talk quizbowl on 'the board', community members." I expressed some thoughts on this on Facebook a couple weeks ago:

I wrote:I think the forum (as a concept) has more/less become antiquated when it comes to the messaging and communication aspect. Established peoples (coaches, TD’s, etc) don’t really “need it” since there’s very little of anything for them to ask about or express (and if they express, it’ll be in the company of their peers or through social media.) That’s truly not a *bad* thing– it’s just the advances of interactions over the past 10-15 years. Young people (e.g. high schoolers/college students) have been typically forum-averse, not the least of reasons being the idea that messaging is again best done through social media as a matter of convenience and speed. The third angle is the “new to the circuit” crowd: they sort of miss out on the forum’s purpose, but even that void is basically fulfilled with again social media outlets (ever heard of Quizbowl Twitter? ‘It’s A Thing’) and in-person interactions fostered through said social media.

I think the board can be revived, so to speak. Part of the dilemma I'm led to think is, at some point, there becomes fewer and fewer things to talk about related to Quiz Bowl at length that can be constructive and interesting. And then there's fewer things for forum people to become impassioned toward 15-20 minutes time of reading, crafting and responding. I don't necessarily think we're at that point, rather we (as a forum base) probably reached an impasse on quizbowl discussion after, well, whenever the last time anything was discussed on here. But that can change. I have ideas for two threads that I'll start on tonight ("Best of the Decade", "Decade in Review") and an idea for a thread more Central Ohio related. Maybe that can get the ball rolling...

I think there might be 6 regional tournaments coming up in a few months that have like a hundred teams all playing in one day that might be able to spread the word a little bit. I don't know, maybe not.

Lowellville will never stop being sweet!

Tom, you have hit on a few things I have been thinking about. When I agreed to do this, it was about saving things for the future. I don’t want the information on this site to disappear without being saved. There is a ton of history on this forum I want to keep. So that has been done for the foreseeable future. That was absolutely time sensitive and it wasn’t the time to think about the details. Now that has been taken care of, we have time to figure out what the next steps are. All the bills are paid for the next year. My plan is to use that year to figure out what the future should be. If people want to give me a couple bucks at a tournament, that is fine. You aren’t obligated and it isn’t expected.

Lots of people have made suggestions that I will be thinking about going forward. I’m going to take the next year to have more of those conversations and we can work out what to do. If anyone reading this has suggestions, I’m all ears and you should feel free to message me or talk to me at a tournament. I’m hoping to work on getting the word out to as many people as possible. The traffic and involvement on the site will help me make my decision. If I think it is still serving an important purpose, I will keep it going. I will have some plan for funding worked out in a years time.

Your ideas for threads sound good. I’m going to try to open up on here a little bit. Nothing too personal, but talking about coaching things in the abstract. I feel like there could easily be more helpful content for newbies, but I am not a very good coach at a lot of that stuff.