Would You Join A Nerd Fitness Message Board?

Posted at January 7, 2010

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Hello from the Port of Tampa!

Later on today, I’ll be headed out to sea on The Rock Boat X.  For those of you who aren’t aware, I work for Sixthman, a company that specializes in producing floating music festivals.  It’s one of the best jobs in the world, and I am a lucky s.o.b.  If you’re interested in following our adventures at sea, you can read about it (starting with my post Friday morning) on Sixthman.net/blog.

While I’m out slaving away on a cruise ship in the Caribbean (w00t!), I wanted to get your opinion on something.  After seeing the great success and awesome community that has formed over on Art of Manliness, I’m considering creating a message board section of Nerd Fitness.  This will be a place where the NF Community (temporary name until we decide on a bad-ass one) to interact with each other, ask questions, post success stories, and really get to know each other.

I’ve gotten a chance to know most of you through email, but I want you all to get to know each other. I know a giant supportive community can/will make us all better people: pick us up when we’re down, encourage us when motivation is lacking, and push us all to level up our lives every day.

However, there’s an ugly side of message boards that I’m familiar with too: trolls, spam, stupid fighting over useless ****, name-calling, and sometimes an unwelcome vibe towards newbies and outsiders from the long-timers.  These are the things that make me scared to start a message board.

I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on this. I also want to know if this is something you’d actually consider joining.  If you’re reading this, and you have some opinions on message boards, please leave a comment below.  What I want to know:

I’ll take the number of comments I get as a rough estimate of people who’d want to help get this community started, so please just leave a quick comment if you have any interest.  I think a few dozen passionate posters is more than enough to get things off the ground, so I’m interested to hear what you have to say.

Peace out, it’s Rock Boat time!

-Steve

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  • Owen_j
    I'd just like to add my interest :)
  • I love the idea, and would gladly work in a beta!
    I have some admin experience, though not much mod experience, other than what an admin has to do, which isn't much on guild boards.

    Though I don't know how hard it is to do on the backend, I think voting systems are great.

    I agree with the others. Getting it up first is the important part. Solutions against trolls will generally percolate to the top as the need arises. Having some fixits ready - like giving mod privs when they're needed - is a good idea, but who knows what solutions will come up.

    (Sorry, didn't know this post was up... My twitter's been acting up i think...)
  • Vikki
    A message board would be SUPER awesome!
    1. Totally agree with Rob Horton about the spammers/trolls kick 'em out. No one gets to be rude to anyone.
    2.Keeping it "tight but inviting" depends on the people you appoint as mods, the people who join, the people who stay and how you deal with spammers/trolls. Be fair, kind, honest and keep smiling!
    3. I'm all in for testing boards, and as for my experience, I was a part of one when I was a teen and the old-timers there were all super friendly. They'd been there for a long time, but newcomers were always welcome. They weren't rude and loved to make new friends, especially if those newbies stuck around.
  • Christoph
    I'd love to take part in that. A messageboard is great, i mean it's like Jordan Smith said, people can ask questions and you don't have to answer the same question over and over (hopefully).

    Greetings from Germany
  • That would be teh Coolz0rz!
  • Yeah Steve, I would definitely be interested in it. I think things would remain topical and you wouldn't have to worry too much about trolls/spam, remember: you set the attitude that attracts the community around it. That attitude is inclusive, not abusive. Your site isn't about putting people down, and neither are your fans.
  • I just found out about the whole site just today and am fascinated by the whole thing!
    And if you want, I'll beta test the message board as well! The only other message board I get on is harddrop.com (Tetris fans).
    They have CAPCHAS for trolls, or you could give beta testers or yourself banning rights!
    And to get more people I'd say you could make banner links for other forums or websites. Even though it wouldn't really keep it tight, it could spread the site around.
  • audj
    I would love to see this place with a message board or a massage board, for those who can't spell LOL. The community will remain tight no matter what you do because there were always be a select few who post the most. We can keep trolls out through user and post moderation. I would be interested in beta-testing. I <3 Message Boards - I've run two and they really help community building IMHO. I think that covers it.
  • Geeraard
    Count me in. Now that's a quick comment.
  • I'm on board with the er, um, message board idea :) For trolls, spammers and the like just don't be afraid to be a hard-ass with them. It's your house ultimately and we're all invited to the party. However if somebody starts a drunken brawl or feeling up your girlfriend, you'd probably kick em out. Same deal here, imo :)

    I'd love to beta-test this. I don't have tons of experience with them - only a member of two. One for woodworking and one for gaming. They can be a big help to folks for sure.
  • Clint Borton
    I would love to involved with that ! I agree with JFreedom about how this isn't a typical musclehead site. That was the very appeal of your site the first time I stumbled on it. Anything that allows for the continued flow of real fittness info should be a priority. This is a great idea.
  • JFreedom
    Go for it, Steve.. it would add a lot of depth to the site and a good outlet for a lot for questions to be answered and community to really evolve. I can't imagine there would be many trolls, at least at first... this isn't your regular musclehead/fanboy site (thank God) so you've already got a step up on that. However, it's the internet, so you'll probably have a few company reps sneaking in product placement ads, and the occasional d-bag to "drop in". If you've got a band of users that is pretty close knit and you require registration I think the rewards of collective intelligence and motivation far outweigh potential slight annoyances. I think it'd be great.
  • The blog is and has been a great place to discuss individual issues. However, unless someone decides to read every post, they are probably missing the "big picture". I'm assuming that's why you wrote the e-book, which is a great introduction. The thing about a forum is that someone brand new to the site can come to the forum and get personalized attention if they have questions about the plan offered in the ebook (or they want more details, etc). Even better, other long-time readers can answer the easy questions so that Steve can focus on writing new posts.

    Additionally, a forum serves as an archive of questions & answers so Steve doesn't keep getting the same questions over and over... in fact, if certain questions come up enough, that's probably a good topic for a blog post!

    Moderators are a good idea but trolls/flamewars are a problem to be solved when they actually happen. In general, I think the forum will work better if people treat any disagreements like a scientific discussion: if they cite their sources, don't make it personal and let the reader decide which argument they believe has the best support, then people can probably keep the peace.

    I like the idea of mandatory registration and I also like the idea of having a "social hangout" where off-topic threads can go and people can just chat. Hopefully, someone can find some mature members for their DotA clan or something...
  • I'd echo Steve's comments above on almost all counts. Seniority for the members that have been here a while (making them mods, etc) would be a good way to keep out some trolls.

    With that said, I think the Disqus comments add a valuable depth to the discussion on the blog posts so I would not want to see them go (I know you didn't mention getting rid of them, but I wanted to reiterate how well they work now). A forum/message board used in a complementary manner might help build a useful index for us nerds to talk fitness experience with one another.

    I've used a few different CMSes before, and Drupal was relatively easy to set up for forums, etc. It does have a learning curve, and a bunch of other features you may not want for this site, so in that respect I'm not sure how well it would fit your needs. I suspect there are some other nerds here that could comment on appropriate technologies to use for such a forum.
  • If you’re interested in joining a message board
    --I think a message board would be awesome, I'm in!

    If you have suggestions on how to keep the community tight but inviting
    --I don't think this would be an issue at first, actually, just about everyone who reads (and comments, anyway) seems pretty cool, but once things get HUGE maybe have a dedicated board for the more seasoned community-ists

    Suggestions on how to keep out the trolls
    --Moderators can handle this, I would imagine. Give one or two people the power to remove questionable posts, suspend members, etc...give yourself final say, obviously, but they could help weed out the problems...Requiring message board registration could help (to an extent) too

    If you’d be interested in beta-testing the boards
    --Yessir

    Your experiences with message boards in general.
    --Overall my experiences have been pretty positive. I've seen some pretty intense flame wars, but they seem to be more geared towards gaming-specific boards (from what I've noticed). Since this site is moreso about fitness and helping people get in shape, I think your message board users would be willing to offer their own take on things and help any newbies w/ questions. If anyone is causing any problems you can always tell them to tone it down.

    Hope that helps.
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