Closure of the official Club Forum

[Observer]

I am totally bemused at  the closure of the official club forum, in my view, is just another poor decision made by the management of ECCC, the aim being (in my opinion) to silence criticism of the club by it's members, supporters and the public in general.

Looking back at the forum, historically, all was well until on-field performances started to attract serious adverse comment from persons who used this facility to express (or should we say vent) their views in a very direct way. I would suggest the worst of this occurred circa 18 months ago.

Some posters (there were many) started to attack the club, its structure, committee/management, coaches and even individual players. Some of these views have hence been supported by a number of media outlets/blogs (some links were posted)

The criticism led to a number of, what were deemed inappropriate posts being removed. It was then decided that every post needed to be approved by a moderator before publication, it was made pretty clear that the forum was not designed to comment on said individuals or certain management matters in a negative way.

The decision to approve every post (made by whom?) obviously put a considerable burden on the moderators. This burden was clearly way beyond their duties. I know of no other sports forum that every post has to be approved before it is published.

My view is pretty clear, someone inside the club took a dislike to the criticism made by the members/public at that time. It was then suggested every post had to be approved. From that time the forum was always doomed.

For the record I have attended a number of members forums in the past. They are always broadly the same, that is, we (the management) know best.

My view is that communication between club and it's long suffering members has been seriously diminished by this very short-sighted decision. ECCC has an excellent marketing team, it is rather a pity this excellence does not extend to the on-field decision makers.

[galboy]

It's hard to argue with that really.

All they have done now though is given someone else the opportunity to open another forum where views will be aired with no biased moderation from the club. The club, coach and players will still be criticised but now without any censorship from the previous moderators. Bad decision in my book.

The club is in a bad way both on and off of the field at the moment and with no limits to the criticism on the only forum for the club that is not going to improve people's views of the club at all.

[Diatribe]

for the club that is not going to improve people's views of the club at all.

Its not the club others have a poor view of, its the management and their policies.

I fully appreciate this is what you meant to state, but I guess you already knew I would get all pedantic on you after your cruel exposure of my ignorance on England's current one day itinerary.

[galboy]

[/quote]
Its not the club others have a poor view of, its the management and their policies.

I fully appreciate this is what you meant to state, but I guess you already knew I would get all pedantic on you after your cruel exposure of my ignorance on England's current one day itinery.
[/quote]

Well in my eyes the management are a large part of the club and therefore go hand in hand.

[bwildered]

Duty of Care to it's employees was the reason given for the closure of the official forum.
In all fairness the club could have just closed the official forum without notification, so lets hope a good relationship will continue in future, and  the club will respect the views of it's supporters.

[Slogger]

I think off the field the club has declined since the untimely death of Mr Edwards. He was a conservative figure but he did seem to understand that county cricket was in its own right a spectator sport and I believe listened to the members, who after all, as the club is a members club, are its owners. I think he would have understood issues such as car parking and its importance to ensuring good attendances far better than the current regime. I recollect spending some time in his company at a game in Leeds in the mid 1990s (I was resident in Yorkshire at the time and my wide had bought me a day in the committee room as birthday present - Peter was there as a guest of the YCCC committee). He was quite critical of the ground at Ilford. He explained to Sir Laurence Byford that it was "a terrible ground but our members like going there so we have to keep using it".

In retrospect I found that quite a telling comment - we dropped Ilford soon after Mr Edwards' death and of course Southend has now gone too. I suspect most members value festival cricket and would want to see it continue.

I think the forum was uncomfortable for the club - as Gorbachev said you have to have glasnost to get perestroika......

[IlfordEagle]

The Club could do a lot worse than listen to the views of it's Members who, judging by what is put on the Forum & what they say whilst watching games, can see clearly what is wrong with the playing side anyway, some also will know about the internal workings of ECCC & clearly all is not well there either.
Those who run the Club cannot just blindly do so whilst ignoring the views of many Members plus also others including distinguished journalists etc , whilst we have done better than the last couple of years ie getting to T20 Finals day & second in a strong YB40 Group plus an improved LVCC campaign (albeit still not good enough), we are still not good enough & if we did get promotion this year we would come straight back down as our recruiting is not what is should be & we would probably not have Shah & Tendo until nearly June plus little of Ally & Ravi so would hardly ever if at all field our absolute strongest eleven which we would need to do consistently.

[ClaireW]

I can tell you that amongst the committee members, there was a view that the forum was not representative, as they thought it was just a handful of people posting. My argument was always that no matter how small a number of people were posting (and I disagree that it was only a handful) they were representative of what others were thinking.

I have to be careful what I say as no doubt those who lurked on the official forum will be lurking on here too, but most of the complaints about the board came from one particular individual...although of course they won't be able to get stuff removed on here like they did on the official forum! 

[squarelegumpire]

No forum such as this is truly representative, since the contributors are self-selected. However, none of us can have any idea of how influential or otherwise it is, since the lurkers, by definition, don't contribute. There's also the view that only the discontented put fingers to keyboard! Often, anyway.

Surely Claire, it was easy to determine how many were signed up to the old board.

Take the point about the one individual. Maybe we were too near the truth when discussing something that individual has an interest in!

Take the point, too, about "duty of care" to employees but these employees are, professionally anyway, in the public eye. No-one, so far as I recall made any comment about members of staff's private lives except to express concern over what seemed to be unfortunate events.

[eastsax]

Surely Claire, it was easy to determine how many were signed up to the old board.

Around 1400 I believe.

[squarelegumpire]

Surely Claire, it was easy to determine how many were signed up to the old board.

Around 1400 I believe.

One didn't have to be signed up to "read only", though! Anyone any idea of the number of lurkers? I realise that's an almost impossible question!

[eastsax]

Surely Claire, it was easy to determine how many were signed up to the old board.

Around 1400 I believe.

One didn't have to be signed up to "read only", though! Anyone any idea of the number of lurkers? I realise that's an almost impossible question!

I've been informed that there was circa 1400 signed up members. I don't know if there is any record of "guests", although there was 3000 redirected hits from the ECCC website last month.

[ClaireW]

Actually, you did have to be a member to read the forum, following some unpleasantness a couple of years back. So there were 1400 members (a figure that was growing) and there was software to ensure people couldn't sign up more than once.

[afinetickletoleg]

There's also the view that only the discontented put fingers to keyboard! Often, anyway.

That was definitely true on the old message board.

You could tell that by the number of posts after a bad performance/defeat compared to those after a good performance/win.

[squarelegumpire]

There's also the view that only the discontented put fingers to keyboard! Often, anyway.

That was definitely true on the old message board.

You could tell that by the number of posts after a bad performance/defeat compared to those after a good performance/win.

Some had actually been at the game, too!