WEEK ONE PICK 'EM

[SF Band dad]

Rebel-Fan-74 who did you pick to win this week?

How long is the pick'em going? regular season or regular season and playoffs

Question #1 - My picks are listed two threads above yours...

Question #2 - I'm doing the best I can to keep things going all season, but there are chances that I will not be here due to some things like my wife's health issues and I'm waiting on the arrival of Reb-Fan-2031, who will be Reb-Fan-2028's little brother.

Let me know if you need to take a week or two off from this, work schedule permitting, I'll jump in and keep it going.

There is no easy way to copy people's picks into a spreadsheet and tabulate them, is there? I recall that just the inclusion of a space at the end of a team name gave me fits last year. Maybe I can get Cralic (Chief Admin & stepson) to modify the phpBB "polls" functionality to allow you to just create a "special poll". I'll search around and see if there is an official mod available for polls or surveys that we can use.

[DeCav]

The PFT PICK 'EM topic is gone, my signature link is gone and "sitemodtest" sent me a PM but deleted it before I had a chance to read it.

It's good to see them paying some attention to their website,...but I see they still haven't figured out their "Internal Server Error" problem.

Yeah, I was scratching my head trying to figure out why the heck they'd allow you to have that link and also allow some of the threads that mentions the site. We'll have to be subtle and insidious. There's no doubt in my mind they have put this site's name in the filter.

I think it was last season the paper changed owners and everyone listed their email in a thread in case they shut the forum down or we had to defect to somewhere else. Well I still have those email addresses on my ipod. I copied them to my contacts list.

Hey I was thinkin (insert joke here).....

The Pigskin Pick 'Em is at this point the most popular part of the forum as far as I can see. We're gonna have new people signing up every week to play. I also see the Region Standings and Points threads being central to what attracts people over here as the year goes on. What would you think about just breaking those out and giving them their own Category on the Home page. It could be right under the SC High School Football banner and above Walhalla to Wando.

Title it "By The Numbers...Stats, Polls, and Pigskin Pick 'Em"

It's really the only thing at this point that folks are engaged in. Might as well make it more prominent.

Of course the argument can be made that by stickying it at the top of the 4A forum, it brings more traffic that way and encourages folks to post. Lemme know what you think.

[SF Band dad]

The PFT PICK 'EM topic is gone, my signature link is gone and "sitemodtest" sent me a PM but deleted it before I had a chance to read it.

It's good to see them paying some attention to their website,...but I see they still haven't figured out their "Internal Server Error" problem.

Yeah, I was scratching my head trying to figure out why the heck they'd allow you to have that link and also allow some of the threads that mentions the site. We'll have to be subtle and insidious. There's no doubt in my mind they have put this site's name in the filter.

Because they don't pay much attention. Administering that site is an extra responsibility for them, not anyone's primary job. The purpose of that site is to generate ad revenue, and it shows. They have not added this site's name to their "banned words" list. I just included a hyperlink to a thread here in a comment over there. If you think about it, all sports-news sites are SHJ's competitors, there are people linking to their competitors all day over there.

The Pigskin Pick 'Em is at this point the most popular part of the forum as far as I can see. We're gonna have new people signing up every week to play. I also see the Region Standings and Points threads being central to what attracts people over here as the year goes on. What would you think about just breaking those out and giving them their own Category on the Home page. It could be right under the SC High School Football banner and above Walhalla to Wando.

Title it "By The Numbers...Stats, Polls, and Pigskin Pick 'Em"

It's really the only thing at this point that folks are engaged in. Might as well make it more prominent.

Of course the argument can be made that by stickying it at the top of the 4A forum, it brings more traffic that way and encourages folks to post. Lemme know what you think.

I was thinking they will get the most views in the class categories, a lot of people just go straight there. I now realize your options are not mutually exclusive. We can create that category and populate it with "shadow topic" links to the stats and pick 'em threads in their respective class forums. To see an example go to 4A and scroll down to the topic: SC Prep Media Poll - Preseason. You'll notice the topic icon has a little arrow pointing up and to the left indicating this is a link to a topic elsewhere. Click on the topic and it takes you to the actual topic which is over in Walhalla-to-Wando. You can create a "shadow topic" when you move a topic from one forum to another, I don't know if you can create multiple "shadow" links in different places. I'll mess around down in the sandbox and see if I can make it work.

[DeCav]

Oh that sounds pretty cool. I think I understand what you are describing. Basically you have an actual physical location of a forum or topic but it can appear to be in two or maybe more locations at once on the site. This sounds like a great way to get 1A, 2A, 3A, and 4A fans who don't usually mingle to see a topic in their own forums that is actually the same thread. Is that it?

[DeCav]

The only thing that could confuse folks would be if they don't understand what's happening when they click on a shadow. I just tried it on the media poll thread by replying to the thread. If someone still thinks the thread is actually in the 4A section they might not understand why the thread doesn't get bumped there although it is obviously bumped in the Walhalla section because that's where the user winds up after clicking the thread.

Seems to me if you were going to shadow a topic on phpbb it would be a useful feature to have the thread bump everywhere it is shadowed. Maybe I'm just bored and over thinking it though. I should probably move these kinds of discussions to the FAQ section but I figured users of the Pick Em might wanna chime in and they won't be likely to visit there.

[SF Band dad]

Yeah, that's interesting. You replied to the topic which sent it to the top of W2W but the shadow topic stayed down at the bottom of the 4A page.

I wonder if you can make a shadow topic "sticky"?

Edit: That's a "no".

Edit 2: Making the parent topic "sticky" has no effect on the shadow topic link.

Edit 3: I just made them "Global Announcements". Now they are pinned in the "Announcements" section at the top of all forums. I think that will do the trick. Once RF-74 posts a Week 2 PICK 'EM we'll just change the Week 1 topic back to a Standard Topic and it will drop back into the normal 4A list. I think that will work.

[DeCav]

Man, I really love the look!

Breaking it out from the other topics is what I was looking for. I'm not a player of the pick em so I was always looking past the first 3 topics to read the other ones that I tend to focus on. It might seem insignificant but that makes a big difference for me with regards to the aesthetics of the board.

[Rebel-Fan-74]

W L Member Name
14 6 Rebel-Fan-74
15 5 dwk64
15 5 GO TIGERS
11 9 SF Band dad
12 8 chief shooting bull
15 5 cityslicker
12 8 cavaliereagle
17 3 Byrnes#1 <----The weiner, I mean winner!
13 7 EHSMeanGreen
16 4 Chief Whoa
0 0 rigginb
13 7 fanoffootball
14 6 Bburg22
15 5 TrojanFan26
15 5 DOLPHN1210
14 6 3-3 Stack
13 7 Wave 80
13 7 Knight Viper
14 6 DON316625
15 5 fanofthegames
15 5 1CANNON
15 5 mystikul
13 7 Sibilance
15 5 Steelersfan
15 5 racincowboy02
16 4 ByrnesRebels05
13 7 CobraKnight

Playa W L %
Rebel-Fan-74 26 9 74.3%
dwk64 25 10 71.4%
GO TIGERS 29 6 82.9%
SF Band dad 23 12 65.7%
chief shooting bull 23 12 65.7%
cityslicker 27 8 77.1%
cavaliereagle 23 12 65.7%
Byrnes#1 29 6 82.9%
EHSMeanGreen 26 9 74.3%
Chief Whoa 27 8 77.1%
rigginb 10 5 66.7%
fanoffootball 22 13 62.9%
Bburg22 25 10 71.4%
TrojanFan26 28 7 80.0%
DOLPHN1210 26 9 74.3%
3-3 Stack 14 6 70.0%
Wave 80 13 7 65.0%
Knight Viper 13 7 65.0%
DON316625 14 6 70.0%
fanofthegames 15 5 75.0%
1CANNON 15 5 75.0%
mystikul 15 5 75.0%
Sibilance 13 7 65.0%
Steelersfan 15 5 75.0%
racincowboy02 15 5 75.0%
ByrnesRebels05 16 4 80.0%
CobraKnight 13 7 65.0%

[Go Tigers]

Nice work Reb74!!!

[SF Band dad]

11 9 SF Band dad

Wow, that's really bad. That's in the range of random guessing.