Gerspride conference, Sat 14 nov

[rbr 1,270]

Very fair point UCB.

 

One person's perception of "regular" is another's perception of "irregular". Both your number AND Zappa's (and anyone else for that matter) number are subjective, and therefore NEITHER is absolute nonsense.

 

The main point though is that none of us have ANY idea how many regular contributors there are. But I bet that if we could organise a flyer on the seats on matchday or even a tannoy announcement pre-game regarding some of this (if allowed) would reach out to far more than those we have online.

 

And the trickle effect to other bears would likely be far greater in that regard too.

 

Or even better if our Chairman made a statement of intent at the AGM and had members of the main fans groups on the stage when he made then , but then if Carlserg did AGM's

[Zappa 0]

I reckon you're underestimating bots in your figure, there, Zappa.

No, I'm fully aware of bots Andy. Even on the biggest of forums they probably account for dozens, not hundreds or thousands.

[Zappa 0]

Zappa,

 

To be fair, just because you chose to define "regular" in your own terms which are different to mine, doesn't make my guess of up to 2000 "absolute nonsense".

You're right, but I still think that estimating the online Rangers support as 'up to 2000' is absolute nonsense. In fact, I think it's absurd because we all know that a lot of Rangers fans don't even use the various forums at all. There's a very large middle ground here of Rangers fans that do use the internet, but don't frequent the various Gers forums as much as others do. Is someone who only participates on Rangers forums once or twice a week not a 'regular participant'? I'd strongly argue that they are, but lets not get pedantic about it.... I'm only giving you an opinion which is what you asked for & if my opinion is that something is 'nonsense' then surely it's just as valid to the discussion as the next person's?

[Union City Blue 0]

Lol - think that's fundamentally what I said. Woof, woof.

 

No, actually it is fundamentally NOT what you said.

 

You said the trust approached the club last month and offered to buy shares.

 

In fact the trust did NOT approach the club LAST MONTH and did not offer to BUY SHARES.

 

You also said it the club rejected this because it was an "absurd" time. But seeing as you have the substance and the timing both wrong, the notion that what the trust did was absurd is ... well.... absurd!

 

That is (also part of) the reason why you didn't get an answer to your 40 questions. Apart from the absurdity of asking someone 40 questions is one go, a quick scan of said questions revealed them to be heavily populated with absurd nonsense, ill-informed hear-say and inaccuracies. But the constant power of suggestion gets through eventually, so I'm sure it'll carry on. And on. And on......

 

I don't know exactly how you get off on all this but might I suggest that instead of barking up the wrong tree you revert to a more natural pass-time - for example howling at the moon.

 

Howllllll Howllllll

Edited November 17, 2009 by Union City Blue
sp

[Union City Blue 0]

You're right, but I still think that estimating the online Rangers support as 'up to 2000' is absolute nonsense. In fact, I think it's absurd because we all know that a lot of Rangers fans don't even use the various forums at all. There's a very large middle ground here of Rangers fans that do use the internet, but don't frequent the various Gers forums as much as others do. Is someone who only participates on Rangers forums once or twice a week not a 'regular participant'? I'd strongly argue that they are, but lets not get pedantic about it.... I'm only giving you an opinion which is what you asked for & if my opinion is that something is 'nonsense' then surely it's just as valid to the discussion as the next person's?

 

OK mate, no problem.

 

There's no point in arguing about what 'regular' is in your mind versus in mine.

 

I was just saying that what I said wasn't yet "absolute nonsense" because the definition of "regular" hadn't been discussed or agreed. I didn't realise there was so much scope for 'regularity' in other peoples' eyes, but in any case your definition & opinion is as valid as mine even if we disagree.

[Zappa 0]

OK mate, no problem.

 

There's no point in arguing about what 'regular' is in your mind versus in mine.

 

I was just saying that what I said wasn't yet "absolute nonsense" because the definition of "regular" hadn't been discussed or agreed. I didn't realise there was so much scope for 'regularity' in other peoples' eyes, but in any case your definition & opinion is as valid as mine even if we disagree.

I don't think we're arguing as such, just discussing.

 

Lets get back on track then. I'll put these questions to you - What was the point of asking what we thought about that particular subject? Do you think that generally speaking someone who posts on a Rangers forum every day is more likely to get involved in fan ownership of the club than someone who only posts on a Gers forum once a week or once a month? What about all the season ticket holders who don't frequent or post on forums at all; are they not potential investors in their club? There's so many facets to this & I'm struggling to understand what relevance there is to putting a number on the online Rangers support. It shouldn't matter whether the number is 2000 or 20000 unless your actual point is to evaluate the best method of getting your message out to the fans or the best method of conducting a fan survey, but as far as the latter is concerned, it's pretty obvious that the best method of conducting a fan survey is to have the club do it (IMO).

[elderslieblue 0]

Depending on what plan [if any] gets put forward I'd certainly consider investing a few thousand in Rangers. One condition............Murray is nowhere on the horizon.

 

Because of that charlatan and what I suspected he was up to, apart from a couple of freebies, I haven't set foot in Ibrox for about 3 years now and Rangers have not had one brown penny from me during that time.

 

And that's a sad thing to say for someone who'd attended home and away since the early 60's.

[boss 0]

I don't know exactly how you get off on all this but might I suggest that instead of barking up the wrong tree you revert to a more natural pass-time - for example howling at the moon.

 

Howllllll Howllllll

 

I'd rather step back from this thread for a bit than respond to your semantics and abuse. I'm happy to let the posters decide for themselves whether what I said is fundamentally true.

 

And perhaps the 'unity' project would benefit from a little less aggression and a lot more discipline.

[Frankie 8,665]

When wondering about the size of the on-line community earlier I was asking about what peoples' own thoughts on this are, but it must have gotten lost in the fog too .....

 

Regardless of how many people sites claim to have registered, the active number of unique, regular participants across the best-known Rangers sites must be about 1000 - 1500 - 2000 at absolute TOPS (although I personally don't believe it's anywhere near that high). Friendly lurkers are there too, but they're impossible to guage.

 

Any thoughts bears?

 

Unlike some, I've no problem discussing my membership numbers.... ;)

 

Gersnet currently has 1251 'members'' However, having just installed an 'inactive' users mod a couple of weeks back to determine a more accurate picture of member activity, we had 676 'inactive' users (some of whom returned after we targeted them with a specific email invite).

 

Inactive in this context means these people have been totally inactive - i.e. they've not logged in for 6 months (which I think is a fair time-scale to observe). 'Lurkers' (members who have no or limited posts but view the forum regularly - not bots) are not included in these 'inactive' figures and are welcome to view the forum.

 

As such, out of the initial 1251 total membership, coincidently, almost exactly half of that are active but an even smaller proportion of that actually post/take part in the debate on a regular day-to-day basis. For example, we have around an average of 70 members visiting per day (although not always the same people and not all post).

 

Ergo, one can see the genuine 'active' membership is possibly only 10-20% of the total we have.

 

Extrapolate that empirical scientific data to FF and RM (as the largest/busiest forums) then you have around 3700 'active' members of FF and 1700 'active' members of RM based on their raw totals. However, obviously they'll likely have a higher %age of inactive users, lurkers and timposters so these active numbers are probably artificially high.

 

Therefore, I reckon 5000 active members across the online community is a reasonable figure to reach but you'd have to speak with the admin of other sites for them to supply figures. This is easily done to a degree as I've shown.

 

Just goes to show how important it is to reach the offline community if one wants to buy the club. That is extremely difficult to measure how successful you'll be given it could also be argued that those who are active online may well be your most interested 'offline' as well.

[Union City Blue 0]

 

Gersnet currently has 1251 'members'' However, having just installed an 'inactive' users mod a couple of weeks back to determine a more accurate picture of member activity, we had 676 'inactive' users (some of whom returned after we targeted them with a specific email invite).

 

Inactive in this context means these people have been totally inactive - i.e. they've not logged in for 6 months (which I think is a fair time-scale to observe). 'Lurkers' (members who have no or limited posts but view the forum regularly - not bots) are not included in these 'inactive' figures and are welcome to view the forum.

 

As such, out of the initial 1251 total membership, coincidently, almost exactly half of that are active but an even smaller proportion of that actually post/take part in the debate on a regular day-to-day basis. For example, we have around an average of 70 members visiting per day (although not always the same people and not all post).

 

Ergo, one can see the genuine 'active' membership is possibly only 10-20% of the total we have.

 

Extrapolate that empirical scientific data to FF and RM (as the largest/busiest forums) then you have around 3700 'active' members of FF and 1700 'active' members of RM based on their raw totals. However, obviously they'll likely have a higher %age of inactive users, lurkers and timposters so these active numbers are probably artificially high.

 

Therefore, I reckon 5000 active members across the online community is a reasonable figure to reach but you'd have to speak with the admin of other sites for them to supply figures. This is easily done to a degree as I've shown.

 

Just goes to show how important it is to reach the offline community if one wants to buy the club. That is extremely difficult to measure how successful you'll be given it could also be argued that those who are active online may well be your most interested 'offline' as well.

 

Very interesting Frankie, thank you.

 

Fully appreciate there's a limit to notional extrapolation of that data set but it puts us in the ball park to some extent.