What does WOOF mean to you survey

[Scraggers]

Like Westdog and MJP; living in this two team town, we get very little Bulldogs news unless we stuff up royally it we are playing against the Dorkers or Weasels.
This site is my life life and connection to the club.

I also loved the interviews that TCD used to put up on the site regularly. I would love it if someone with ‘connections ‘ to our great club could get that happening again

[Dry Rot]

I saw this thread the other day and have given it a bit of thought before responding. I think you can break this up into looking at site activity in the off season, and in season.

This off season

Once the trading and draft periods were over, we've had little news to discuss. I understand most of the training sessions are closed so we don't know much about that. Thank God we have had no major new injuries. The coaching staff has not really changed. Some issues like Picken's concussion and Boyd's bad back were known previously.

I think that other related or competing sites are struggling as well. AFL.com is struggling to put up any interesting use across the competition at the moment. BigFooty has had all sorts of nonsense, including threads comparing Bontempelli to David Bowie. It may have a lot more traffic and posts, but it is certainly quantity and often nonsense over quality.

During the season

The reported drop off is a concern. Speaking for some of the interstate supporters here without Foxtel, it is very difficult to post best players based on listening to a radio call or six minutes of highlights. Likewise, without watching the game, it is difficult to sensibly post in game day threats. Often I'm just posting questions rather than opinions.

So from my perspective I'm not that concerned about the pre-season here and expecting things to really pick up in a few weeks with the preseason games. However, the drop off is a concern during the season.

Does anyone have any good ideas about how to get some new members? I suppose the SEO of the site could be looked at, but I think we need more then that.

Thoughts?

[boydogs]

Does anyone have any good ideas about how to get some new members? I suppose the SEO of the site could be looked at, but I think we need more then that

Promoting on Bigfooty, Facebook and Twitter would work, but would you want it to?

The site functions well as a boutique with quality over quantity

[The Bulldogs Bite]

My contributions have died off in recent times mainly due to lack of time, I’ve moved into a new place, got married and got a new job all within a year.

I still try to login most days and post when I can offer something. I’m sure that will pick up once the season starts but apologies for my drop off.

As a poster from the beginning, I’d be lost without WOOF. It’s certainly been a great part of my life to share experiences and opinions with other like minded people. It helps with the bad taste of a loss and it sweetens victories - think back to 2016 and we had some wonderful stories going around.

Let’s hope activity picks up as the team itself improves.

[Doggy]

I have been a WOOF member for 8 or so years. I have never been a prolific poster and do admit to being just a lurker recently. I have been through some personal issues over the last 12 months and I suppose with the team not doing so well the passion has waned a touch.
I, like many on here log in every day to get the latest info on our club.
I am planning on being far more active this year and can't wait for the season to start.

Onwards and Upwards.

[Happy Days]

There's definitely times I've definitely posted more, but I still try to maintain a presence. Working at a job where you actually have to do something has hindered my ability to post as much as I'd like

I think the contributions will definitely pick up once there's current content to talk about. We've kinda plateaued at gaining new members who contribute a heap, so in addition to what everyone's said we're a bit tapped for those "whats your favourite memory of x" threads that take up so much time in the off-season.

That said, I need WOOF GVG, please don't close the site. Have you thought about reaching out to the club for some assistance? I know they have an official presence here and they definitely owe us after taking so, so much.

[ratsmac]

Life would not be the same without WOOF. Like a lot of the others have said, I check in here on a daily for any "real" news about the club. If I see something of any significance between all the BS on Facebook forums or the like, I will come straight to WOOF to see if any sensible people have said anything about it here. If there is nothing I know it was nothing.

I am guilty of being a lurker who needs to contribute more to topics. Its easy when we are winning games and grand finals to contribute but no so in the off season after a disappointing couple years after reaching the summit. I will be adding my 2 bobs worth more often from now on.
I believe things will pick up again when we start winning more games again.

Thanks to all who keep this site ticking over. I enjoy all the personalities that come out through their posts. I have definitely taken for granted the time and effort it takes in to keeping such an good informative forum going while keeping the trolls and keyboard warriors at bay. If there is also a financial burden that makes it hard to keep this site up and running I'm happy to donate to ease the burden.

Again thanks to all the Admin and Mods who make WOOF happen.

[GVGjr]

There's definitely times I've definitely posted more, but I still try to maintain a presence. Working at a job where you actually have to do something has hindered my ability to post as much as I'd like

I think the contributions will definitely pick up once there's current content to talk about. We've kinda plateaued at gaining new members who contribute a heap, so in addition to what everyone's said we're a bit tapped for those "whats your favourite memory of x" threads that take up so much time in the off-season.

That said, I need WOOF GVG, please don't close the site. Have you thought about reaching out to the club for some assistance? I know they have an official presence here and they definitely owe us after taking so, so much.

We do have a great core of contributors in the WOOF community and it's certainly not about quantity over quality but over the last 2 years there has been a dwindling participation rate which has me questioning if there is enough interest to keep it going.

When you look at Bulldogs Bite response, just married, new house and new job then it's clear he is stretched for time
Many others like yourself are also finding it harder to get onto the site than perhaps before.

For whatever reasons we've lost some good contributors completely and at the same time many others are struggling for time which is understandable. In previous years we had the same challenges but we had enough new members wanting to contribute to conversations which just about covered it.

Over the last 3 years though we've had enough new members join but getting enough of them to be regular contributors has been a frustrating experience. For every AshMac and Vred who have recently joined and made a good contribution there are 30 others that have joined but with little too no interest in contributing to discussion. Many of them are very clear that they only joined the site to read the thoughts of others and some are quite sharp in their response that they won't be contributing.

Dry Rot mentions SEO's (Search Engine Optimisation) for the site but I don't believe that is the issue. If 60 people sign up in 2017 then enough people are finding the site however, if 18 months later only 3 of them get to double digits in post numbers then that creates a void.

Happy Days, I don't want to close the site and I know it means a lot to a number of people but I do think it's worth reminding the WOOF community of where we are and where it's possibly heading.

[GVGjr]

Life would not be the same without WOOF. Like a lot of the others have said, I check in here on a daily for any "real" news about the club. If I see something of any significance between all the BS on Facebook forums or the like, I will come straight to WOOF to see if any sensible people have said anything about it here. If there is nothing I know it was nothing.

I am guilty of being a lurker who needs to contribute more to topics. Its easy when we are winning games and grand finals to contribute but no so in the off season after a disappointing couple years after reaching the summit. I will be adding my 2 bobs worth more often from now on.
I believe things will pick up again when we start winning more games again.

2,500 posts in so you are hardly a lurker ratsmac.

Perhaps a strong season will spark some of the members.

[I'm Not Bitter Anymore!]

WOOF is an island of sanity - footy would be colourless without it

[soupman]

Couple of further points that may explain the lack of enthusiasm atm:

-the club is giving next to nothing back. Uninspiring form gives little to get excited about. And it's complete unwillingness to let the supporters in by shutting us out of any inside info or even just being able to watch pre season training kills the off season. Aside from the one report on BF from the training camp there has been virtually no reports on anything football related at the club. I remember my favourite parts of preseasons past have been reading about who impressed posters when they went down to watch training. Atm we are getting none of that.

-the constant stream of "news" and "opinions" fromAFL related media makes it almost fatiguing to want to think about issues. For example, I have already seen about 10 variations of the same article discussing the impact of the new ruck rule. I don't really feel like diving into and extended discussion on here about something I was only mildly interested in to start with anyway.

-is there a chance that the discussion on here has become almost universally too in depth? By that I mean aside from gameday threads most posts are at the least a paragraph, if not half an essay. This is a good thing, but when a topic is comprehensively covered within 10 posts and it is clear that you are expected to articulate any point you make I can see how some new posters may have trouble becoming active contributors. Not only is there potentially the hurdle of new posters not feeling like they could contribute enough, but also the time it takes to create a decent sized post (anywhere from 5-25 minutes) could just be too much for someone who signs up purely to browse a couple of times a day.

[Vred]

Soon as season starts I’ll be in here daily. Offseason right now so it’s bound to be slow, but yeah never close, I read here almost daily and is a great way for me to catch up on the Dogs.

a suggestion if your trying to grow is remove the “no gmail or hotmail” limitation on signing up for new members, I can tell you that put me off signing up for the longest time because I simply didn’t have a non gmail account to sign up with.

[Mofra]

I really enjoy Woof and would be very sad to see it go.

There is some excellent discussion on here and all Bulldogs related articles find their way here too which helps when just quickly scanning the net.

[Insufficient Intent]

One of the strengths of WOOF is the absence of vacuous posts. No one opens their mouth here unless they've something meaningful to contribute.
Quality over quantity, always time well (and enjoyably) spent.

[EasternWest]

I have been a WOOF member for 8 or so years. I have never been a prolific poster and do admit to being just a lurker recently. I have been through some personal issues over the last 12 months and I suppose with the team not doing so well the passion has waned a touch.
I, like many on here log in every day to get the latest info on our club.
I am planning on being far more active this year and can't wait for the season to start.

Onwards and Upwards.

I hope everything is on the up and up mate.