Site Madness Battles - Interview with Tucker933
The Site Madness Battles were pretty good, and as such I have decided to interview a number of the people involved, that either got a placement in the top 3-4, had the best battle, or were staff that helped run the battle. You will see a number of interviews being posted over the upcoming week or two, in relationship to those who were involved, that agreed to do an interview for you all!
To start off the Interviews being posted, I have decided to start off with the winner of the Site Madness Battles, Tucker933. All of my questions to him are in Bold, and his responses are in Italics.
Hi Tucker933, How did you feel about winning the Site Battles Madness, in Forum Promotion's March Madness? It was great! I really didn't have any expectations for how far I would get, but I found myself becoming determined, and realized I could really use the prizes to help better the forum. What do you think helped you out in winning at the end? I think it had most to do with my second battle, which was against Atrium. While I was aware that asking your members to vote wasn't against the rules, it felt like a dirty tactic to me personally, and I didn't want to employ it. As I noticed Atrium going strong with that tactic and us falling greatly behind in the polls, I eventually caved and decided to return with the same. I figured Atrium could rally more votes than I could over time, but I was sure I could rally what I had much more quickly. I waited until the last day of the battle before asking my members to vote, so that Atrium didn't have the time to hit back quite as hard and retake the lead. This more or less remained my strategy throughout the competition, which is a lot easier when your voters are already qualified. It's not exactly a fair fight, but you clearly have to play by those tactics since most everyone else was as well. What are you planning to do with the Prizes that you had won? Will you invest it into your forum, or do something else with it? Everything I've won is already in the process of going back into the forum. The money turned out to be extremely helpful because I've had a rather large expansion in the planning phase for a number of months, and the necessary start of implementation happened to be just a few days after this competition ended. I agree that it can look like a dirty tactic to have ones' members to vote for the forum, but from the perspective of gaining votes, it certainly does help to have extra votes from your users. Do you think you would have been able to get past the third round, if you had not decided to continue asking your members to vote? I do think we would have gotten further than the third round, because I feel we have a great site and unique community, but it's hard to say whether we would've won the whole tournament. Although I wouldn't have asked our members to vote if I didn't feel we had decent merit. Aside from your users helping you out, what do you think helped other users vote for your forum, that weren't already members of your forum? The most frequent comment I saw voters make was in regards to the strength of our community, however I feel that was most apparent from the amount votes we rallied, rather than simply from first glance. As that's still tied to how the votes were rallied, I really don't know beyond that. I believe any forum with a dedicated userbase can stay online for a very long time. With that in mind, do you think that is part of the reason why your forum might have won, not just because your forum has stuck around, but because your members are dedicated to the forum? Open Carnage was built around an existing community and what they felt they could support, so they've helped shape a comfortable home for themselves. Our active userbase has grown much since our beginning, but they've remained just as tight-knit. This is why I felt we could rally votes more quickly than Atrium, even though they had a significantly larger userbase. If we do an another March Madness next year, would you participate in it? Definitely. =] Thank you for participating in this Interview. Before we end this, would there be anything you would like to say to the users here at Forum Promotion, that could help them out with running their own forums? Keep at it, because unless you get really lucky, it's going to be a long road full of late nights and tears. You're not likely to ever make back your investments, but you'll become very proud of what you've built, and appreciate the journey it took to get there. It's a character-building experience, and you'll meet a ton of great people along the way. I never planned on running a forum; Open Carnage was born from a long story and necessity, but I very quickly came to love working with it and the community. =]
I would like to thank Tucker933 for agreeing to do the above interview. It was nice to learn what he thought about the site battles. Thank you for reading this interview! If there is anything you would like to ask him, feel free to leave a comment below!
Hi Tucker933, How did you feel about winning the Site Battles Madness, in Forum Promotion's March Madness? It was great! I really didn't have any expectations for how far I would get, but I found myself becoming determined, and realized I could really use the prizes to help better the forum. What do you think helped you out in winning at the end? I think it had most to do with my second battle, which was against Atrium. While I was aware that asking your members to vote wasn't against the rules, it felt like a dirty tactic to me personally, and I didn't want to employ it. As I noticed Atrium going strong with that tactic and us falling greatly behind in the polls, I eventually caved and decided to return with the same. I figured Atrium could rally more votes than I could over time, but I was sure I could rally what I had much more quickly. I waited until the last day of the battle before asking my members to vote, so that Atrium didn't have the time to hit back quite as hard and retake the lead. This more or less remained my strategy throughout the competition, which is a lot easier when your voters are already qualified. It's not exactly a fair fight, but you clearly have to play by those tactics since most everyone else was as well. What are you planning to do with the Prizes that you had won? Will you invest it into your forum, or do something else with it? Everything I've won is already in the process of going back into the forum. The money turned out to be extremely helpful because I've had a rather large expansion in the planning phase for a number of months, and the necessary start of implementation happened to be just a few days after this competition ended. I agree that it can look like a dirty tactic to have ones' members to vote for the forum, but from the perspective of gaining votes, it certainly does help to have extra votes from your users. Do you think you would have been able to get past the third round, if you had not decided to continue asking your members to vote? I do think we would have gotten further than the third round, because I feel we have a great site and unique community, but it's hard to say whether we would've won the whole tournament. Although I wouldn't have asked our members to vote if I didn't feel we had decent merit. Aside from your users helping you out, what do you think helped other users vote for your forum, that weren't already members of your forum? The most frequent comment I saw voters make was in regards to the strength of our community, however I feel that was most apparent from the amount votes we rallied, rather than simply from first glance. As that's still tied to how the votes were rallied, I really don't know beyond that. I believe any forum with a dedicated userbase can stay online for a very long time. With that in mind, do you think that is part of the reason why your forum might have won, not just because your forum has stuck around, but because your members are dedicated to the forum? Open Carnage was built around an existing community and what they felt they could support, so they've helped shape a comfortable home for themselves. Our active userbase has grown much since our beginning, but they've remained just as tight-knit. This is why I felt we could rally votes more quickly than Atrium, even though they had a significantly larger userbase. If we do an another March Madness next year, would you participate in it? Definitely. =] Thank you for participating in this Interview. Before we end this, would there be anything you would like to say to the users here at Forum Promotion, that could help them out with running their own forums? Keep at it, because unless you get really lucky, it's going to be a long road full of late nights and tears. You're not likely to ever make back your investments, but you'll become very proud of what you've built, and appreciate the journey it took to get there. It's a character-building experience, and you'll meet a ton of great people along the way. I never planned on running a forum; Open Carnage was born from a long story and necessity, but I very quickly came to love working with it and the community. =]
I would like to thank Tucker933 for agreeing to do the above interview. It was nice to learn what he thought about the site battles. Thank you for reading this interview! If there is anything you would like to ask him, feel free to leave a comment below!
