I've never understood why people give a **** about rep. What's it good for? What can you do with it? I don't take anyone any more or any less seriously because of it. Why do you need some green squares to tell you whether to bother reading something or not? You can tell for yourself can't you?
Anyway, my 2 cents:
One of the most important characteristics of this forum is that it connects Sharks fans- its an opportunity to make friends but it also 'grounds' those fans who can't get to Endeavour very often with the rest of the Sharks community. That's wonderful in my opinion, and 'Team Gronk' is a great example of it in action... I would love to see more of it happening actually. But that said, sharksforever.com isn't just about that- its an archive of Sharkness being stored for posterity, its a way to inform Sharks supporters and call them to action, its a place for Sharks fans to talk all things Cronulla and many other things besides.
So its not just a place to chat online. That's obviously a major part, but when it starts to be detrimental to other Members' enjoyment and to the usability of the forum, I think it becomes a problem. And certainly, I think people sometimes forget that they wouldn't have this place at all if it weren't for the work of a few- especially fitz. I'm not sure many of us realise how lucky we are to have him. You want a Premiership? He's one of the guys who are getting this Club there.
Personally, I've been getting increasingly disillusioned with this place of late. A lot of the posters who were around when I first joined and with whom I liked discussing all things Sharks (and from whom I learnt a lot) seem to have left. For a variety of reasons I'm sure, but I know some of them cite the shift away from footy talk as the part of it. I'm talking the likes of Megashark, IronShark, bort (who is/was by far the best banterer on here too IMO, so that's a blow), Shiredad, BUZ, Great White, KELPIE etc and more recently the likes of Sixgill, slide rule, SF, PMQ_Tony and Capital_Shark who all seem to post much less frequently than they have in the past. All high quality, respectful posters... and they can all tell a joke as well.
So while there's a place for most (legal, respectful, Shark-related) things here, what we post does affect others, and the site doesn't run itself. Maybe we need a few more footy/Club related threads, a few less posts with more *s than letters, and just a fraction more thought put in to what we write before we write it. Especially because every time you click to post something on here, you're representing your Club- you might not have a jersey on, but you are saying to the world 'this is what the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks are about.'
That's more like about 8 or 10 cents, so I'll be quiet now.
I've thought exactly this for a while now. You mentioned some great names there AB. I particulary miss Bort and Capital. You can def pinpoint the time the mood in here changed and alot of those posters were left disillusioned.
