Front Page: September at Twins Daily, Part 2: Community Building & Forums

[John Bonnes]

Each month, we try to check in on the site and the community and share what we find. Yesterday, that meant reviewing stories and traffic the site garnered in September. Today we’ll dive into community building and the forums.Community Building

Usually when we talk about community building, we’re talking about the forums, but this time we had an actual face-to-face event: the ALDS Game 1 Watch Party at Brothers Bar & Grill. It actually happened in October, but I don’t want to wait until next month to talk about what a great time that was had.

 

First, we had 315 people show up, which filled up the enormous downstairs area of Brothers and spilled into the upstairs as well. Second, these are 315 Twins Daily fanatics, so the crowd was far more intense than an actual Twins game. Every pitch was scrutinized and agonized and dissected. The celebrations were raucous and the groans were shared.

 

The next night I went to the Twins own watch party at Target Field, and they did a great job, and it’s in a great space, but there was no question in my mind which was the better experience. It was a powerful night. It might have been the highlight of my season.

I would love this to be a more regular occurrence in 2020. I don’t mean just postseason games, though god knows I would like that to be a more regular occurrence too. Stay tuned, because bringing together fans seems like a very natural and impactful endeavor that Twins Daily should attempt. If you have any ideas for that, I’d love to hear them below.

 

Forums

Another thing that didn’t happen in September, but I want to share was a recent topic by Brock praising and thanking the moderators. We have had several new moderators join the ranks lately to help with all the increased traffic we’ve had, and I can tell you, it’s a lot of work, as I detailed in a response to the post. So I’d appreciate it if you stop by to let them know how much you value their contributions to the site.

 

The high level numbers for September were great:

• Registrations – 98 (up 754% from 2018) !!!!!!!!
• Topics –289 (up 65% from 2018)
• Posts – 15,563 (up 140% from 2018)

If you’re not part of those numbers yet, I assure you, we want to hear from you. There should be a lot to talk about this offseason. Just register and tell us your thoughts. Here are some standouts:

• The most liked post of the month came from SwainZag, in a thread that challenged the idea of resting players when so many in the lineup were hurt in September.
• The Twins Daily contributor who got the most likes was Blake, and it looks like most of them were in our popular game threads, including this one versus Cleveland.
• The (non-game-thread) topic with the most comments was the news that Michael Pineda had been suspended for a banned substance.
• The Twins daily member with the most posts was FlauerPauer, who should also get credit for a helluva user name. mrtwinsfan and LVTTwinsfan finished second and third.
• One piece of not so good news. While we’ve had lots of interaction on stories, we haven’t had many topic started in the forums. If you have a question, a thought, an opinion, some research or find a story you want to share, I’d encourage you to head to the forums to starts a conversation. Our community rarely bites too much, and in fact the opposite is true: they really appreciate the effort. The top topic started by a member last month was this research on the 2020 payroll, started a week before the season ended by amgjt.

Thank you to everyone for sharing your thoughts and keeping the Twins Daily forums a civil, entertaining and informative place. October has already been incredibly active in the forums and stories. I hope you enjoy the offseason as much as the regular season.

 

Blogs

Finally, I’ll encourage you, when you find your voice a bit more, to check out Twins Daily’s blogs. September we had seven active blogs, but an interesting thing has happened in October: they really fired up. I count 12 blogs in October and we’re only a little halfway through the month.

 

If you’re looking for more baseball – and I think a lot of us are looking for more baseball in October - stop by and check them out, urge them to keep writing, and respond to their thoughts. The blogs are right here and they’re always a link at the top of the Twins Daily menu.

 

Thank you for checking in with us. If you have any ideas for Twins Daily, or feedback that you want to share, please don’t hesitate to give it, good or bad, in the comments below. I promise to read your thoughts and respond when appropriate.

 

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