Assignment: Original writing piece for an organization, the Carolina Hurricanes NHL hockey team (with which I have no affiliation). Site visitors may be those who regularly frequent message boards and are familiar with the written and unwritten rules, or they may be new to the genre and will welcome a FAQ on etiquette. Users might just come once or twice to the site, or may revisit to see updated resources and news about the fan message board universe.
You may be in the capacity crowd when 18,730 fans converge on the RBC Center for home dates for the 2006 NHL Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes, but the fun doesn’t have to end when the game is over. You might be a fan from afar, a former Raleigh area resident, or even a resident of another country, perhaps the native land of one of the Canes European-born players.
MESSAGE BOARDS
Hundreds of our fans are using online message boards to share their experiences, commenting on the team and individual players. Tickets are traded, photos posted and shared, and stories told and retold. Here at carolinahurricanes.com we want to let you know how to get in on the action.
Anyone with an internet connection can join the online Carolina Hurricanes world. Message board users can make up their own screen names and stay relatively anonymous, or post with their real names, and even upload avatars like that of Scoreboards message board moderator Jeffbear.
BLOGS
In addition to message boards, the blog phenomenon allows individual fans to set up their own individualized weblogs, posting commentary, with most allowing readers of the blog to chime in with their comments. A good blog will also have a blogroll, linking the reader to other similar sites or resources.
AN ONLINE FAN COMMUNITY
Online fan communities have largely developed on their own, but both national media and the team itself have also hosted message boards or set up blogs. This article will catalogue numerous message boards and blogs that focus on the Canes, as well as give casual fans pointers on using those boards. Message boards can be of two varieties, moderated, and those with standards. Scoreboards moderator Jeffbear discusses differences:
“I think it’s important to deal with the stance regarding moderation and Standards up front. There’s a huge difference between an actively moderated board and a loosely moderated board in terms of what posters can get away with in terms of behavior, and it’s good to make people aware of the rules up front … and then enforce them. All message boards generate their own conventions in terms of slang terms, user handles, avatar pictures and the like. Those things need to be explained in a good FAQ”
GAME DAY THREAD
Fans seem to enjoy the message board game-day thread, where the moderator posts an introduction to the game a day or two in advance, fans make predictions and talk about injuries, and during the game fans listening on the radio or watching on TV post commentary. Fans returning from the game also chime in later. A regular season game might see 100+ postings, while a playoff game might have over 300.
