Yeah, but the Spartans were formed by a bunch of regular CricSimmers and the attempts to make the subforum active and different were original. It wasn't a safe-haven to bitch about another forum we all posted on which, at least initially, enabled us to rack up a few 1000 posts. Fuck it, I propose moving 'Association Football Discussion' to an SR Club subbie and forming 'Football RFC'. Or move Direness to the Gamblers subbie and have the points from there count to their SR count. Sign Fiery and they'd walk the title. League of Legends RFC another which may have competed a little while ago.
The specifics weren't his point - his point was that a lot of what is being posted could be posted in the CricSim pub. Every club subforum has a thread like that for generic chatter within the club, but it is generally one thread. A good proportion of the Crabs threads could be posted in the CricSim Pub and they'd be good threads. And to respond to Howe's post, I made changes this season which definitely penalised the Spartans more heavily than every other club. The unintentional side effect was that they even more heavily benefitted the Crabs.
AFAIK, yes and no. Vast majority here are obviously 'Cricsimmers' first and foremost and their SR teams are, more often that not, secondary to that. So in that sense, yes, everyone else comes on to the forum to post about stuff and discuss it generally while many of the Crabs do it almost exclusively in their own subforum. However, it's not all stuff everyone else is doing there as they have a specific mutual interest and so they talk about that, at length, in private, when it's relationship with this forum and the sim can be distilled down into nothingness.
They'd be good threads until certain members of the forum ruined them, true. I've long held the opinion that anything not sim-related should be posted on the open forum, but my opinion has changed. Initially I would've run our mixtape draft in the pub, but I much preferred seeing the lists that we came up with over the lists that would've been contributed by members on the open forum, not to mention the delays we would've suffered.
I want to say split them in two and combine them with the Sharks into 2 new teams but I don't think that'll help/work. Either way, much as I hate to say it, I don't think the Sharks are sustainable for another season as things stand. Not sure how things are for the other teams but we have literally 0 activity, when I submitted lineups for r8, the most recent posts were me saying the changes for r7. Even if you force a split of some form, I guess they could keep the subforum and just stop the post for counting for RUSim but for the good of the sim, something has to be done about that too.
Discussion of CW is, to be fair, a minimal (not insignificant) percentage of what is posted about in the Crabs subforum these days. Many of them have no CW presence at all these days. How it started and what it is today are two different things. Look at Emm's post count for example. Doesn't post a thing about CricketWeb, but he's still got nearly 600 RUSim posts when he had pretty much none before signing with the Crabs.
Another concept showing the Crabs to be nothing more than plastic rip offs with next to no original content. Honestly, 40k of posts crying over CW's latest spat and deciding how to be more like the Spartans must be embarrassing to be involved in.
And the move to recruit a whole team from another website wasn't different and original? It's one of the reasons I joined. I get to interact with people who I otherwise wouldn't. You could hardly consider me as a CricketWeb member, but I'd definitely consider myself a Crab. There's nothing that I know of stopping you from trying to start a club with it's own unique clique that would rival us in activity. Start Football RFC and get new members to join up to the sim, build yourselves up into a powerhouse and I won't say a word about it once you do.
The other clubs are the same, tbph. The Hurricanes are probably the 2nd most active as things stand. The start of the CricSim hiatus coincided with a shorter, but noticeable Seasonal Rugby hiatus and we've lost a lot of members. As things stand, Seasonal Rugby might not be sustainable (at least with 30 man squads) for next season. Last season, for example, every team had well over 30 players. This season, 2 teams still have less than 30. There is one unsigned player (Wivian) who has since gone inactive anyway.
Also, posters who, afaic, don't post on the rest of Cricsim: Fertang (not contracted) Burgey Uvelocity Matteh (inactive) Of those, only Burgey approaches having a decent player, and he actually has far fewer posts than most, owing all his sim success to random factor (as evidenced by how good he was at the start of s4). People who're acting as though half of us only post there are kidding themselves. The likes of Weeman, Quaggas, Jäger et al have had plenty of impact on the rest of the site and if it weren't for the Crabs that wouldn't be the case. People who were here already still form the backbone of the team. Myself Athlai Phlegm Furball GIMH Spark Teja SP Captain KATA CC Mike Alec Bannerman Cabinet All Cricsim first, Crabs second. That's not counting hedger and Hurricane, who were here first but 'brought back' by the Crabs, and are now regular pub and Union discussion posters respectively.
Dropping a team becoming a more likely option just on it's own? Would open the way for the crabs to split more fairly too. Not something I really want to happen but if there's multiple clubs like that there's no point in maintaining most of them.
I refuse to have a bye. It's either an even number of teams (potentially 10 x 15, 6 x 30, 4 x 45) or the season doesn't start.
I'm not saying the concept of the Spartans was original. Just that the content of the subforum was. The setting up of the Crabs was for two reasons: Increase membership and eliminate the bye. Once they were achieved they should have been folded, let the subforum stay if needs be and give access to all who want it - much like direness - and then we wouldn't have to pretend it wasn't the CW bitch sanctuary it began as. If a bunch of like minded individuals want to then go and form a different club then by all means encourage them to. But have it SR related, have it as any other club. Have these as two distinct things. The introduction and continued existence of the Crabs is artificial and degrading to SR. There's nothing stopping me, besides it being BS and an avenue I'd never even consider pursuing.
