So Carlton players and officials read and perhaps contribute to this site, yes?
And the online "Carlton" audience is steadily growing, right?

But the club seems reluctant to acknowledge or legitimise this site enough to have an official spokesperson officially inform this sites audience of day to day club news or policy.

Why wouldn't the club accept that this form of media has a rapidly growing interest and audience and that "matters of interest", more often than not, will eventually tend to morph into total mis-information resulting in bad PR, which no-one wants?

Has this site grown from the underground and broken the surface?

How can we both meet and co-exist in positive and peaceful harmony?

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There's so much I could say...

It is a cost benefit thing for the club.

how much damage do forums such as TC do to the club, how much benefit do they bring to the club?

How much will an 'official' voice from the club make a difference to this equation?

I'm sitting on the fence on this one. On the one hand it would certainly put out a lot of brushfires around here that should never get going (if done well). On the other hand it has the chance of compromosing the sites independance from the club which may effect which news items actually do make it onto the site.

Of course it is up to the club if they want to participate, but they should only do it if they see that the move will benefit the club. I'm not sure if it is clear that it would.

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|♥♥♥♥♥♥| http://www.blueseum.org |♥♥♥♥♥♥|

We're at a crossroad I reckon....

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There's so much I could say...

I think the club's tacit acceptance of the site (via the irregular appearances of certain board members) and the fact that they're ok for one of their recruiting staff to post here regularly, is good enough for me.

Some of the stuff that gets posted here (rumours, Ackland, etc) would make it difficult for the club to formally align itself.

Not sure what either party would gain by creating formal links.

That's right JohnM for it to be officially linked to the club it would need to be under their guidelines and stuff. I reckon the Mods are great at upholding it's integrity anyway and I like it how it is. We have respected members who provide us with decent info too.

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The problem will be made. for the solution to be sold, to your face before your eyes, tolerance is now the new danger

The club's first website had a chat forum, you posted, waited for your post to be checked and then it would appear a day or two later after the moderator/s had made sure it didnt contain anything anti carlton or could lead to litigation.

All fine if you wanted to read feelgood carlton propaganda but not if you wanted to make constructive criticism......
The forum became tedious and the club nervous......the forum collapsed under the weight of non feelgood posts and overworked moderators and this led to the formation of the Blue View, the supporters club site. as supporters became frustrated with the clubs website.

I think the club took a dim view of all the unofficial forums and viewed them as anti carlton establishment.

While the club now has accepted these sites exist and are a voice for supporters... to offer a spokesperson to appear on any rival site other than the clubs own would be seen as legitimising those sites and what they say as well as being business competition for the clubs own website...not going to happen.

I think TC has credibility in the media world with some of the newspapers often quoting posters and some carlton identities tuning in to see what the supporters are thinking especially at board election time....funny about that.

There would be many business reasons for the club to want to come onboard TC such as gaining new members etc but as Jarusa said you would have to weigh that up against the negatives........

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"When you have the attitude of a champion, you see adversity as your
training partner."
- Conor Gillen

Isn't that what carltonfc.com.au is for? Any official comment the club has, whether its denying or confirming recent news about the club, releasing media releases, announcing new developments, or even just interviews with the players carltonfc.com.au is the place they do it.

Why should they repeat themselves on this website, or worse yet post inside info on this forum thereby limiting the line of communication to only those who post on this forum? The official website is a good enough format for club announcements at the minute and that shouldn't change.

What is the real 'point' of a forum?

To vent and be vented....

I think some people lose sight of what these sites actually are. They are a medium no doubt, but please, take the information reported sometimes with a grain of salt.

At present we create more negative than positive thoughts at IMO and based on some feedback.

Thie main concern is the lack of consideration for personal family members who read the site. Posting unsubstantiated rumours on players, attacking individual players outside of match day results or without any basis are just a couple of issues.

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Mjonc signing off at 8888

Personally I have never attacked a Carlton player on here, nor when I'm at a game, nor any other time. Even when I have been disappointed with someone's performance I have kept it to myself, but generally I'm always looking for the reasons why I support Carlton, not looking for things to complain about.

I decided to not participate in player sponsorship after witnessing the way sponsored players, and their teammates, are treated on here. I found it impossible to feel proud about being part of a sponsorship which spends the majority of its time putting Carlton players down.

That's pretty much it verbs. I was keen at the start but after getting to know the standard behaviour I didn't want to become involved. Once I am financially comfortable in the future i'll sponsor a player by myself.

so ner!

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The problem will be made. for the solution to be sold, to your face before your eyes, tolerance is now the new danger

It's not a Telstra site...

One of the American Directors of Aston Villa in the EPL - General Krulak, who is the owner's right-hand man, posts on about 2-3 different Villa forums. It's basically an open forum for the supporters to provide feedback to the club about their experiences of it (ie for the purpose of improving how the club does things) as well as have a bitch and a moan about the cost of pies in the stands etc.

The bloke is a legend, because as long as it is within the agreed parameters he will answer any question, put people in contact with staff at the club who can assist or assist himself. He won't discuss the team's performances except on a general level, or anything that is the area of the manager / coaching staff (transfers, tactics etc), but he is very forthright and respectful with his interactions - and takes the time to do it all in person, even though he performs other roles in Randy Lerner's business interests (including the Cleveland Browns).

It is fairly tightly moderated in the sense that the mods will shut down any inappropriate comments pretty quickly, but most of the punters understand how valuable his input and responses are and don't abuse the privilege.

It's a bloody brilliant effort and it would be amazing if there could be a similar arrangement with Talking Carlton and one of the CFC board or whatever.

Shouldn't this fall under Coutts' area of management?

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And so while others miserably pledge themselves to the pursuit of ambition and brief power, I will be stretched out in the shade, singing.

I'm with you on that Ponkstar. We are fortunate around trade and draft time to get such terrific insights from Cazzesman about how the recruiting department is thinking . It would be even better to get year round information from a board member, now that the board is united and not "leaking sneakily". I guess its up to someone on the board to volunteer to do it. Over to you, guys.

We have had similar discussions in the past with Mark Harrison, Stephen Moulton and others. And let's not forget the interaction prior to the board elections at the end of 2006.

Perhaps a more formalised session at the start of each month, or every second month, with a Board Member(s) might be worth pursuing?

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Lets not get too caried away this is an anonymous internet site where as someone else has said you can vent and be vented on and whilst some journos use it to take the 'pulse' of some Blue supporters on an issue its not representative of Blues supporters per se.

Perhaps if anything its representative of Blues supporters who can be bothered to join an internet chat site and not much more. The club could not offically endorse a site like this when it has the capacity to go into meltdown after a bad loss or when one of the whipping boys like Acland has an even worse game than normal. It would embarass the club. Not to mention the propensity to post rumours and hearsay-which is what the internet is about really.

You would think he or his lackey could pop in every now and then to quickly 'set the record straight' on issues of interest as they pop up before they get misconstrued and turned into bushfires...
That wouldn't be difficult, would it??

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There's so much I could say...

ha ha

Let's not overestimate TC's importance. There are about 2,000 "members" registered on this site. Let's say 1,000 of them read/post regularly. That's a pretty small proportion of the 500,000 CFC supporters around the world.

TC is a great unofficial site, but you gotta admit it's for the tragics (like me)

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Go Blues

It's also the tragics who tend to vote and attend AGM's. The majority of the 500,000 are followers primarily and wouldn't have the passion the majority of TC posters have.

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Mjonc signing off at 8888