Before we get started, I will say that I am reposting this because I never saw the results of this thread the last time I posted. I looked at this website a few hours after I posted this only to find it deleted. Please reread and reconsider these ideas.
CoachT, I agree with Mr. Coasterboarder's words from another thread (which I have quoted at the end of my words) in the football forum. I too feel that it would be better if you would either allow the Track and Field board to remain open or open the Cross-Country board as soon as possible. There are several reasons for this. The ten most important are listed and described below in addition to those reasons cited by Mr. Coasterboarder.
1. The sport of running takes place all year long, especially for distance runners. In fact, track is only done in the eyes of the TSSAA: the Nashville Striders hold a track meet at the Vanderbilt track every week this month. They will even probably hold these meets in July. The people running in these meets are the people who will be running in Cross-Country and who are developing themselves even more for track next year. By closing the forum this early, you prevented by from talking about Bumbalough's 1:54 800m at the last meet. These meets at Vanderbilt don't, of course, take into consideration the numerous road races that occur during the summer.
2. Most distance runners only give themselves a few weeks after the end of their season before resuming training. This is to say that before the dead period, summer training is in full swing. The dead period is simply a time to practice unoficially and independantly (that is to say without coaches).
3. These boards provide a vital method of communication for runners all across the state of Tennessee. I can share ideas with people across the state. Living in Middle Tennessee, I can communicate with people in both East and West Tennessee, people whose phone numbers I do not know, people with whom I would not comfortably communicate without this board.
4. There are some members on this site that are not members of ######.com and vise versa. We will call the people who use this site the elements of set T, and the people of that other website elemts of set O. To communicate with these people, we must be able to discuss running with the elements of the set that contains the union of sets T and O.
5. I might buy a plus membership, but there are many who would never buy that membership. To force universal compliance would be impossible, meaning that this time of a year would always be a loss. I could post and read my own posts, but not too many people could respond to them. Other reasons for not buying a plus membership are analagous to those of coasterboarder.
6. Storage is cheap. I recently downloaded a post to preserve it for posterity and I was surprised to find that the file was as small as it was (only 8kb). There is a service that is profitable for its owner. This service involves storing digital video recording from the security cameras at places of business. The fee for this service is $20/month, and this allows years of digital surveillance videos to be stored on a server for future needs. We're talking about terrabytes here (Tb). Almost all servers back up data. Combine this with multiple servers per website (I'm assuming that such a large website like coachT.com would be no exception) and data is being backed up. The most popular and economical way to do this is with a RAID architecture. For you non-eggheads that's geekspeak for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. This means that there are so many disks that they become redundant, or not needed in normal circumstances. Did I mention that these disks were inexpensive or, in other words cheap?
7. From what I can tell, based on my posts at various times of night and day, including when I posted while burning the midnight oil, coachT.com is up and running 24 hours per day. The cost of operating a server for 24 hours a day would in all logical likelihood remain static unless the server is greatly used. Opening a running board would not affect the staticticity of operating the server, as compared to the football forum, the running forum is far less active.
8. You, the pioneer of this enterprise in Tennesse athletics, would probably actually make more money by opening a running board at this point in the summer. Your traffic would go up slightly and the ad companies would likely increase your monetary compensation to reflect this.
9. The ad companies broke one of the restrictive covenants that they agreed to when you allowed them to place their ads on your website: a political ad revealed itself. This political ad was and anti-John Ashcroft ad asking the viewer to go to the website sponsoring it to help the anti-Ascroft cause. As recompense for this deed, I feel that it is fair that I, the mistreated user, be entitled to a running board. This is a little over the top, but perhaps you could convince the ad agency to cover you losses (if any) for opening the running board.
10. If a running board is not opened, the membership at ######.com will increase and the number of active members on your website will decrease. This results in a loss for everyone, as some runners will remain with this website while others will move to ######.com. Everyone loses on this one: we lose because we lose the ability to communicate effectively and you lose both business and, to a lesser but equally as important degree, prestige.
CoachT, I hope that you consider my requests in this appropriate forum to do so. These ten theses are ten issues that I have with you not opening the running site. I will respect your decision to either open it or leave it close, but I cannot say that this will remain my most favored forum. I joined to discuss track and field, but it is now that sport that is out of reach. Once again, thank you for your time and consideration.
-saywhat?
