Internet forums: the wonderful world of online communities- Case Study TWGF [Previously titled: Greeks invented the interwebs]

Guest Post from AKTIFMAG, a fan of the interwebs.

Hello,

With this I hope to give you nothing but an insight into TWGF. Why have I written this? Because I have no life, that’s why I hang out in a multi-cultural football forum. Why am I asking myself Questions? I don’t know.

What is it?



The World Game forum or TWGF as the users know it is a forum/online community that is part of SBS’s Football site [Soccer to you new dawners] ‘The World Game’. Which in itself is pretty much at the peak for online content. Lots of quality video and updated reports.

VITAL STATS: ‘Our users have posted a total of 978475 articles
We have 19874 registered users’

Address: http://www21.sbs.com.au/wgforum/index.php

Here’s some background info thanks to resident legend in Moscow: Vostok
[By the way this is way better than the insight I’m about to dribble]

http://z15.invisionfree.com/TWGF/index.php?showtopic=5&st=0&#last


TWGF has been going for roughly 10 years and has about about 50-80 users engaged in active discussion at any given time. It’s a home where football fans come to fight, shit stir and sometimes talk football. If 4Chan is described as the Footscray of the web then TWGF is the Balkan war of the web. This is not just an analogy either with many users engaging in bitter ethnic battles however; most of it is in good humour.

Over the years TWGF has grown to such a community that some have met in the real world and even traveled to football matches overseas, met up for kickabouts, to attend A-League matches or have just gone to jail. I myself have met people from TWGF and despite mum’s advice about not meeting people from the web I wasn’t raped. Still, I told a girl I was seeing that I was meeting some mates from the internet that day and I never saw her again.

Seriously though when it is good this forum is laugh out loud funny [LOL we call it for you marketing types trying to understand the crazy yoofs lingo] with all the wit, banter and psychopathic characters that blow in and out. Also pretty much everyone is angry here for either one of four reasons:

A: The fact that Football is always getting kicked in the guts by the traditional media in Australia.
B: ‘New Dawners’ are starting to follow the game
C: Because someone just hacked their Facebook account and posted photoshopped pics in the forum of them bumming someone.
D: The wheels on their gyspy cart just fall off.

Users tend to talk in a variety of media such as the forum, youtube and facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=4049523357&ref=ts
It has had many ups and downs over the years with it probably on a down at the moment.

TWGF compared to other forums:

Most other forums are moderated properly or have users that invite you in. TWGF is the complete opposite. But this is probably part of its charm. If you post for the first time on another forum people generally say welcome. On TWGF we either give you shit or ask what ’multi’ [explained later but a fake account] are you- forumites don’t believe that new users come to the site and in fact out of the 19,000 registered users only about 100 are believed to be proper forumites.

TWGF users view of the brand

Most users tend to slag off SBS’s coverage of football or lack of it nowadays. Every host that’s ever been on SBS’s The World Game TV program has had someone register an account in their name and mimicked them in their posts. This has lead to an almost cult like status of SBS’s hosts such as Craig Foster, David Basheer and Les Murray. It’s fair to say though that most users have a respect for the work these guys have done for our game – maybe except David Basheer who everyone complains about, but not as much as FOX SPORTS’ Andy Harper who has been captured so magnificently by the one and only JAYFCAK47 in this vid:


The site owners/administrators dialogue with users:

This has been no existent with enquiries about forum problems made to Administrators falling on deaf ears. Users have been recently banned and threads deleted so users have broken away and started their own forums. The most recent being Gippo sports

http://www.gippo-sports.net/phpBB3/index.php

Korb and Gippo Sports:

Korb is a secret breakaway forum started by members who were disillusioned with the way TWGF was heading. Rumour has it they’re all single.

Gippo is a new breakaway forum that was recently started after members of TWGF had had enough of administrators deleting threads, banning people and not discussing it. I have a feeling that the Gippo threat could slightly be worrying them as Admin has banned the word and also delete any posts discussing it. Of course I could be wrong like the time I accused a poor person of stealing my camera at the World Cup and the police kicked the crap out of him only for my ladyfriend to start laughing and say ‘Oops, it’s in my bag’. No hard feelings, we all had beers after it, even if he had to drink through a straw.

Brands engaging in Dialogue: Setanta Sports.

Setanta is a sport channel than runs on FOXTEL. It costs extra and is mostly subscribed to by football fans due to its extended coverage. Setanta came onto TWGF before the European Football championship to promote their packages- basically spam, but targeted to people who were actually discussing it and were interested in their product as opposed to be sold to by snidy pricks. Setanta answered questions directly and many users signed up. I know I did and must say that they were helpful on the phone and even sent back up emails to see if everything was working smooth. [Give me free Setanta next year for the plug karnts] Afterwards they have continued to have a voice on TWGF and answer queries about what they will be screening. The irony being the people that run the site won’t even answer users questions yet another brand is more than happy to engage.

http://www21.sbs.com.au/wgforum/viewtopic.php?t=161155&highlight=setanta


When industry professionals post

Sometimes professionals in the football scene, journalists or bloggers come onto TWGF. When they do they basically get hammered. Mathew Breeze [an ex-Australian Referee who officiated at the World Cup] did a live chat. He did get some serious questions but these were outdone by ‘Dear Matthew, Why are you so shit?’

Another is Jesse Fink, who has a popular blog
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/blogs/halftimeorange/

on SBS’s site and used to have one on FOX SPORTS. He started posting his blogs in TWGF but this pretty much stopped when he was online and there was a whole heap of threads with titles like
‘ATTN: Jesse Fink and when you clicked on the link you were met with ‘Why are you such a fucking wanker?’ Extremely childish but funny to watch. It’s like a mix of a car crash, girls fighting and listening to outer suburban lebs talk.


Lurkers

Lurkers are people that lurk on the site [or any website], like dirty perverts in a bush. They never post but just read. TWGF has many lurkers. The most famous was a user called KMART2004 who lurked continuously for two years but never posted [you can see who is logged in]. After a substantial campaign of calling him a ‘faarking lurking karnt’ for a year- KMART 2004 posted with probably the best post ever. It was just a picture of a baton and he wrote ‘over to you’ to another lurker. Since this incident most users wished KMART2004 remained anonymous, as he has contributed pretty much fuck all since then.

Examples of the quirky users

Jase The Ace- A young Aussie/Greek and generally just a good guy that lives and breathes the forum. Made an awesome tribute vid to celebrate making 15,000 posts

Maestro: Trawls the internet looking for things that make Croatians look like fools and then posts it. Started a universal TWGF language by always following up his posts with ‘Oh Cros’ followed by an ‘embarrassed’ emoticon. Pretty much every forumite has adapted and used this phrase to take the piss out of everyone.

Polynikes- Used to only post articles about Greek history and if anyone posted a random topic he’d instantly say Greeks invented it. For some reason makes posts about UFO’s every day now. I’m not kidding.

Tonigol- A young kid who pretends he is an accountant and had been banned probably 100 times.

Didi- An enigma. Was sort of normal then went a bit odd. Would only post TOTTTTTTTTEEEEEEEEEEEEEE referring to Totti’s penalty to knock Australia out of the World Cup. His personal pics were famously posted all over the site.

Fronty- A freak who has a grudge against SBS. The story is that he was a sacked janitor. Now all he ever posts about is how bad their programs are or how they are slipping in the ratings. All his posts seem to start with ‘A slap in the face for lil'ol2%SBS’ and only ever refers to SBS as ' lilol2%SBS’.

Multis

A multi is an account someone makes in another name. This is a massive part of TWGF as not only is it funny, but it’s essential as people are always getting banned for breaking guidelines. Some classics include:
Robot Mugabe: A robot version of Robert Mugabe.
QuBo: A Chinese man that accuses Australians of racism any chance he gets. Also talks about dogs a lot.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The Iranian President.

Language:

The TWGF has spawned its own form of language and grammar. But I cannot tell it, you’ll have to join the forum and learn it. Mostly because this post is way to long. All I can say is it’s ‘Technically and tactically a farken World Clarsh language spoken by true Crayshans and Strayans alike and invented by Greeks. Spoken from here to Tardistan’.

Invasions

Forumites occasionally invade other forums. This is means they all go in as a group, registering at another forum and posting topics to fuck with people. It happened in the Uruguayan forums during the World Cup qualifier and more recently against an AFL forum: Pic supplied. TWGF once unwisely tried to invade the masters of invasions - 4Chan. TWGF went into meltdown and nearly never recovered. Luckily 4Chan dismissed TWGF as a silly inquisitive child and didn’t crush it like they could’ve.

That concludes my long posts about the World of Forums or should I say the awesome cesspit that is TWGF. It’s also given time for me to reflect on how sad my life has become knowing this sort of shit. But in a strange way it’s kind of funny and strange in a funny kind of way.

Hopefully a few forumites will post a few comments here telling me to ‘get farked ya filthy gypsy’.


By AKTIFMAG