*The State of Clubs

This sounds like a great idea! I can't wait :)

I've been putting together this suggestion for a little while now, but only just posted it (it took a while to write). It involves a very large role for clubs as breed registries, which may address some of the issues of clubs becoming a bit under-utilised, and would be compatible with this idea of official clubs and player-made groups effectively becoming the same thing. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on it, both in the context of my suggestion, and the concerns about clubs.

Regardless of whether aspects of my suggestion get implemented, I agree with the idea of clubs and groups having the same function, and presidencies becoming much longer. I'm not convinced they should be indefinite, as I think players should still get a say in the way their club is handled, so they should have the ability to vote out an inactive president, or one who is steering the club in a direction the majority don't like. By also allowing multiple registries for a single breed I can see how some would become desirable and exclusive, which would increase the usage of clubs, or at least their registries.

I do think clubs should get a choice whether or not they even have a registry, otherwise purely social clubs like the Artists Club are going to have to dedicate time to rejecting every horse that applies.

I don't mind one way or the other if we end up losing club shows.

I would like to see more of a social chatter function on clubs, beyond the simple chat box, such as allowing comments on newsletters, or having a simple forum which would allow people to discuss the breed, advertise relevant horses, etc.

Last edited on 2017-02-16 at 19:21:11 by UlyssesBlue (spare)

I've had the trophy idea going for two months now with very little interest :(
5 Entries the first month, zero entries this month despite 1 mill EVD in prizes.
Click Here

I'd love to see clubs more active but I think the issue is the player base is too small. I can see with all clubs becoming unofficial there being even less interest as things become decentralized and everyone would rather run their own club?

Not trying to be a negative nancy! I just feel the issue with clubs as they are is due to the lack of interest, rather than the other way around.

I like the idea of trophies, but I feel that it could also be exploited - I know there was no suggestion of rewards, but even from just a visual standpoint club/group owners could decide to favour one horse in particular, give it all the trophies they possibly can, which could possibly raise the value of the horse, or devalue the trophies. Most likely the latter.

I'd be happy to introduce maybe automatic competitions, so groups can host a club card competition, take entries via a form where entrants provide a link, entries can be voted on by group members, and the winner is chosen on a date automatically. The prize could be determined by the group owner, which would give a use for groups to have a bank.

Similarly for horse mascot contests, maybe "top studs", or whatever the group wants to host. There could be several competition types which allow different submissions, so "Horse", "Art", "Text/Writing" types - and each type either gives a horse dropdown box, a URL field or a text area to write in.

Just a small idea which could be quite fun :)

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned but would club/group owners be able to opt out of accepting horse registrations? I'm being lazy and not reading anyone's comments so if this has been mentioned sorry about that XD

I would allow group owners to close horse registration if they want to.

I have to agree with SolE. I think a huge problem with clubs is lack of club member participation. I'm president of a club this month so I ran the usual club mascot contest. Since it's February, I allowed members to enter 2 horses (like a "couple"). That meant 2x the chance of winning. The prize was 25k. Only 2 members entered horses out of almost 200 members. I sent out reminders in the newsletters & kept bumping the topic. I also tried hosting an art contest where the twist was that no digital art was allowed. I was trying to make it available to all club members - especially those who don't know digital art. The prize for that was also 25k. I had one person say they'd enter, 1 person who said they'd love to but didn't have a printer, 1 who didn't have a scanner to upload when done (I told them a photo would be allowed), & 1 person who said they'd love to do it - if they raised Clydes & were a club member. I reminded & bumped this contest also. I ended up having to cancel it due to lack of interest.

I think the main reason that members don't participate in clubs at the moment is because there's not really much reason to. Contests are fine, but they're the same contests every month - there's not really much continuity because of the rotating presidents.

Other than that, what is there? Horses are registered yes, and it can be a nice place to find a stud or a horse for sale, but I guarantee the majority of people forget those features exist.

If we merged everything into groups, it would instantly have all the features of groups and clubs combined, there would be a group leader with a bunch of group admins to help keep the group interactive and alive - so it's not all dependent on one person to keep everything interesting. The leader wouldn't change monthly, so there would be more continuity. The groups wouldn't necessarily need to be about the different breeds so there could be some nice hobby/interest discussions. I feel like it would be a lot more community-based than clubs currently are at the moment, and I 100% believe that it would be a good move to combine the two types.

^^I like this idea. It allows for more freedom I think, instead of being limited to the main breed clubs we'd be able to make small private versions to better suit specific breed goals.
Mostly what I really love about this is adding more admins. I've been in a group and the co-creator has since left, unfortunately for the moment I don't have time for it either. Although she created the group, I've been the main one running it and have put in a lot of time and effort trying to get it off the ground. As you can imagine, I really don't want to step down as I've been the head contributor. Adding more admins would help out in situations such as this tremendously, as would being able to hand off the "creator", or rather, the head admin role to someone else. One to two people is not enough to run a massive group .-.

Last edited on 2017-02-19 at 13:09:52 by ξιίzα Ð

There's another game I play on where groups are a huge thing. It's not a horse game, so they don't have the registration and all that. But it's essentially the same, with multiple admins and they can be created for any topic.

One thing that's nice about those groups is they have a 'wall' to post on. There's the main layout that admins can edit and then underneath is a stream of posts from admins as well as members, for anything related to the group. So if it's a group for selling then members can post on the wall to advertise, or admins can host games, etc.

We might benefit from something like that here too. At the moment, groups are not very interactive, other than having basic chatboxes. We could change that so that contests, sales, etc. can happen right on the club's page. It'd basically be like expanding the functions of the chat box so that people can use basic BBC coding and can respond to each others posts. It's almost like a forum but instead of having to click to view the posts, they're all visible. I'm hoping this explanation makes sense. It'd be easier to post a screenshot but that would probably count too closely as discussing/advertising another game. xD

EDIT: On second thought, a good example would be Facebook groups, that have a similar posting set-up. xD

Last edited on 2017-02-19 at 13:33:16 by Wicked

Definitely agree on making clubs more social with functions like what Wicked mentioned.

I think that if clubs rolled into groups, there would be 10 different Arabian clubs and most wouldn't have great memberships. In the real world I am a member of a few different organizations, but my horse is only a member of 1. We can earn points in the others, but I feel like breed registry is very, very different from sport organizations. Maybe if club registry had more impact they would be more popular? I know of one game where there is only 1 registry, but the horses must be a certain level in order to be registered, and it increases the chance of a bonus for the foals. So if confo and stats are an average with plus or minus 2 points (I can't remember now what the plus and minus are) maybe a registered foal would have a chance of plus 3 or minus 2. Not a major bonus, but something. If we were to create just one registry, then I could be open to all other features being merged between clubs and groups.

Or if we keep things as they are, adding incentives for club membership or activity could be nice. I know I haven't even looked at clubs since we switched over to this site. I just can't remember any reason to join or participate. Horses automatically earning things for achievement only when registered to a club could be nice. Maybe the 100 show placings and things like that could be re-routed to only registered horses. Then it couldn't be abused by a president playing favorites, but would entice people to join.

Just curious.. as Ive been president of the Appaloosa Club a few times and I donated well over 1 mil EVD ( like 1.8 mil) to the club to sponsor contests etc...
If the clubs are nixed....what happens to that money donated? In my case, I donated about 1.8 mil EVD ..thats alot of money to throw away..
I donated the funds so I could offer monthly All Round High Point awards...that way, people wouldn't need to actively participate in the contest. They would just show their horses as usual. I would choose the winner based on the appaloosa with the most points earned for the month..on the last day of the month.. and the prize was 100k.

Last edited on 2017-02-22 at 10:20:27 by 🌀 Windspun Appaloosas

I would give at least a month's warning before changing clubs, so the clubs would have the chance to spend their bank funds on contests in that time.

I like this idea but I'm wondering what stops people from making like 8 groups all about quarter horses? I would hate to see redundant clubs and groups which divides people further.

Also the competitions for mascot and stat raising that clubs do are a better use for clubs than the shows in my opinion. I should probably start thinking of more things to do with my group :)