Hi Tech!!t

By Grockle et al
January 25 2013

The history of Grockles.com moves up a gear after the official site abandons its attempts at a supporters forum of its own.   Cut loose from its national network, it walks into the world alone......

With Somerset setting up its own website in the late 90's one would have expected it to take over from the Grockles model and for the independent site to move into a lesser position as the official forum became the main conversation place for the internet bretheren and sisterhood.   However,that was not the way things went.  The moderation of the official forum ran into problems and there were a number of them an accusation of racism (from someone I still believe was Viv Richards) and one of favouritism plus the issue of waiting for your post to be authorised before it was seen because of the moderation system.

Grockles did not disappear, Rivals.net did and in February 2002, we moved to Sportnetwork, the same structure taken over and run under the support of a set of Durham estate agents (don't ask me why).  We started there with a monthly total readership of 6,426 and were very very pleased with that.  Pete moved to Stoke on Trent and the official forum decided that having a supporters comment section was more trouble than it was worth and pulled out of the forum business.  Once more Grockles.com was the only real voice of Somerset cricket.

Comments from the site started to appear in other places, letters published in Wisden Cricket Monthly, reports found on the search engines as they were linked to 'News Now' and its distribution network and a little more interest in the comments from the club itself who now saw us as a conduit to the supporters rather than a place fermenting revolution.  A cricket paper even wanted to know if we really did have a thread called 'pointless cricket questions' with over a thousand posts!  Giles Clarke and Richard Gould even posted at times though the players (Ian Blackwell being a notable exception) still kept any contribution they made under wraps with pseudonyms which the site has never made any attempt to identify.  Grockles has always looked to protect those who wish to post under another name.

Suprisingly, numbers of posters and readers started to rise.  The number of unique readers started to move towards the number of members of the County and although the number of readers has always been significantly more than the number of posters, both continued to move upwards as the site itself moved towards its 10 year anniversary and the team's performances started their own upward trend.

We celebrated 10,000 page views in a month, then 50,000 in a month within 2003.  By the T20 victory in 2005 the site was regularly experiencing over 100,000 per month meaning traffic in excess of 1 million pages looked at in a calendar year.  The school project had become a monster with its own photographer (Mike has been in place since the early noughties) and its regular international correspondent during the winter in the form of Nicky King or Bagpuss as we know her... the England overseas adventurer and locum vet!!

Grockles is now significant within its network (regularly one of the largest sites in terms of traffic among the 40+ sites on SN).  It is significant in the world of Somerset cricket and known on an international level by some of the press who we read every day.  We are not important outside of Somerset except to SCCC supporters but we are a community of value and those who know of us are regularly impressed by the content and the general nature of the debate on a supporters forum.  Presently the number of page views is in excesss of a quarter of a million each month within the season and near to 3 million each year.  We have over 4,500 sites that access our content regularly and a regular contributing posting population in the hundreds... some of whom have been on this site for over a decade.

Then along came a new prospect.... welcome to Grockles contribution to "Somerset Match Special"..... But that is another chapter and there's ample time for that later.

This seat of Mars

Discussion started by Grockles.com , 25/01/2013 13:01

Grockles.com
25/01/2013 13:01

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013:02:20:18:13:05 by Grockle.

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Clarence Parker
28/01/2013 11:42

“However, that was not the way things went. The moderation of the official forum ran into problems and there were a number of them an accusation of racism (from someone I still believe was Viv Richards) and one of favouritism plus the issue of waiting for your post to be authorised before it was seen because of the moderation system.”

I have strong personal feelings about Viv Richards, and do not wish to expand upon them here on this esteemed website.

But purely out of interest (and seeing as you have raised it Grockle), would I be correct in understanding that an accusation(s) of racism was / were made against Somerset CCC, and that you believe that the poster who made them was Viv Richards?

I did at the time read some of the contributions on the “supporters forum” on the official website, but do not recall any particular instance referring to this, but I do remember the situation as being particularly shambolic, so perhaps any such accusations were deleted from the site by the moderators – who were presumably appointed by the club’s officials.

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Grockle
28/01/2013 12:08

It was not to do with the club at all Clarence. There were comments made by a poster - I can't for the life of me remember the context now - which one particular poster on the club forum inferred were racial in their content. They seemed innocent but this particular poster (whose pseudonym had something about it specifically related to IVA but not generally known by most people) took extreme offence and finally left the forum because of it accusing the forum of racism. It was early in the life of the section of the website and created a bad taste at a crucial time.

A storm in a teacup to be honest but it was difficult for the moderators at the time. The view of the identity of the poster is entirely mine and I'd be very happy to be proved entirely wrong.

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Clarence Parker
28/01/2013 12:53

Thank you for enlightening us on that Grockle.

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Scrumper
29/01/2013 02:39

Everything is much clearer now.

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