At this point I've been writing the 49ers Year-by-Year segments for six weeks, and have completed three seasons worth of summaries. They can be found either in the Year-by-Year section of the site accessible on the left margin directly beneath the log-in, or at these links: 1946 Overview, 1946 Season, 1947 Overview, 1947 Season, 1948 Overview, 1948 Season.
Since we're still early in the process, I wanted to make an active play for feedback in order to improve the quality, readability, and participation of future seasons. Personally, I'm a little dissatisfied with the format that I seem to have picked up. I have some concerns that I would like to address and I have some goals that I would like to express.
And I would like any feedback that anybody can give. Let me know if you share any of my concerns, if you have any of your own, or if you just have suggestions for the future?
Some concerns that I have:
- Length: Each season is currently running close up 2500 words and two stories. I'd personally like to work around this a little better. I think that each season should ideally take one story just so that it doesn't get so boring. At this rate, it would take over a year and a half just to get to the 80's... there's just no way that anybody is that patient to the get to the glory years.
- Repetition: Repetition is good, but it can also be boring. Right now the structure of each season has been VERY rigid. I don't think that is necessarily a problem, but there are aspects within each individual story that are also repetetive. The "Season" segments have been covering every single game. Game after game after game is internally repetitive, and I think it's bound to be a major drag. I think it will be better for me to display the season results and then recap only the significant games.
- Not much on the players: I've been pretty focused on the games and their results, but I haven't done much in terms of profiling the more interesting ACTUAL characters of the historical years. Buck Shaw, Frankie Albert, Len Eshmont... less well know (but AWESOME) guys like Alyn Beals and Johnny Strzykalski... I think it would be cool to make these somewhat less generalized and somewhat more personalized.
- Response: After six stories, the most glaring thing for me is that nobody is commenting. This isn't in and of itself a bad thing because if nobody coments that DOES NOT mean that nobody is reading (not by a long shot), but one goal that I've always had for these stories is that they would encourage discussion. Since they're not doing that, I can improve some aspect of the process to consequently improve on that goal.
So please, let me know. If you have any ideas, or would like to see anything going forward to make these more entertaining for you, please let me know. I can't please everybody, but I'd like to please as many as possible.
Thanks.