Sporting News Website Review and How to Become a Five-Star Community Member

The Sporting News website relaunched in 2005 with a new way for members to communicate, engage, and be a part of an active community. Many features to the site offer members the chance to make a name for themselves as well as presenting ideas and opinions for improvement to the overall website. Having been a highly respected five-star member for Sporting News for close to two years since it relaunched, I am going to provide my review of the site. My ID on the site is Big Sooners fan, and I am active in many ways within the Sporting News community.

Before the site relaunched, it was mainly seen for the number of fantasy sports that are available for members to play. Sporting News offers the most diverse fantasy sporting games on-line, and has continued to grow the number of members that play them every year. Many games are free to play, and some are pay leagues although most are not more than $20 to play in them. Prizes are awarded to the top fantasy players in each game, and this keeps many members active in keeping up with their team throughout the season. Pay leagues are also a good way that the site keeps members involved in trying to finish the best they can in order to win a prize because often times, people will pay closer attention to their teams when they are paying for the team.

When the site relaunched in 2005, ratings were put in place and are based on three factors:

The first rating is participation score. Participation score can be increased by getting involved in fantasy games, contests, and adding more content. Basically, you have to get involved in the community to see the participation score climb.

The second rating is performance score. Performance score can be boosted by how well you do in games and contests compared to the entire community. Performance rating increases with a strong performance and decreases with a weak performance. You have to stay active with all your teams and contests that you enter in order to maintain or increase this score.

The last rating is community score. Community score tells you how you rank with other members in participation and quality. Several things can be done to increase the community rating which includes starting a blog, adding members to your friends network, becoming active in forums, and writing posts or blogs that the community views favorably. Sending out and receiving testimonials is another good way to increase the community score.

Both the participation and community ratings are updated every night. The performance rating updates within 1-2 weeks after a fantasy game ends. The overall average between the ratings is what determines how many stars you have with five of them being the maximum. As an example, I will use my ratings:

Participation: 11.15%
Performance: 97.66%
Community: 100%

Now my participation has a much lower rating because I do not play in any pay leagues. I just prefer to play in the free leagues. My performance rating is high which says that I do very well in fantasy games and contests. The community rating is the highest it can be. I currently have close to 600 friends in my network, and I write many blogs that are viewed very favorably by members and staff. The participation score at one time counted more towards the overall star rating, but changes were made to it as now the community and performance ratings are factored more heavily.

What I like the most about the Sporting News website:

1. The best thing about the Sporting News website is being able to freely express your opinions in a variety of ways. One of the best ways to express your own opinion is through the site's free user blogs. Many members write regularly in user blogs to engage in great debates and discussions on some of the hottest and most talked about issues in sports. Members can reply to those user blogs which gives bloggers a chance to get some exposure as well as a different point of view. User blogs can be tagged by whatever sport(s) are being covered, and can be found easily when a member is trying to find something more specific to read about.

Another way members can express their own opinions is by replying to news articles and staff expert blogs. This gives the experts feedback on what they have written and whether or not they disagree with them. This more often than not leads to great debates and interaction with the entire community.

The last way members can voice opinions is on the message boards. All major team sport forums are available for members to talk and debate about sports. The message boards also provides fantasy forums for members which includes strat-o-matic forums for those who like the simulation baseball games.

2. What I also like about the community is the many friends that can be made on there. There is a wide range of members that will likely follow the same sports and interests as yourself. If you present yourself by being active, while also writing with quality, you will have no trouble over time building a solid friends network. It is fun to debate topics in a good, professional manner with those you have been friends with on there for a period of time. Debates with members and friends disagreeing is bound to happen, but keeping the topic going with someone providing a different point of view can be great way to help others out. You can never have too many friends in the community, and that is always a good thing.

3. The idea of having your name or ID appear in the Sporting News magazine or an exclusive on-line article is very humbling for many members including myself. Those who are respected and bring a professional, well-written article or blog have a great chance of being featured in the magazine and/or on-line exclusive article. This can lead to members getting more active in the community and also increase the membership, too.

4. The fantasy sporting games on Sporting News has the best variety anywhere on the internet. There is a game on there for just about any kind of sports fan. Again, some do cost a little bit of money to play, but many are free as well. They are fun to play, and that also helps to build friendships as well as having some competition, too.

What I dislike about the Sporting News website:

1. One thing I dislike is the issue with "Thumb and Run" members that leave a thumbs down for bloggers and/or articles without replying as to why. It is not uncommon for people to disagree with one another on there much like in life. However, alot of the reason why user blogs and message boards were created is because they wanted to increase community interaction while still being able to actively debate any subject. This causes a problem with many members that I have talked to when they are left with a thumbs down rating without knowing why. I will say this is a tough issue for the Sporting News staff because they use the thumb rating system to weed out the inappropiate or offensive blogs. This is the biggest reason why they have kept the thumb rating system, but the problem with those that write a great article or blog is they don't get the reason for it. I personally think an auto-reply feature should be used for those who thumb a member down as they would have to answer as to why they did so.

Trolls, like with many message board or blog sites, can cause problems for members. But, they are often not too bothersome or offensive for members as they can be subject to a suspension or ban from the site upon doing so.

2. The second thing I dislike is it can be difficult at times to reach customer service with a question or concern on the site. I have had it where I don't get an answer back for a week on occasion, but not too often. The staff does a good job keeping everyone up to date on the latest changes in the entire community. But there will be those occasions where you will not get a reply back in sufficient time.

3. Members creating multiple ID's to attack other members. There are members that create ID's for the sole purpose of personally attacking other members. Many times, those members will do this when they are close to getting disciplined for offensive and/or inappropiate posting. This causes a problem for many members because personal attacks isn't what Sporting News wants to promote. The Sporting News staff can suspend an account to stop a particular member from creating another ID to attack others.

4. Plagiarism at times has been a problem for the site. There have been those few occasions where members will copy and paste published and/or copyrighted material and claim it as their own. The staff has done away with much of this, but there has been a problem with user blogs being copied over as well. Plagiarism is something most every site has to deal with, but I do feel that Sporting News can do more to limit it. Many members have spent countless hours and effort into their work, and they do not like the thought of someone stealing it.

Overall:

Besides playing fantasy games, I highly recommend any sports fan that is willing to have strong conversations about sports-related topics to give Sporting News a try. The site has variety and quality members all over the community, and plenty of ways to stay active. Outside some of the issues mentioned here, it does provide an excellent alternative for those that like to engage in sports debates outside of their living area. Sporting News has a great group of members and staff writers that keep interest up for everyone that logs on everyday. I am friends with many members and also with a few staff writers as well. I have been featured many times in the magazine as well as also being interviewed by BusinessWeek magazine about fantasy football last August at the recommendation of a staff member. This is what being active can bring you by participating on the site quite often.