Who decides what content goes on PDGA.com? I saw an article about the Midwest Masters :rolleyes: on the front page. No disrespect to that tourney, which I'm sure was a great one, but where's the coverage of the GBO, Atlanta Open, or the Dogtown? All A tiers with big name pros in them.

Just curious.

PDGA.com relies on content provided by members submitting stories and photos. PDGA Staff doesn't have the resources to directly cover more than the Majors and a few large events like BG Ams so it relies on TDs and their staff for information, stories and photos on other events.

Maybe the PDGA should contact volunteers already at the events by calling the TD beforehand and giving them a heads up to announce it or find someone before the event starts.

All they have to do is make a phone cal.....I know there was filming and pics at the GBO.

I couldn't believe there was nothing on the front page the weekend after Texas Womens Championships became largest Womens event ever

Hopefully, most people know there are no reporters on PDGA staff. Just staffers who are officials who wear multiple caps at Majors and a few other big events. They do their best to also post event info along with their duties for scoring help, officiating, etc. PDGA.com is mostly a conduit to publish stories it receives, not creates.

Maybe the PDGA ......

Here we go again.

Kid, the PDGA is a group of volunteers and members. There is minimal staff, no large group of people sitting around looking for something to do. It is us as members, a member based group. So, maybe the PDGA should do as you say. But when you say it, remember you are referring to you, I and all other members, not some large paid office sitting around drinking coffee.

So, maybe the PDGA should have more write-ups on the events. Maybe it should have covered the Texas Womens Championships. I'm sure the TD of each event would love to have someone from the PDGA (i.e. one of us) step up and provide the coverage and submit the story. I'm pretty sure the people who manage this site would love to have the PDGA (i.e. one or more of us) submit so much content that they have difficult choices to make regarding what to post. Again, one of us ........ The PDGA is a member based organization. One of us ....................

Here we go again.

Kid, the PDGA is a group of volunteers and members. There is minimal staff, no large group of people sitting around looking for something to do. It is us as members, a member based group. So, maybe the PDGA should do as you say. But when you say it, remember you are referring to you, I and all other members, not some large paid office sitting around drinking coffee.

So, maybe the PDGA should have more write-ups on the events. Maybe it should have covered the Texas Womens Championships. I'm sure the TD of each event would love to have someone from the PDGA (i.e. one of us) step up and provide the coverage and submit the story. I'm pretty sure the people who manage this site would love to have the PDGA (i.e. one or more of us) submit so much content that they have difficult choices to make regarding what to post. Again, one of us ........ The PDGA is a member based organization. One of us ....................




So the org is too small to call 2-3 TDs a week maximum? All I am suggesting is calling the TDs of larger A-tiers a such to see if they can possibly get a local to do a small article on the event.

Like you said we a member based and with a little heads up I'm sure that they would have few problems getting the material needed.

One of us will do it but many don't know that there may be a demand for such material and therefore do not submit such articles. Seriously all that is needed is someone calling a few TDs who will find the volunteers needed...........saying the org is "too small" will only work for so long especially when the solution takes little effort by the office.

Sounds like a great idea. When can you get started on it?

So the org is too small to call 2-3 TDs a week maximum? All I am suggesting is calling the TDs of larger A-tiers a such to see if they can possibly get a local to do a small article on the event.

Like you said we a member based and with a little heads up I'm sure that they would have few problems getting the material needed.

One of us will do it but many don't know that there may be a demand for such material and therefore do not submit such articles. Seriously all that is needed is someone calling a few TDs who will find the volunteers needed...........saying the org is "too small" will only work for so long especially when the solution takes little effort by the office.

"Jerry" and Kid

I think you all have a good idea. The PDGA could be asking ALL TD's to compose short write-ups of their event and take photos and/or videos for consideration to be included on the front page of PDGA.com. However, the implementation could be much easier than someone making phone calls or sending emails. It may be best to include the request for pre and post event coverage in the TD Documents. A document on how to write and submit stories for PDGA.com could be added as a new TD Document and reminders could also be included in the following resources: How to Plan a PDGA event, How to Run a PDGA Event, the Tournament Director Checklist and the Post Event Documents.




Until this official request for event coverage is included in the TD Resources, please consider this your personal invitation to take photos, videos and submit write ups of the events you attend this year so they can be considered for the front page news.

The Texas Women's tournament submitted a preview article and it was published. Last year they submitted a post event article and it was published. my understanding was that they were going to submit a post event article this year but we never received one.

There have been multiple announcements made over the last year seeking writers, photographers and videographers to join the PDGA Media group with the intent of generating content for the website. In the end the tournament articles need to be written by someone who was present at the event. In so long that the quality is acceptable, we are more than happy to publish submitted articles from tournament directors and members.

Chuck Kennedy's "In the Fairway" article, which initiated this discussion, is a new template based initiative to get TD's to submit information, photos and results from their events for publication on the front page of the website.

The Texas Women's tournament submitted a preview article and it was published. Last year they submitted a post event article and it was published. my understanding was that they were going to submit a post event article this year but we never received one.

There have been multiple announcements made over the last year seeking writers, photographers and videographers to join the PDGA Media group with the intent of generating content for the website. In the end the tournament articles need to be written by someone who was present at the event. In so long that the quality is acceptable, we are more than happy to publish submitted articles from tournament directors and members.

Chuck Kennedy's "In the Fairway" article, which initiated this discussion, is a new template based initiative to get TD's to submit information, photos and results from their events for publication on the front page of the website.

Cool. I didn't realize that any TD could simply submit content for their events. Sounds good and I'll plan to do that for my larger events. Good to know.

I know that the Glass Blown submitted a preview article, but I never saw it up on the site.
I was kinda bummed about that.

http://www.pdga.com/videos/glass-blown-open-2010-promo

I'll resist the comments that I am thinking out loud, but I think that its not too much to ask to have information shared, nor is it too much to ask the PDGA and its office staff to multi-task in events.

I think that there is a stronger need to develop people at lower level to help support the notion of events, but there has to be a concensus to what is needed in order to have articles printed, or published. Set some guidelines that the PDGA would like to see, give parameters, and then ask for that information when turning in the excel spreadsheet.

If you have parameters and ask for the information on the front end, and a follow up, we may all learn a little information about each event. Having it attached to the event in the registration page (you know the book pages) and then a review about each event after the fact (You know the trophy) would then entice many people to either do it themselves or ask someone to doa quick write up for the PDGA section.

So by simply calling A-Tier TD's (if thats the parameters) or having this information requested prior to the event would then lead a person to develop a marketing plan for their event, and that in turn could possibly (GASP, OMG) be used by another person to develop even further ways to promote, inform, and showcase ALL events, not just limit it to the minor few events that we see today, but really showcase our efforts.

Thinking of Lamoni Iowa this weekend. Where ~100 people show up and spend money in a town of 2500 for the weekend, and make an impact on the city. We do that every weekend, and we all play for our own money. We have to leave this model and one way to leave to help us all grow is to better communicate to not only our audience (we are all already hooked) but the other 99% of the world that is not familiar with how passionate we are and how much of an impact we make locally.

We meed to think locally, act locally, and raise locally in order to become national, and for years our organization is trying to be national and international before we can even be good at that local level. Local level is where we must win our first battle, then we can look at the next battle, regional, state, national, and international.

Starts with a few requests that need to be made, once we can do it locally, going larger will not be as painful as it appears to be for our sport to get to.

Win locally first!

Sounds like a great idea. When can you get started on it?


He shouldn't have to, he started an excellent point, and Brian made the argument that anyone can do it. The better argument needs to be made that it needs to be required by a person to run an event, pre-event, and post-event, so that besides the scores, you get a recap of what happened in the eyes of the people at that event. You can always rinse lather and repeat the prequel, but lets make the PDGA responsible for not suggesting it but demanding from the TDs that a written report giving information about the event must be included as well. It then becomes history written not just scored.

Its an excellent idea whose time has long come and has been ignored, its time to change that. (Along with many other things that need changed)

It's an excellent idea, but falls short with the 'demading from the TD' part. I don't think the org is in any position to demand from the few that actually do things. But if people would step up more and assist local TDs, then extras become possible. Suggest, ask or guide? Fine and I think it has been done. Demand? I don't think so.

So yes, he should have to. We all should have to. If not, then we all have to live with it not being done, because there is no one else to do it. Demanding from the TD only goes so far, and the leverage (i.e. you can no longer run pdga events) is not of benefit to anyone.

Then so be it. Less events that are ran more effectivley and efficiently by people that have the knowledge and time to do so will only benefit the sport.

The list of events is to grand in our current system and in all honesty does not benefit the TD, it benefits the PDGA, not the players.

Sanctioning agreements are not aligned well nor kept as they should be by the PDGA, and in turn causes events to not reach the full potential that they could.

The radius arrangement that the PDGA has is not followed as it should be, but if I were the PDGA I would not change it either. If you have an event that is slated to be 180 players, and you sanction an event within the geographic area that it shouldn't be, and each event attains a total of 110 players, but is not full, the TD's get burned, but the PDGA gets more money from the players and the sanctioning fees.

So lets truly make our events better and in turn make more people accountable for the showcasing of what events should be. That in turn makes a better venue, better bang for buck on the players side, better opportunity to gain sponsorship, better way to communicate locally that we are here and we are spending millions and millions of dollars every year to communities, and getting nothing in return.

We have to change the formula, or we will never grow. This could be an excellent start. If you run an event and it does not have at least 72 people in it, it should be classified as a C-Tier, 144-B, 216-A, over 250 gets something better, and you see where I go with this. The fact that the PDGA requires $$$ to be the determination is another outdated formula in our sport. That taxes TD's more than a written report would.

As a person that has ran C-Tiers to Majors, I have a strong feeling about what it takes to be a TD. I think that I can attest to what needs to be done as there have been many nights where I sit and make a program for my C-Tiers until 4:00 am and then take to Kinko's at 7:00 to give to the players.

To ask-nay-DEMAND that someone type about the event is a small price, and if you can't do it, then you shouldn't be running an event. We have to differentiate the PDGA events from the local events if you want to take the sport to the next level. If you don't want to do it, then you should have the option to run a non-sanctioned event, but the PDGA pull for people will create local only events.

Now there is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with local only events, and in fact many events shuold be but in order to have the PDGA as a an event that is outside of a local event with a PDGA name, we must demand more from the tireless people that already run the events.

I am completely aware of how under appreciated the TD's in our sport are already treated....After all I am one of them, but I am also keenly aware of the need to change our current system to better ensure a future for our growth.....

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.........

Time to change some things folks, time to change some things, we must or we have nothing to gain.....

I'm not of the opinion that less PDGA tournaments will be in the best interest of growing the sport. But I can understand where you are coming from in advancing the quality and experience. Perhaps this would be best focused on the n-tier or a-tier level.

I also dont share your view that we arent growing with the current method. But again, it depends on your perspective. In regards to rounds played, courses in the ground, public awareness, number of participants and so on we are growing. In regards to how much a touring pro can make, how big the largest tournament each year is, or how far along the national tour concept is, perhaps not.

I suppose it depends on your definition of growing the sport. I most certainly appreciate your efforts in all of this.

And we are growing as well, but I think that we are also not growing as cohesively as we could. I know the countless hours of work that people give to our sport for the love of the game, you cannot put a value on it (though I try when I give presentations for the sport to the city leaders) and how it helps the community and the sport around those people.

But by having the TD's give this information (I still tend to disagree with limiting to "upper events") it may be picked up by other local media outlets, or better yet have the PDGA direct their information to the local media outlets and start to develop a plan to use the content from the PDGA.com to funnel into the local annals.

I know that my personal goal to find information about the park that I love (Cliff Drive) has led the research I did to be included in the Parks and Recreation information about the park and its history. The recorder of archives loved the information that I dug up to give some strong insight into the area that had not been surfaced previously. As such an instance, who is to say that others running the events are not as equipped with knowledge about the area, or event that others would want to know?

Our sport has not done a real good job of preserving history. We have a few isolated people that have done a pretty good job, but even something here locally as the Kansas City Wide Open (A staple in disc golf tournaments for close to 3 decades now) we do not even have all the logos that have been used for the event.....but I was able to dig up a person whose dad played in them for years before and now we will have every logo, but again that history needs to be shared.

The other thing that had me thinking about this thread last night after league was if this idea works, where will we store this information for future generations? THe server space needed would be enormous, but in all honesty should be something that we all strive to see from our I-patch glasses we will be wearing......

I know its a different approach, but I really think that we need to better define what the events are that shuold be called a PDGA event. If the PDGA wants to put its name on an event, the knowledge of the event shold be a superior setting to that of just a round of people playing for money.

I think that this will in turn help out even more locally, and allow us to continue to grow, and grow in the direction that gives our sport more credibility in long run. We strive for that right now on many levels.

I am taking out 65 5th graders next week to teach/play the sport. I will give them all information about the sport, and help them to understand it as a lifetime sport they can play. We need to continue to push the youth about our sport to ensure we bring in more people, and in turn we get more acknowledgement that this sport is a lifetime sport that will be lpayed by people from 7-85 (look at 2009 worlds ages...) for world championship titles.

All this can be done for under $300 currently......we are a cheap sport, we need to elevate it (our sport) where it makes sense, and unfortunately it makes sense to start with the most tiredless working group of people within the PDGA, the TD. TD's should get their own exemption in my book. If you run 2 events or more a year, the PDGA should waive your yearly registration fee, but in doing so you shold also request that they do more work to ensure a better product that has the PDGA name on it.

Good thoughts though on this from my mind, it has me thinking of ways to do things differently, so I appreciate the counter point, and understand it as well.

Our sport is growing, we know that, but at which direction makes it a better sport?

Grass roots is good, having a "pro" earning a living at this sport is tough and at what point do we say thats ok, instead of asking how can we help them?

I asked the question in our forum do we need a "Pro Disc Golfer" and was amazed at the responses. So suffice it to say there are clearly two sides to this coin.

Good points for sure on both!

I think we all agree that we really just want our sport to conintue to grow, the question is how to accelerate it in all areas?

Most certainly on all points, and I appreciate and greatly respect the views.

As for the server space required being enormous, being in IT for the last 20 years has me fairly unconcerned about this. Storage capacity now is inconceivably enormous to what we thought was possible in 1995, and the cost per MB has dropped to the point where we don't even mention MB anymore. 5 years from now will show advancement in storage capabilities and reduced costs that are hard to imagine through today's glasses. The hard part is getting people to utilize it, lesser so to organize it in a fashion that can be easily retrieved. Providing the resource is the easy part.

Great food for thought you guys. A couple of random thoughts/comments:

I would agree that the recorded history of the sport is insufficient. There are a few disc golfers out there who have done a lot to document the sport in a real-time fashion (Rick R. stands out here), but there is a dearth of information on the sport from a historical perspective. I hear Jim Palmeri is working on a book, but know little more. Now is the time to get on this task, before we lose more of the founders of the sport, as we did last year with Tim S.

Something one of you said got me thinking about the notion of pushing the "pro" aspect of the game. It seems to me that the growth in pro purses should really grow more organically - purses would grow as the player base grows and the sponsors interest in capturing the imagination of the player/spectator base grows. Thinking that having a slightly larger prize purse is going to attract the attention of spectators and prospective players doesn't ring true to me. I would think that you grow purses by making the game (and seeing skilled play of the game) relevant to more people. You do this by establishing more places for people to play (more courses) and exposing more people to the game through clinics/demonstrations/youth events. Our current pros need to recognize that they may have simply been born too early - suck it up and do the work that will help your kids get the large purses.

I lost my train of thought on the next thing...work keeps getting in the way.

I would like to give the PDGA webmaster and the staff a compliment regarding the front page of the website. I have noticed, for about a month now that, if not daily, then several times a week, that there is a new current topic displayed. By that I mean that the newest item on the list at the left hand side of the webpage is changing several times a week, and I enjoy seeing that as a user.

Thank you. :)

Take the ads off of the discussion pages!

An ad will appear on the right side blocking you from accessing the last post on what ever the top 4-5 threads are on the page you pull up.

Keep the ads on the home page and get them off of the others.

OK I can live with ads on the Discussion Board but please tell me that an ad blocking a portion of the top post is a glitch and not a feature, very annoying! Please fix this.

I agree with Sharky & Twoputt.....those pop-up advertisements on the right side of the page are extremely annoying. This is true for viewing personal messages, too.

I don't have a problem with seeing advertisements on our web site, but please stop these ads from blocking the site's content. :mad:

Hard to understand why more people are not complaining?

Im right there with you guys.

Seems to be working now. It appears that over the weekend, the only O/S that would work was I/E, all the others would load a banner ad but then only get a blank page on the content.

To do bigger and better things the PDGA needs more $. It's clear the membership isn't willing to pay more for yearly memberships. People complain when representatives are paid to go to major events. I think the ads are reasonable and anonther way to bring in some income.

I think the ads are reasonable and anonther way to bring in some income.

That is not the point. Advertising revenue is a good thing.

The issue is not being able to view portions of the discussion board because of an add that is not properly positioned on the page. As I type this, I do notice that the "State Farm" advertisement is no longer hiding the right side of the message forum. Perhaps issue has been resolved? :)

What a joke.

Hard to understand why more people are not complaining?

Perhaps more people find less pleasure in complaining.

Besides, with so many people volunteering to help solve the problem, it's doubtful our complaints would get through to be heard.

Perhaps more people find less pleasure in complaining.

Besides, with so many people volunteering to help solve the problem, it's doubtful our complaints would get through to be heard.

Or some of use Firefox and block the ads.

So who do I work with to get an article on the site?

Send draft to Gentry or your idea for an article if it's not written yet.

So who do I work with to get an article on the site?

Since you didn't write So, with whom do I work to get an article on this site?, I will suggest that an elementary school English teacher would be a good place to start. :p

Since you didn't write So, with whom do I work to get an article on this site?, I will suggest that an elementary school English teacher would be a good place to start. :p

I would have wrote it that way but I didn't want to sound like an arrogant d bag.

Good thinking! Arrogant d-bags also commonly use would have written when appropriate, so at least you're consistent in attempting to hide your true colors behind an opaque veil of idiocy.

Good thinking! Arrogant d-bags also commonly use would have written when appropriate, so at least you're consistent in attempting to hide your true colors behind an opaque veil of idiocy.

touch�

LOL... Now that's entertainment... I know I read these boards for a reason.