Practicum #5 - Mike D.

I concluded my last practicum post by previewing the ‘Community’ tab on Newschoolers.com, so I’ll pick it up from there. From the main ‘Community’ page, users a linked to the latest blogs, newest cults, contests, top members and the current featured poll. The blogs are pretty straight forward, users on the site post content of all sorts on them. The cults are a little bit more confusing at first though. As I stated during my presentation last week, they are a relatively new addition to the site, and I hadn’t really gotten a chance to investigate them. Over this past week, I’ve spent quite a bit of time checking them out.

They basically link a whole bunch of resources on the site together, as a more central location for very specific information. I joined the ‘Trick Tip’ cult, which links resources for learning and enhancing tricks. The cult page has a spot dedicated to the latest forum posts concerning trick tips, examples of this include the ‘How to Guide on Rail Tricks’ forum and ‘Blind 4’s’ forum. Beneath, the user will find the ‘cult chat,’ through which users communicate with each other directly and in real time. On the right hand side of the page is an ‘about this cult’ section as well as blogs posted by the members of the cult. Overall it seems to be a useful addition to the site, it makes finding very specific information faster.

Another part of the ‘Community’ tab is gear reviews. These are pretty straight forward. You can view and post reviews in a number of categories surrounding the skiing world. These include Accessories (gloves, goggles, etc), Hardgoods (bindings, skis, etc), Media (books, movies, music, etc), Resorts, Services (airlines, car rentals, hotels), Softgoods (hats, jackets, etc) and Technology (cameras, cell phones, computers, etc).

There is also a ‘Top Rated Members’ section to the community area of the site. This is the only form of ranking I’ve discovered on the site. Members are ranked by their Karma Points and Xchange rating. Karma points are gained by contributing to the site in various ways, and can also be deducted if moderators have to terminate user contributed content. The Xchange rating is a part of member profiles. Users can rate other users directly on a 10 point scale. This is a strategy to stop one user from pissing another off.

An assortment of polls can be accessed in the community section too, I’ve found no use for them other than boosting Karma points.

The games section is probably my favorite portion of the community area of the site. A variety of flash games have proved entertaining to say the least. Gnarshmallow has to be my favorite, in which the user controls a little stick figure guy and goes down a huge mountain hitting jumps, rails, cliffs and more, often killing himself or throwing down ridiculous tricks impossible in real life.

And finally, the events area of the community tab lists all the upcoming events in the skiing world in an orderly fashion. Unfortunately, the majority of the events on the site are out west, out of reach for this midwesterner. Until next time...