Fishing Reports

[MuskieBait]

I actually like the idea of contribution to receive benefits. As in a real society, there is no free handouts. You work hard to receive reward (salary, respect, fame...etc), nothing is freely given.

There are lots of lurkers on message forums and it's annoying that there are lots of freeloaders. That's why I reduce posting pictures with lots of background anymore. Too many people are just looking for the hot bites to chase and not sharing their own successes.

My ideal forum will have a contribution meter. As long as the member contributes fishing reports to the forum, the access to read the report forum is maintained. If the member stops contributing after a certain period of time, the access to view report is revoked until a new report is posted.

It encourages participation. Sure, it's not a forum for everyone (since people like to freeload), but the quality of the members is greatly improved. It's just a matter of quality vs. quantity. It's useless having 5000 members when only 50 of them are contribution anything worthwhile to the forum. I'd rather be on a forum where members are active contributing and helpful to each other, both online and in person.

My favourite fishing forum (a California fishign forum) grew very rapidly in a few years with more than 5000 members and a large fraction of those are contributing everyday. On any day, you can expect at least 5-10 new fishing reports. The number of fishing related and non-fishing discussion is almost too much to track some times. In fact, I'm flying there this summer to visit SF, LA and SD and to specifically fish with some of these members. That's the atmosphere the forum had fostered and quality members are what helped the forum flourish.

JMHO.