For years I have thought about opening a forum on this site. The actual process of creating the forum is easy, but running a forum takes a lot of time and effort, something I do not have. But over the last week, a few things have happened that have made me think again about starting a forum here. I’ll explain what happened last week and then float my idea at the end of this article.

On last weeks post there were a number of comments about the SBC (Secret Betting Club), deleting all the posts from one of their forums. The SBC is a paid service that puts out a magazine once a month. I would visit the forum once a month and did enjoy reading the threads in the now deleted forum.

A reader and SBC member, Pete wrote:

Hi Steve,

I would be interested in your view on the SBC decision to close the “betting discussion” part of their forum. In case you are unaware, on 5th January they sent an email out to members stating –

“To help us implement some of the improvements to the SBC service for 2015, we have also made the decision to remove the Betting Discussion section of the SBC Forum later today. Analysis has revealed that less than 3% of all active members are actually using this section of the forum and we feel the resources allocated to its moderation are best utilised elsewhere. It is not a decision we have arrived at lightly, but one which will allow us to spend more time working on projects that will benefit a much larger section of SBC members.”

With less than 24 hours notice, literally thousands of postings were removed from the site, including some very interesting and useful discussion on bankroll, odds comparison & how to deal with losing runs. Valuable records of personal experiences with dozens of tipster services have been removed, along with everything else ever posted on the forum. Personally, I was an infrequent poster on the board, but a regular visitor, and access to that board was one of the primary reasons I paid my membership fee.

It seems more than a little coincidental that this has occurred in the midst of a truly awful run from the SBC partner-tipster George Dempsey. Once again, I am not a member of that particular service so I am not in a position to know if that criticism was justified or not. However, I do know it was there, indeed it was very prominent, and I feel it must have had some impact on the decision to not only close the forum, but to delete all the previous posts as well.

I do not feel that it is unfair to compare this to some of the “tipsters” we know who delete all negative feedback and in some cases conveniently forget to record losing selections. This is the exact type of service that the SBC was setup to help punters avoid.

It seems to me that the SBC were only too happy to moderate the forum when George was the “Golden-Boy”. Now variance has come home to roost, they have realised that negative feedback on the service may adversely affect the sign-ups for future SBC-tipster partnerships and have conveniently removed any record of said feedback.

You can go to the post and read over the whole conversation, Rowan who writes for SBC had things to say in response and some others also voiced their points of view. Personally I could not care less, I rarely visited the forum and Pete (the owner of SBC) has the right to do whatever he wants with his business. If a member doesn’t like it, they can always leave. To show how much I knew about the SBC, I had no idea they were selling their own services on the site. I always assumed they were a proofing site.

This brings up my only criticism. If you are a proofing site and also run your own tipping site than I can see a conflict of interest there. I’m not very good at analogies, but to me it is like the food and safety people opening their own restaurant, or the police policing themselves. I can also see it from a business perspective. A proofing site alone probably does not pay the bills, and with years of experience, the SBC would know what makes a really good service. So why not create something that would get top marks if they were to proof their own tipsters? They have worked for years to get a big user base of people who are known to pay for services, so why not sell them a service.

I did the same thing with this site, this site generates $0 but is a pretty good resource for many punters. With my years of experience in what makes a great service, and my contacts made over that time, I created what I feel is the best possible tipster site (Dailyprofit.com.au). The Dailyprofit service allows me to write content for this site. The more I write and help readers, the more likely they will see value in the Dailyprofit service and the more money is generated which frees me up to write more content. It’s a very symbiotic relationship.

I did find it strange that the entire forum would be deleted. I felt a better alternative would be to have closed it down (not allow any new posts), but leave up all past posts. This would show that the SBC was transparent. Like the original poster Pete said, deleting damning posts is akin to a tipster removing losing bets from his results. I have no idea what was written in those posts as I never had a chance to read them. After emailing Pete (SBC), he said he had made sure his website guy had kept a copy of all old posts, and may put up the old forum. I think this would be the right thing to do as there was also some useful content in a lot of those posts.

Pete did email me with his response to this situation and it is reproduced in full below.

Pete (SBC Owner) reply:

Hi,

I was made aware of the posts on here about the forum so thought I would respond to a few comments.

I have actually only received 4 emails asking about the forum since the decision was made – not exactly underlining it as the essential place some would have you believe.

The removal of the forum was a long-term decision based on about a year of consideration. I had hoped the new SBC site and forum design last year would help improve interaction on the forum, but sadly that was not the case. If anything it just got worse and I got a few complaints about the lack of interaction.

I decided to re-asses the forums usefulness at the start of the New Year and when the opportunity came to replace it with the Bet Diary written by Rowan, this made even more sense. Feedback from members has told me the Practical Punter reports he has penned is much more valued so I wanted to expand into this area.

It is not as some question a decision based on George’s form. All premium services go through good and bad times and George isnt the first (and won’t be the last on that front). Every member of that service can access daily updated results which are included in each email. Its a shame this takes centre stage, especially given the fact some of the other premium guys continue to do well long-term, yet the form of the likes of Andre Gomes gets very little mention.

The actual decision was based on a few factors including…

• The lack of interaction on the forum – around 2 to 3 new posts each week. Hardly marking it out as an essential resource
• The fact that numerous threads often descended into people falling out with each other. The forum had certainly gone from a friendly place to having more than its fair share of aggravation – something others have commented on.
• I also felt that numerous posts also lacked a lot of balance or fairness. Not really adding much value.
• The legal issues when people posted up about things such as the usage of bet brokers (SBC would be ultimately liable for anything posted – a serious concern).

All combined it made sense to remove it and its posts.

Betting forums in general are very tricky to get right. They are either totally out of control (Betfair) or heavily moderated. Neither route was one I wanted to go down, especially the latter for various reasons, including the best use of time.

Thanks, Pete

So should I create a forum?

That leads us to the main point of this post. Would a forum on this site be a valuable resource? I believe it would. There would be a general chat area and an area for members of different tipping sites to express their opinion.  The issue is, I have no want or time to do anything more then set up the forum.

I am looking for two things.

1. Your thoughts. Let me know if you want a forum on this site.
2. A few people who would be happy to be moderators of the forum. I believe I would need at least 3 moderators.

Just let me know in the comments below, if there is no response than that’s cool. It will save me a lot of time and effort. If it’s something you want, make your voice heard below.