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The Voyageurs


Binky

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12 minutes ago, Binky said:

(How many here miss the old forum?)

Which one? Network54 or whatever it was called. This is like what, the fourth version since I joined?

What an ignorant (as in uninformed. without substance) comment BTW. The Voyageurs are growing and getting ready to support Canada through 2022 and on to 2026 when we will showcase our country for the world.
 

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I am sure I am not the only one who doesn't understand why the forum is now on canadiansoccernews.com.

Anyone care to give us the Cole's notes version of why this change happened?

Functionally there is no difference, as far as I can tell, so I am not sure what you miss about the old forum @Binky

Edited by Obinna
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Like what's up with the Beaver logo? Are we now going to wave a Big Beaver Flag at CWNT internationals? Is that supposed to attract women to come and share their views on this forum? Has the volume of traffic increased on the CWNT forum since the change? Aside from Mrs. C. is there one other woman that logs on? Anyhow, speaking of the Beaver, I've got a game to watch. Cheers.

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6 minutes ago, Binky said:

Like what's up with the Beaver logo? Are we now going to wave a Big Beaver Flag at CWNT internationals? Is that supposed to attract women to come and share their views on this forum? Has the volume of traffic increased on the CWNT forum since the change? Aside from Mrs. C. is there one other woman that logs on? Anyhow, speaking of the Beaver, I've got a game to watch. Cheers.

WTF?

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2 hours ago, Obinna said:

I am sure I am not the only one who doesn't understand why the forum is now on canadiansoccernews.com.

Anyone care to give us the Cole's notes version of why this change happened?

Functionally there is no difference, as far as I can tell, so I am not sure what you miss about the old forum @Binky

There are a few different reasons. 

The Voyageurs need to be rebooted into an organization people can join and feel a part of.  The forum is/was an impediment to that. I personally think it's bs, but the public don't, people that run clubs don't, people that run associations don't.... The level of derision and hatred for the forum is unreasonable, but it is there.   People don't remember the 999 people that were nice to them, they remember the one asshole that wasn't.

The association of the Voyageurs to the forum was both almost universal, and negative. 

As a non profit organization with the goal of building something special for 2026, things need to change drastically.  The larger broader changes I want to make with a cross Canada board of directors ect... well, I don't think anyone should work on this the next 7 years without an agreement on 2026.  Certainly no one should continue to pay for it as I have, it just isn't a reasonable expectation for anyone. Progress on this is stalled, which is why we seem stuck between two sites.  


The Voyageurs site is (soon was) hosted on a cloud based platform.  Rolling the ticket sales and the forum together into the same site had some expensive consequences based on how the cloud hosting worked.  It had hit $340 a month, or $4K a year.  This could easily have hit more should we have been more successful.  The lowest possible cost heading into 2026 was about thirty thousand in hosting.  It would more than likely be many times that should we succeed in building for the World Cup. Not something I can continue to pay for.   Not something that would be covered by membership, or scarf sales. 

Splitting the site, and going back to using Pay Pal buttons cut $2k a year off the total cost.  As the forum grows, it's possible it will be not financially viable.  If it does, it is now separate from the Voyageurs.  As the forum grows it can seek sponsorship or advertising in ways The Voyageurs can't, even though in my experience those things are not enough unless you go to some grey places. 

 

Changes to the legal responsibilities of people running websites are also coming. It is my understanding that someone posting something as simple as a link to  torrent for a WC game, the site owner is on the chopping block.  In this case, that would be the Voyageurs.  We have had three serious lawsuit threats.  The ability to sue the site owner is apparently about to get a lot easier. 

Moving the forum provided financial, social and legal separation from the Voyageurs. 

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2 hours ago, Binky said:

The Voyageurs 

 

=

 

  Canadian Soccer News

No, this is not the case. 

It appears that way right now, as I have top level menu bar links connecting them so people can find their way here, but that will go away. 

CSN is in my name, but owned by a few people. 

The Voyageurs assets are the property of a non profit organization. 

The V's site will get completely transformed as soon as there is at least MOU achieved wrt to 2026. 

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5 minutes ago, admin said:

There are a few different reasons. 

The Voyageurs need to be rebooted into an organization people can join and feel a part of.  The forum is/was an impediment to that. I personally think it's bs, but the public don't, people that run clubs don't, people that run associations don't.... The level of derision and hatred for the forum is unreasonable, but it is there.   People don't remember the 999 people that were nice to them, they remember the one ******* that wasn't.

The association of the Voyageurs to the forum was both almost universal, and negative. 

As a non profit organization with the goal of building something special for 2026, things need to change drastically.  The larger broader changes I want to make with a cross Canada board of directors ect... well, I don't think anyone should work on this the next 7 years without an agreement on 2026.  Certainly no one should continue to pay for it as I have, it just isn't a reasonable expectation for anyone. Progress on this is stalled, which is why we seem stuck between two sites.  


The Voyageurs site is (soon was) hosted on a cloud based platform.  Rolling the ticket sales and the forum together into the same site had some expensive consequences based on how the cloud hosting worked.  It had hit $340 a month, or $4K a year.  This could easily have hit more should we have been more successful.  The lowest possible cost heading into 2026 was about thirty thousand in hosting.  It would more than likely be many times that should we succeed in building for the World Cup. Not something I can continue to pay for.   Not something that would be covered by membership, or scarf sales. 

Splitting the site, and going back to using Pay Pal buttons cut $2k a year off the total cost.  As the forum grows, it's possible it will be not financially viable.  If it does, it is now separate from the Voyageurs.  As the forum grows it can seek sponsorship or advertising in ways The Voyageurs can't, even though in my experience those things are not enough unless you go to some grey places. 

 

Changes to the legal responsibilities of people running websites are also coming. It is my understanding that someone posting something as simple as a link to  torrent for a WC game, the site owner is on the chopping block.  In this case, that would be the Voyageurs.  We have had three serious lawsuit threats.  The ability to sue the site owner is apparently about to get a lot easier. 

Moving the forum provided financial, social and legal separation from the Voyageurs. 

Just got the book, AMAZING SOOO HAPPY, THANK YOU

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1 hour ago, Binky said:

Like what's up with the Beaver logo? Are we now going to wave a Big Beaver Flag at CWNT internationals? Is that supposed to attract women to come and share their views on this forum? Has the volume of traffic increased on the CWNT forum since the change? Aside from Mrs. C. is there one other woman that logs on? Anyhow, speaking of the Beaver, I've got a game to watch. Cheers.

The beaver logo is just that, a beaver. The beaver association is with Canada, that is the only intention.  My personal problem with beavers is that they eat their own poo.  A difficult habit to find endearing. 

 

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21 minutes ago, admin said:

There are a few different reasons. 

The Voyageurs need to be rebooted into an organization people can join and feel a part of.  The forum is/was an impediment to that. I personally think it's bs, but the public don't, people that run clubs don't, people that run associations don't.... The level of derision and hatred for the forum is unreasonable, but it is there.   People don't remember the 999 people that were nice to them, they remember the one ******* that wasn't.

The association of the Voyageurs to the forum was both almost universal, and negative. 

As a non profit organization with the goal of building something special for 2026, things need to change drastically.  The larger broader changes I want to make with a cross Canada board of directors ect... well, I don't think anyone should work on this the next 7 years without an agreement on 2026.  Certainly no one should continue to pay for it as I have, it just isn't a reasonable expectation for anyone. Progress on this is stalled, which is why we seem stuck between two sites.  


The Voyageurs site is (soon was) hosted on a cloud based platform.  Rolling the ticket sales and the forum together into the same site had some expensive consequences based on how the cloud hosting worked.  It had hit $340 a month, or $4K a year.  This could easily have hit more should we have been more successful.  The lowest possible cost heading into 2026 was about thirty thousand in hosting.  It would more than likely be many times that should we succeed in building for the World Cup. Not something I can continue to pay for.   Not something that would be covered by membership, or scarf sales. 

Splitting the site, and going back to using Pay Pal buttons cut $2k a year off the total cost.  As the forum grows, it's possible it will be not financially viable.  If it does, it is now separate from the Voyageurs.  As the forum grows it can seek sponsorship or advertising in ways The Voyageurs can't, even though in my experience those things are not enough unless you go to some grey places. 

 

Changes to the legal responsibilities of people running websites are also coming. It is my understanding that someone posting something as simple as a link to  torrent for a WC game, the site owner is on the chopping block.  In this case, that would be the Voyageurs.  We have had three serious lawsuit threats.  The ability to sue the site owner is apparently about to get a lot easier. 

Moving the forum provided financial, social and legal separation from the Voyageurs. 

Well, thank you for all your hard work. 

I still don't understand why/how the "public" see this forum as negative. For me it is just a place on the internet to talk about Canadian soccer. If you say it has a negative reputation, I will take your word for it, even though I am not making the connection...

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20 hours ago, Obinna said:

Well, thank you for all your hard work. 

I still don't understand why/how the "public" see this forum as negative. For me it is just a place on the internet to talk about Canadian soccer. If you say it has a negative reputation, I will take your word for it, even though I am not making the connection...

It depends on which set of concentric bubbles you move in.  There is not a single senior member of a single supporters group in Canada that will touch the board at this point and that is spreading to the members. This is a combined effect of social media, toxic online behavior, divisive city based bullshit... ect...

We should have split into two forums for Canadian soccer and club when we ended up with three MLS teams.  We should have separated the two, because that is what ultimately killed things. 

If you say work a table at a game or trade show... the opinion of the V's is very bad.  It is largely driven by the forum.  There is a lot of epic grade crazy shit on there. People seem unable to parse things out these days. 

Anyone who has searched anything about Canadian soccer on planet earth, finds that forum. Guaranteed.   It doesn't mean that it is justified.  I can't for the life of me see how people can eschew the forum while espousing FB & Twitter as the place we should be.  It makes no sense... but it is where we are.

 

 

 

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Well I am still glad the board/forum is around.  For all the people that dont live in the major centers and dont have supporters groups in their back yard.  I think our board is much better than twitter or reddit etc.  Obviously real people in supporters groups would be best, as people tend to temper their actions and not act like a-holes in person.  But here I am still able to talk to Impact/TFC/Whitecaps fans about their team/academy, new CPL supporters from across canada and have access to people with immense knowledge about whats going on in a dozen foreign leagues and the CDNS in them.  

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1 hour ago, Greatest Cockney Rip Off said:

Isn’t the issue with the club supporter groups is that they see things as club over country while most on the voyageurs forum we’re very country over club and the two attitudes clashed?

In the specific case of Toronto getting an MLS team, that isn't all there is to it. Many of the Canada-supporting TFC fans (or those who would come to be fans of TFC) left this forum because they felt that there was a lot of Toronto-bashing from other posters from other parts of the country. Those guys left the forum and have still never come back. They aren't club over country, they were more like "Why bother to put up with Anti-Toronto BS when we could start our own forum?" and so they did. Only a handful of Toronto-area posters from that large group still post today on this forum, but they have still been going to every Canada game in Toronto since they left the forum.

I'm not sure what the case was with Vancouver & Montreal posters (some of the most prominent ones from days gone by also seem to have left the forum once they got an MLS team), but then those two teams wouldn't be accused of causing the death of Canadian soccer the way Toronto was because it was the first MLS team and they had a period of exclusivity which pissed some posters off (even though the period didn't last very long, which was something I believe I predicted back in the day) so the anti-Vancouver & Montreal rhetoric wouldn't have been so strong (nor do they usually get accused of acting like they are the Centre of the Universe anyway).

I have noticed that a couple of prolific posters (Grizzly, Jpg75) don't seem to have migrated over from the previous forum as yet......

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2 minutes ago, Gian-Luca said:

In the specific case of Toronto getting an MLS team, that isn't all there is to it. Many of the Canada-supporting TFC fans (or those who would come to be fans of TFC) left this forum because they felt that there was a lot of Toronto-bashing from other posters from other parts of the country. Those guys left the forum and have still never come back. They aren't club over country, they were more like "Why bother to put up with Anti-Toronto BS when we could start our own forum?" and so they did. Only a handful of Toronto-area posters from that large group still post today on this forum, but they have still been going to every Canada game in Toronto since they left the forum.

I'm not sure what the case was with Vancouver & Montreal posters (some of the most prominent ones from days gone by also seem to have left the forum once they got an MLS team), but then those two teams wouldn't be accused of causing the death of Canadian soccer the way Toronto was because it was the first MLS team and they had a period of exclusivity which pissed some posters off (even though the period didn't last very long, which was something I believe I predicted back in the day) so the anti-Vancouver & Montreal rhetoric wouldn't have been so strong (nor do they usually get accused of acting like they are the Centre of the Universe anyway).

I have noticed that a couple of prolific posters (Grizzly, Jpg75) don't seem to have migrated over from the previous forum as yet......

Grizzly is just busy that's all. I chat with him on occasion. 

 

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3 hours ago, admin said:

It depends on which set of concentric bubbles you move in.  There is not a single senior member of a single supporters group in Canada that will touch the board at this point and that is spreading to the members. This is a combined effect of social media, toxic online behavior, divisive city based ********... ect...

We should have split into two forums for Canadian soccer and club when we ended up with three MLS teams.  We should have separated the two, because that is what ultimately killed things. 

If you say work a table at a game or trade show... the opinion of the V's is very bad.  It is largely driven by the forum.  There is a lot of epic grade crazy **** on there. People seem unable to parse things out these days. 

Anyone who has searched anything about Canadian soccer on planet earth, finds that forum. Guaranteed.   It doesn't mean that it is justified.  I can't for the life of me see how people can eschew the forum while espousing FB & Twitter as the place we should be.  It makes no sense... but it is where we are.

 

 

 

Appreciate the explaination. I never asked, but was quietly hoping you would elaborate on this supposed issue. Thanks for that.

The ignorant part of me wants to respond by saying there is no issue. I have never encountered an issue, and never heard anyone bashing this community in public, though I don't go around discussing the Voyaguers board in my daily life, so how would I know how people feel about it? I wouldn't. 

As @Bison44 said, this platform is mild compared to FB or reddit. Even the skyscraper forum I occasionally lurk on gets weird from time to time. 

Bigsoccer seems no different than our board, but I am sure I could find something to get offended about, if I was looking to get offended. The 2019 Gold Cup thread on thereggaeboyz forum has some weird racial undertones to it. It's the internet afterall, user beware.

Point is, I don't judge any of these communities based on the comments of a few fringe individuals. I am sure most well-balanced and rational people wouldn't either. Clearly there are some who can't parse out such things, but so what?

Are we pandering to prospective members by cleaning up our image? You mentioned negative feedback whilst working at a stand on game day?

 

Edited by Obinna
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19 hours ago, Gian-Luca said:

In the specific case of Toronto getting an MLS team, that isn't all there is to it. Many of the Canada-supporting TFC fans (or those who would come to be fans of TFC) left this forum because they felt that there was a lot of Toronto-bashing from other posters from other parts of the country. Those guys left the forum and have still never come back. They aren't club over country, they were more like "Why bother to put up with Anti-Toronto BS when we could start our own forum?" and so they did. Only a handful of Toronto-area posters from that large group still post today on this forum, but they have still been going to every Canada game in Toronto since they left the forum.

I'm not sure what the case was with Vancouver & Montreal posters (some of the most prominent ones from days gone by also seem to have left the forum once they got an MLS team), but then those two teams wouldn't be accused of causing the death of Canadian soccer the way Toronto was because it was the first MLS team and they had a period of exclusivity which pissed some posters off (even though the period didn't last very long, which was something I believe I predicted back in the day) so the anti-Vancouver & Montreal rhetoric wouldn't have been so strong (nor do they usually get accused of acting like they are the Centre of the Universe anyway).

I have noticed that a couple of prolific posters (Grizzly, Jpg75) don't seem to have migrated over from the previous forum as yet......

I actually remember that now. 

Toronto was, and still is, my favourite MLS team, but I always felt the whining on both sides of that argument was a bit much. Didn't think it would have been enough to push people off the forum, but perhaps I would feel differently if I was from Toronto.

I noticed some of those guys vanished, but I never made the connection, until now. Their feelings must have really been hurt to go and start their own forum. But hey, great for them if they got their own forum out of it in the end. I am sure they have some great dialog about the Canadian national team over there, nice and safe from all the the evil Torontophobia hate speech.

Edited by Obinna
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