Worlds Absolute Freediver Award 2011

[baiyoke]

Haven't seen this thread before, but saw the Newsbot-thread about it and enjoyed the awarding info very much, also the rest of the site, and visit it from time to time... I think people appreciate your work very much, reading info and stuff, but get lost in reading, and forget to go back and reply:hmm, and I can see it might be dissapointing for you...

Thumbs up Trux :wave

Congrats to all divers, and good to see the Danes are still swimming...

 

[Simos]

Thumbs up from me too for apnea.cz

 

[mattbigblue]

It's a great work from You Ivo.

I don't have a website but I've put it on my fun page.

I will also support Your website!

Matt

 

[trux]

Thanks for the supportive words, guys! And thanks also to Will, Jody, Matt, Mikko, ChrisMar, and Thaz for the financial support (188€ altogether). I'd just wished the majority of the donors were not the same ones who were awarded. It is a bit strange to pay for your own award :duh

Frankly, I did not expect getting much financial support, but I am very surprised that during the week practically nobody posted the press release on their website. It costs nothing, and does not even take any time - the text is ready, and right in three languages, so all what is needed is dropping it to own or club blog or a website, that I know the majority of competitors have.

So frankly told, although I am very glad for the supportive words and for the donations, I do not understand at all why only a single person from the several hundreds who came to look at this thread was willing to help by publishing the PR.

Anyone dares to comment? Perhaps I can try changing something in future, but one thing is sure - without your help and support I will be unable to run the website and ranking.

However, my word still stands, and at the end of June (or perhaps even earlier if nothing moves for longer time), I'll draw the winner from the donors (minus those who already got the WAFA), and will send a cert and an Apneaman noseclip to the winner.

 

[chrismar]

I've posted on the Lazy Seals site and I think it is going/has gone to the AIDA NZ one.

We appreciate the work you do, I promise

 

[azapa]

Trux, if you could just change my results to World Record instead of national, I am sure a nice donation would come your way

Seriously though, great effort (and nice programing too). Much respect for your work.

 

[trux]

No problem, Simon! Just send the funds and according the height of the donation, I'll define the size of your own world, where you can hold all WR's! Let's call them AWR's - Azapa's World Records

 

[Jouskari]

I see there is no feedback . I understand well that people are not excited about the financial help, but I hoped that at least posting the PR or a link to it on your blog or website was not too much to ask. Unfortunately it looks that among the thousands of DB members nobody cares too much whether the WAFA and Apnea.cz stay alive or not. That's finally also not a bad conclusion. No feedback is also a feedback. It clearly tells that it will harm nobody if I finally shut down the website, and use my time and funds for something more sensful.

I think the biggest problem is that not that many actually read through the threads properly. They only skim trough the thread titles and see if there is something that directly interestes them. A more interesting Title could draw more support?

Off topic. Has facebook etc. diminished the use of forums? I´ve noticed that a few very active forums has become almost completly silent during the last 2 years.

 

[Kars]

Yes I think FB has FU regular internet. I hate their practices.

 

[trux]

Thanks Jouskari for your comment! Yes, you are certainly right that few people read this thread. I did not really want to spam the forum with yet another thread, just asking for help, but since the response so far was rather low (8 donnations mostly from the WAFA winners self, with the total of 218€, and less than 200€ after the Paypal fees, and only around 60 external links, most of which I placed myself ), maybe I'll indeed post another thread asking for the help, since the loss is still important, and the achieved publicity so far rather disappointing.

If you have an idea for a title that would attract some attention, please let me know

As for the influence of Facebook on forums, I am not sure it had too much influence on the DB forum - in fact the posts here are more and more numerous each year. The problem of Facebook is that unless you really open just to a few close friends, you are permanently spammed by thousands of messages wihout any relevant content. The noise-to-signal ratio is enourmous in Facebook, much worse than on a specialized forum like DB. Also searching of some information in the past posts of Facebook is very limited. Still it is not bad for seing what's happening in real-time.

Anyway, many thanks to all those who already helped! As for the donations it was Will, Jody, Aris, Matt (all WAFA winners), Mikko Pöntinen, Chris Marshall, Françoise Steers, and Bill Graham. As for posting the Press Release, there were surprisingly very few responses.

The nose-clip and the certificate are still up for the drowing later

 

[mortenkv]

As for posting the Press Release, there were surprisingly very few responses.

The press release got linked to Danish Sportsdvining Federation Facebook ;-) and on my companys facebook site. The facebook sites of the two are much more alive (+ viewed and read) than their respective homepages...

Really appreciate your work doen Ivo, really, really!
Morten

 

[trux]

Thanks, Morten!

Frankly told, the popularity of the pages and the number of their visitors is much less important. Much more important when reporting the results to the sponsors, is the number of external links that can be picked up by search engines, because only those increase then the visibility of their websites too. Unfortunately, many pages and posts on Facebook are not at all visible to search engines, but only to "friends", hence the impact of the Facebook posts is limited to the direct views. In contrary, links on real websites or blogs, increase the visibility of the referred sponsor sites even without nobody coming to view them.

So in fact I value much more links on any small webiste or a blog, than a link on a highly popular facebook page (unless it is fully public and indexed by search engines)