This week, we’ll be covering your time in the game.

It’s funny because in my short time playing this game, I’ve come across people who have been playing for 30-plus years and still have the crazy love for it.

But I’ve also noticed the generation gap of long-time players and newer players. There’s definitely a different feel. Maybe it’s because it seems like there’s so much to digest when starting now.

Starting way back when, it was more minimalist. These guys (or gals) had the chance to grow with the sport and technology.

Anyway, we’ll get back to that in a moment.

Let’s quickly re-visit last week’s poll. I say quickly because we didn’t get much of a turnout for this one, which is quite disappointing, if not just because as writers we’re interested in what the readers want to see.

As I noted in the post, we won’t necessarily be changing things based on the poll, but it helps us when deciding future things.

I’ll be covering the past two weeks worth of polls as well as some other things about the site in a post later this week.

Last week we asked about the content you, the readers, like best on Rattling Chains. Each person was allowed to vote for two options. We had 65 people cast votes, for a total of 122.

The top spots for this poll were extremely close. The ones that were at the top, I figured would be there as they are usually the ones with the most views.

Instructional posts were in first with 28 votes (43 percent), followed by in-depth stories (25 votes/38 percent) and first-person accounts (24 votes/27 percent). In fourth were product reviews (14 votes/22 percent) and in fifth was Company Closeups (12 votes/18 percent).

The rest of the selections were stories/posts written by touring professionals (11 votes/17 percent), Photo Focus (2 votes/3 percent), Creative Corner (2 votes/3 percent), stories about the pro tour (2 votes/3 percent) and other (2 votes/3 percent).

We didn’t receive many comments, but we’ll tackle a few here.

Ross M says:

I enjoy the emails and read most stories. The whats in your bag feature was very interesting and have not seen that in awhile.

My suggestion would be to stick to 2 or 3 emails a week. I do not have the time or motivation to read a full story every day. Pick 2 or 3 days and make sure your keep those deadlines every week. If I knew a new story was coming every Tuesday I would look forward to it. A little less is often better. As George Costanzo would say “Always leave em laughing”.

The e-mails are an automatic thing. It’s something I can’t control, in regard to how often they go out. When a new story is posted, an e-mail is sent. It’s a plug-in with WordPress. So, it’s basically have the e-mails or not at all.

That being said, we’ve tried the three-day thing (this past summer) and it seemed like readers came and went a little more than when we’re on a five-day schedule. We are debating a lot of different things, including the frequency of posting. I’ll cover more on that in the post later this week.

As for the “What’s in your bag?” feature, I’d love to bring it back. However, not many people sent in their bag contents and photos so we could do it. I will also be covering this the post I referenced above.

Tim J said:

I see that instructional articles has the most votes, as of right now. I enjoy those too, but can find similar on many other sites. I like the variety that is offered here and found it hard to vote only for two!

I think you really nailed something here, Tim. I love having the instructional posts, but I wouldn’t want this to ever become a instructional site. Or a site that is mainly about one thing in disc golf. I hope others enjoy the variety here as well, which is what I think we do so well.

The reality is, we’ll keep doing what we do and we’ll tweak as necessary. But we have to occasionally look in the mirror to see what we’re doing well and what we need to improve upon, which is one of the main reasons behind the past two polls.

Again, I’ll go a bit more in-depth about some Rattling Chains items later this week.

Now to this week’s poll.

So how long have you been flinging discs?

Disc golf, in relative terms, is an extremely young sport. The best part about that is still being able to talk with those who have been playing since the beginning, or somewhere near that. With many sports, it’s impossible to speak with those who were there from the start.

So let us know — how long have you been playing this wonderful game?

[poll id=”42″]

If you have any comments, questions, thoughts, ideas or anything else, feel free to e-mail me and the crew at: pj@rattlingchains.com. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!