Poll 44: Building disc golf courses

January 28, 2013 / P.J. / Leave a comment

OK folks, it’s poll time.

The sport of disc golf is something that people look at on different levels. There’s the one-disc player, casual players, kids, tournament players, local pros and top pros.

There’s probably more there, too.

But the essence of furthering this game goes beyond playing or beyond giving somebody new a disc. The game has to be out there to grow. Though this is a fast-growing sport, there are still a lot of people who have no idea what the game is.

One big thing is the lack of courses in some places.

Despite being able to tell people what the game is all about, or have them throw a disc in an open field or to a portable target, there needs to be more courses. Because as fun as this game is, if you show somebody and they then have to drive an hour or more for a course, the odds are probably more against that person not playing again than going and playing.

All courses have a place. Whether it’s a 9-hole pitch-and-putt to a well-designed 27-hole championship course. Still, they have to be built.

But we’ll touch more upon this below with this week’s question.

First, lets check back to last week’s question when we asked what your favorite type of disc to throw was.

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Poll 43: Your favorite type of disc

January 21, 2013 / P.J. / Leave a comment

We’ve talked about discs before, but it’s time to find out what your favorite type of disc is to throw.

And by type, we don’t mean plastic, rather the range.

Before we get into that, however, we want to visit last week’s poll and see what some people had to say.

Last week, we asked a simple yes or no question — should there be dress codes at tournaments?

It seemed like this would definitely invoke some thoughts and opinions as it seems like something that is sometimes talked about at tournaments among different levels of players.

Of the 145 people who cast a vote, 62 percent (90 votes) said yes, there should be a dress code. The no vote had 55 votes (38 percent).

Some noted they voted yes because they see something small being helpful, others thought there should be some bigger parts to the rule.

Let’s see what others said.

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Poll 42: Dress codes

January 14, 2013 / P.J. / 11 Comments

Oh disc golfers — with our interesting choice of clothing and such.

I am sure most of us have seen some outlandish and interesting choices of clothes people wear playing this fine sport. Whether loud and crazy tee shirts to basketball shorts or whatever else, it can be quite the mix.

You’ll even see these sort of things at tournaments.

Is this an acceptable sort of thing as the sport continues to grow and moves forward?

We’ll get to the question and thoughts down below. But let’s first look at last week’s poll and comments.

We wanted to know last week if it mattered to you if so many professionals jumped to Prodigy.

The overwhelming response was no, which garnered 114 of 176 votes for a whopping 65 percent. Of the voters, 62 (35 percent) said yes.

That seems to speak volumes. Let’s see what some people said in the comments.

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Poll 41: Prodigy Disc Golf

January 7, 2013 / P.J. / Leave a comment

As many of you know, we don’t do a lot of coverage when it comes to the professional tour.

There’s a reason for that, too. By looking at the numbers over the course of the year, the page views are noticeably higher when we’re not talking about the professional tour. This year, however, we are planning to do a bit more — such as previews and wraps of major tournaments. After all, if we’re going to continue to grow, we need to cover all angles.

Still, the reality is professional disc golfers — especially touring professionals — do not make up the majority of the disc golf population. In feedback we’ve received, people enjoy the in-depth stories, first-person accounts and instructional stuff. We like to be goofy at times and serious when we need to.

Alas, this whole Prodigy Disc Golf things is being talked about in the world of disc golf. So we’re curious what you all thing.

Before you vote, make sure you read what we mean by the way this question is being phrased. More on that below.

First, let’s check back on last week’s poll, when we asked you about your goals for the upcoming year.

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Poll 40: Looking to 2013

December 31, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

Happy New Year’s, everybody!

Before we begin here, I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas (or whatever holiday you may celebrate!) and I hope you all prosper in the New Year. Be safe out there tonight!

We’re back from our break starting today. And, if you’ll remember from the one post, we’re going to be a little more laid-back for the new year. That means though we’ll strive to keep our Monday to Friday schedule, we might miss a day here and there because we want to make sure Rattling Chains continues and is sustainable.

Hopefully, in the long run, it will make us better. My goal for 2013 is to make this blog even better than our first year.

How about you guys?

What will 2013 bring? We’ll get to that more in a second. First, let’s see what some readers said about 2013. Our last poll asked what you best disc golf memory of 2012 was. We only got 113 votes for this poll, but of those, the winning selection was “other” with 27 votes (24 percent).

Second place went to playing in your first tournament with 20 votes (18 percent), followed by improving certain aspects of your game (17 votes/15 percent), reaching a big goal (16 votes/14 percent), a new course or two you played (15 votes/13 percent), winning a tournament (10 votes/9 percent) and learning how to do something new (8 votes/7 percent).

It seems like it was quite varied when it came to people’s thoughts about 2012, so let’s see what some readers had to say.

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Poll 39: Looking back at 2012

December 17, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

In a few weeks, we’ll turn the page on 2012.

So why not now to look back at the year in regard to disc golf. This week’s poll will be covering your best disc golf memory from the year.

Maybe it’s that tournament win. Or figuring something out about a new technique.

It could be something such as hitting a 50-foot putt.

With a year full of disc golf memories, will you be able to pick out that one moment — that perfect event — to be your best disc golf memory of 2012?

We’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s go back to last week’s poll and check in to see what some of you had to say about the oldest disc in your bag.

We had 149 people respond to this poll. The overwhelming majority selected a disc that is 2-5 years old (63 votes/42 percent). The second choice was 6-10 years (37 votes/25 percent), with a year or less coming in third (20 votes/13 percent). Then the older discs started popping up as 11-15 years old placed fourth (17 votes/11 percent), followed by 16-25 years old (9 votes/6 percent) and more than 25 years old (3 votes/3 percent).

That’s quite the range. I know I’d like to see those 25-year-old discs and what kind of shape they are in!

Let’s see what some of the readers had to say.

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Poll 38: What’s the oldest piece of plastic you carry?

December 10, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

OK, old timers (and newer players), it’s time to figure out some ages.

Now I realize some of you players will go and buy an older disc because of its plastic or whatever, but that’s not necessarily what we’re seeking here.

One of the Rattling Chains folks sent me an idea for this poll and I really liked it. I’m not too sure if this is exactly how he saw it, but the more I thought about it… well, the more I got curious about the way we’ll be doing this poll.

But more on that in a moment.

Let’s check back for last week’s poll first.

We wanted to know how long you’ve been playing this fine game of disc golf. We had 189 responses for this poll.

The winning choice was 3-5 years, which received 38 votes (20 percent). You’ll notice it’s not a crazy majority here as the votes were extremely spread out.

A year or less took second (36 votes/19 percent), followed by 1-2 years (34 votes (18 percent), 6-10 years and 11-20 (25 votes/13 percent each), 21-30 years (18 votes/10 percent) and more than 30 years (13 votes/seven percent).

That’s quite a spread-out set of data, which is good. It’s nice knowing people of all experience have stopped by here!

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Poll 37: For the longest time…

December 3, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

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.

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Poll 36: The content at Rattling Chains

November 26, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

As noted last week, we are doing a two-week set of polls covering our site. It’s mainly to use as a tool to try and improve what we are already doing.

It’s also to help us understand our readers a bit.

The reality is, blogs aren’t always successful. You can’t base everything on the amount of visits or hits you get. You have to base it on your readers. Many blogs have people who visit once and never come back. Some blogs get massive hits, but the content isn’t great.

We aim to have a solid following and to them, we strive to give the best possible content. In many facets, the content on Rattling Chains isn’t available anywhere else based on what our writers go through to give you these things.

Before diving back into that, let’s check out last week’s poll about visiting the site.

Though we hoped for more voters, this kind of proved the point originally thought — the readers we do have seem to be loyal. And, in turn, we hope to be loyal to you.

Of the 76 people who voted last week, 49 percent (37 votes) said you visit the site daily (whenever a story is posted). Second place, understandably so, with 17 percent (13 votes) was when you see something that interests you.

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Poll 35: Visiting Rattling Chains

November 19, 2012 / P.J. / Leave a comment

By P.J. Harmer — Rattling Chains staff

This week’s poll will help us, somewhat, shape the direction we plan on going with Rattling Chains.

Though we have a great group of writers, the reality is none of us get paid to do the work on this site. Therefore, when real life gets in the way, sometimes the content takes a hit.

When that happens, sometimes the load comes down on one or more of us and it becomes a burden.

But that’s neither here nor there.

All of us who write for this site enjoy the aspects we bring to readers — a journalistic way to look at the sport we love. I still believe we offer content not available in most other places, such as our in-depth pieces. Our interviews are not in a Q&A format, rather crafted in the form of an article in the format many traditional publications would use.

To do so is a time-consuming situation. We research. We interview. We write. We edit. We format.

Over the past few months, I’ve watched our site statistics. I’ve seen the type of stories that seem to get the hits and I’ve seen the ones that don’t work as well. I know what days the bigger hits will come and I know where hits come from on certain days etc.

Still, as we shape the site and we push forward, we need to know how to shape the site. For the next two weeks — today and next Monday — I’ll be doing polls that are based on the site and the reading tendencies of our visitors. In the end, we hope to continually make the site better moving forward.

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