[kq76]

Some comments on impressions:

1) Incorrect Spelling (or Grammar) - Call me anal, but it annoys me immensely. Not only does it bother me that I have to take extra time to try to decipher the post, but it leads me to believe a number of negative things about the poster, be they true or not. If someone misspells the odd word or netspells (e.g. ppl, tho, abbreviations like that), I have no problem with that. I probably won't even notice it, and like someone said, everyone does it, including me. However, when someone misspells every tenth word or so, that is showing me that either they haven't gone past grade 7 and won't intellectually stimulate me, or they don't care much about how long I must take to read their post, so why should I do them the service of reading and replying?

2) Nicks - For the most part I could care less. Some offend me, like ones that seem to praise hate or violence, but those are rare. (Nirvana btw, was the first band that really got me into music and I still think they were amazing. I do wonder the age and knowledge of those who advertise Nirvana, but it takes time to know how genuine a person really is.)

3) Avatars - Some I find annoying like cartoons of questionable taste and models or scantilly clad women. Again, it leads me to believe or at least question things about the person, but I know I shouldn't prejudge and I try to keep that in mind. But hey, I'm anal and I know that.

4) Extensive Rules/TOS - Turns me off big time at first, but once I'm in the community, I love them (even though I might fight tooth and nail to change them).

5) Trying to get participation - You need to market and sell your league and by the looks of it, very few commissioners do a decent job of that. You certainly don't want to come off as begging people to join or otherwise make it look like no one else wants your product, so why should they.

Someone made a great point earlier, the best sellers of your league are probably other participants (owners, vultures, whoever). They already participate and if they are expending their energy praising your product (again, without coming off as begging others to join), then that's probably a good league to join. But to get owners to praise the league, you need to make it better for them. Don't know how to make your league better? Periodically ask for feedback.

Website appearance, though I'm loathe to say it, is very important too. If your website doesn't look very professional then that naturally leads people to believe that other characteristics of your league are not very professional either. I understand that this is prejudging, but I (and I'm sure most people) consider their time very valuable and that there are an infinite number of ways in which I can spend my finite time. So if something does not look promising to start off with, it's like a woman, she's most likely not worth your time, jump ship and move on to better prospects.

Actually, this precious value of time can be applied to appearance of everything, your nick, your avatar, what you say and how you say it in your posts, your league website, everything. And if you don't want to accept that you have to have a good appearance (ootp or whatever) to be successful, well then I bet you that you won't be as successful as you want to be (kudos to you if you are though). But that's just life.

P.S. I recently joined Cooley's start-up UBL and the things that sold me on it were: 1) the uniqueness of merging mlb, the negro leagues and pcl, 2) the response from others / Cooley's reputation, 3) the appearance of Cooley's other leagues, and 4) Cooley's appearance. The only other league I had really been interested in was the CBL, but I'm Canadian and it seemed to be the best Canadian league and it was always full when I looked.