Why is this site not popular ?

I just looked at Ohio, Michigan, Indiana. Three matches listed ? One in Ohio, none in Michigan and a couple in Indiana.
Its no wonder this hobby/ sport does not grow.

I have found this website to be one of the easiest ways of spreading and finding information about matches. Hopefully more people will recognize this and use it.

can't tell you why it's not there, but, the Michigan State shoot is the weekend of Sept 9-10 in Ionia, Michigan

Michigan State Shoot  Sept 9th-10th (Sat-Sun) shooting starts at 9:30.

i added a few matches earlier in the year. A shooter may need to add to it the page for the match director to ease their workload. 

If you're on the east coast http://www.njpistol.com/  has a very nice calendar as well as online registration,  also http://www.bullseyematches.com/ has a good list of matches for the east side.

The site is new. People in each state need to chip in, and add matches that they become aware of.

Rob Kovach wrote:The site is new.  People in each state need to chip in, and add matches that they become aware of.

Agree, but it will soon become old and stale. Is it the local ranges feel they do not need to advertise ?
Me being a noob, it has been frustrating trying to find dates and places to shoot ?
Kind of like Skid up a couple of posts. Michigan State shoot ????? No info at all if you don't live around the corner ?
It is the 21st century after all.
Done ranting now........ carry on.  

PROGRAM.

Another place to check is here:
https://www.ssusa.org/coming-events/

When match directors turn in their info to the NRA, the matches magically appear on this page after about 2 or 3 months.

rreid wrote:Another place to check is here:

When match directors turn in their info to the NRA, the matches magically appear on this page after about 2 or 3 months.

Well, that would ease things up. 

The owners of pistolmatches.com need to get a web scrape utility to mine the data from this site and others.

Wobbley wrote:The owners of pistolmatches.com need to get a web scrape utility to mine the data from this site and others.

The owners funds and maintain the page free of charge to us and on his own time. Contact him if you want to take over the page?

Would it help if members attending matches printed up the site's name and the WWW. addy on small pieces of paper and then distributed them to others shooting or attending the matches that are not members?

Another possibility of increasing the membership and match awareness of this site could be to get several members together and buy some business cards with the site name and WWW. addy?

Gary Wells wrote:Would it help if members attending matches printed up the site's name and the ww. addy on small pieces of paper and then distributed them to others shooting or attending the matches that are not members?

Another possibility of increasing the membership and match awareness of this site could be to get several members together and buy some business cards with the site name and ww. addy?

This is just a suggestion, of course. 

Well, yes, I should have denoted that in the beginning. I would think that the forum owner might be interested enough to supply the business cards or the $$ for them. Then ship them to some of the members that attend the matches. And I would be more than happy to undertake the passing out of the cards but I do not attend the matches as I am under daily visits of nurses to tend to an open wound that I have on my foot due to losing three toes and a major part of my foot last year. I do support this site by posting up info that I see on this site on other sites or at least make reference to this site.

It's not popular for the same reason so many decent ideas aren't popular.
Besides the expense and effort required to advertise and promote the site, getting diverse organisations to cooperate is much like herding cats. Particularly when there's a mix of politically or economically self-interested groups and overworked volunteer organisations.
In every activity and volunteer based groups I've been in I've lamented the absence of regional/national involvement in helping local groups setup and maintain websites, distribute communication, keep member rosters, create and maintain calendars.
And most importantly of all...
For the best interest of the activity COOPERATE OPENLY!
All of the national and regional organisations should cooperate and share information in databases with a common interchange structure.
If they did, other organisations or individuals could promote or include the information from numerous sources.

For example of what I think is a horrendously dysfunctional way to communicate, WTH is the following not available and displayed through a searchable database that can be filtered by event type, date range, and location/distance?
Display by map, by list, by ...
PistolMatches.com needs to convince them and other organisations like them to provide their data on a regular basis or in a way they can access it.
Perhaps a backdoor/surreptitious way to do it would be to offer services to each individual organisation to create the webpage/database model for their individual web page and then offer the opportunity to share with others later.
An easy example of "WTH guys? COOPERATE!" would be the FQT, the SFC, the CSSA, and the NFA.
Yes, there is some overlap and competition between the organisations, but think they could merge the FQT's amazing range finder map and listed ranges (FQT) with the SFC's plain list of clubs (SFC) and the other provincial and discipline specific organisations that have club lists online?
Maybe some cross border cooperation too? There's a great industry database of ranges, with a horrible (tedious? blocked from work, so I'm commenting on past experience) interface, from the NSSF in the USA (NSSF where to Shoot).
Each organisation could show their members highlighted while still showing others.
Guess this is a "big data"/"data should be free and shared" kind of rant.

Another backdoor way to build a resource to greatness, contact clubs directly to provide an insert-able, searchable, events calendar and listing on their website.
For example, offer something easier to use or more shooting specific and offer it to clubs who use the Google calendar approach:
http://www.torontorevolverclub.com/mplcalendar.html
And approach clubs that have manually updated lists or pages:
http://psah.org/
Grab the club listing of a shooting organisation (both of the above were the first and second club I randomly chose at https://cssa-cila.org/clubs/ ) and offer the plug-in and services to each club in turn.
Each club, run by volunteers wants to do what's best for their resources and members, if you make that easy and increased visibility is a free bonus there might be more chance of clubs joining the application/service. But if the service is "yet something else" for the club secretary to remember, growth of a shared forum/app/service will be slow and painful.

What gets me really mad is that national organisations aren't leading this effort or supporting an open-source effort within their community.

Slartybartfast wrote:What gets me really mad is that national organisations aren't leading this effort or supporting an open-source effort within their community.

Yes, and this is just sad. Just imagine if the sufficient support was given.

Edit to my posts:
The NSSF range database, which long ago I accessed through wheretoshoot.org, is now map based (and accessible through my workplace filters) at:
https://www.nssf.org/shooting/where-to-shoot/

Well it seems obvious that the NRA is a little disoriented. Anybody remember the Shooting Sports magazine that competitors got, (and you got to have your picture in if you were good)? For the creepy prize scenario that BE shooters have to deal with (points etc.) You would think that a separate web mailing with match schedules for all and or specific disciplines would be emailed to classified shooters. It is their matches, we do pay for them and generally volunteer all the work. If they don't step it up a little they are going to send BEye the way of the Scheutzen match. It was as popular as modern baseball is. Granted we are in strange times, but I wish the bottom line wasn't the only thing dictating how our sport is going. We are a loyal faction of the shooting sports. Sure would be nice if we were treated that way. Let em know. I plan to.

Keithcrc wrote:Well it seems obvious that the NRA is a little disoriented. Anybody remember the Shooting Sports magazine that competitors got, (and you got to have your picture in if you were good)? For the creepy prize scenario that BE shooters have to deal with (points etc.) You would think that a separate web mailing with match schedules for all and or specific disciplines would be emailed to classified shooters. It is their matches, we do pay for them and generally volunteer all the work. If they don't step it up a little they are going to send BEye the way of the Scheutzen match. It was as popular as modern baseball is. Granted we are in strange times, but I wish the bottom line wasn't the only thing dictating how our sport is going. We are a loyal faction of the shooting sports. Sure would be nice if we were treated that way. Let em know. I plan to.

https://www.ssusa.org/

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nra/ssusa_201711/

https://www.ssusa.org/coming-events/

I took some time with the help of my daughter a few weeks back and got most of the Northern Ohio indoor stuff entered on the Pistolmatches.com site.

I think the run-and-gun folks attract many more people due to its "sensational" appearance.  I imagine bullseye shooting and its competition is a yawn for most shooters.  I'll bet if the bullseye targets were similar to the human body there would be more interest.  My comment is not meant to demean the "other" pistol shooting sports as they are just as serious as bullseye shooters.

I just finished updating 2018 ( with the help of my Daughter ). If anyone is doing recurring monthly matches each month needs its own date and info page.

http://pistolmatches.com/

Enjoy, see you at a match
Ron