Fremantle Dockers on Yahoo!Groups
This post is part of a series looking at the AFL fandom on Yahoo!Groups. It focuses on providing general historical information about these groups: When they were founded and activity levels. For a critique of the problems on Yahoo!Groups in getting demographic information, read Sydney Swans on Yahoo!Groups and The AFL on Yahoo!Groups.
This post is about the Yahoo!Group’s Freemantle Dockers community.The Fremantle Dockers directory on Yahoo!Groups has five mailing lists. Of these, four are actually about the AFL team and one is generally dedicated to the AFL. The four lists are docker_1995, fremantledockersinternetclub, Fremantle_Dockers, and grazzasfremantledockersclub. The first was created in February 2008 and as three members. There has been no legitimate content posted to it. The second two were both founded in 2000. fremantledockersinternetclub has 17 members and legitimate content appears to have ended after May 2006. Fremantle_Dockers has 66 members. Legitimate content ended after January 2005. grazzasfremantledockersclub was founded in December 1999 and has 23 members. Legitimate content ended after April 2002.
I added real posting from the lists together and created the following chart:
This community just is not as active as the Sydney Swans or Western Bulldogs. The peak for the Bulldogs was at about 24 and the peak for the Swans was 49. What is interesting is that the peaks differ, with a 2003 peak for the Dockers compared to a 2001 and 2008 peak for the Bulldogs and a 2005 and 2006 peak for the Swans. According to Wikipedia, 2003 was a great year for the Dockers as they finished 5th and made it to the finals. While they finished 3rd and made it to the finals in 2006, there was no similar bump. For this team, there have to be other factors at play to explain the overall low posting volume and the total posting drop off since late 2006.