Larry Levy:  A Spielfrieks Membership Drive

I’m here to ask you to help a worthy cause.  I don’t want your money or your time.  I just need your electronic presence.  The Spielfrieks user group wants you!

I’m sure many of you have heard of Spielfrieks.  After the pre-eminent gaming user group of the nineties, rec.games.board, collapsed under the weight of its own interminable flame wars, there was a vacuum that needed to be filled.  Many flocked to the then new BoardGameGeek.  Others concentrated their efforts on invitation only user groups.  But a hardy few decided to start a public user group on Yahoo, one that would be open to any who wished to join.  They called it Spielfrieks and it opened shop soon after New Years Day, 2000.

It was an immediate success.  The number of members soon soared past 1000 and thousands of messages were posted each month.  Then came the fateful day when one of the administrators accidentally changed the status of the group from public to “by invitation only”.  Unfortunately, Yahoo does not allow this decision to be reversed (don’t get me started...).  As a result, the number of new members over the past couple of years has dropped dramatically, since people who encounter the group cannot easily join.  This absence of new blood has led to lower message counts and less interesting discussion than was commonplace during the group’s heyday.

But all is not lost!  Joining Spielfrieks is easy if you know the secret!  All that’s necessary is to send an email to spielfrieks-owner@yahoogroups.com with the title “subscribe please”.  A moderator will respond and before you can say “Zooloretto”, you’ll be in.

Why should you bother?  Well, even with the lower message count, Spielfrieks is still one of the most interesting gaming user groups around.  There’s a wide variety of members from all over the world (even though the group is strictly English language) and their perspective is always valuable.  Discussions are almost always civil and flame wars are extremely rare.  The Geek is nice, but its threads are easily swallowed in the vast amount of text pumped out every day.  Spielfrieks is more focused and more incisive and I find the signal to noise ratio much higher than at the Geek.  Besides, you get to vote for the Meeples Choice Awards every year!  What more could you ask for from just a simple email?

The group’s lowered traffic was a subject for discussion recently and several members pledged to publicize the membership procedure.  So this is me using this forum to spread the good word.  I think if the group can be returned to a more public status it will once again rise to its earlier heights.  So come join us for lively discussion and (mostly) informed opinions at the Spielfrieks user group!

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