Steel Balls

5. Membership is free and is intended to stay that way. There aren’t too many places on the internet (or anywhere else for that matter) where you can pursue your interests without having advertisements forced into your face at every turn or someone dipping into your pocket. It’s nice to have a no-marketing zone, since we surely get our fill during actual football games.

4. We don’t censor our members. The site is administered, not moderated. We treat each other like adults, meaning we understand that this is all in good fun. As long as we behave in a manner consistent with the basic rules of the site, we can express ourselves freely. We have a private posting mechanism for content that “pushes the envelope”. There are two basic levels of membership – subscribers and authors. Authors are able to post original content. Currently we have about 20 different authors and really anyone interested in participating at that level only has to ask. What other Steelers site has such an open policy?

3. This site is about the members, not about fulfilling the ego of the site owner or pushing the agenda of a media organization, any corporations, or even the Steelers themselves. Everyone is treated equally. In fact, you don’t need to be a member at all in order to participate in the chat (although membership is strongly encouraged). Our members are not Pittsburgh-centric, and in fact very few members reside in Pittsburgh. As shown in the SB Nation map, we have members all across the United States and even at least one active member in the UK. Furthermore, our members are some of the most intelligent and knowledgeable fans that you will find. Members often disagree with one another, but their reasoning is clearly stated. Our members tend to be a little bit older and a little bit wiser than what you might encounter in the Dawg Pound.

2. The Sound Off chat is the central purpose of the site, for casual interactive discussion among members rather than just articles by one or two restricted authors. No other Steelers site, so far as I know, features an open chat forum. They all have post and comment sections, and that’s great and appreciated, but the unique nature of interactive chat can only be found here. That is our raison d’etre – once the Post Gazette decided to kill off the PG+ chat forum, there was nowhere to go until we formed this site.

1. Steel Balls is a very convenient clearinghouse for Steelers information.  So far as I’ve seen, no other site provides live feeds consolidating current news from various Steelers sources, including the Steelers official feed, the Post Gazette feed, and the great blog Steelers Depot, among others. Other sites provide a list of links to other sites, but not the live feed. This makes it easy to keep up with the latest posts on various sites without having to go to those sites first. The “Other Interesting Places” section can then focus on non-blog information sources that are very useful for analysis and discussion, like Pro Football Reference and the NFL Arrests Database. That way, you don’t have to clog up your browser with a bunch of bookmarks, and this list can continue to evolve as new sources emerge without everyone having to keep their own bookmark list. People may also find the various “Tweets of Steel” interesting, as well as the archive of Post Gazette chat sessions with Ed Bouchette, Gerry Dulac, and Ray Fittipaldo. Furthermore, our members keep coming up with new things to add, such as the recently added Steelers Nation Radio. In short, we’re trying to be a one stop source for all of the various Steelers related news and information sites.

Bonus reason: I like seeing those six steel balls at the top of the page every day, and hope to see a seventh added soon.

So what do you think? Why do you like this site? What is missing that you’d like to see?

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