As I was trying to tell you, but you were far too interested in shutting down any criticism rather than listening to what happens in reality - the first two weeks are key for ePetitions.
Just look at the Nurse campaign. 55k in about 3 day. In the following weeks it is just shy of 60k. ePetitions are a viral medium. Some of the KCIC said quite clearly they were going to sit back on their "success". You cannot do that with a viral campaign. Because once interest wanes that's it game over!
No point handing out leaflets at games, because leaflets tend to get ignored, so only a tiny amount will actually be actioned on, and likely those that go have already signed!
But even if they haven't, best case there are 7k away fans. You need a simple website address to link to - is that up and running yet? All very well saying its dead easy to do, yet it hasn't been done yet has it! Again was a website even considered necessary before this was started?
By the looks of it, no offence to Michael (these things are highly complicate), but I suspect the weeks of planning focused on the words of the ePetition. No thought was given to the actual campaign - it cannot have been. had you done ant kind of research, you would have seen there are massive problems with ePetitions.
Yesterday was a watershed. Have you completed the forums? you guys were crowing over 1k/day/ The CET old fashioned poll was getting 4x that! Quite frankly with national media support, 3 front page mentions, Blanket covcerage of forums, fans groups support, you stillafter nearly 3 weeks not achieved even the numbers of the CET poll!
Still think you don't need advertising? So I ask you once again, are you confident enough in maintaining 1000 signatures per day for 100 days? Saturday was around 200, and you had a shout on talk sport!
Going ahead how much are you prepared to spend on this? Both in time and money? When you carry out petitions, you are relying on spur of the moment decisions. With this, they are making a concerted effort to sign. You have to go out of your way to log into your website, follow the link, sign their details, and confirm receipt of email. The harder you make it to sign the less likely you are to actually sign.
Are you sure this campaign is worth spending money over? Even if you get to parliament, there is no guarantee of the inquiry - even if there were, there is no guarantee it will change anything!
I'm sure someone will once again try and shout me down, but surely now everyone can see how incredibly risky relying on an ePetition is. No one who campaigns regularly to parliament uses these things. There are just far too many hurdles to get over.
But again all those attacking me for daring to reveal actual real world experience of these things have far more experience of successfully getting stuff done than me !
I asked you to convince me this is a good idea. Not only have you failed to do so after several days, you didn't even try!
If you don't want to try and convince me fine, you lose one signature. But if you failed to convince me after several days, how do you expect to win over 15 or so hard nosed vote chasing MPs? How do you expect to win over the people on the street when you have 30 seconds to do so?
This campaign was doomed even before you pressed submit, because you are thinking you are trying to win over fellow fans, you think having a pint sorts this out. It is naive - whether you like it or not!
I shall leave you to your self congratulation. You think this has been successful so far - it hasn't. You ask for a well dones. That's what my toddlers ask for.
You seem to think all coventry fans have a moral duty to sign this because you think this! Clearly the vast majority of coventry and indeed the footballing community absolutely disagree with you!
Good luck wasting money on this lame duck!
