Evertonia's raison d'être

With the redesign and change in platform at ToffeeWeb and the associated influx of posters who are either new to Evertonia or wanting to try it out again, I thought it would be worth me outlining what this site is — and, perhaps, more importantly — isn't.

The intent behind this site was to create an online "magazine" (a very loose term) devoted to Everton, with less emphasis on daily news, a much bigger focus on the dying medium of long-form and in-depth articles, and the fostering of measured, friendly debate about the club and the team. Getting like-minded writers on board has been a challenge but we crack on!

Evertonia is not ToffeeWeb; it was never intended as such. You won't get all the up-to-date news here or even a place to discuss the latest goings on at EFC if there isn't an article dedicated to a particular story or event. It's worth noting, therefore that, at its core and if you look past the betting ads, TW is still largely what it has been since the introduction of the ability for readers to add comments to articles about 20 years ago — a news and information resource with a wide-ranging discussion forum.

The idea here at Evertonia, meanwhile, is very much centred on discussion and debate about the football as opposed to more general chat, banter and political arguments between readers. The recent introduction of the UK’s Online Safety Act and the onus it puts on publishers just makes this an all the more sensible approach.

The community here has been small thus far — I am enormously grateful, by the way, to those who have come on board to write for the site and engage in discussion in the kind of fashion that we all wish was still de rigueur on all websites and platforms — which has made that an easy concept to grasp but if numbers grow then the need to actively moderate the discussion areas will also increase.

I know that there are those who prefer an open and free-ranging forum where threads can meander to all manner of topics and posts aren't moderated but that was never the intent here (apart from posts that are inherently not football-related, like this one, obviously!) There are, of course, other Everton-related sites where you have greater license in the comment sections, ToffeeWeb and Grand Old Team chief among them, but here I will be trying to keep things as on-topic as possible.

That does mean that comments might be removed (or consolidated if there are too many posts by the same person) and I'd appreciate your understanding that there will be nothing personal in the decision. The reader's experience is my paramount concern.

With all that said, I thank you for your support of both this endeavour and the Evertonia Podcast and your efforts in helping me fulfil the mission of the site. UTFT 💙