There is only one obvious place where the SHL Hall of Fame should be enshrined and that is digitally. For a site where so much of everyone’s time is spent online, whether through PTs on the site, browsing through the forums, communicating with each other whether through older chat based apps or discord these days, the entirety of the SHL exists on the internet and it would make sense that the Hall of Fame would continue that trend as well.


The primary reason is the accessibility aspect of it: for a site that, while Western/North American biased like most things offered in English, and having a large predominant North American user base (no real stats just guessing by anecdotal experience) it would be remiss to have the Hall of Fame hidden away from our other international users, many of which who have contributed significant portions to the site and are in or will be in the Hall of Fame themselves. Now while I do say that the Hall of Fame should remain digital, that does not mean that it should simply be a manner of record keeping akin to what Luke does with the history of trades, a list of names and picks, some stats that are holed away somewhere on the site for when somebody wants to find specific info. There could and probably should be an entertainment aspect to it.

This may be going above and beyond but why not; I think it would be incredibly interesting if it were possibly to design a virtual Hall of Fame that could be experienced through VR. While the technology still hasn’t quite hit the mainstream levels the same way that smartphones do in being a regular product that majority of the average person owns even in different socio economic circles, that would be my ideal in terms of having an online source but also combining with the ability to create a presentation and have an event out of visiting the digital Hall of Fame. It would include pieces of lore history from sim results, board messages and links to the greatest threads. Ideally it’d also have maybe a worst of section since we all know everybody enjoys their dirt even if technically it might not be something that the head office of such an organization would necessarily want to celebrate. Still, with it being part of league history and potentially pivotal moments in the site’s history, it would still be worth considering adding.

I struggle with the idea of making this digital version more exclusive or fancier through tactics including FOMO since the original basis of my idea was for the sake of accessibility for all users. Technically VR would make it inaccessible in some ways but more so certain experiences but the general Hall of Fame should otherwise be presentable in a regular internet based environment. How that is entailed exactly, I don’t have the creativity to say. Is it simply just another forum on the site? That would seem a tad boring but at the very least it’s tied to the site still in some way. I think live/recorded presentations of inductions could be something to be included in all forms of the digital Hall of Fame.

In the most unique version of all this, there would be two things: Either we have live events every x amount of years that tours around the world (who’s going to pay for it, don’t worry about it), hosting an SHL event in various major cities for the Hall of Fame as a get together for site users everywhere. It would certainly be one excuse for folks to be able to travel and meet IRL as so many internet relationships seem to result in happening. One event would be in Hamilton, another one could be somewhere like maybe Stockholm. Live streamed with hosts and events and interviews, man it would be quite a crazy idea.

The less insane but equally inane idea is that the entirety of the SHL Hall of Fame in a digital version is entirely hidden on a USB thumb drive passed from one user to the next. As the next person carries the Hall of Fame, they become designated to add the newest collection of inductees into the file. Maybe it should be a portable hard drive instead since it’ll be less difficult to lose it. Sure there’s absolutely no reason to do things this way, but it would be a neat cult like idea that keeps the SHL HoF as secret from the general public as possible, a far cry from the original idea promoting strictly accessibility. Instead with this, the known carrier would have a great deal of responsibility and importance placed upon during their period of holding the HoF on their person. Or at least, until they transfer it to another SHL user. Nobody wanting to be burdened with this would want to move on quickly to another lest they feel the community’s staring eyes. That and hopefully they just don’t decide to ghost the site and chuck the data away because it’s all too bothersome to even worry about.