About Arena

West Ham Arena is an independent content hub for West Ham United supporters. We link to original publishers and show short excerpts. We are not affiliated with West Ham United.

How popularity works

News ranks using unique daily Arena reads and members’ saves, with a boost for freshness. A saved story carries more weight than a click. Repeated clicks by the same signed-in member or browser session on the same day count once.

YouTube videos are ordered by recency; we do not collect YouTube views, likes or comments. Social posts rank using public platform metrics and their growth between imports. Views, likes, comments and shares contribute where available. Arena clicks never boost video or social popularity. Older items and stale metrics lose weight. This is our estimate of momentum, not an official platform trending chart; platforms expose different metrics.

The first import has no growth history, so ranking initially uses cumulative engagement. The Latest option always sorts by publication time. Shorts are identified conservatively by duration and explicit Shorts tags; some Shorts may remain in the wider video feed.

One story, different perspectives

Related news published within three days can appear as one story, with alternative publisher links under “Also reported by”. In Popular, the highest-ranking visible article leads; in Latest, the newest matching article leads. Source preferences also apply to alternative coverage. Search selects a matching article, and your saved feed selects an article you saved.

Grouping uses headline and excerpt similarity, names and topic clues. It is an estimate: some differently worded reports may remain separate. Grouping does not mean a report is confirmed or that publishers agree.

Your feed, your choice

Hide any publisher in My sources. That preference applies to all feed categories, search and your saved list. New publishers are visible by default. Saving content does not override a hidden-source preference.

Arena reactions

Sign in to like or dislike content. Select your vote again to remove it, or choose the other reaction to change it. The counts beside the thumbs-up and thumbs-down icons come from members here, separate from publisher metrics. Votes belong to individual articles, including the lead article in a grouped story. They do not change feed ranking.

Conversation

News articles and videos have their own comment pages. Members can post, reply and remove their own comments; administrators can remove comments too. Counts include replies and exclude removed comments. These conversations belong to individual articles, including alternative coverage, and do not affect ranking.

Administrators set the discussion topics. Members can reply, respond to another member and upvote a topic. Keep the conversation respectful. You can remove your comments; administrators can moderate comments, pin topics and close discussions.

Polls

Administrators publish polls with a fixed set of answer choices. Sign in and select an answer to vote instantly; results appear after you vote. You can change your choice while voting is open. Polls may stand alone or appear alongside a discussion, and you will also find them throughout the main feed.

Once a deadline passes or an administrator closes a poll, everyone can see the final results and voting stops. Deadlines are displayed in Europe/London time. Closing a discussion and closing its poll are separate actions.

Privacy in this prototype

We store your email address, public display name, securely hashed password, source preferences, saves, votes, comments and connected social provider identifiers. Your appearance preference is stored locally in your browser. If you choose Google or Apple sign-in, that provider authenticates you and shares an account identifier and, where available, a verified email and display name. We do not store provider access or refresh tokens. Apple callbacks use a single-use server-side handoff that expires after 60 seconds. A necessary session cookie keeps you signed in and supports form security. Click tracking stores a daily keyed hash of your account or browser session, not your raw session identifier. IP addresses are used for sign-in and registration rate limits.

Publisher thumbnails load directly from the publisher or image host, which receives your IP address. We do not send a page referrer with those image requests. Missing images use a local fallback. News links open on the original publisher’s site, where their privacy policy applies. Video pages embed YouTube using youtube-nocookie.com. Loading the player connects to YouTube and shares your IP address and the Arena site origin; playback is governed by YouTube’s policies. You can also open the video on the source site. This prototype does not include advertising trackers, email verification for password accounts, password recovery or self-service account deletion. Before a public launch, the operator must provide a privacy contact and account-management procedures.