It would be cool if more people checked out threads on unheard of artists. I mean between jackhammer and I we've flooded this site with hundreds of obscure/underground acts and 90% of the time it's basically just him and I checking eachother's stuff out which is disheartening.

I would put adidasss in this category too. He has recommended a good few bands as well.

Well as I have mentioned I do not take anything personally. My apologies to NSW for thinking it was off topic and being condescending. I have done nothing but defend on how new I am to this sort of thing. I would have been happy to post goofy whatevers with whoever but wasn't sure if that was the place for it so I just took a stand.

ANYWAY.....what do you guys think of the "Name That Tune" idea? I have no idea how tech stuff works so if thats asking to much sorry for the noobness. Or maybe even name that album. Dudes / Dudettes could scan album art and we could guess which one it is. I think it would be fun.

EDIT : I thought this was a thread for improving the site. Not for which threads users should read.

@ashtray you're welcome here.
Keep coming and we'll get to know you better.

As for the arcade, I really doubt that'll make a comeback.
It was shelved for extra bandwidth and even if Admin agreed to return it we wouldn't see it happen for ages anyway, cos they're busy with other projects at the moment.
So any improvement requests should steer away from any Admin involved changes.
At least for the time being.

In all seriousness the arcade was ridiculous. Definitely a waste of space. Time should be put towards improving forums or something more productive.

This is more of a question. But why is the Country and Foreign Music sections closed?
The more discussions about music the better...right?

It's not closed, it's been archived.
The current forum is here:http://www.musicbanter.com/country-folk-world-music/

You can shut off the old forums at the bottom of the main page by clicking on the small arrows on the right of the section.

I find it annoying that the same old threads/arguments are regurgitated ad nauseam. Doesnt anyone want to hear new music and debate that instead of discussing bands that get far too much exposure?

Well sign me up for a journal then, I'm good for an long-winded post a week.

Other wise...

The elitism is a big issue for me too. I can’t imagine what it’s like for new people to show up here and have to deal with a consolidated set of ideologies. We can’t change that though.

Short of bringing back old man Adidasss, I think we ought to start enforcing some higher standards. The grammar threads and the nazi’s that start them are cute but I don’t know, a certain number of characters to qualify for a thread to be created?

The problem there of course is that rare is the ten word OP that remains open. It’s the “yeah I really like this song” posts that drag a thread to an early grave.

the issue there is that we discuss initial reactions and rarely anything more.

Theres something to be said for a review thats been marinated in time. With new music we tend to run ourselves ragged trying to find, listen and review it, all the while ignoring the appreciation of it as it grows.

That new Arctic Monkey album would be a master piece, but three months down the road, its not so great.

Yeah what happened to Adidasss? I liked him, he was fruity. And commented on my Superabundance review.

I can't imagine there are many ways you could improve MB short of a total overhaul of the design - which would cost somebody, presumably.
You can't really control what people are going to want to talk about, but if you post a thread on some obscure (or not so obscure) music you can be 99% sure there'll be a reply.

well I just meant he was a mod and his enforcement of intelligence was more rigid.

His famous line was something like "sigh...boring spam deleted"

Start a thread when you're ready Big3 and I'll approve it.

Any more takers for a journal?...

adidasss is alive and kicking and you should post more reviews. If it hadn't been for you I wouldn't have given Superabundance a try and it's become one of my favorite albums of 2008...and I can't believe Poland just scored...:|

If we deleted the *ahem* less intelligent posts on here, we would surely be enforcing even more elitism by suggesting that many posters have less intelligence than the mods? One sentence posts from new posters are annoying as hell, but if we delete everything then those new posters are scared off straight away. This site can be as educational as it can be entertaining and deleting every post that does'nt always fit our criteria could be detrimental in the long run.

This segues into something else that I wanted to mention. Sometimes we all have to remember that most of us were all young once and generally musically naive. Many new members arrive and if their tastes are genre specific or commercially orientated, then we should encourage them instead of jumping on their backs straight away. I myself am guilty of this on occasion and it should be reminded that the lifeblood of any forum is new members. I have already heard a lot of new bands from these boards, so let's hope that we continue to promote unknown bands and be nice to fellow noobz.

Well I think this was the gist of the first part of my post.

boo boo tells me on a regular basis that i'm not allowed to say my favorite artists have more passion with absolutly zero logical reason as to why I cannot.

Boo Boo and I fight, its no big deal. And he is far from one of the worst violators, but actions like that have seeped down into some of the younger and newer users who turn around and utalize those same scare tactics on the brand new posters.

We continue to practice a policy of kowtowing to the lowest common denominator when in reality, a well crafted response to useless posts revive a thread much better than "thanks for the post" or "stop getting your opinions from Rolling Stone and the radio" ever could.

All of my grandparents bar one are Poles so I should probably be downstairs watching...
For any Americans reading Poland is the one next to Germany. In Europe. Eastside!

MB is music boffin bliss; once you've gotten used to Jackhammer's dirty PM's

This has definitely begun to be more prominent recently with certain members suddenly becoming a fountain of knowledge after being here a few months.

I agree with the sentiment, but I'll say I frequently check out those posts as well as Urban's and Coffee and really anyone who writes a review, most of the time I just don't post a response because I have nothing of merit to add.

I wonder if there are more people like me then you think.

I am th same way.

And most times i find a new obscure band, i do not bother posting anything about it because i know i will get maybe 1 or 2 responses at most. Usually none.

Then if i post a thread that says Seether!!! i get 500 responses within the minute.

My point being we should find a way to encourage posting in less often talked about threads.

Ways to Improve the site

1. Organization of Members: Starts with more detailed profiles linked to a journal that is automatically created when you reach X amount of posts. Have a page where users can see who has been posting most often recently and on which threads and be able to access their profile from there.

2. Tread Lightly: What the newer posters are saying is true; a lot of people get intimidated around here early on. Being a bit older it's easy to look past it, but there is no doubt it hurts the site's user retention.

The more people and the more diverse representation of opinions we have here the better the site.

3. Search old threads from time to time: Bump the ones you find interesting. Sometimes good threads get lost in the shuffle and new members have never even seen them. Don't rush to create a thread until you exhaust the topics of intrest already created.

Just curious as to what you mean in #1. I definitely agree with it, just not sure i am understanding it all the way.

Make it easier for people to have an idea who they are talking to and what that person's tastes are. Have a page where each member with X amount of posts has a journal thread that includes links to what other threads they've posted in recently as well as all their reviews, favorite threads and profile information.

If people wouldn't get so pissy about different opinions. They could argue an opinion instead of name-calling or taunting.

But that's been mentioned.

I think if you gave us more descriptive options, and maybe displayed our favorite genre under our avatars, people would understand/know eachother better.

And I hate how I can't see a thread in the "New Posts" menu once I've looked at it or posted in it.

Wow, those are actually great suggestions...

I'm just curious to how people would feel if we banned all the chain threads in this place. Such as the 'what song are you listening to now , what song do you have in your head , rate the avatar/sig/music taste of the person above you.

I don't feel they add anything to the place and are just a waste of time.

This isn't something that any mods or admin are considering at the moment , just my personal opinion. But if others feel the same way there's no reason it can't be discussed.

Tread lightly..Ashtray? ;)

If it's not music related, I agree, I guess.

Rate the music taste above you, or what are you listening to seem perfectly acceptable, though.

Apart from number two I meant...;)

The 'Rate the' threads are just games really, so there's no reason they should go because they're in the right place. In the case of the music taste on they also link to JayJamJah's previous idea of knowing about other tastes.
I don't see much point in the other 2 though.

Agreed. The avatar and sig threads are retarded...off with their heads!

He has an ex Soviet early 1950's cold war computer that fills an entire room.

Wrong thread much?

Oops. :o:

Probably caused by a quantum omnipresence of string particles resulting in a warping of space and time.
Apologies.

Either that or you forgot to refresh

I got a beef with the search.
I don't like the 4 letter rule when serching for bands or threads, what about bands like U2, or The The...They get the short end of the stick....I don't know, just a bit annoyig for me.

Just search for something U2 related (like Achtung) and you'll get relevant results. Don't search for Bono though, because MB is the primary source of Bono-hatred in the world and the sheer intensity of it might just blow you away. ;)

Seriously though, The 4 letter rule is indeed annoying.

I love this website, there really isn't much I would change, except for the parameters of the search option. I know it's been said already, but it really is a pain in the arse. I think a better search option would minimize the number of duplicate threads as well, since sometimes you just can't find an existing thread no matter what you type in (at least I've experienced this). Please don't ask for examples because I can't remember what happened 5 minutes ago, much less a week, month, or whatever.

@ ashtray...sorry if I offended. I was just joking around.
@ Urban...thanks for sticking up for me.

No problems. I was the **** to begin with you were just joking. I just want to have fun like anyone else :tramp:

I think you've pretty much nailed this n00b issue Jackhammer, Spot On,,,as you lot would say. I am new to this site myself, I've only been a member for a couple of weeks and I can sympathize with how new members are reticent to post their opinions only to be shot down in flames as soon as they put one up. I don't think the problem is Elitism amongst Mods/Veterans, it's just that you have all been "Bantering" for so long you're like a family at the dinner table, you say and do things with each other that you don't even think about anymore and yet to a new visitor it's hard to know when you say something how it will be received or dismissed out of hand, so many just say little or nothing at all.

"One sentence posts are irritating, but we don't want to scare off new members...", I have lost count of how many short meaningless posts are in here, I would rather read 10 one sentence posts that a dozen arrows pointing above you and LOL,,,exceptions during long exchanges between members having a great argument...but most of the time they are just annoying echoes and don't add anything to the topic at all.(I know Urban said you issue a warning when it gets out of hand...) Talking Pish...I'm guessing this is slang for swearing, colorful metaphors etc..., in my other forum it is simply deleted on sight, it's done because we want to preserve the civilized exchanges and feel that flaming each other just doesn't add much to the thread, I read the rules update the other day by Urban, and then the exchange between Right Track and Civic, and then Civic was permanently banned. I read the actual post by Civic before it was deleted and absolutely agree that it was way out of line, and because of other violations the decision was taken and the ban was issued. My first exposure to the moderators maintaining discipline in the ranks and it was professionally done all the way around.

I haven't really started to post as often as I should,,,mostly I'm still getting a better feel for your forum, and downloading numerous new bands/albums that you have introduced me to, so it's hard to contribute to many of the ongoing discussions with a worthwhile post. Ha ha,,,about the older popular bands,,,it's simply what I grew up with,,,the new emo/techno/rap/indie genre's are new territory for me, so I just read, dl some recommended bands and continue to learn as much as I can about all these new artists before I can offer something concrete to a discussion about them.

Suggestion #1- Move the New Members Intro to the very top of the opening page, and have all of the Moderator's introduce themselves with a quick summary and a very basic outline of forum policy/requirements.(I know I started posting before I even stumbled across the cool intro thread in the lounge...this site is so large that it's easy to get distracted and miss something as basic and necessary as this thread.)

Suggestion #2- A Banter Octagon,,,a sub forum where members can meet to really take the gloves off so to speak,,,if you are going to allow Pish etc...then why not a proper sub forum where almost anything goes, except very demeaning personal attacks, I don't think they have any place in a public forum.

Suggestion #3- Bumping old posts...the scale of history in your forum is astonishing to a new member,,,I have gotten lost more than once just looking over some of the ancient posts scattered throughout the popular threads. Maybe the Moderators could pick a few of the really good ones that are still relevant and resurrect them for new discussion. You know Urban picks 2 or more this week, Right Track next week etc....and then eventually they can be archived or locked.

So far I've enjoyed Banter and hope to get to know everyone a little better so that I can participate more fully, but I have limited time as well so sometimes I don't get a chance to visit as often as I like.