I would totally support it if people are into the idea. You'll have to be mod over at the new one Tore. :)

It seems you're still missing the most important question, which is "why" getting members is difficult. Truly, you understand that recruiting a select few people from another forum is not the solution. I know this from experience, and I'm sure you do too. You also know that funding and running a forum is not the issue, so counting that as a positive isn't necessarily a selling point, because practically anyone with a monthly allowance from their folks and a bit of technological know-how can run a forum from the ground up. No forum can exist without someone to fund, develope and run it. This is a given.

What you need to be asking yourself is whether you have a game plan that is highly likely to succeed, and the core membership to devote their time and energy into sustaining it through the years it takes to nurture and build upon that idea so that it bears real fruit.
All I'm saying is that if you are putting all your eggs in a basket that's made out of some people here helping out in your forum, that's not a very wise strategy. I'm saying that if you want to make people want to be a part of your venture, you have to offer something of more substance than what you currently have (or speculate that you will have), especially when the people you're trying to recruit are not dissuaded from their current membership and efforts, which should be obvious, since they have not moved on from it by its limitations alone.

I'm saying, understand your potential membership. Put yourself in their shoes, then formulate a plan based on that. Simply convincing yourself that it would be better is not the way. You need to convince EVERYONE. And you do this by having everything in place, where people can simply begin using it, not spending years of time and effort to build it themselves.

People don't go to Google and type in "How do I spend years building and developing a music forum so that I can participate in a music forum that I like"
They just type "music forum".
And they do that until they find a place they like.

You can't rely on a few people to make that happen for you. You have to have the framework in place, and you have to sell it effectively.

I can tell from the responses here that the time is not right for stuff like this. I think Freebase and Lateralus concerns about site rankings are very legitimate. Let's say we did it and it worked, then the reasons why it did so would be because so many made the move that the community would live on healthily for years in the new place. It could only do so if it was large enough, that is if enough people moved. I think if everyone wasn't in on it and made the move, then it wouldn't be worth doing. Well, that's an exaggeration - I'm sure there's some people with 15 posts that we could do without - but roughly the whole of what we think of as the community should make the move.

And if that can't currently happen, then this is not a good idea at present. However, I hope that if this site was to come down, Yac or the admin would let us know well beforehand so that we could get something like this underway so we don't suddenly lose our home.

I don't think it's a bad idea, however I just think you should have something in place and presentable before the membership part of it comes in. We're talking SEO and everything. The less pressure you have to put on the core membership, the better, specifically when this site is fulfilling their needs right now.

Best one I've seen only had +1 options. No negatives.

edit: Also, I'd move.

I think that are quite a few people that would move or at the very least post in both places for a while until it get's the footing that it needs.

Thanks for the support for the idea, dj :)

I get what you're saying. But then one person would have to fund it, develop it and when all that's done, try to sell the idea to the members here. It would be one guy trying to get all the members here to move to his site.

I don't propose the communal approach simply because it's less labour for each person involved. I also think it would make more people feel invested in it. And the fact that it had more people from the community involved would probably make it a lot easier to sell to the rest of MB as well.

A sort of compromise could be if one person fixed some place where the site could be developed, then a few people could join in on development. When it was all done, a working version of the site could be presented to the rest of MB.

Yes, I also think the best versions of these basically have a positive reinforcement by some kinda +1 option, but no negatives.

I don't understand. A completely new Music Forum? Or any forum in general?

Perhaps you should read the first post and see if that explains things?

Troll.

Obviously it isn't important enough to explain, and you'd prefer to be sarcastic, so I don't care to know anymore.

I didn't intend to offend or be sarcastic and am sorry if you feel trolled, but the idea is explained in the first post. Rather than ask me to explain the whole thing over again, you should check it out. Then, if something is still unclear, just say so and I'll be happy to elaborate.

This might have more to do with the we have a problem thread but I do want to say that you Tore have done more work for this forum than 99% of all members. Unfortunately much of it has gone under-appreciated. Between the reviews you have written up, the events you have put together, the writing of different guides for new forum members and such, and your journal (possibly the short lived MB mIRC room :). So just throwing it out their it is appreciated.

No homo.

He really "appreciates" you ;]

And it's fine, I mistook what you said for sarcasm, but I ended up re-reading it. I think it may just be an issue of knowledge for me, not understanding how it would work to begin a new forum. I'm sure I will if this idea happens.

You should get your journal going again. I remember it from a few years ago, you reviewd an Alkaline Trio album. Was a good journal.

Since people are reviving so many threads, it may not be a bad idea! But thank you, I really appreciate it! I didn't think anyone remembered that!! :]

I'm gonna bump this thread as I don't want it to die just yet :p:

I am no webdesigner and I don't really know much programming beyond the most rudimentary php, but I was able to set up a site like The Polite Force without encountering a significant amount of problems. Okay, it's not that great looking and it's been dead for about a year, but the software it runs on is free (wordpress and phpbb3) and comes with a lot of possibilities. With the help of a few more people with a bit of no-how, I am convinced it would be simple to make a great looking home with functionality that would make it far more suitable to our community, technically speaking, than this one. And, like The Polite Force, it wouldn't have to cost a lot.

My wish is to to get such a team together and start discussing development.

I would be interested in helping where I can Tore.

Cool Rez! Adding you to my mental list :D

Up for it. Look into wordpress if you want BTW, you could set up a frontpage which could feature and highlight forum content.

Cool!

And I know it well :) I've run a number of wordpress powered sites, in the past and the present.