Moving To A New Forum

[Stephen]

LOL why does this remind me of No Homers Club?

[Burning Down]

Originally Posted by Stephen

LOL why does this remind me of No Homers Club?

I think that analogy is spot on! I thought of it too

[Mojo]

Originally Posted by Burning Down

http://www.musicbanter.com/announcem...nt-thread.html

The problem is nobody seems to be using that thread to vent their frustrations.

While there is a thread, and that is certainly a good thing, I have to be honest and say that I doubt would use it. I wouldn't use it because I wouldn't see the point.

If a user here has a criticism, there are a number of things to consider before raising that criticism. There's the comfortable attitudes of the more "experienced" members and the way things are as they stand, the potential for having their criticism met with some defence, depending on what its a criticism of, and the lack of communication between the mods and the admins.

I mean, even if a point was raised, a suggestion given, and it was agreed to act on it and request something from the admins, chances are we arent gonna get what we want or even get a response either way. As I said, if it was me I would probably just think "Whats the point?"

[Burning Down]

Originally Posted by Mojo

While there is a thread, and that is certainly a good thing, I have to be honest and say that I doubt would use it. I wouldn't use it because I wouldn't see the point.

If a user here has a criticism, there are a number of things to consider before raising that criticism. There's the comfortable attitudes of the more "experienced" members and the way things are as they stand, the potential for having their criticism met with some defence, depending on what its a criticism of, and the lack of communication between the mods and the admins.

I mean, even if a point was raised, a suggestion given, and it was agreed to act on it and request something from the admins, chances are we arent gonna get what we want or even get a response either way. As I said, if it was me I would probably just think "Whats the point?"

Then I'm not sure if Trollheart's idea of a moderated suggestions thread would be much better in that case. It's kind of like those comment/suggestion boxes you see at restaurants saying "Tell us how we did!". I never see anybody filling those things out because nobody can be sure their suggestion is being taken into consideration by the corporation.

[Astronomer]

While it is a great idea, I don't know how feasible it is, because I don't think the new forum would continue to be successful as MusicBanter is. The reason being is that MB gets a lot of new members who probably find the forum via Google searches, because MB has soooo many past posts from past members that are great that come up when you search on Google. Often many of these new members become regular members - just look at all of our join up dates - they are all varied, which means we are not all from the same time period but we have all joined up at different times and the influx of new members that become regulars is what really keeps a steady community going as old members leave. Do you really think a brand new forum with less threads/posts/members/tags/search criteria would attract as many new members?

Also, I don't know how feasible it is to ask people to pay to help set up the new community. And I don't know how many people would actually migrate over to the new one. In theory, it is a great idea and I agree that the regular community on MB should have more of a say BUT I just don't know how realistic the idea is and if it would be as successful in the long term.

[Freebase Dali]

Personally, while it does suck that we can't often get the kind of improvements we might like, it doesn't detract from the reason we're here in the first place. Sure, setting up some other forum is nice when you think about all the benefits, but the down-sides do outweigh things from an initial perspective, and this isn't simply having to recreate content.

One of the biggest things this forum has going for it is its exposure. You type in "music forum" on Google, and we're all the way at the top. Even if the majority of lurkers aren't posting, your posts are being read SIGNIFICANTLY. You don't get there just by doing some SEO and letting the hits roll in. It's a long, hard-fought road. The point of this is that when you have the kind of exposure this place gets, it rarely gets old from a potential for new contribution perspective. It's self-sufficient in that way. And while there may be downfalls to that same exposure, there are measures in place to rectify them.

Starting up a new forum doesn't just mean you'd have to re-create all your content. It also means that, realistically, you're going to be starting with a relatively small group, and you won't have the same rankings this place will, which will make it very lonely, for a very long time. If you have a dedicated core group heading it up, that might not be so bad posting amongst such a small group for a very long time, but the last thing anyone should expect is that it would be getting the same kind of action we have here.

If someone wants to build something, that's great. But I think people should understand the commitment that goes into something like that, and honestly, I think the reason this place thrives is because not only are there committed members here, but there is an incentive for being here beyond bouncing the same ideas between the same people over and over again. Yea, you might get there eventually with a self-started place, but do you have the kind of core membership that would be able to stick it out through the YEARS of gaining practically nothing in terms of membership, especially when you're competing against a place that ranks number one in a search query?

Ultimately, I don't think most people come here are here for fancy features and ability to control the layout and smileys. People come here (I'm being generous) to talk about music with a large variety of people. That is in no way restricted by absentee admins. Considering that, does it really seem feasible to expect a relatively small portion of the community to defect to some other place so they can do what they do here with more control over irrelevant issues, but less people to keep it fresh, simply on the hope that it might be as prolific someday?

[Mojo]

While I agree for the most part, and am not so sure it's a feasible idea, I think it's worth noting that Tore wasn't suggesting a new forum to replace this one. Replicating content wasn't, as far as I understood, expected and it was a suggestion that a new forum be made to compliment this one. Do you have any ideas for that yet Tore, in terms of how exactly that would be achieved? What a new forum would offer?

If there was good reasons to attempt to run it, and find things to do there, content to host there, that would benefit from the advantages of having what would essentially be a member owned and run site when compared to hosting the same content here, then that would at least give it a reason to exist and if the number of people registering and using that forum takes a while to build and grow, that wouldn't be such an issue. It would also mean that if and when this site ever does close, theres a place to go that has been gradually growing.

It may not be feasible, there may not be enough good reasons to bother with it, there may not be enough reasons to start it, in terms of content, that we can't just as easily do here and also financially it just may not be a viable option- I don't know. Whether or not that is the case would involve a lot more thought and discussion. I do see some strong reasons to try it though, at least in theory.

[Astronomer]

If the new forum is simply to compliment this one, and people will still be using this one, then I don't really see the point . I thought tore was suggesting a complete move to a new forum.

[Guybrush]

Trollheart, this move is not, from my point of view, in order to escape any member/community related issues on this forum. It would only be a way of getting a place to really call our own instead of borrowing this site from the admins.

Originally Posted by Lateralus

If the new forum is simply to compliment this one, and people will still be using this one, then I don't really see the point . I thought tore was suggesting a complete move to a new forum.

I can see how Mojo got me wrong earlier. I do suggest moving all activity to a new forum, but before making the move, I imagine a sort of transition period where we build the site, copy over threads we want to keep, discuss what features we want and try to implement those. In my imagination, this transitional period would be an interesting time for MB as the community gets to piece their new home together by moving threads and perhaps contributing in other ways. Once the place was done, we'd make the move by setting up an announcement thread or similar.

Lateralus and Freebase, you mention what I think is the biggest problem which is leaving behind this site's google ranking etc. It is both a curse and a blessing. It is a blessing because we get traffic here, but it's a curse in that it's one of the important reasons why this site has not changed since it was made in 2003.

I don't have a complete solution to that problem. Setting up an announcement here telling people to move to the new forum would help a little bit, but I assume Yac might take that down and so we're not exactly guaranteed to have that. As for the new community surviving over time with less influx of members, that would be a challenge. I think if we build a new site, each one of us will be a little more personally invested in that site. It will be a bit more exclusive and can cater to more community wishes and features rather than those given only by a forum and these things should help keep members around, but there is definitely some risk involved.

edit :

In my opinion, the most desirable scenario would be to be allowed to do things with musicbanter.com, of course. We could simply get more privileges here or the admins could set up a sister site on a subdomain and we could play with it there. When we and admin are satisfied, it could become implemented. If the new site also ran on vbulletin, all posts and threads could be imported. There would be no loss of information.

[Astronomer]

Originally Posted by tore

Trollheart, this move is not, from my point of view, in order to escape any member/community related issues on this forum. It would only be a way of getting a place to really call our own instead of borrowing this site from the admins.



I can see how Mojo got me wrong earlier. I do suggest moving all activity to a new forum, but before making the move, I imagine a sort of transition period where we build the site, copy over threads we want to keep, discuss what features we want and try to implement those. In my imagination, this transitional period would be an interesting time for MB as the community gets to piece their new home together by moving threads and perhaps contributing in other ways. Once the place was done, we'd make the move by setting up an announcement thread or similar.

Lateralus and Freebase, you mention what I think is the biggest problem which is leaving behind this site's google ranking etc. It is both a curse and a blessing. It is a blessing because we get traffic here, but it's a curse in that it's one of the important reasons why this site has not changed since it was made in 2003.

I don't have a complete solution to that problem. Setting up an announcement here telling people to move to the new forum would help a little bit, but I assume Yac might take that down and so we're not exactly guaranteed to have that. As for the new community surviving over time with less influx of members, that would be a challenge. I think if we build a new site, each one of us will be a little more personally invested in that site. It will be a bit more exclusive and can cater to more community wishes and features rather than those given only by a forum and these things should help keep members around, but there is definitely some risk involved.

edit :

In my opinion, the most desirable scenario would be to be allowed to do things with musicbanter.com, of course. We could simply get more privileges here or the admins could set up a sister site on a subdomain and we could play with it there. When we and admin are satisfied, it could become implemented. If the new site also ran on vbulletin, all posts and threads could be imported. There would be no loss of information.

If you did create a community, I would no doubt love to be a part of it and would be happy to invest time and effort into setting it up. However, I think I would still continue to post on Music Banter and I'm not sure if this would be the case with others, too. The reason being that I post on a music forum to have discussion about music, I'm not really here for control of forum features or customisation or anything like that. I can understand that others might want something different out of a forum - but for me, it's about the discussion, and while a new community of regular members would be very cool and I would certainly be a part of it, I don't think you would get the same level of discussion/exposure/sharing of music that you would on Music Banter due to the fact that it will still likely generate more traffic, have more members, have all the past posts of rich discussion and information, etc.

So I think that if we tried it, it would probably turn into an additional forum that some regular members post on, yet Music Banter would still exist and still be the "main" go to forum.