Moving To A New Forum

[djchameleon]

Originally Posted by tore

By your logic, why bother writing on a forum at all? I mean, if you love writing album reviews, why not just write it in .txt files and save it on your computer?

I don't want people to have to love writing album reviews for it to be rewarding to do. The whole point of writing on a forum is to share so why not share more? Should being a contributor here only be valid to the most passionate of us, those who might as well write in those .txt files? If that's how high the bar's gonna be, that basically means less people will do it. And the whole argument was about making more people do it more often. How do you manage to think of an idea like a site showcasing the hard work of its members as if it's a bad thing? To describe the goal of making an environment more nurturing towards productivity as misguided sounds like .. you're missing the point.

You can write to share on a forum because you do want other people to see but that shouldn't be your main focus for writing those reviews. I remember Powerstars started up his journal and he was so concerned with and always focused on wondering why people weren't reading his journal and how he could get more people to read it. I understand that want/need to have others read your work but if that's the main motivation behind you writing it then you shouldn't bother at all is my point. You are only writing it because you want people to blow smoke up your butt and give you compliments about how well/good your reviews are. I feel like you should be more focused on writing it just because you wanted to. I know you don't agree with me on this point but we'll just have to leave it there.

Also regarding the bolded part, I'm not saying that at all. I was going deeper to the motivation behind writing the reviews in the first place and as Trollheart has mentioned. He has created a way to do just what you are thinking about even though it's not on as grand of a scale where it has front page attention, writers are still getting showcased.

Another point that others have brought up, so you wanted to start up a site which is going to have lower traffic overall but you get to showcase/highlight those journals on the front page but sticking around here gives those same journals more attention through the sheer volume of traffic that comes here even if people don't post in your journal saying that they have read it. I had a point of saying that last part but I lost it while writing it so I'll just stop typing and go to bed, I had a long day.

[Guybrush]

Trollheart, I am aware of your efforts and that it is possible to promote journals by mentioning them in other threads and posts. I myself made the Musicbanter portal / feed thread for this very purpose. But the restriction of having to do it with threads and posts is still huge in my opinion.

And dj, what I propose would make writings more visible to the rest of the community, but perhaps not to the outside world. While I agree that passionate writers like writing regardless, I think that doesn't take away the benefits of creating an environment that more rewards writing. This isn't just about writing either. I mean, you could have a karma/reputation system that promotes good behaviour on the forums. You could have moderator stats that tells you and compares how many spammers a moderator has busted so you can have spambusting competition. In general, you can make it so that the MB people's good work and efforts become more visible through various ways. It doesn't have to be just about reviews and journals.

[Burning Down]

Reputation systems generally end up becoming a popularity contest though. But I understand what you're saying there.

[djchameleon]

Tore, I get what you are saying but I just don't agree with it.

[Trollheart]

I would in fact rather oddly perhaps agree with both of you. I write because I like to write, but also in the hope that people are reading what I'm writing. It's quite true what tore says: if you were to write and not know people were reading then you may as well be writing offline. It's one of the reasons I stopped maintaining a sort of mirrored journal on another site. I got one single comment, and all it said was "very good". If you don't feel people are appreciative of what you write then it's hard to keep putting in the effort. It's one of the reasons why I never started up my own blog outside of this site, because the chances anyone would a) find it and b) comment on it were and are pretty minimal.

However, I would not stop writing here just because people are not commenting. I learned long ago that you can judge the popularity or otherwise of your journal on views. Of course, that's not a perfect system, as out of say 1000 views 800 could be by one person or a few people, but it still shows that somone is reading. Comments are better of course because then you get to hear what people think of your writing, good or bad. This is why I am always happy to see a new comment in my journals, which is not that often.

But as tore says this isn't all just about journals, and I must admit the rating system that other site has is good. For each post you get points and your standing goes up, like I started as something like squire and ended (before I abandoned the thing) as God-like. It's pretty cool. Plus you get a running total on how far you have to go to get to the next level, like Experience Points in an RPG. You can also win awards for say Most Posted or Most Popular and those icons display against your username. It shouldn't of course be the reason why you write, or post, but it's a clever and enjoyable incentive.

It's a pity something like that couldn't be implemented here. But I'm still in general against a new site being setup. I think I've personally settled really well into this one and to me it would be like moving house, starting all over again even if some of my friends went with me. I also think it would be a huge amount of work, and what if it doesn't take off? I don't really have any problems with this forum so I'd have to say I'd be likely to stay here. I kind of owe this place, or the people in it, quite a lot.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

You can debate the whys & wherefores as much as you like, the simple fact is unless one person decides to take this on and run with it it's never going to happen.

It all comes down to time & money and unless you're willing to put up those things it'll never happen. To be honest while this forum is still around I don't think people are going to cough up the cash for what is essentially just going to be a forum people already post on with a few extra bells & whistles attached to it.

Asking the forum about it is kind of pointless because you'll only get opinions, not help or cash.

[Guybrush]

Originally Posted by Urban Hat€monger ?

You can debate the whys & wherefores as much as you like, the simple fact is unless one person decides to take this on and run with it it's never going to happen.

It all comes down to time & money and unless you're willing to put up those things it'll never happen. To be honest while this forum is still around I don't think people are going to cough up the cash for what is essentially just going to be a forum people already post on with a few extra bells & whistles attached to it.

Asking the forum about it is kind of pointless because you'll only get opinions, not help or cash.

Actually, I don't think it's much of a cash problem. I mean, setting up a site like this is relatively cheap. A new site wouldn't have the same traffic as this one and thus not the same exact requirements. A site with bandwidth enough for the number of dedicated users we have here now is no prob. If you want it to run on vbulletin, that costs a bit and I don't know how much, but there are free alternatives. Funding the site, making the site, getting desired functionality, all that's basically fun and easily doable.

The problem would be getting people on board with the idea.

[Freebase Dali]

That's still not the whole problem. I help run another forum and one guy funds it, and I help fund other aspects of what we do, along with donations (that I had to implement a PC hardware giveaway with it just to get people to donate, and that's still busting).
We're a relatively small group of people that defected from a very large forum that eventually shut down after our exodus, and we've been running for over a year now with very little new membership. Our SEO is fine, but it's not good enough. We are VERY relaxed with our rules, and practically anything legal is not removed. We also have total control of every aspect of the forum, and are currently building a home-page/portal, just to put into perspective how much control we have.
Still, it gets stale, and all our efforts to keep it lively really only affect the people that are already there.

Your biggest challenge is going to be getting new membership on a frequent basis. And there can only be so much word of mouth before that ceases to be feasible. That's very hit-or-miss to begin with.
I think your goal is admirable, however your execution of it is going to be missing the mark. You would be providing the same exact thing as we have here, but with bells and whistles, at the expense of a big driver of success, which is new membership. If you're not offering something significantly better that people can't live without, then you're competing in a failing battle against places that don't even need the bells and whistles to succeed, like this place.
Sure, you can eventually outshine this place if you have a great membership, good marketing, great SEO, and relevance... but if you think getting (and let's be realistic by saying SOME) people here on board with the idea is the problem, you have not thought this out, and this should be a cause for concern with anyone electing to devote the sort of time and energy to a venture that, in all likelihood, would fail without the kind of foresight that needs to go into this sort of thing.

I think you need to have a well-drawn, effective plan before you recruit people to support it. Not the other way around.

[Stephen]

One thing I would like to see would be some sort of cohesive, searchable IMDB style music resource. Something like you look up a band, click on the bass player to see what else they have done, click on their producer or lable and just trace down leads that way through the band's legacy. I imagine that is way beyond the scope of any forum software though and probably a decade worth of dedicated research and writing on the part of users and admin.

[Guybrush]

Freebase -buy a domain, rent some server space, set up a forum and figure out what else we want on there. How much more well drawn should a plan be?

I own a few domains and one of them is a community site with a forum that has now died out (site dedicated to Canterbury), but I still pay for it just to keep my intellectual property. It's not expensive. I have experience with most of this in some way or another and I still think of the technicalities of it as the simple bit. Making a site loaded with customizable functionality is cheap and simple for anyone with a bit of know-how. But getting members is difficult. Forums have been going out of style, especially now that people get their discussion fixes over facebook and the like. Starting a new forum site with a community from scratch is extremely difficult.

So getting site up, easy. Getting members there, difficult. Having failed to attract people to my Canterbury community site, I personally wouldn't want to set up another site until I knew it was going to attract people. Even if it's simple and fun to do, it still takes a lot of time and if at the end noone's interested, then much of it is a waste of effort. That's just how I feel. Plus, what I suggested is that the community work and invest together on making a new site work so then it goes without saying that the technical details would be worked out over time in the community.