Moving To A New Forum
 

Hey guys!

This is not a passionate revolt against the moderators or anything like that, but I've often thought that it would be better for the musicbanter community if those involved in the community had more power over the site itself; layout, functions and so on. This has been brought up before, but I'm bringing it up again.

Quite a few of us have experience or even expertise with making and running sites and, if we put our heads and perhaps a little bit of our resources together, I figure something like this is a possibility. So, imagine a scenario where all of us move onto a new forum. Threads/announcements describing the move would be set up and the mods here would be mods on the new forum and the active members here would be members on the new forum. In other words, the community stays the same but the place is new and the URL would change. What I want to ask is how feasible is this idea? Do you like the idea? Do you like it so much you'd f.ex help pay a little for server fees? If someone went through all the trouble of getting it set up, would you come along? Could or would you contribute in some way? What are the risks? How would being on a new site change our community?

Discuss!

I´m a bit embarrassed to start off the discussion on a negative note, tore, but I personally don´t find the present MB format that uncomfortable. I also think it´d be pretty hard to get all members to swap to another site, so division of the membership would be a real risk, I suspect.

One of the good things about MB is that there are zillions of interesting posts, dating back to the days when you and other constructive members were cataloguing and reviewing every artist that ever picked up a microphone. What would happen to that wealth of information, I wonder ?

I expect you´ve heard the little fable about the monkey with a stone in his hand; he has to drop the stone before he can pick up a peach, and maybe I´m like that unimaginative monkey, clinging to MB because I can´t easily imagine a better, new site.
But I´d also like to say, on this issue, that I´m quite prepared to change from monkey to sheep - and will happily follow everybody else if they prefer to re-locate. So, as a voter my position is, "Well, tell me who the president is going to be, and I´ll agree." How´s that for spinelessness! :laughing:

Yeah that's an important part of MB as a musical research tool. You can pretty much pick any genre and there's a wealth of old posts to mine through.

This sounds like sedition to me. I think Yac needs to lay some banhammers down to keep the rest of the peasants in line.

:laughing:

I guess from the point of view of our administrators, it can seem like sedition. I understand it if mods would be sceptical to supporting this. On the other hand, admins are not invested to the point where they want to do anything with the site so are they invested enough to care about this thread? Either way, thoughts like this will float around, even if they're not spoken out. I prefer things out in the open. As I hinted at, this thread is not fueled by my passionate rage against the admins or anything like that.

But admins aside, what I sort of imagine is one or more of us setting up a sister site that some of us could work on. We'd get a forum up, tweak it the way we like it and so on. Perhaps we could add a blog part, chatroom or some radio stuff members could listen to and then, when we think its ready, we'd make our move. There'd be no secrets and no violent revolutions, basically just a project for the MB community to work on. Those interested who weren't directly involved could keep an eye on how it was going. Perhaps there would be a thread here documenting the important happenings over there and now and then, there'd be some voting over the visuals of the site or some other relevant topic.

Leaving posts and threads behind is definitely a big drawback. The most important threads, like journals, could be moved over, but probably not with all the comments intact. So a lot of the banter would be gone and we'd have to start that fresh. I don't mind starting fresh so much, but I can see how others would disagree.

Personally I feel a site where we, as a community, have more of a say in how it looks, operates and is run and moderated is a wonderful idea. I just get the feeling it would be incredibly difficult to get off the ground. I also don't really know a lot about exactly what it would take to do this, so can't really offer much of an input there.

I've been here five years and I often go through lengthy phases away from here, and when I am here a lot of things annoy me. How annoyed I become by being here is something that has gotten stronger with time. I come here because there are a few people here I like and enjoy conversing with, and of course I come here to read about music I may enjoy, and use this site for reference. I would be lying if I said I haven't, at some point or other, been critical of many things here and of things I think we could do better. From the approach we take in the way things are run and moderated, to the treatment of new members, and many other things that don't make this as friendly a place as it could be to visit for all users and potential users.

I don't want to see this place die, but I think one thing to consider, which would hopefully not become an issue but always could, especially as we don't exactly have a huge amount of active, registered users, is one day this site could close. What then? I think at least having these discussions now can only be a positive thing.

well the problem is there are just so many old threds and topics here that cant be moved and are a prt of this place


thats a good point tho about this site closin cause most ppl prob dont have contact info of many ppl

I've been on a site before where all threads, posts, blogs, journals, poems, lyrics etc that every user had ever posted to it, one night, disappeared completely when the site closed without any word of warning at all.

I'm obviously not suggesting that this is gonna happen here, or that if it did we wouldn't at least get warning, but we arent a site with a huge active population. I personally don't take it for granted that this will always be here.

Is it surely not though the fact that any issues we have here, or that anyone has, is down more than 90 percent to members? As tore says, the admins, other than Yac looking in occasionally, don't even seem to notice us, up there on their lofty peak in the clouds, and so can't really be blamed I think for any problems we experience. As a community, these are of our own making.

So the next logical step is, if we as a community are at least part of the problem, does not relocating just move the problem to another site? I'm not for a moment suggesting there are people here who are causing problems, and personally I don't really see any though maybe they're more on the mod side of things? But if there are perceived problems, I would have thought maybe tackling the root of those issues here would be a better idea than "running away" or becoming, to use a Monty Python term, "splitters"?

What about setting up a thread, maybe in Editor's Pick, so it has to be moderated, asking people to vent on what their problems, if any, here, are, and work on maybe trying to fix them? I think a more constructive approach rather than a "this place sucks let's go over there" or a Bender "The hell with you! I'll start my own casino! With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the casino!" might be something more worthwhile putting our efforts into.

I know I've worked for four years on my journal and would not like to have to restart or reconstruct it, and there are people here who would I am sure feel the same. Also, if another forum was set up, what's to say the same problems would not raise their head down the line?

Not trying to be negative, just think maybe we should look at this a different way?

Oh, and 216: let me be the first to congratulate you on reaching the number of posts in your username! :laughing:

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

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

LOL why does this remind me of No Homers Club?

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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 :confused:. I thought tore was suggesting a complete move to a new forum.

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.

well like freebase deli said and you echoed the google ranking is what really hurts. i was a part of a forum for over 10 yrs that eventually fell from the google rankings )not sure how that worsks) and over time it just became a ghost town as people got older and got other priorities and left and there were no new members to kind of take their place in activity. now there is like 1/10th the activity and i still stop in from time to time and theres only a handful of regulars left and never anybody new that sticks around.

i see ppl use this site for differnt reasons, i come here and dont take it real serious and just post in my journal and browse for new music and post whenever i want but some ppl use it differently like trolheart who makes a ton of blog journals for instance or crazed who avoids the lounge so like latelust said i think a lot of ppl dont have that big of issue and just wanna come here and throw down some thoughts.

maybe u already said but i dunno what features u want i mean i know from what u are sayin that admins arent around but is there anythin real drastic hat u want that the admins wont do???????

Here I've mentioned a blog part of the site, a chatroom, an internet radio station that members can do shows on. I'm sure we could think of other things as well.

I think that creating the right environment is crucial to creating the sort of community you want. Let's say you want to encourage people writing to writing band articles, album reviews or doing album clubs. You should make the environment so that it rewards these things. Right now, in order to find out what's written in a journal, you have to find the journal. Instead of members writings being actively promoted by the site, it is hidden. What if it was presented someplace else where it was easier to see?

Basically, a new site gives possibility of new features and increases the possibility to mold the MB environment into a place that rewards the things we like. The community should change over time in response, making it easier to get involved with other members . A new site could make the MB experience more rewarding overall, especially for those who contribute the most like moderators (who would have more control over the site), those who like to write longer pieces and those who actively try to involve the community, f.ex by album clubs or members compilations. My feeling about present day MB is that if you invest a lot in it, you don't get much back and sooner or later, you may feel disillusioned as a result. I would like for that to change so that the more you put in, the more you feel rewarded.

Everything I bolded can easily be done here. The only thing with the blog section is that it doesn't have it's own separate area to showcase people on a front page but Trollheart took up having a weekly feature section for the journals. All it takes is initiative. At one point in time, I had the idea of doing the internet radio station with MB members but I didn't follow through with it properly. When I first came out with the idea, I was pretty new at the time and I would have probably gotten my thread deleted. I recruited a few people behind the scenes through PMs but they weren't as interested as they claimed and when I set them up with all the details for the stream that I had they never showed up for their scheduled slots.

I remember you going through this idea before but it's just not going to work imo. Also you seem to be focusing on the wrong thing. If you are passionate about something you will do it regardless if you get rewarded or not. Your main focus on being rewarded seems misguided. I know that's why you stopped writing a journal and made an exodus at one point in time. You didn't feel rewarded for all the hard work and contributions you were making to MB just to have the admin turn a blind eye to minor features that could easily be activated.

chameleon i think u are wrong for your 'how dare you type of attitude, of course tore wants a rewarding experience. for you to act like he is 'misguided' for wantin to be appreciated for his time or effort or work or whatever i just stupid man, everyone likes feelin appreciated and tore is sayin that with a new site appreciation can be shown and recieved easier

That was suggested? That's horrific.

Whats the point of doing that? Are we really going to be burdened by someone posting the same suggestion again? Yowza.

And while I'm on a rant, how long have the edit buttons been gone from threads in the moderated forums? (e.g. Spill your guts)

Hrm I'm not sure but I hope the edit feature stays, I was a member of another forum and they removed the edit feature completely. I wanted to edit one of my posts as it had some information in it that I didn't want broadcasted on the internet anymore, so I PMed one of the mods and they were like "Sorry, we do not allow editing on the forum anymore." I was pissed.

I don't think you understood what I was trying to say. Or maybe we just believe in two different things fundamentally but I feel like if you love doing something then all the time and effort that you put into it doesn't need rewarding. Doing the work is reward enough. If you are only doing something because you want to be rewarded then that's what I'm calling "misguided"

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.

I'm not ignoring the rest of your post tore, I just didn't want to quote the whole thing when this is the part that concerns me.

I don't know if you are aware, but I have put in a lot of time and effort making a special thread which not only updates everyone on who's writing journals and what they're writing, but takes a somewhat humourous and light-hearted approach to the whole journal thing (humour got a little out of hand though, had to dial it back) and also encourages others who haven't already started journals to try it. Finally, I focus every week on a new and an old journal that's being written.

I think, without being smug or arrogant, that the members' journals section is getting a lot more publicity now than it was last year, and some of this has been down to that thread. A direct result of this can be seen in the amount of both new journals starting up and older ones which had been left to rust being picked up again. In my own little way I hope I'm responsible for, or have contributed a little to that, and I would have to take issue with the above statement. Sorry, but I think whereas people who didn't maintain journals before may not even have been aware of the section, a lot more now are.

EDIT: Apologies, DJ: I see you brought this up already. That's what I get for rushing through the thread! :banghead: Still, my points are I think valid and expand on what you said, but thanks for mentioning the thread anyway. Appreciate it.

The only reason it was suggested, Big3, was as an alternative to setting up house elsewhere, as tore wants to. I also don't think there's a need for it, or that it would work, but it was just saying "would this not be better if you have to do something?" rather than "wouldn't this be cool?" Which I do not think it would. As someone noted, suggestion boxes rarely if ever work.

Reminds me of my favourite scene from a TV show called Newsradio, where they got suggestion boxes in. The two best notes from it were "We need more notes for suggestions" and "Help! I'm trapped in a suggestion box!" :rofl:

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.