Moving To A New Forum

[Guybrush]

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!

[Lisnaholic]

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!

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by Lisnaholic

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 ?

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.

[The Batlord]

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

[Guybrush]

Originally Posted by The Batlord

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

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.

[Mojo]

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.

[butthead aka 216]

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

[Mojo]

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.

[Trollheart]

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!

[Burning Down]

Originally Posted by Trollheart

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!

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

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