Lisnaholic

Yes, ribbons: I agree with you agreeing with Marie, TH and rubber soul !

Absolutely times two for the bits in bold. One huge advantage of the "wait and see" tactic is that, as TH has already been farsighted enough to give us an escape route in thecraic, we can all kick back and carry on as previously. Thanks, TH.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Guybrush

That's fair and not unexpected as it's not the first time it's been brought up.

I've kinda thought of MB as a sinking ship, albeit one that sinks extremely slowly.

I've wanted for MB to perhaps expand outside the confines of this forum and/or to have more going-ons like compilations, maybe competitions, meet-ups, etc. Things that create engagement and togetherness. But it's not exactly a great place for that kind of thing, even less now that I do most of my MBing from my phone. I find the lack of mobile screen optimization a little frustrating.

Judging by this current round of responses, I may be speaking only for myself, but the current state of affairs makes me less motivated to spend time, invest / engage with MB. I believe the site, on average over time, turns people away more than it turns people on. I think not doing anything is letting it die, like Marie says. If I was to spend my time trying to improve things on MB, well.. the current environment would work to kill any such motivation. You'd get no help from above and, of course, I find it a bit disappointing that there's not more ambition in general about this stuff in the community.

I might try a new appeal to the current owners myself about upgrading vbulletin at least. Maybe the new Yac can be reasoned with?

Edit:

I understand, but when the time comes to move to The Craic, who will be left? It'll be the forgotten, dying refuge of a forgotten and dying community.

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Something Completely Different

ribbons

This makes me sad. You have an incredibly rich history with MB and have always done a brilliant job of imparting wisdom, knowledge, humor, kindness, time and energy to this place. You are one of my very favorite posters, Tore - and I for one appreciate you tremendously!

rubber soul

Yeah, I would say just enjoy MB while you still can. Who knows what lies in the future but for now, we're still here.

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Trollheart

Note to self: create new sub-forum on TheCraic called "Dying refuge for forgotten and dying community." And bring in fumigators.
X 2

I know the re-confirmation of a lack of interest in moving is disheartening, Guybrush, but to some extent you maybe need to look more at the symptom than the disease. In other words, give most of us all the bells, whistles and shiny things we could ever want, we'll still sit there and grump "someone entertain me. I'm bored. What? Do it myself? You jest, sir!"

Maybe the best thing is to try to get people more interested FREE BEER!* in what we have and try to FREE BEER!** work out why this place can be so FREE BEER!*** dead a lot of the time. I do all I can as you know FREE BEER!**** to engender interest but like everything else, if folks don't wanna they won't. No matter how nice the place is.

* There is no free beer
** No, that's a typo
*** What do you mean, how can you misspell free beer?
**** No, I think it's easy to confuse beer and knuckle sandwich.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

ribbons

Just my additional 2￠: What has been slowly killing MB over a very long period of time in my opinion is not the lack of special features (although those would be nice) but an ongoing mean-spiritedness between posters and toward newcomers (actually not nearly as bad now as it used to be, but it's there and it goes unchecked). It's been cancerous to this forum and over time has caused its decline.

SGR

I get what you're saying and perhaps there's some truth to it, but to me that characteristic of the 'banter' here is part of what makes us....us.

I think people here certainly have different ideas of where lines should be drawn, but I've seen the mods step in many times when lines are crossed (Hawk, Anteater, any times slurs are used, etc). I wouldn't want a MusicBanter where jwb and Batty aren't calling each other "bitch" in their replies to each other. Or where passive aggressive remarks aren't made to newcomers who spam dumb threads in the wrong sub-forum. It wouldn't be the same. And like you said, I think the level of 'mean-spiritedness' is much less now than it was in 2010.

Forums like this are mostly a dying breed. The way people communicate on the internet about this stuff has been siloed alot by social media alternatives that we simply can't compete with in terms of popularity (Reddit, Twitter, etc). There are some forums that have proven to be hold-outs, but most of them have had a history that predates these social media alternatives and many focus on a niche interest. More niche than just music discussion, I suppose.

Trollheart

I would have agreed a few years back, but I'd have to say that now things are a lot more... mellow? I used to have knock-down fights with people here, but I guess I've become a little more thick-skinned now, and that drama as such doesn't really happen much, if at all. I would have to say that some of this improvement has to be lain at the feet of Marie Monday, who has in quite a short time become a legend among mods, and can really keep people in line while not being a spoilsport.

For me though, the real cause of the slow death of the forum is a lack of participation and/or interest. It's hard to keep making threads nobody cares about (ie all of mine) and attempt to keep a sense of fun and contribution going when nobody responds. The feeling is definitely, to me anyway, of a lot of people sitting back in armchairs watching the forum, but not ready to haul their asses out of those chairs and take part. That's fine if it's what people want to do, but if so, then nobody should be surprised we're going down. Of course, I've said this before, but maybe it needs to be reiterated. To a great extent, the sense of, if you will, community is gone, and it's more like a clubhouse where people used to meet and have fun, but which now is only occasionally visited by people who pop in to read the free newspapers.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

rubber soul

We do seem to have an upswing in new membership though and at least some of them are staying (Ayn Marx, Music collector, to name a couple) so I wouldn't count us out quite yet.

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Trollheart

All I want to know is, did the admins provide enough lifeboats, because if not, I'm dressing as a woman!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018