Suggestion: A reduced number of forums
 

Hey musicbanterers.

So the forums seem a little bloated nowadays considering the amount of activity, or lack thereof. I would suggest the amount of forums should be trimmed down.

Today, MB looks like this:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/O1...gBirg9rE=w2400

This excludes the section with archived threads.

Some facts:

• Total number of regularly user accessible forums: 34
• The biggest forum, by far, is The Lounge (I assume thread count includes the subforums). General music, Rock & Metal and Media are also popular.
• Most forums have a tiny amount of activity compared to these big ones

Might it be time to trim down the amount of forums and rather have a few forums with actual activity in them? I think it would make for an easier experience navigating this site and also make it seem less dead.

This may seem a little minimalist, but I propose the following:


Musicbanter forums

• Music section
  • Artists corner - For discussions on music production, equipment, songwriting, etc.
  • General music - For general discussions related to musical arts and artists
  • Releases forum - For threads relating to specific releases like album reviews, etc.

• Off-topic section
  • Media corner - Discussions on non-music media like books, movies & video games
  • Philosophy - For discussions on religion, morals, science, the nature of reality, etc.
  • The Lounge - For general discussions that would be off-topic in the above forums

• Community section
  • Introductions - New members can introduce themselves here
  • Member journals - Members can create their journals here

• Admins section
  • Announcements & feedback - Mods and admins announcements and members feedback
  • Archive - Threads that have been locked down

(this is an updated suggestion. The old suggestion is here)

Ignoring archive, these would be forums with a fair amount of activity and should cover our bases (I think).

These forums can be made by merging together the forums we already have.

So what do you think?

There are definitely subforums that are hardly ever used, however practically speaking is any of this possible? It seems to be difficult, not to say impossible, to get sub-forums added, so is it as hard to delete or move them? I had asked, once, recently, for a sub-forum in the journals section for my journals, so that I didn't overpower everyone else (if you only knew the power of the Dark Side!) and swamp the section, but nothing happened. So I wonder if this idea could fly at all?

I suppose it depends on who uses or intends to use the, shall we say, currently empty forums? I doubt you're going to drive any more users to the ones that are busy (in comparison) so really all you're doing, so far as I can see, is shuffling the blocks around, rearranging the furniture for the same amount of people. I guess it would make it look tidier, true. However my feeling is that there will be a general lack of interest in doing this and your thread will remain with some views but no replies, or very few. I guess we'll see.

For my part, I'd have to say it's not a priority. If there are unused rooms, lock them up, but someone might come and want to use them. If you knock them down nobody will. So in answer to your question I don't know.

Someone like Yac can do this easily using the merge function. Whether he/she will want to isn't my concern at this point in time. I'm more concerned with seeing what you guys think.

I also think human drive to specify and categorize and find the most specific place for everything leads us to dividing which is definitely the opposite of what this place needs.

As for your furniture analogy, it might be a little like swapping out a bunch of small chairs for some big, comfortable couches. It's easier to see where you're supposed to sit and you can do so in the company of others.

My opinion is it isn't really worth fretting over. I always look at the new posts anyway so it doesn't really matter much about the multiple forums and sub-forums. Anyway, it's obvious the admins are only going to do what they feel like doing anyway so I guess just go with the flow.

Hall monitor Tore making sure no one pees without a hall pass.

I wouldn't be bothered if we merged things and widened the tents, so to say. Likewise, if it remains as it is and how it's been forever, I'd be fine with that too.

If you don't want to post in a specific forum, just don't post in it. The amount of subforums rarely if ever deters me from going on with my forum experience. Seems pointless to worry about it.

I wouldn't call it obvious. I'm guessing that for years, there has been little attempt to try and engage with Advameg in any meaningful manner, so requests to Yac/admin are probably relatively rare. There is little for admin to do here these days, so why should they check in often? I'm not saying this is the explanation, but I find it slightly more feasible than the admins just do what they want (nothing). Whoever's behind Yac's account is a paid (I hope) employee with a job to do.

There was a time when Yac did help us rearrange the forums to their present state and so there's precedence. I see no reason it couldn't happen again.

Everything is fine? That's an interesting statement.

This seems like a weird strawman argument. You might be making stuff up, my man.

Just my personal opinion, but I think merging all music-related forums/sub-forums into a single big one (if this is what you are proposing), with no way to sort things apart except for what has recently received new posts, could quickly turn into a a cluster****. It would make me dread browsing music-related threads because the ones I was interested in and wanted to read were lumped in with a lot I don't care about.

However, if we had a forum like your "Music corner", essentially replacing the "General music" forum we have today and maybe a few others, and then sectioned off genre-specific discussion into its own forum, with a sub-forum for each category, I could actually see it helping to declutter the website and making the front page a little less bloated (and make it easier to access the Shoutbox and the Lounge for that matter) while still not making it difficult for users who were searching for genre-specific content.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts, and for the record, I wouldn't mind if the site stayed the way it is now either.

Not arguing. Just saying my personal side of it.

Yeah I have to agree with Key, your comment Tore seemed out of place. He's not saying this is how it should be, he's describing his experience of the forum, which is I think how most of us perceive and use it too. I can't see how it can be seen as any sort of an argument, never mind a non-gender-specific one made of thatch and hay.

In other news, I think you kind of have your answer, though admittedly it's only been up one day, but as they say, vox populi and all that. They appear to have voted for the
https://media.tenor.com/Jc3v8QSOmYcAAAAd/status-quo.gif

I think the forum would be better if we all tried to be the bloat we want to see.

Also I'm not down with the ska erasure this would entail.

Pffft. Erasure aren't a ska band. Everyone knows that.

I also only use the "new posts"function so I never really look at the main homepage most of the time.

What I really want is GIF functionality in the shoutbox so I can post dancing Chris Christie GIFs. #MakeMBsShoutboxGreatAgain

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/FatalThoro...restricted.gif

https://media.tenor.com/59KAHZd_kqgA...o-christie.gif

https://media.tenor.com/o98PX0nIkXYA...ie-dancing.gif

That's not what I was referring to.

I'd agree with both these statements and neither worry, nor feel adverse to posting in any specific forum, so I just didn't quite understand what warranted this comment.

Idk man I just post in my journal. I just dont think it's worth trying to "fix" anything at this forum when it works perfectly fine the way it is. Other than aesthetics, there doesnt seem to be any other reason to trim anything down.

Thanks for your input, GD. I actually agree with you, at least to some extent, in that I would prefer to have a few music forums rather than just the one. I would like to se perhaps two or three. It wasn't in my suggestion because with the time I had, I couldn't come up with a satisfying way to divide music related discussion into a few forums that would cover all the bases and be clearly delineated / not overlap so that it would be clear to people where a thread should go.

Your suggestion about one general and one for genre discussions (with subs) is a possibility. I also considered separating by content type (like reviews are a separate type of content from discussions) or decades or perhaps broad stroke descriptors like popular music and avantgarde. None of these seemed quite satisfactory to me, but I'd still like a few music forums rather than the one if one could find the right set of forum themes.

I see a few here describe things as perfectly fine. I get that not everyone will want to trim the forums because it is a radical suggestion and I understand that. However, I can't get quite behind the statement that everything is fine. Just a few items from my immediate wishlist:

• A vbulletin update so that the site is more mobile / tablet friendly
• The possibility to tag users in a post so that they can be notified when addressed
• Replace the blue theme or make it optional and for Darwins' sake clean up the white pixels around buttons like "Post reply" or "quote"
• Remove censoring of swear words and the like OR at least make some changes (I can't write Marvin Gaye?)
• An improved capcha for better spambot prevention

If I were running things, you bet I would be on Advameg to implement these things and more. However, I fortunately am not riddled with the headache of running things and that mostly spares me from a continous uphill battle against a community where most of the people who wanted more for MB have already left and the people who stuck around are the guys who seem completely complacent or even happy with the admin neglect and abandonment that has turned MB into a sinking ship in a losing battle against social medias and other music forums that are able to update and implement welcome changes. Whatever the deal with admin is, the most disappointing thing about MB, by far, is that nobody left seems to care about its' wellbeing.

Did you ever get those deets on what exactly the vbulletin update would entail? The site's mobile functionality seems fine.

We don't have tagging but we implemented notifications for when your posts are quoted, which is close. You have to enable it though.

Never noticed the whitespace, we can look into that.

The censorship is an advameg requirement for our SEO, can't undo that one unfortunately. If we requested this, they'd probably end up implementing a way to block our current workarounds :laughing:.

We're only gonna implement things that are fixing problems or are widely considered as useful. Minor aesthetic adjustments won't undo the declining significance of forums that is causing membership to dwindle. I think improving forum culture would be the best protection against that. That said, SGR's GIF request is a good one. I'm thinking about reaching out to Yac about increasing the PM limit for established members as well. Don't let me keep you from congratulating your hypothetical initiative as a mod though.

Advameg runs vbulletin forums for a living, so it should be well within their power. The explanation last time was vbulletin costs money and MB isn't profitable enough to make it worth the investment.

I still think it should be asked about - and repeatedly. The last time significant updates were made was in 2009, I believe, and it wasn't a full version upgrade.

To say the mobile functionality is fine seems backwards to me. The site basically predates the smart phone and obviously hasn't been optimized for that technology. If anything, it's smartphones' old ass webpage functionality which is fine. That still doesn't make phone-posting on MB as easy as it should be.

Hey, cool! Didn't know that. That's great.

I cleaned them up and presented them to Yac a long time ago. He was able to change the forums around, but couldn't or wouldn't just overwrite these old gifs with my new ones.

But again, there's a new Yac now so I definitely think it's worth asking again. I also don't think NOs should be accepted indefinitely, but I'd rather die on the vbulletin upgrade hill.

I know, but they need to update it a bit. The word G A Y should definitely be taken out, probably a few more too. Maybe some should be added.

Edit:

Hey, the word gay is allowed now, so that's years of annoyance to Gloria Gaynor and Marvin Gaye fans eliminated. Thanks to whoever made that happen <3

I don't even understand what this means. Am I congratulating my hypothetical initiative as a mod?

Yeah I don't know what changes the update would include either. Let me know if you find out.

...the word gay is not censored. Problem solved!

Yeah I would call this paragraph self-congratulatory in that aspect.

Alright. That's not a term here, but sure, why not. The content of the paragraph still seems fine to me

There's a better term for it that I can't quite place atm. It overstates the problem as a way to bolster your suggestions when they're criticized or ignored.

It's not that we don't care, Guy. It's just that the few of us that are on here just come on to post and may kibbitz a bit. As such, we tend to not want to be bothered when dealing with changes that will never be made on the forum or when a certain member tries in vain to get us to join in on his latest project. In other words. we're just here to relax basically.

Having said that, I do like the idea of expanding the PM capacity. I'm reluctant to send PMs in general because my box would load up too quickly, especially since they count sent PMs as well. I don't know what the capacity is for a mod, but it has to be frustrating to have your PM box stuffed with the various PM's they might send or receive. It was never an issue for me when I was a Mod at the writing forum. We could send as many PMs as we wanted and my box could hold 20,000 PMs by the time I left. Even a regular member could hold 500 PMs. Anyway, that's the one thing I'd recommend.

Yeah I think what Frown is getting at, and you might not realise, is that you're kind of saying "look at me. I think this place can be better but you bunch of lazy gits won't help. Wake up! Think as I do." And we're all blinking and yawning or rolling back over going "Mmmfff? Yeah yeah, five more minutes, honestly. Is that toast I smell?" Like, nobody, so far as can be judged by the responses here, sees a major problem in how the forum is now. Everyone would of course rather it was busier, more active, but that won't be fixed by a few cosmetic upgrades. Again, it's moving the furniture (or, as you say, getting new stuff) without the people to sit on it.

Forums probably are dying, and that's not a thing we can change. I personally prefer them to FB or Cheep or Warble or whatever the other one is, and don't get me started on Grannygram. Instagram. Sorry. Definitely not Grannygram. Something entirely different. Never mind what it is. Where was I?

Oh yeah: your initiatives and suggestions, Tore, sadly and probably unintentionally always come across as a little, um, arrogant maybe? Preachy? You guys don't know, sort of thing, or why can't you understand, that sort of line. And I mean, to be fair, look at them all: every one of them has been more or less shot down. I see this going the same way. It might be better to contribute in a way you can, now, like with some new thread or discussion, rather than a big drive to overhaul the system. I really can't see the benefit. Sure it will be tidier and more pleasing on the eye, but isn't this, again to go on with the metaphors, like someone who opens up say a coffee house and nobody - or very few - comes in. So he thinks I'll add some pictures, paint the walls, bring in a jukebox - all very fine endeavours, but the problem remains: no customers because his coffee is ****e.

That's what it's like here. We've basically become a collection of old - I don't necessarily mean in terms of age, but in terms of how long we've been here - mates and/or adversaries who have been here so long we're stuck in our ways and that's just how we likes it. Another analogy is kind of like one of those old gentleman's clubs they used to have in England, everyone reading their paper and smoking and nobody paying much attention to anyone else, looking over the top of the paper with a frown and a raised eyebrow at any new members.

It's a problem we're unlikely to fix. I don't see any way to, certainly not by doing a spring clean in December. I'm happy to go along here as we are, annoying everyone with my constant threads and planning to foist more and more journals on them in the coming year. It's not a perfect place, but it's our place.

Perhaps, if it ain't broke, y'know?

Oh, and by the way, gay may not be banned but *** is, which is annoying when I did my review of The Nightfly by Donald ***en, and will be when I constantly have to keep getting around how to write the name of the bad guy in Oliver Twist when I get there in my Dickens journal!

They banned the word ***? What do they have against British cigarettes? :yikes:

The fact that MB is still here and not completely deleted and forgotten is a testament to the miniscule amount of earnings this site still brings to Lech Mazur through data mining.

Or due to the existence of some very incriminating photographs held at a secret loc - uh, yeah. Data mining. That sounds better.

I'd say PPC (Pay Per Click) too, but there's no advertisements here.

Thanks for your response, Trollheart. I just have a little time to respond atm.

I am well aware that the community at large don't mirror my ambitions for this place, which is why I wrote I'm fortunately not riddled with the headache of running things :laughing: It was that way when I was a mod and it seems probably even more so now.

If I'd had my way, we would've demanded some things from Advameg some ten-ish years ago and, had they not delivered, moved to a different place with the uncertainties and possibilities that that would bring. The alternate MB timeline I would've wanted is very different from the one we're currently in.

Perhaps you mistake my continuing requests or suggestions to mean I don't realize this distance between myself and the community at large, but I do. I'm just tenacious. Now that I post relatively rarely, suggestions getting shot down doesn't phase me much. But as a mod, it certainly did become a source of frustration.

There is if you're not logged in. I think.

Yeah, I believe non-member lurkers get ads on the header, or at least they used to.

You can check that out easily by logging out and then browsing as a guest.

Nope. No ads.

I see ads. I'd guess you have some adblocker running?

Nope. Vanilla Chrome with no extensions.

Regardless, this seems like more of a control thing than anything else. It's akin to heading down to the local library and rearranging the book shelves because it bothers my OCD.

Why not start your own forum? You can be the grand puba and control everything.

Like Key and rubbersoul, I most often start on MB by going to "New Posts", which is a comfortable enough entry point for me, because it directs me to those rivetting hot-button issues of the day. ;)

On the other hand, I enjoy the sprawling nature of having threads about everything: it reminds me of going to the British Museum as a kid and thinking, "This goes on forever and I will never see it all". If I couldn't explore some ancient thread and bump it, MB would've lost something of value, imo.

Someone mentioned too much scrolling to reach the shoutbox, but there is a way to scrunch up your first, homepage view of MB if you want:-

I post on mobile and I definitely don’t think it’s fine. It’s a massive headache but I have no other way of being active.

It is awful. A vbulletin update could fix that.

Sounds like you're projecting.

I could (and have before), but I've got enough work in my life and would generally like to do something else with the little free time I have