Exo

I just don't have the time for anything new. If this place goes, I'll fill my time elsewhere. I just love the power too much to leave now.

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LastFM

SUPREME POO BAH MODERATOR EXTRAORDINAIRE

Key

Pretty much this.

The idea is great, and hope people enjoy it but I'm good with one forum.

jwb

This is the friendliest coup I've ever seen.

Hey TH, remember when you bitched me out for saying this forum was dying a couple years ago?

Guybrush

Regarding our friendly coup,

People are tired of hearing this, but I can't come to terms with the fact that MB has an owner / admin who is entirely absent and who doesn't provide updates. It seems exploitative to me and it becomes a barrier to my own involvement with MB. But I've been saying this for ten years or more and know that most people feel different, so I know whatever we did, it wouldn't be a coup. I believe many of the people who would support us have already left (as I also have earlier).

I've been told many times to lighten up and to not take things so seriously. That's actually what I've been doing since stepping down from modship more than 10 years ago. I realized back then that caring too much about MB is just gonna sap your energy because the people in power don't respond to you and there are problems at the core of MB which we're unable to change. MB creates this environment where caring too much becomes a source of frustration and the solution is to not care. So while I used to run genre weeks, write review journals, etc. I've instead been absent for years. When I got back, I've been way less involved in everything and probably cared less about being nice, etc.

So this less involved person who adds less to MB is the relaxed me, but it's not who I want to be. I want to be more involved, write great content and help nurture a great community. I just refuse to do that as an unpaid worker bee for a boss who doesn't give a shit about me, the community or what I do.

So SCD is, for me, a place where I can invest my time and energy the way I'd like to. I don't have to be an admin to be satisfied and would actually prefer a more functional MB, but lacking that, I can at least try to co-run SCD more the way I believe MB should be run. I want to try and make it a place where making an effort, caring and getting involved is rewarded.

Best case scenario for me would be MB with a management that was involved and implemented the kind of features we have now on SCD, but that's a fairy tale.

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Something Completely Different

Trollheart

Yeah it's not a coup - what? Hello? You can't what? But I ordered those brownshirts WEEKS ago! How am I supposed to - well, I suppose we can just - what? NO FLAGS EITHER? Oh come on now! I bet this didn't happen back in Weimar - hello? Hello? HELLO???!!!

Seriously man, it's not a coup, as Guybrush says. Originally, from my point of view, it was and is more an escape craft in case this place goes down one day. I know there are people here - probably yourself included - who wouldn't give two ****s if it vanished, but there are those who are invested in the place - be it in terms of their work, the people, just the damn routine of it - and those people might be upset to log on one day and find a DNS error or whatever.

So we're here as a lifeboat if/when this place goes. You can come here and find the same people, mostly, and some of the same style of a forum. Then again, it's kind of Music Banter V. 2.0 etc; as in, other than being as well known Googlewise as MB, it's going to be a place where you can get all you get here, but more too, and better run, assuming Guybrush doesn't turn at the last moment as I'm plunging the knife into... what? Oh nothing, nothing.

Anyway, nobody's obliged to come here. Some have said they're not interested and that's fine. They will of course be first against the wall when the revolution comes, but that's their choice. And obviously nobody has just one chance. If anyone decides to change their mind, they're welcome to come over to us. Which is also not to say that you can't be in both places at once. The one does not exclude the other, and we won't be looking on this place as any sort of a rival or enemy, so please don't allow the buildup of thousands of troops at your border concern you. Military excercises, I do assure you.

Anyway that's my two cents. Come if or when you want, don't if you don't want to. I'll still be in both camps, because why annoy one forum when you can annoy two? Maybe I'll see you there, maybe not.

Now excuse me, I have to take a call.

Hello? Oh now this is just INTOLERABLE! We got planning permission for those re-education camps last year! Constit- what? Hello? Hello?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

rubber soul

I'm actually doing both. I'm still spending most of my time here but I'll pop over SCD a few times a day to see if anything new is going on. I'm also copying my American Presidents thread one by one to the new forum. Anyway, like Trollheart says, people can do both.

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Chula Vista

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

jwb

I think I've mentioned this before but I've seen this sort of forum schism over management twice before. In both cases the new forum seemed to inject some life at first but then eventually both resumed declining into obscurity. But they also both basically destroyed the user bases of the original forums as well.

rubber soul

I don't think anyone has actually left here though. An maybe Occult will take a go at it over there. Like many of us, I'm taking a wait and see attitude.

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Guybrush

Of course, those other schism forums didn't have me and Trollheart as admins.

The challenge of growth over time is very real for forums. MB is obviously fighting a losing battle here with active user numbers that have, on average, dwindled for years and years. MB has the google ranking so that people stumble across it, but lacks the ability to integrate new members into the community and/or to keep people interested over time. You can always find examples of newcomers staying, but the overall trend is that activity is dying off.

The people who could slow or turn around that slide into obscurity don't seem interested. Perhaps they don't see the problem or are well-versed in denial. Maybe they have accepted that it's a lost cause or that it isn't worth the investment. We're left with neglect which just makes a bad situation a little worse. Simple things like updates are actually important. Who's championing them?

For SCD, the situation will be different. It doesn't have google ranking so people will stumble over it, so more than anything it needs to have that staying power; that newcomers are integrated well into the community and that people who are part of it don't leave.

I believe the best way to achieve that, besides having a decent amount of activity, is to create a feeling of community - to make something that actually helps create meaningful connections between people. That means you should feel welcome and respected. You should be able to safely share things. When you make an effort to write something, there should be others who see that and welcome that effort. When you're dealing with some shit, you have friends online you can turn to and who see you. Maybe when you play an online game or just chat, you do that with friends from your online community.

Some get those things on MB, but there is little here outside of regular members to help nurture it and there's good reason to believe also these things are dying. From a management point of view, I don't think you can just neglect a community and expect those things to sort themselves out. I think you have to work to achieve it and, if achieved, that you then have to work constantly at maintaining it. I could be wrong, but I don't see any clear evidence of these sort of issues being on anyone's agenda here. The admins should be regularly discussing these sort of things with the mod team. Where are they?

So instead it's a bit like discussing global warming. You have a lot of deniers and a bunch of people who see the problem, but think there's nothing to do about it. What's worse is for MB, they might be right.

At least me and Trollheart have a rough idea of what the challenges are. We strategize and make goals and plans to deal with them. We have an ability to adapt, accommodate and nurture the community that you won't find on an ancient, static vbulletin. And hopefully, we'll also have help from the other people in our burgeoning community to achieve the above.

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Something Completely Different