The forum, its present and its future

digitalscream

So...as most of you are probably aware, Tony decided this week that it was time for him to step down as an owner of the site. I'm not going to go into the reasons - all I'll say is...he'll be missed in the admin team, and he's got my thanks for all the work he's done over the years to keep this place going. That leaves me as last man standing from the original four who set it up...let's hope I don't ruin it, eh?

So, I've got plans. Some for later, some for right now. Here we go...

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1 - A small rule change - an official distinction between bans and perma-bans. 

We allude to the difference in the rules, but it's never really been defined. There's precedent for bans not being permanent - in a couple of cases, we've let people back in after a year or two has passed. Now, people will be free to apply for re-entry after a year, and we'll look at them on a case-by-case basis (trying to apply a bias towards second chances where possible).

There are exceptions to this - the permanent ban variety. These are bans which occur for one of the following reasons (this is not an exhaustive list):

- Scamming people
- Sock accounts created to deliberately fool people
- Accounts created to get around being in the cooler
- Threatening legal action against the forum

Examples of people who won't ever be allowed back in are Collingridge (scamming), Lixarto (creating accounts while in the cooler) and Richards Guitars (sending us pseudo-legal threatening letters).

2 - We're starting a YouTube channel.

I'm conscious that forums are a dying breed, and we need something to bring this community into the modern world. Nobody's going to be forced into it - it'll mainly be a sister project. I've got some ideas for "show" formats, and at least one of them will need us to recruit a few folk who're good on camera from the member list. However, solid plans for this are a ways away yet.

The logic is that I really don't care about the forum making money; as long as it pays for itself, that's fine and dandy by me. The currency I'm interested in cultivating is influence - this is a pretty big forum as things go in the UK and Europe and represents quite a chunk of active musicians, and I'd really like it to become big in more than just numbers.

3 - New software.

I'm going to be writing something from scratch to replace Vanilla, in a proper language and designed from the ground-up to scale well and be a well-behaved platform for the future. I'm aiming to have a prototype ready by the beginning of the year. One of the big features it'll have - besides reproducing everything the current software does without the bugs - is integration with Patreon. The "donate money by PayPal" thing is great and shows a lot of enthusiasm from the community, but it's not easy to manage. Using Patreon, people will still be able to do the same thing, but I can also integrate with their API and provide people with benefits for handing over their hard-earned without any intervention from myself. One of those things will be a perk level which allows those supporters to upload images directly in the editor - that's going to be the first paid-for feature.

I don't know if there will be others, but one thing I'm definitely not going to do is go down the road of artificially restricting functionality or access that people currently enjoy and then trying to sell it back to them. I wouldn't want somebody to do that to me, and so if there are going to be chargeable features on here then I'm going to make sure they add value or improve the quality-of-life on here.

EDIT: For everyone who thinks I'm insane, please read this post, this post and this post before commenting. There's a lot of logic, reason and experience behind the decision.

4 - THE BIG ONE - Drew's coming back.

The timing of this sucks balls, but we were discussing it in the admin area before Tony's retirement and there was a majority in favour of a qualified "yes". This is a big part of being able to do the YouTube channel; he's got a lot of expertise in recording audio and video, he's good at editing, and he has access to facilities that the rest of us don't. That's all on top of the fact that he was one of the top contributors in on-topic areas with loads of useful posts prior to his departure.

He'll have a new account (which I'll update here when he's signed up again), to make a clean break with the troubles of old. There's precedent for this, we've done the same for a couple of people who're now doing well on here having managed to move on without reference to previous transgressions. If we in the admin team can let his "interesting" times go, we're hoping you guys can as well.

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So, that's it. Now, I'm off to do a tip run for the mother-in-law. I'll be back in a couple of hours to see the carnage...

I appreciate that some of you might have strong feelings about some of these things. Please keep the asshattery to a minimum, eh, and maybe have a refresher on the rules? I don't want this to be a whole round of cooler-filling...

cj73

I'm a relative nobody but, "onwards and upwards" and where can I get my hands on popcorn at 0840 in the office?

guitarfishbay

Seems a solid plan. Hope it works out well as I can only imagine how much of your time and energy this forum has taken up over the years.

guitarfishbay

Speaking of video content, Drew did a cool video for Thorpy’s Fallout Cloud recently.

https://youtu.be/GQwN-OUjzG4

Moe_Zambeek

I hope it works out, it’s a heavy load to carry for one person. Personally I think inviting Drew back is a mistake, but it’s yours to make.

mrkb

The king is dead, All hail the new king!

Sounds like a good plan Lee. Could the YouTube channel have a playlist of the non official jam videos as well to show member events?

digitalscream

mrkb said:

The king is dead, All hail the new king!

Sounds like a good plan Lee. Could the YouTube channel have a playlist of the non official jam videos as well to show member events?

I think the smart thing to do there is to keep that stuff separate from the main channel. Perhaps an "unofficial member content" side channel, with less-formal content? I'd probably want to look at doing that after the main channel's been going for a little while.

Worth noting that there will be another announcement next week about what the score is with the jams/member events/etc. Just thinking my way around it.

roberty

Thanks for all your hard work @TTony, this place has been invaluable to me

Dominic

I think you should charge a flat fee to post a Classified advert.I'm guessing that about 40 adverts are placed in various categories per day ........I'm sure nobody would begrudge a £3 tariff per advert posted.This would generate a reasonable little revenue stream to enable the promotion of the Video channel and it's still a very cheap way to advertise items for sale.
  £3 is a nothing when advertising a £1000 item to a target market.There must be an automatic software gatekeeper that only posts the active advert as the fee is paid on-line .

mrkb

digitalscream said:

mrkb said:

The king is dead, All hail the new king!

Sounds like a good plan Lee. Could the YouTube channel have a playlist of the non official jam videos as well to show member events?

I think the smart thing to do there is to keep that stuff separate from the main channel. Perhaps an "unofficial member content" side channel, with less-formal content? I'd probably want to look at doing that after the main channel's been going for a little while.

Worth noting that there will be another announcement next week about what the score is with the jams/member events/etc. Just thinking my way around it.

I was just thinking of a way to link to other forum member generated media - not host it all on the official channel. May also be good to do the same for the “solo of the month” soundcloud stuff- perhaps through a new Forum Media section?. Would be good to have a page where all the non site based media could be linked to so people can find it all.

mrkb

Moe_Zambeek said:

I hope it works out, it’s a heavy load to carry for one person. Personally I think inviting Drew back is a mistake, but it’s yours to make.

Just give him a new forum name - I think TTony is available - and we’ll never know

mart

mrkb said:

Moe_Zambeek said:

I hope it works out, it’s a heavy load to carry for one person. Personally I think inviting Drew back is a mistake, but it’s yours to make.

Just give him a new forum name - I think TTony is available - and we’ll never know

DDrew.

paulnb57

Sounds good to me! 

manicguitarist

I for one welcome our new overlords! Also - Lixarto- what happened there (or shall we just leave that scab unpicked?). I was looking forwards to sparring politics with my old communist buddy

dindude

No problem with Drew returning, but this forum is a worse place when you get a few who dominate, so don’t give him too much power, eh

Veganic

Can we vote on Drew's new name in a Drewy McDrewface type thing?

Jimbro66

1. Very sound reasoning.
2. Excellent idea. Looking forward to hearing what format that will take.
3. Well above and beyond the call of duty. If you can achieve that it will be a big lift for the forum. Muchly appreciated.
4. Drew? Hmmm, we'll see.

No mention of the modmin team. Is it intended to continue with the present team of three or might it be expanded?

guitars4you

Very best wishes Lee - Hope FB continues to be influential and helpful to so many

I love the 'community spirit' that it brings to so many - I do a number of guitar shows through out the year and see so many members 'pall-ing' off for a chat after meeting up (is it pal-ing or pall-ing) - Previously I dare say such guys would just not see each other and walk on by

I love the fact that there is so much knowledge on here from so many different sources - So many different members have a 'Mastermind specialists subject' that they are willing to share

I love the fact that it allows small 'businesses' to have a voice and offering - Be it makers, repairers etc etc

You have my continued support and hope it keeps going

Are you having an FB stand again at the Brum show 

guitars4you

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  meant to add comments about a caring side to FB and the community spirit it can offer

I know there have been other instances, but the obvious one that springs to mind is how FB helped to raise funds for @thomasross20 a while ago - It shows FB is more than just a forum

munckee

No idea who Drew is but apart from the perma ban crimes which make perfect sense I don't think you need to ban anyone. You can ignore them if you don't want to discuss with them. 

All sounds good though and it's great we still have you Lee. If this place folded I would have to work during the day and speak to my kids and play guitar at weekends. 

Fretwired

Can Lixarto come back ... ;-)