Funny, I’ve had ideas for that kind of thing come to me in dreams. Never music though. Go figure.
Discord 3.0
Artificer
#22
It’s also one of the things that you don’t get from youtube how-tos. You’re right, outside of absolute beginners or really confusing/difficult things, the “how do I make this sound?” stuff isn’t useful, or a draw for a larger community. Mostly people are just going to google or youtube search and find what they’re looking for. Real feedback on how how your track’s doing is one of the things that a place like this can offer that makes it stand apart. We might be old, but that just means we have experience! 
And just FYI since you mentioned it - you can turn off Discord notifications by right-clicking the server name in Discord and selecting the Notifications option. You can mute all, mute specific rooms, or a bunch of other fiddly bits to keep your phone or computer from blowing you up all the time.
relic
#23
Notification settings: that’s great to know. Grandpa relic needs help with his cellphone occasionally lol (no for real, I can’t always figure shit out)
And just to play devils advocate, doing a live stream critique where the person could make adjustments in real time and get responses from people could be cool too.
Auto-meh-geddon
#24
I haven’t installed it on my phone, I use it only on the computer thing, so notifications don’t really bother me.
White_Noise
#25
I normally will let my phone ping me if I’m mentioned, and will hard mute any meme channels and such. I’ve found that’s my happy medium that lets people get in touch with me but doesn’t bother me. I think my phone buzzes like half a dozen times a day.
IO_Madness
#26
Well, really I’m NOT here that much. The BB’s, we’ve just gotten so slow, there’s just no users coming in, and I myself am burnt out. There’s no new users coming onto the site in general. We had 332 new users sign up in the last year, that’s less than 1 per day. Only 120 of those new users made their first post in the same period, meaning, roughly 1 in 3 new users over the last year ended up posting at all.
Over the last year we had an average of 22 users that interacted with the site on a daily basis. 22 users. Think about that. We’re an international site, and we have 22 people of the 7 billion people out there in the world, that login and do something (like, post) on average on any given day. And that’s our ENTIRE site. All the posts, all the content, everything that is on this site, only 22 people actively engage with the site.
Over the last year, we had 13.2k posts (probably a quarter of those immediately after COVID hit and no one had anything to do) made, which is about 36 per day. So, with 22 users, that’s 1 1/2 posts per person, per day. 1 1/2, so like, roughly 10 people make a post, 10 people make two posts. Honestly, I don’t even know where these posts are going, cuz so many threads have no activity more recent than a few days, a week, two weeks, a month. How do expect to engage people, when is there is SO little activity? And this isn’t the cause of just one individual who isn’t contributing, one person isn’t going to be able to make enough posts to bring those numbers up any significant amount. We need a community, but this is not a community. It’s barely a community, it’s a small group that meets in a small town for star gazing. That’s nice and all, but we’re a domain on the WORLD WIDE WEB. There HAS to be something we can do to boost presence in order to not be two people per country using the site.
Now I kinda disagree with Auto about “IDM” being dead, but certainly IDMf has VERY LITTLE to NOTHING to do with IDM music, so why are we called “IDMf”? What pathway to success does this place have? What do we offer? OK, we putz out a few releases here and there of OK quality, and hey, we’re a netlabel with 22 active users a day on our site so maybe it’s not a big deal if we’re not A-quality, but is this helping us get more people? In any case, it’s confusing because, we’re a label, we have “IDM” in the name, but we actually just do general electronic music?
Does anyone have a vision of what we’re trying to be? We have an admin crew of 6 people, 5 mods (including myself), who are basically also the admins, Stu runs some SaaS business, and our server isn’t being updated. We’re running old Discourse software that doesn’t look like it’s ever gonna be updated unless we plead with Stu every time an update comes out, that is IF he responds.
At what point do we just declare that we are a dead site? I’m happy a few people cherish the site, but broadly speaking, what point is for us to be here?
I mostly use the forums for the comradery or gear talk, and just casual dialog with other people. But every time I come log in, the software is still out of date, it’s the same color scheme it’s been for over a decade, it’s the same topics, there’s nothing new happening. What point do we just say, this is dead? This is done for? IDMf is no more. What is IDMf doing for anyone at this point? Honestly, I pose that question to anyone reading this comment. What are we doing here?
When I say that, I’m including myself in that group as well, but specifically not doing stuff where people are pushing out releases for labels, making money, getting attention, that kinda stuff, I’d like to see more of that.
bbb
#27
I’m all for discord being re-formulated for the forums.
I don’t think there were any specific problems with the last one, besides moderation. There were moments that were completely inappropriate for the community to have its name attached to. But, that’s easily solvable by adding extra moderation to it. “oh you’ve been here for 10+ years and still around? If you see some bunk shit, please block it.” “we’ll review and delete that member from the forum”…Because that was my biggest issue. At times, things got out of hand. Which is whatever but I feel if consequences from one space, was inforced on the other, it would have kept it inline, to a degree, at least with concurrent members.
I’ll add as well, I know the moderations on the forums are pretty tight, unwarranted, member-wise. Probably wise or not necessary to open that up but I’d give more people access to do stuff in discord, just because of the instant nature. Most of us older folks rarely use it, you guys included. Might as well give more people access there to block/delete shit, since we might hop on there randomly to see who is playing what, etc. That doesn’t have to be towards the forums, obviously.
That could help with forum mods as well, if you need them. As a member with a lowering active status, I’ve notice a lower active status from the mods as well. But just because you guys post less, doesn’t mean you’re modding less.
I guess my meaning is, I hope you guys would post more and have to mod less(unless i’m out of place there). The three that come to mind on the daily, I join and read, I just don’t see often. But hey, I guess if the entire activity is lower, that would include you guys too.
bbb
#28
Also, probably not possible…
But is there a way to cross-post some sub-forum threads into discord and vice-versa?
That’d be interesting.
Obviously, being apart of the community for years now, I’ll add to comments made about this being a shell wihtout the years of dedicated responses from members that actually attempted to help people solve their issues making stuffs. If there were a hollow point or an easily crackable shell, I’d say that the people with the most experiences and opinions aren’t posting anymore. That doesn’t mean you have to be right, it never has, it was always meant to give direction to people, things to try. Which was one of those things I always looked forward to reading, answering, and seeing. Experiences that you didn’t even remember you needed to ask. Things you never thought to try, things that mirrored your own issues.
That’s something to covet.
RFJ
#29
@IO_Madness Here’s the thing for me…
Like I said I don’t disagree with your comments. I think though most of us on here with half a brain see the proof of what you are talking about in the pudding that is the forum. Frankly though, most of us on some level enjoy using the forum. The forum is not what it used to be, but it is what it is. A place most of us enjoy having a chat about gear, production, and whatever else on in our limited spare time.
Every so often someone comes along harping on all these things as you have chosen to do of late. Why you have decided to do this I’m not really sure. It just strikes me as odd someone who complains about a forum that they regularly use.
The glory days are over. The world, as you have pointed out, has moved on. We can either accept the forum as is or not. Hemming and hawing about this and that in the way that you are only distracts from what little we can actually do and rarely produces anything of value.
Interestingly enough we also have a MOD room where a discussion like this might actually bear some fruit. Starting a dialog out here, like this, will only create an unproductive shit show of a thing. Surely you’ve been here long enough to see countless examples of that.
————
Whatever you guys decide to do with the discord I’ll do my best to get on board with.
Creepr
#30
Man it sucks being half a day behind on these things because of time-zones…ah well.
I will not weigh in at all on the general discussion, but I contribute this one point:
Give the “we don’t even make IDM music/the name is dumb” etc, et. al., ad nauseam discussions that we have had, why not take this opportunity to rebrand the Discord? Leave the forum as is, but create a “new” community on Discord, associated with the forum, but with a new name?
Auto-meh-geddon
#31
So, less talk and more rock, there’s already a Discord with a structure, let’s try to use it a bit more and take it from there.
We might even add a couple of things:
- a channel for discussion of discord improvements (or we keep this thread)
- auto moderation rules(might need some prodding)
- voice/video channel?
relic
#32
you got my grompy ass chatting on discord–this was like moving a mountain so bravo everyone lol
metaside
#39
I think the main additional benefit a forum such as this could add nowadays to all the stuff that is out there for free and often by well-known artists, is actually releasing community-driven things, such as music or sample packs as organized by the netlabel, but for instance, the latest sample pack project didn’t get nearly enough submissions.
And I doubt people want to release their tracks here when even mods are writing that someone should pull the plug lol. Who would want to release with a place like that - at least if they see any value at all in their own music? I really don’t understand why people who don’t like the site anymore can’t just make a personal decision and move on individually. Nobody needs all that negativity, especially in these times.
Auto-meh-geddon
#40
Which is why we need to try and tune things around, get more discussions going and overall be better, Discord is not the end-all solution, just an extra way of connecting and talking, there might be good ideas coming out that could transfer to the forum.