Criticisms and Suggestions

First off, I'd like to say that this forum is great. I especially love the colours!

Here comes the bad part:

I think that there are a few unnecessary boards here.

1. Invite your friends board is completely useless in my opinion - this board can be reduced to just stickied threads on the Announcement board

2. The off-topic board should be titled without "Introduce Yourself". I just thought sticky the introduce yourself thread would be enough.

3. I don't see the point of the "Trash Can" board and "Free for all forum"

4. More interesting member groups names perhaps?

5. 'Harmonize a Melody' board can be included in the 'Composition' category rather than it having it's own games category - Too many categories and boards can be quite confusing.

Apart from that, I think this is a beautiful forum most likely to grow.

Ta chuck!

First off, I'd like to say that this forum is great.

Lots of bad parts :)

I think that there are a few unnecessary boards here.

Agreed. Will work on condensing.

Invite your friends board is completely useless in my opinion - this board can be reduced to just stickied threads on the Announcement board

Agreed. Makes the board look a little messy doesn't it :unsure: This is not permanent though. I put it there for a reason, and I think it is obvious that it kind of worked? After all, you noticed the thread to spread the word didn't you :P Where the "invite friends" board is, that is called a hot spot. This hot spot is where most eyes will view when the page loads. Most eyes will see this thread, and hopefully they will read it! The board really needs a jumpstart, and I think this jumpstart is working. After I get more members, I will clean it up.

3. I don't see the point of the "Trash Can" board and "Free for all forum"

Yeah I dont see a point in a trash can either. I probably can hide it I just never got around to looking into that yet. As you know, this board is moderated. The free for all board is for unmoderated material, so you can say anything you like! But beware, offensive material may offend you if you decide to join this free for all forum!

4. More interesting member groups names perhaps?

Aw you dont like your "starving musician" title tag :lol:

5. 'Harmonize a Melody' board can be included in the 'Composition' category rather than it having it's own games category - Too many categories and boards can be quite confusing.

The reason it is in a separate category is because I am eventually going to add more contests. I think it would be more confusing in the long run to have competition forums included in the composing categories, dont you think?

Overall, you are correct that the board does need some cleaning up. I can probably hide the trash can, and take away some of the forums in the future (mainly used to help advertise which is essential right now).

Rarr I won't stay long as Starving Musician. - I take back number 4 (most definitely) and 5. Don't know how I missed that member group name. Teehee sorry.

Another little suggestion:

Why not make a thread to explain the membergroups i.e. 0-50 posts = starving musician; 50-100 posts - um...bla bla bla

Speaking of which, I see a lot of people have custom member group tags. How do you change those?

Edit: Never mind. I'm an idiot.

The trash can was mainly as a reference guide for members to see what has been deleted, as it may be irritating or unnerving to see things randomly disappearing forever. Despite this, I have now made the trash can only visible to moderators, and it will be used from now on as a record of what has been deleted. It will also be useful if something is deleted by mistake, or if a moderator deletes something which should never have been deleted.

By more interesting member groups, do you mean renaming Members to Composers and such?

I blocked everyone from changing their memeber tags. At least I thought I did! I want everyone who is 0-50 to be called starving musician!

I blocked everyone from changing their memeber tags.

Isn't there an option to allow only people with a certain minimum number of posts to change their member tags?

*raises arm* I changed it back :wacko:

Andrew - There is. We could limit it to members with 50+ posts, I suppose, as that's what chopin appears to want. Let's see what he says.

I have thing problems with the youngcomposers front page

1-The ad's right in the middle of the screen really throws me off and makes the site seem second rate to me.

2-The section about piano music. It makes it seem like this site is domiantly piano players. I think that bit about the piano music can be snugged away in composers advice.

Of course that is just my opinion.

Also I think the piano music and composition 'tutorial' things are far too subjective to be the first things you see on the site. Maybe this sort of thing should be on the board. There are points made as if they are fact which aren't. You say it's impossible to make interesting music without changing the key signature. This is simply not true. It may be true for you, but you (Chopin) isn't everyone (dispite the impression given on these boards). Also, despite the many, many critisisms of the guides, they remain stuck in place in one of the most prominant positions on the site. Why?

Not only for the musical things, but also dubious 'information'. What's the source for the claim that Sibelius files are midi files?, for instance.

The new posts system doesn't really work that well. If I log in, and look at my posts, but don't get to read all the new posts, and then log in later, these aren't listed in the new posts bit. It really would be a lot simpler with a 'check messages' button. Really. I have to click about 3 times (or click and scroll and bla and bla) to get to see a new message and that is just two clicks too many.

I agree. This new board works in a very clumsy way, with an increase in the number of clinks per task. Just reading new messages, for example, takes three times as long as it did on the old board.

The home page is too busy. A simple greeting page with, say, half a dozen or less well spaced links to the forum, an about page, a site map and so on will be much better visually for both first time visitors to the page and for returning people who know where they need to go to.

Also, I get very irritated by the Google ads near the top of the forum pages. Ads are fine... in the right place: but in the forum are just annoying. At the very least, can you put them in a 1pt box? This will at least separate them from the useful information for which we use the forum. (I do know that we can't get rid of the adverts, for financial reasons.)

Talking of the google ads, I *really* *strongly* object to them when they are for waste of time sites such as the following, which are being advertised in my current window:

"Online Chat Room: Chat with 1000s of local singles Girls fo free, guys are welcome! www.*censored by David*.com"

"Chat Online Now: Meet 1000's of sexy singles and start chatting for free www.**.com"

"Free Adult Chat: Flirt, Chat And Have Fun Online Instant Live Free Access Today www.**.com"

Are they really appropriate for this kind of forum?

About the new posts system - this is a bug which will be fixed in the new version of IPB (2.1), due out some time this month I think.

Regarding the ads/front page - I have no control over the front page, but I will get in contact with chopin and bring this thread and the suggestions to his attention. Google ads were chosen because they're generally the least intrusive and fastest loading. It would however be nice to have some ads specifically about music as the sites grows.

I know a few things have to be changed still. Just keep in mind that not only is the board surviving, but it is growing! So I must be doing something right. Give me some credit in that respect. Ok so there are mistakes here and there and so far I have been trying to accomadate everyone's concerns....but try to give me some leeway. I even spent about a week trying to learn php and mysql to write a script to help manage everyones composition upload files, the "composer files". I think you guys are being way too hard on me. All I want to do is try to make this a pleasant place for you guys.

All the stuff you guys are mentioning, except the ads, I am working on. Just give me time as I am still trying to promote the site, and develop it.

I am going to put a blog on this forum soon so the Contributors forum that you see on the board will be deleted, or moved to another position. Since I need help with content, the Contributors forum is a way to invite people to write articles. The blog should take care of this problem though, but I am waiting around to see which script is best.

I am sorry about the ads. The ads should be relevant to this site's theme, or the topic you are typing in. The ads are staying because it is a way to help me monetize the site. So far the ads are performing pretty good. This site is extremely costly to manage right now. To give you an example, 200 megs are being transferred each day. I may have to limit attachment space to 1 meg, but 1 meg is plenty for midi files.

PS. The old yc, if you haven't noticed, never allowed attachment space, and had an ad at the top of every single page on the whole site as well. 69.22.155.44/yc?13@@.ee6b280

I don't think anyone actually had a problem with adverts per-se. It was merely the nature of these. And anyway - noone said the old site was perfect. I found the adverts to be distracting and irritating there as well.

Personally I think you have site success and site subscription numbers incorrectly inextricably connected.

You are the owner of the site. It is your 'job' for us to be hard on you. If you please everyone, you get continuous praise. If you don't, you have to accept the praise (which I do think you are getting elsewhere in the board) alongside the critisisms (which are, by the way, being posted in the "Critisisms and Suggestions" part of the forum.

And while you are the owner of the site, I must say I think it is somewhat arrogant to continuously refer to it as "my forum". Surely, as we (mostly) live in democratic states, it is a fair assumption we agree that that is a pretty good way to go about things. The "my" brings about images of an Empire or Dictatorship. I hope you sympathise with what I'm trying to say here.

"Young Composers Important - Please Read!

Composer Files Music Chat Help Search Members Calendar"

I think you can bring out the top "toolbar" a bit more - it's pretty easy to overlook, given the small text. Maybe make buttons out of them too?

I think making them into buttons would make the design seem a little too busy, but attracting attention to them by changing the colour or something is a good idea. I'll work on this.

EDIT: OK, made them slightly larger. If anybody finds this change annoying, do say so.

You are the owner of the site. It is your 'job' for us to be hard on you. If you please everyone, you get continuous praise. If you don't, you have to accept the praise (which I do think you are getting elsewhere in the board) alongside the critisisms (which are, by the way, being posted in the "Critisisms and Suggestions" part of the forum.

Agreed and good point.

And while you are the owner of the site, I must say I think it is somewhat arrogant to continuously refer to it as "my forum".

My mistake, I didn't even realize this when writing up the page. It's not even my forum license yet (still have to buy one). All fixed, and dictatorship is not even close to what I am aiming for.

Personally I think you have site success and site subscription numbers incorrectly inextricably connected.

I disagree. For the low amounts of signups, we have an extraordinary amount of posts.

Ok so I hope I at least covered "some" of the complaints so far.

here's a pat on the back, you've done well so far regardless of other opinions. :)

OK. Thanks Chopin. My mind is slightly more at rest. :) Indeed, having been active recently on the 'originality' thread, I have the same feeling as I did years ago - wanting to check to see if anyone has posted anything else ridiculous, and feeling compelled to reply! :) Thank you for that. Seriously. :)

It's active and still small enough to be able to recognise the most active members. That's good. It's just that from the comments you made elsewhere, I was under the impression that no number of signups was too big.

So. I think that we have ironed out a few of my worries. :)

I am also getting used to the board - some features are nice - being able to see how many posts is great... but there are still some slight irritations. But I won't dwell on these now. Let's enjoy this moment of peace. :o

POSTS MERGED

God, I use a lot of smileys.

* laughs *

* but doesn't quite insert a smiley *

I don't know why I made this connection. From the film "Victor Victoria" (1983):

Victoria: You're smiling, and I don't believe you.

King: You're not smiling, and you should be.

:o

Please refrain from making a double post when you can just edit your first post, stefan. ;] That said. Indeed, you do use a lot of smleys.

Chopin, you are brilliant. ;]

So... Where did these smileys originate from, anyways? (try to answer that without going off topic)