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A BIG XMAS THANK YOU TO CHOPIN


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Thanks for what, again? This?

http://forum.youngcomposers.com/t18390/revised-rules-and-code-of-conduct/page__view__findpost__p__280935

Lovely comment.

If there's one thing for sure I'd rather be thanking the members who actually contribute interesting things (or are hilariously stupid, lol) rather than the administration (except Mike, actually, he was cool.)

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If it weren't for an administration, in PARTICULAR, chopin, who pays the bill to keep YC online, there WOULD be no YC, no matter how meaningful the community is. Maybe Porcaro isn't always the best leader or decision maker, but I strongly admire his devotion to the cause. He has a vision in this site and he's really stopping at nothing to reach his goal, even if he makes a few mishaps on the way, but there is where the community comes in to help him make sure the decisions he makes are for the better. He really wants to see this place advance further, and we have a word, we just need to offer it to him in order for him to hear it. We the community are like a set of marbles for play. Chopin is only laying down the carpet as we need it. I offer a hand in acknowledgment of chopin's devotion to seeing that this place always has room to move forward.

*clap clap clap lap ap p *

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If it weren't for an administration, in PARTICULAR, chopin, who pays the bill to keep YC online, there WOULD be no YC, no matter how meaningful the community is.

I don't mean the community. I have nothing to thank the community for honestly since it's practically just 10 people, 8 of which I couldn't care less for. The rest were just one hit wonders who posted pieces and left forever(!) or people who were only ever active in off-topic (how many of my posts are debating religion/? rather than music since NOTHING WAS GOING ON on the music area?)

The forum stagnated already early this year if not earlier, so I'm just sticking around to see if anything actually happens. If anything I would've put much more effort into getting the forum out of the stagnation than all this networking stuff, but oh well.

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What do you think causes the stagnation, SSC? I think the more people have to talk about on a web forum, the more participation we'll see. I agree that the networking stuff wasn't a priority, but it's better to do it when times are slow than when the forum is busy if you want to do it at all.

Quite frankly, there aren't enough users making posts about music alone to spark interesting discussion. You almost definitely need other discussions to offset the times where music discussion slows down. When music discussion picks back up (and it does), the participation slowly and steadily increases.

If anything, I think the forum policy should be to encourage all forms of discussion (in the appropriate areas of course) that further explore not only music but culture in general where music must function in an ever-changing world. Religion may be one component of that, economics another, and government is probably another biggie, especially where it concerns education at least in the US.

There are plenty of things to discuss that aren't directly related to music composition. I just hope the admins and mods of the forum are aware of the social aspect of this site and aren't merely theorizing that the best course of action is to keep discussion strictly in reference to the compositional aspect alone.

Heck, we've already got an "Off-Topic" forum that already sees more activity than the Composers Headquarters. "Off-Topic" should be renamed to "General Discussion" anyway with "Composers Headquarters" below that and so forth. You don't put the most used forum of a message board at the bottom unless you're trying to "steer" or "manipulate" the focus of the site to meet your expectations (admins, mostly). You let the users tell you what they want, then you give it to them. And often, the best way to do this is simply to look at where the most activity is occurring and if you see trends developing, nurture them with a thread that asks something like, "You do x now in this forum... would it be helpful if we did x, y, and z to make your experience more enjoyable?" If you do things on a message board that users aren't asking for/don't care about then it's really not building on the existing user base.

This, of course, is also a way to attract 'other' members to the forum as well by broadening the offerings of the forum through thoughtful acknowledgment of existing trends. If you don't like that members are arguing with each other, instead of banning them outright (which happened FAR TOO MUCH this past year, I might add), make a forum called "Fight Club" or something and move the thread there so members can battle it out. I have a hunch that the "Serious Discussions" forum might have fulfilled that purpose, but anyway...

And just because a discussion becomes heated doesn't mean it's bad. The Composers Headquarters should be a members only area anyway, and that's where any serious discussions about music and things related to music should be happening, simply from a logistical standpoint. I guess at this point I'm not really addressing this to you, SSC. I'm just trying to point out how the organization of the forum and its overall "focus" on directing discussion more than opening the board to all discussions that can even loosely be associated with music could be, in my opinion, more to blame for stagnation.

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I don't mean the community. I have nothing to thank the community for honestly since it's practically just 10 people, 8 of which I couldn't care less for.

I think there are a little more than 10 people here. Throughout a given day, about 200 regulars will have visited the site, and 2000 guests/members will have visited.

The rest were just one hit wonders who posted pieces and left forever(!) or people who were only ever active in off-topic (how many of my posts are debating religion/? rather than music since NOTHING WAS GOING ON on the music area?)

We are taking measures to eliminate people like this. For example, everyone will inherit a "member rank" and a member rank will encourage those to participate. Those who do not participate on the site in any way, will suffer from lower visibility of their music. So people who come and go, will not perform in the search engines. Also, the only way to upload music will be through the network, so anyone who does not take the site seriously will most likely be turned off by this new system.

The forum stagnated already early this year if not earlier, so I'm just sticking around to see if anything actually happens. If anything I would've put much more effort into getting the forum out of the stagnation than all this networking stuff, but oh well.

Again, we are taking measures to improve the quality here. For example, we are growing a team of reviewers for the upload forums to increase activity to those forums. Staff has been restructured, and Mike, Jen and myself are no longer the only "go to" people on this site when it comes to site policies and/or technical issues. We now have Ron who is in charge of reviewers, and James and Hillary who are assisting us with various parts of the site, such as skin design, technical issues, and wiki development.

And of course, we moved the network to Young Composers, so we feel this will help with overall growth. I do make mistakes, but I try to recover from them. I listen to you guys, and I am for "fair and balanced" which is the reason why our staff is not just limited to me.

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And of course, we moved the network to Young Composers, so we feel this will help with overall growth. I do make mistakes, but I try to recover from them. I listen to you guys, and I am for "fair and balanced" which is the reason why our staff is not just limited to me.

I don't think anyone should be attacking -you- Chopin, because many of the things that have gone on over the last year haven't really been on your watch, so to speak. I just hope none of what I'm saying here is not being taken as criticism of you. I think the site looks updated and much more aesthetically pleasing. I just hope that in the months to come, updates will include logistical things like organizing the forums in a more sensible way. I'll post the remainder of this discussion in the appropriate forum and link to it if you're interested in listening to me.

EDIT: Topic is posted in Announcements; Technical Problems and Suggestions at http://forum.youngcomposers.com/t22300/forum-logistics/#entry324533

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