Sure thing, I’m off the day job tomorrow so can look into it!
I personally think drama creates activity. And I enjoy the more adult lax conflicts that can bring. But this is my perspective as I have no business to look out for.
The more restrictions there are in places the less likely someone is going to express themselves. Question is does it get you more subs to be in drama or out of it?
I can tell you that forum drama massively interferes with trying to get actual work done when you have sit there monitoring the web site like an air traffic controller all day. And that is such a large negative that I am strongly in favor of avoiding it.
I’m also fairly certain that a forum full of people yelling at each is not appealing to new subscribers, though that is just a guess.
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It’s a balance for sure. You only have one mod as far as I’m aware? Tommo, and you and Brendan as admins?
I would say that many of the biggest sites are literally people yelling at each other, I understand what you’re saying tho.
Situations like this will always come down to me stepping aside from whatever I’m doing and either making a hard judgement call, or actually getting on the forum and typing the repsonses myself, sending the emails, etc. There is only so much delegation that can work when your name is in the URL.
I understand that “drama” sells tickets, but I think running an instructional site is a different animal and is just fine with a quiet, boring forum filled with questions about deviation and flexion/extension!
Sounds like you have your mind made up to me 
I have curtailed my abrasiveness to be part of the forum and I think anyone who acually has something to say will too. I acually forget it’s literally your name, I know that makes it more personal.
I think it depends on the intention of writing. I think it’s different to be constructive and give advice that will help the future, to criticize, and to be unilaterally undermined to offend. It hasn’t been long since I started working on the forum, but it’s the same in other communities.
It’s true that it’s not easy to tell this apart. But it’s easier to distinguish when you look at it in terms of presence advice. Sometimes stories that start with good criticism get overheated. In this case, I think it’s good to refresh the atmosphere through management.
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Although this may be an unpopular opinion, but maybe moderation needs to be a little more strict.
I don’t mean dictator like, but say when a comment is an attack or a personal insult that could erupt into a crazy mess, a mod should remove the comment and maybe message the poster to explain why and give a warning that it breaches the rules. After this, if it continues, a temporary suspension etc. Perhaps recruiting one or two more mods could lessen the workload.
Knowing where that line is will have to come down to yourself and the mod.
I do feel like a hypocrite as I type this… I totally lost my cool in the most recent drama, which I’m sure didn’t help anything or anyone. Sorry about that! I’m not usually confrontational, Im not even sure how that happened, it’s a bit embarrassing.
By the time I removed my own comment, it was too late, so maybe if it was flagged by a mod or I got a warning, it might have been a wake up call to chill tf out!
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Troy and everyone, I looked at the available settings (there are many!) and we can actually prevent new users (=trust level 0) from posting until they are promoted to trust level 1. The current conditions for reaching TL1 do not look too harsh to me:
- Open 5 topics
- read 30 posts
- spend 10 minutes reading
Below are some additional settings, applying to all users, that I took the liberty of changing straight away:
- Minimum time between creating new threads: 3 minutes
- Minimum time between writing two posts in the same thread: 3 minutes
- Maximum number of consecutive posts in a thread (i.e. not interrupted by answers from others): 2
Quoting the excellent @Frylock I pulled these numbers out of… thin air 
So please let me know what you think of the proposed changes Re: trust levels, and if you find the waiting times reasonable or too frustrating.
Cheers 
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I think that’s fairly reasonable 
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I think us being music lover we like doing on our thing. So using more security features would be the first step before trying to dictate how we post. I like to say what I feel, especially about guitar, I still don’t know why I love this quirky instrument so much with it’s awkward fretboard that still confuses me, but I am passionate about stuff.
And if I have to sort of alter my train of thought to keep things civil that sort of stinks. I mean I get it, but I had no idea what was going on as I come and go from time to time here. Searching for anything that can help my musical journey.
I try the best that I can to remain grounded in composure, but that is getting much harder to do in today’s society, yeah I am look at you gas prices and vehicle prices with hot summer rapidly approaching. Nothing is perfect, nothing is easy, shred guitar and music in general is very difficult for most people.
I like to get a sense of who someone is even if it is only words I am reading of said alias person, hopefully not a bot, doubt those exist, but these days who knows with things so technologically advanced.
Basically I don’t want to see it get to the level of those open source operating system forums. This is nothing compared to what you get in that realm. My anxiety is getting bad just thinking about that area. I mean you can think you are being nice, and did everything right yet still get in trouble for overstepping the boundaries.
I do get the point of posting back to back, and I am definitely guilty of this for sure! I can turn into a chatty cathy, dare i say karen, doll, going on and on. So yeah I am glad someone said something to me about that to wake up my brain to show me my flaws. Much respect on how you guys asked as well very professional in their demeanor.
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These options all sound great.
Are you saying that users currently can post at trust level 0? Yeah, that’s not ideal. Definitely trust level 1. We can fine tune as need be.
The “must do an intro post” requirement is great also but I don’t know if there’s a feature for enforcing something more complicated like that. If that requires custom dev work we might have to let that one go for now.
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I understand what you mean Troy, sorry I mist his excuses on the other thread you created.
I however don’t understand why this post is still there in the original thread?
It’s realy negative towards Anton and in my opinion should have been removed already.
Then I would never have commented a second time.
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No worries Andy and thank you. I moved this post to this thread since it’s where we’re discussing this issue.
In the simplest way I can put it, here are some examples:
opinion - acceptable
“I like that player.”
“I don’t like that player.”
“That player sounds robotic to me.”
“That player does too many pentatonic lines.”
opinion stated as blanket value judgment, intent to shut down other people - not acceptable:
“That player sucks.”
misinformation - not acceptable:
“That player is running a scam / eats babies / etc.”
To be clear, I don’t really think negative opinions are all that useful. There are cases where someone wants to say something negative for constructive reasons, but they’re not as common. Most of the time it’s just a person lashing out from a place of ego, usually to shut other people down. This is the garbage type of non-discussion and should go. Anything that can be said like “That player sucks” can also be said in a way that provides actual insight into why you feel that way and can lead to some type of meaningful conversation.
So in short, although I don’t love the “acceptable” kind of negative opinion, I don’t know that we should be legislating that. Moderating the other stuff is enough to keep things civil.
I’m sure there are edge cases. Feel free to suggest them!
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I would suggest that it may be unacceptable to spread gossip and/or rumours about the personal lives of the players we study here also.
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I think that’s pretty sensible. Is this a thing that you’ve seen here, or just a general comment about forum conversations?
One of the reasons I love this forum, and what always set it apart was the freedom to discuss guitar technique from our favorite players. I’ve learned (and continue) from Troy and so many knowledgeable players on this forum. A truly helpful, supportive community. That’s a rarity these days, especially in the guitar community, which can be, let’s face it, opinionated and competitive at times.
I think you should be allowed to disagree and have positions if you don’t demean the other person. If another person is incorrect about something, (something objective) and won’t listen to reason, heed the warning, or get disciplined.
IMO, Troy was too permissive in the AO thread. The poster crossed the line, and showed he couldn’t reign himself in. Anton is very opinionated about certain things; many brilliant people are. That’s what makes them brilliant. You must respect that in the guitar community and get a bit of “thicker skin”.
For example, Tom Hess is a polarizing person in the guitar instructional community. I recognize his talent and his teaching ability, but I don’t like his policies. I think it’s ok to cite them and move on.
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Mostly just a general comment. I’ve seen some outrageous speculations, unfounded rumours and outright lies about the personal lives of different musicians on various guitar forums over the years.
Ok, that’s clear to me Troy.
But what is written in this post is crossing the line to me.
“Anton often sounds robotic to me. His picking strokes all sound the same which is pretty heavily accented. He vibrato sounds downright tweedly at times, always has, he’s no Yngwie Malmsteen that’s for sure, let alone someone with really good vibrato, forget about virtuoso level”
Anton has great dynamics. That’s one of the things he is a master at and i proved this by posting some material where he plays from realy soft to realy loud by a very controlled pick attack.
Also his vibrato is very controlled, he masters all different kinds of.
So these are lies and in my opinion should not be allowed in a post.
Just my 2 cents.
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I don’t think is a “lie”. And I think that word gets used a lot these days and is worth paying attention to. This comment starts off expressed very clearly as an opinion: “to me”. So I infer that everything else in that paragraph is also still part of that opinion. You can go crazy micro-managing the language. But the tone of this paragraph, while negative, is the tone of someone expressing why they don’t like they way something sounds, and at least offering some explanation for that.
Is this my favorite type of discussion? No. But I don’t think this is quite the same thing as the commenter offering misinformation that the commenter knows is not correct, i.e. lying.
If you think the tone itself crosses a line, because negative comments like this are confrontational, or not constructive, I can see that. But that’s a different criticism. I’m open to that.
Again, please feel free to suggest ideas.
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