Better ways to incorporate Plug.DJ into the MB community
 

Ok, so I figured this was more suited to the suggestions and feedback forum, but if a mod disagrees and feels it's better in General Music or whatever then feel free to move it.

Plug has proven rather popular as of late and it only makes sense. This is a music forum and Plug offers the ability for users to chat, a place to get to know one another better, and of course for us all to play and listen to music together. It's a perfect fit and I think users are benefiting from an easy to way to discover music that is new to them and get to know each other music tastes better. It does also have the potential to retract from the music discussions here, and almost become a replacement for the music forums.

I've started this thread following a discussion between myself and Arya in the shoutbox a few minutes ago where we sharing ideas about what we could use Plug for, more specific ways to use the site to both bring the community together and maybe even create more discussion on MB in the process.

I'm going to share with nyou a couple of ideas that were mentioned, give you all the opportunity to offer your input, brainstorm and of course share your own ideas. If we can get some solid ideas together that we would like to try then we create more threads and try and arrange something.

The ideas we came up with are:

• Full album streams and listening parties, where we can schedule a time, lock the DJ booth and the nominated DJ can create the album playlist and we can all listen to it together.
• We could even make that idea a little more specific, such as new release streams and/or genre-specific parties.
• Essentially we could have an album club scenario, but with group listenings. We could still have the feedback for the album be given here on the forum.
• We could use it as a resource for allowing our more musically talented users to share with us their work. This could work in many ways, if the interest was there and a user was willing to do it, then we could allow a user to DJ, lock it for everyone else, and give them the opportunity to share a playlist of their work with the community.
• We could also open the DJ booth and allow multiple users to do the same and share their music with us.
• And in what I feel could be a very interesting project, we could have themes. If we had enough users willing to participate and contribute then we could themes, maybe monthly themes, where we could have users record covers. For example we could have a different theme every month, either a genre of music or even a specific artist and let everyone have a go at recording cover versions.

I have no musical ability, but I know that is something I would at least enjoy being a part of and being there to listen to others work.

There are certainly issues, such as timing. Timezones creating possible problems. I still think it could be fun to try any of these and try to use the site in a more positive way. I have nothing against the way we use it now, by the way, infact I love it, it's a lot of fun. I don't think it hurts to try and think of other things we could be doing that may just get people using and posting on MB a little more!

As I said, feel free to comment, criticise, and offer suggestions. And please, if you have other ideas, and better ideas, than the ones above then share them!

Honestly, I love all these ideas. We could have a stickied thread started with a separate Plug.DJ room specifically for all of the above, and have set times to do the listening parties. Separate so that if certain members don't want to participate in whatever album it may be (or whatever music is being played) the more informal room is still open to do whatever in.

So yeah. Do it.

I was actually going to create a thread for ideas for better incorporating plug.dj into music banter, but this is way better than what I was going to come up with, so thanks for saving me the effort.

Honestly I'm down for all of these ideas.

I'm really loving the idea of listening parties for new releases, and would be a part of that for sure.

I'm happy to give Mojo the power to organise this sort of thing in the main MB room - right now he's only at the "bouncer" level, which doesn't give him the ability to lock the DJ booth.

I would request that there be separation between mods in the plug and mods in the forums - simply because I feel they're different things that require different moderation.

This is also because the plug thus far has been largely unmoderated and has been, in my opinion, the better for it - the live environment leads to less drama and I think if the time comes it needs moderation in the way the forums do, something will have gone drastically wrong.


Otherwise a seperate room for the listening parties, where moderation is wholly consistent with the forums makes sense, but as I said before - I think there's a different dynamic in the forums vs the plug, and I don't foresee it being a good thing to have a ton of mods in there, since its worked very well already with minimal moderation - I think for the simple reason that it being almost unmoderated, forces people to be slightly more adult about things, rather than crying for kicks or bans just because of arguments happening.

We shouldn't need mods, as such, really. I agree it's fine as it is. If a time comes where it seems we may need that then so be it, but I wouldn't be worrying about that for now.

If theres enough interest then when it comes to working out exactly how we would organise these things, keep in mind that the creation of private rooms is now enabled again. At least for now. I made one, simply to make one while I could.

Also I am obviously willing to be involved in the process of creating and organising this stuff but I think that for anything involving the recording and sharing of users own music, it would be more appropriate if someone else did that. For now I'm nominating Arya, but obviously thats her call. I say this simply because I wouldn't be contributing to that, as I can't play anything.

I have a really good idea for the plug room that Mojo had a big part in, when I get to a computer, I'll start that! :)

Whatever ends up happening, I'm in. I love plug and would love to see it incorporated more into the forum.

The album-club-type ideas are especially ****ing awesome.

This for sure sounds great.