Why message boards go down hill.
 

There was quite a bit of speculation a few months back on how this site was going downhill. With Jackhammer's recent departure, its come up again with the Mods and I wanted to offer my 2 cents about why it happens, not just on musicbanter, but with the world at large.

Theres a reason people continue to watch political punditry even after the same issues are dredged up every 2 years. Theres a reaon why everyone hates Rolling Stone, despite being the biggest music oriented magazine state-side.

With regard to the former, in the heat of opposition, opinion becomes conviction. With the latter, opposition forces take on a "king of the hill" role. Eventually there is a position taken, it is standardized which is held as truth after a given time period becomes fact.

Rolling Stone is bull**** because the same useless and tired old warhorses are trotted out for their annual blow job and we're all supposed to stand and applaud as these elitist journalists with $5 hair cuts tell us about authenticity and "freshness" with a thesaurus's remix of the same old line. Once this line of rhetoric becomes standardized, those who rebel to rebel take up a counter-culture camp with the hollow rationale of "rebellion" but they do little to move on a given opinion. Most are happy to call the Beatles terrible, or announce their undying passion for Daniel Johnson. These are not opinions, they are part-time filler for empty personalities. The character-equivelent of foam shiping-peanuts.

Message boards co-opt that musical snobbery that is so prevelent in the music/journalism industry at the very cost of the interest in the boards. It does this because of two major reasons; for one thing, the pseudo-intellectual posturing that occurs is rarely based in logic. It would be near impossible to do this given that music is traditionally an emotional response. Still, because there is no right or wrong answer, arguments are reduced to horrible posturing and medals are often given to the loudest, with the snarkiest lines. This atmosphere of bullying lends itself to the solidification of opinion.

Secondly, and I think this is bigger - most forum posters are ****ing vaginas. I've said prior, most show up here with whatever opinions happened to stick to them as they walked through life. No one comes to MB as a "scholar" because those people are generally touting how great jazz and classical are, and they find no responses here. That and their *******s. So your average Joe shows up to these boards and is promtly savaged with a 4-Iron by clueless dopes who not only think Minus the Bear is Jesus, but revers them with the same regard that the scholars revere Jazz and Classical. The larger differece being that Minus the Bear sucks, and we do respond to Indie threads.

Once these Johnny 6-packs are abused enough they either leave, or start to conform. And they don't kind of conform, they jump in whole hog and beat the hell out of the newbie wave behind them. They are assisted by the few that had just finished beating them, and who are now just as snarky but with less fire.

Eventually those folks become established or leave, and the final tier of a forum poster becomes somewhat of a seasoned veteran in musical exploration and argument. Even still, old habits die hard and conventional wisdom is questioned but rarely explored. And thats the problem. This penthouse class of posters doesn't weild its experience like a weapon to slaughter sacred cows, they sit, kowtowed to the systems and norms that were in place when they showed up here.

In an ever-evolving world like music, how could discussion ever become boring?

With access as easy as it is now, how could the well run dry?

It can't, and it doesn't, still people look across the forums, through a large expanse we've all paved with two hands and a keyboard and we think to ourselves that its all been done. This is because we've agreed that Nirvana actually sucked, Radiohead is so untouchable they shouldn't be put into groups with other artists, and that there is no redeeming features left to the countless genres we hear on the radio.

These ideas are only challenged when some doe-eyed newbie shows up, who only wants to come to a place to talk about music and is quickly questioned on his intellectual abilities by a group of hatemongers (sorry Urban) who were too weak-minded to defend themselves at the gates opening.

People have said in the course of this discussion that they were thinking of leaving or that this place had become so boring that would check in weekly at best. I'd guess that few things would be better for the longevity of the boards. Your opinions are here, you're here in spirit. But we've survived a liteny of great posters leaving before; Pastor of Muppets, Ethan's 42 user names, Swim, Satchmo twice, Jr, and despite his part-time *******ry, Bill good make a great point when he wanted to.

I understand wanting to show up here for battle and seeing the field abandoned can be frustrating. But the effort of one new point, in a world of a countless trillions, can't be that hard. And if we all did it, even once a week there wouldn't be a problem. But in order to do this, we're going to have to challenge our own ideas, and the musicbanter conventional wisdom, if we're going to make it work.

I'm going to go post about the problems with Metallica. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong.

I think if anyone else had written that I wouldn't have read it.

I agree, I'm not entirely sure if I disagree with anything. I'm going to read it again tomorrow, it's late. I'll get back to you with my disagreements. :D

I think people have a lot of expectations for message boards.
People don't have as much to say as they think they do, and they say it all, and they get board.
They argue about the same things over and over again, and bash others for the same things over and over again.
And then the boards become something else entirely.
That's what I think for now.

wait jackhammer departed?

woah, i missed that part, what the ****?!

These are definitely the sentiments I share, now that I have been posting here for a couple months. It really can seem repetitive at times. Personally, I try to avoid bashing a band someone likes (especially if the person is new). Granted, there have been times where I can't help but give my opinion on how terrible a popular band is just because it is frustrating to me that people don't know about the "underground" music that is so much better (well...to me, i guess).

I guess the hope I had coming here was that I would meet people who have a passion for music like I do, and that I would be able to find some great new music I would have otherwise never found. MB has definitely done this.

It is easy to figure out what music is popular these days, but that is not why I listen to music. I think the fact that people come and go so quickly is less due to the fact that people are ready and willing to tear them down and more about how the "elite" that stick around are so much into to music that all the stuff we tend to recommend to your average joe, they have never heard of. That gets intimidating. Checking out the "Albums Your Digging" and seeing album after album of absolutely unrecognizable music makes a casual fan feel unready to participate, and then they don't.

I'm sure if we all restricted our discussion to "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" we would actually get a bit more activity. The sad fact remains, however, that being as enthusiastic about music as we stayers are is rare. I know I don't meet many when I'm out and about. Even so, we do exist. And I think this forum could stay strong, even with your periodic fluctuations in activity.

It's not just people recommending unheard of music to people, or moaning about your favourite band, it's people acting like ****s when they do it.

I believe these forums have gone as far as they can go for a message board.
Unless going around in circles counts for something.
I think most of the old member accounts share that sentiment and the ones who haven't left, or died of boredom struggle to post something they haven't already posted before.
The MB Reader injected a bit of life back into the boards and extended the interest level while at the same time helping to raise the bar.
My opinion on the future of Music Banter is that the old place needs a facelift and a slightly different direction.
It needs to evolve from a community message board to an amatuer online music magazine without losing it's community spirit.
Under the present Admin I doubt that will ever happen.

^

Perfect. This needs to happen. Agreed 100%.

On a related note, there's an undercurrent inherent in the kind of musical snobbery being talked about here that I've always found rather... I dunno, unsettling, I suppose. It basically comes down to the idea that having a critical perspective on art (music in this case) seems to be more about disliking things than actually liking them, finding something wrong in the taste of the less educated. IE: "That thing you like sucks because this thing you've never heard of is better" instead of "That thing you like is sort of like this thing that I like that you've never heard of, but here's what's cool about my thing." There's something of an ugly undercurrent of art-as-social-currency in that, as well as a... for lack of a better word, laziness or lack of understanding at least.

Although I guess it is difficult, since as was pointed out, reasoning here is based more on emotional response and personal passions than any kind of objective logic. Still, I think it's unfair to assume one can't take a scholarly approach to popular music just because most people don't default to doing so.

And for the record, I enjoy a lot of Nirvana, Minus the Bear are alright now and again and Radiohead are good but far from untouchable.

been there, done that, moved to this site to have fun being one of the little people (and it is SO much more refreshing than being a mod or admin).

even the idea of becoming something more than just a message board is old. i'm not trying to discourage, just saying what it is. the enthusiasm is normally rampant in the planning stages but when push comes to shove very little normally happens when it's time to get the hands dirty.

it's the same kind of idea that comes up whenever old members become set in their ways and new members simply fellate their entrenched opinions.

It's where I wanted this place to be.
The idea would be an extension of the MB Reader.
The site would still be moderated with moderators having Editor status.
Contributors would be invited from among the regular members due to their writing ability (on merit) to write reviews, articles etc much in the same way as the journals, but on a more serious (as serious as amatuer will allow) level.
There really is no end to the potential. Even band member interviews wouldn't be out of the question if the place was handled correctly.
The site would still have it's message boards and community members could aspire to become a Music Banter 'Contributor'.
For this to happen the site would need a fair bit of money spent on it and an online magazine look.
There's no reason why a serious, amatuer online music magazine couldn't be successfully run by ordinary music lovers with little to no journalistic experience.

It's just end up with all the mods favourite members getting 'contributor' status.

Emphasis on merit.

wait, jackhammer departed?

and rt, when did you stop being a mod :(?

When I realised what I just posted isn't going to happen.

I know, but I still think it'd be biased, consciously or not, maybe if there was some kind of anonymous submission method for reviews/articles and what not.

Totally, and I think the reason for this is that people get bored of talking about their favorite things. One of the ways people convince themselves that their tastes match up with the creme de la creme is to denounce "inferior" music, and music forums serve as the perfect outlet for bashing in the skulls of people who are deemed musically-inept by the old guard/elitists.

There's a bigger picture involved than the one I outlined.
Big ideas can become big realities.
For the good of the site members would be chosen on merit. Anything less and the site would suffer. Any bias would be detrimental.
The community boards would remain the same however, but with a higher profile and with more potential to grow.

That's probably true, actually--it does get a bit dull talking about the same things all the time.

My retort to that attitude, though, is that there's so much music out there and so much constantly being released, all of which is made so easily available, why not just extend a little bit and find something new to talk about? That's the upside to the digital music culture--it's not as much of an investment or effort to explore something new as it used to be. I'm not necessarily condoning a constant consumerism--always getting new things without ever forming an opinion about or relationship with them (something I occasionally find myself guilty of and about, I admit)--but there's got to be a balance there somewhere.

Plus, the denouncement of "inferior" music in such a way just creates a divisiveness that actually stifles the kind of "authenticity" and "originality" generally praised by said old guard, in a "you are what's wrong with the music you hate" kind of way. Maybe that's not true 100% of the time, but sometimes it's hard not to feel it.

The Allmusic Blog

This site kind of echoes what right-track is talking about. The site is dedicated to music both new and old, but never repetitive. They blog about an album, discuss, and move on. I find great new music here all the time and it is very newb friendly.

The idea that "Musicbanter is going downhill" has actually never entered my mind until now. And still, I strongly disagree with this. When I joined the forum, the atmosphere was quite hostile and certainly far more elitist than it is now (or I've just become more elitist I dunno :P), but if anything, it's gone uphill. Every month we get at least few new permanent members who go on to become an important part of our community, and very few members leave. I can't think of many in the past year who have abandoned the place.

I have no complaints about MB as it is right now. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough at all the dirty little things, but I'm very happy with it.

The thing is, you're right, and you're wrong. With the evolution of the internet as a whole, message boards have become less important in part. They're also suddenly unexplored territory again. Back in the day everyone knew everything about forum politics and culture. And knew to stay back for a bit until they settle in. Now people just don't expect it on a forum. Which is strange given the standard of discussion on youtube. The forums haven't really changed (Which is partly the problem, I admit) it's the userbase. It's not really for better or for worse. It just becomes harder to intergrate.

Although tbf, it's so much more fun just to be a ****.

I'm a newbie here, so my opinion may not be as valid as the veterans here.

When I first came to these forums, I really wanted to talk about all of the types of music I liked. Thankfully, there was a board specific to everything I enjoyed. However, after reading some of the comments, I feel like I am a bit out of place at times. Yes, I do listen to Cunninlynguists, Inverse, and at times Immortal Technique, but I do like stuff from T.I at times and I do like some stuff from kind of mainstream rappers. That and I do like listening to Green Day and such along with stuff like the old Metallica.

However, I feel like if I were to say something like "Did you like this new Drake song," or " How good was that album by The Fray," I'd get laughed at, scoffed at, and basically be run out of the forums. Of course, I'd get recommended other music, but it would be given along the lines of "That's such a ****** band, you should listen to *insert band name*" or something.

But that's just how I see it at this point. Also, as a newbie, I don't really have much say in all of this.

I stopped reading here.

Maybe my reading comprehension isn't what it use to be, but to me, it sounds like you are mimicking what you claim the Rolling Stone is doing to the world. What's the difference between you telling this message board's entire community that "Minus the Bear sucks" than the Rolling Stone telling us about "authenticity and 'freshness'"? It would appear to me like you are being that "elitist".

All in all, they are nothing more than opinions and if you are going to try and attack the Rolling Stone's in a rant, at least make sure you aren't doing what you are accusing.

Note: I don't like either (Rolling Stone nor Minus the Bear).

I'm sorry but you missed his point entirely.

And yet, he made my point amazingly well.

Forums have become Legaleese 101. Its not that I had a point. Victory comes in taking apart an argument. Showing hypocrisy is the new moral high ground. So rather than discuss my point, which may or may not be valid, we're going to discuss whether I'm an elitist or not which is irrelevant to my point.

This is likely hard for the Gen X'ers to swallow because it requires them to think, and it requires them to go against their parents cultural lessons post-Watergate: Being a Hypocrite is not a reason to dismiss a point.

Its why they don't allow you to say "well he did it too" as a legal defense. My position about conventional wisdom being lapped up by the newer posters who are tired of being abused isn't changed by me potentially being an elitist.

Ah, touché

I really think this thread should be called 'The Future of MusicBanter, Discuss...'

I believe the regular message boards are the fabric of this community, but I think the way forward has to be an extension of the MB Reader as I outlined in earlier posts.
Failing that, I believe MB is doomed to the internet equivalent of Groundhog Day.
A vicious circle of recurring regularity which completes it's cycle for individual members at slightly different times.
For the veterans, MB lost it's shine a long time ago. For the newbs it's a whole new playing field of possibilities, until eventually they in turn become veterans and want to see a little more from the old place they visit before they in turn begin to lose interest.
The trick is maintaining the interest and using the veterans and any potentially talented newb of a writer with a passion for music as a tool for taking these boards to another level.

Big3 points out that the content of the posts on these boards lies in our own hands. Which of course is entirely true, but if the status quo remains indefinitely, then it's only a matter of time before another newbie doesn't stick around and another long standing member disappears.

this isn't a music blog.
it's not a reviews site.

it's musicbanter

the reason i visit this site several times a day is because i like it how it is. people are talking of musical elitism - well where else can i find other people getting excited about the obscure stuff i listen to?

i come here to talk about music i have discovered, and to find more. and i don't find music by reading verbose reviews that inevitably sound pompous and obscure. i find it by listening to a few tracks on youtube and exploring things myself.

moreover, i don't come here to make friends. i don't care about anyone on the board - i'm just around to talk about music.

maybe i'm jaded, but this forum is great just the way it is.

This is fairly accurate description of what this site has become for me, although at one point it was much more of a social outlet, which is ironic because it was also when Music Banter was much more about bantering about music (Who else remembers pre-lounge MB?).

This isn't a soapbox rant. MB has simply evolved into what it is, and what it is will to appeal to some and not to others.

Pretty simple actually.

I'm new here and I think it's a good site. There's lots of plusses: looks and works great, tons of people here, great ordering and attention-to-detail re: the different genre sections etc. (ie real easy to find what you're looking for). I like the "latest comment fires thread to top" thing, which means you can have a long-running discussion and good threads don't die prematurely.

I kind of like and don't like the way all of the threads are regimentally ordered, eg "The Radiohead thread", "The Sigur Ros thread" etc. and new threads about an act just get tagged on there. Great as a source of info on a new act you're checking out but some of them become a bit overlong and unreadable as a result. I think if someone wants to start a new thread they should be allowed, the old one can always be refreshed as well, doesn't have to an either/or.

It's a terrific "source of information" site for these reasons but doesn't lend itself so well to quick banter (ironically!)

Also I'd like it if it only flagged up threads as having new posts since I last logged out, rather than if I've never seen them. There's a reason I haven't opened those threads! And the banner pic at the top (the guitar/decks/CD thing) is a bit naff I think, I'd change that just to a text logo or something.

Pros outweigh the cons though. Nice job by those that take the time to run and maintain it.

In terms of people worrying about music elitism, negative comments etc., it's just opinion, don't be so thin-skinned. Negative commentary is just as valid as positive, as long as it's relatively well substantiated and avoids personal insults etc. there's no problem. If someone speaking ill of your favourite record is a cause of upset for you then you don't belong on a music forum, end of story.

I responded to a similar 'downfall of MB' post 4 months ago to the day. In that post I said all forums go through a lifecycle, and the inevitable end is always a painful death (usually about 5 years after being created). If I remember right even you, Big3, criticized my point when I made it. This thread has the same familiar tone as that one, and nothing has changed. Even sites based around topics that have an unlimited pool to talk about (like music, sports, etc) are not immune. It's just life, baby. Let 'er die in peace...

either the reading comprehension is lacking, or you didn't read what I wrote.

this site isn't even close to dead.

not even close to dying.

Right-Track's ideas of having a magazine style site associated with the forums is top notch but setting up and maintaining something like that is a lot more work than what people are normally willing to do for free in their spare time.

I think Another is pushing for his/her verdict to be correct to avoid being wrong.

As far as work in your spare time is concerned, I will says its disheartening to put time and energy into something and have it get 42 views and 0 replies. Thats my personal bitch for the day.

You guys think it sucks now, wait till the summertime when we're all too busy drinking and getting laid to care about music.

Great read, Big3. You make a lot of good points and it was really well written. I largely agree with you.

To Right-Track, I think your idea actually sounds really good and it should be easy to do as well. You could move the forums to something like http://forums.musicbanter.com and then have a sort of blog/journal/mag thing on the front page with selected material from the editor's pick.

Even I could do it. You could just install wordpress and then those who want/are worthy can register there and get promoted to contributor status so that they can post their articles and reviews on the blog part of the site. In essence, you could keep the forum and add the music journal idea on top. Nothing much would change for those whose only wish is to stay on the forums.

As for other ideas for the future, I would like more community-minded stuff. Me, Anteater and Comus - although we're a tiny group of the users here - used to chat quite a bit outside of the forums and listen to Comus' radio show ;) Good times, but it's been quite a few months. Incidentally, the last version of MSN is so dysfunctional on my computer that instant messaging with it has become a pain in the arse so I'm not on much anymore at the moment. I really wish the IRC chatroom had become more popular, but it seems just a tad too technical for most.

I'm gonna see if I can come up with some more community stuff we can do on the forums, possibly some games where members make teams which compete against eachother.

edit :

I'll send a PM to Yac and ask if they can put up a wordpress blog on http://blog.musicbanter.com or so that we can play around with.

I will pretty much echo sentiments provided already, but in my opinions, most of the times forums based on music, movies etc, tend to struggle a bit more because it isn't what I would really call an 'active' discussion topic, music less-so than movies. This is in comparison to sporting forums, for example, where an active season heats universal discussion. Lets be honest, music is a pretty polarising topic to post about, and naturally having such a varied base of opinions means it's more difficult to discuss. You can't really analyse music like you can sports results or whatnot for discussion, and when you have a decidated core of posters who are elitist in their opinion (No matter how much they want to suggest otherwise), it makes it much more difficult to formulate what many would consider worthy discussion. This leads to a circle effect in a way, where because it is so difficult to gain a common hold (Especially between those that are well versed in their own opinion) between each other, we trudge up the same old same old that 'everyone' loves of course, and nver has a bad thing to say about.

Interesting discussion on the 'negativity' factor that preceeds a lot of discussion around most music forums. As commented, a lot of posters react more to a bad album they have heard of than a potentially good album that someone else is pressing them to listen to. Don't really have a comment to add, I can't really be bothered posting about shit I hate, not that I spend too much time posting about what I like. 4ZZZ, the bloke that introduced me to the site stopped posting because of the overall dominating negative 'buzz' he got from the site. This was back when the 'this xxx sucks' threads were open though.

TBH I can't see musicbanter changing a whole lot if I do end up hanging around more often/less often as long as there is a solid core of posters that are willing to hang around.