This is becoming increasingly useless. Even the smallest, least intrusive suggestion I've made like establishing an FAQ doesn't seem to merit serious consideration or discussion. Most of the replies to my last post didn't address any ways to improve this forum by a country mile, and of course there is the to-be-expected ridicule from Alone&Forsaken solely because someone like me tried to make a difference. Nigel's emails to me are equally depressing... I am reminded of some commercial clients who sit back and say "no" to everything while refusing to contribute any positive ideas themselves.

No, there are no "magic forums" where everything is perfect, but there are MANY progressive forums where simple and unobtrusive guidelines for posting have been in place for years with no ill effects. Two moderators working in tandem to weed out the garbage that wastes bandwidth - it happens everyday. And if noone here can stop reading between the lines looking for insults or criticizing long enough to focus on ways to make this a better forum then that speaks for itself.

Hi.

To be honest, I'm not that keen on a second moderator as long as Nigel do the good work as he does and don't have any problems managing the SZ by himself.
A co'moderator is not necessarily the answer, because this also will be a person with it's own view and perspective who might "colour" the way a censorship (that we don't want?) will be carried out.
To me SZ is "Nigel" , it's free of charge (but we can share some cents if we want), here is "high under the roof" and now we also got TheBar where all kind of humor, family or health and other chitchat stuff can be discussed.

Happy playing and Posting
GJ

Like the songs says, it's easy to say no. Pretty much everyone on this thread has done it in one form or another. The real trick is to come up with solutions, and we have damn few of those. Very big risk to walk out and make a suggestion - someone (by the dozens) might come in and tell you what's wrong with your proposal without countering with a better idea.

There is room for improvement in the SZ Arranger Forum - I don't honestly believe that is debatable. My goal with this thread is to seek and discuss those improvements.

Pro,

I find myself agreeing with you in a lot of instances, but here I cannot. I think all of this is much ado about nothing. That's why I haven't responded to it very much. I also think however, that the personal attacks against you were pretty unfair.

OT posts are gonna happen on a forum like this. So what ? Cliche` as it is, life really is too damned short to fret over such frivolous things.

I spent the first 40 years of my life not understanding this too well since I was always healthy. The last couple years have been physically challenging for me, and really challenging as of late, to the point that, I don't honestly know what life holds for me in the future. That's when you find out if you didn't already know it.... this stuff just isn't that important.... Not important enough to fight over anyway. Hopefully others don't have to find it out this way..

It's easy.. I just scroll over the stuff that doesn't interest me... ( there's plenty of it ). Even in my condition, this isn't too physically demanding.

In spite of all the controversy, this forum still has the least amount of flaming and controversy of any forum that I've ever participated on. I think Nigel deserves all the credit in the world for that btw.

You guys can argue this forever. Everyone has to be "right", and sometimes we have a hard time accepting that maybe life on a forum ( as everywhere else )has to be about a little tolerance and maybe even compromise. Me, I'll just scroll over it and read something more interesting. I just hope that the good relationships that have been forged here, some over many years, aren't too strained after all of this.

AJ

Of course, and I agree fully in that, and I also think Nigel will agree as well, because he have always told us to say so if we have some ideas to share who might be helpful and improve the forum.
But then again we might have to "twist our brain" to find out what to adjust or add/remove, and what is right for me or my needs, is maybe not the same as you would like to see, so here we go again....



Hehehe...well, no wonder there is wars going on around the world... that's also about stating out who's right.
But a bit more seriously, after all we sign in at SZ by agreeing the rules and terms of use for this board, let's keep on in good harmony and have fun in good musically spirit!

Cheers all!
GJ

Jim, I'm getting the feeling that there are a great number of people who are satisfied with the status quo. Just what about it are you pissed about? OTs are a fact of life. Nigel has offered to change the thread deletion option. Some of your other suggestions, though good, may be impossible on this software. Nigel owns and runs this forum, so any significant changes would have to come from/thru him. I, for one, would support changes if they were to occur - if they were to occur.

Your anger and frustration on this topic seems unusually high. As I said earlier, I think there's more to it than OTs.

I probably did get frustrated this morning when I saw the number of posts following my suggestions concerning the possibility that a simple FAQ or Sticky or some posted guidelines might be helpful. Seems like everyone was more interested in fretting over whether or not Sheriff had insulted me or not ("not" incidently - I'm not the only one who needs to lighten up here). Also Nigel's daily emails to me are very troubling - he has this belief that I am trying to reform this forum to suit me alone... with an FAQ? And overall there is a lot of "we can't do this or that" with no counterpoint as to what we CAN do. It's all very negative... so few ideas.

We have so much being used for so little: a General Forum - the perfect place to discuss overall synth issues of any kind. We have The Bar - a nice place for OT posts of any kind. And we have the Arranger Forum - great for discussion about arrangers. Now why can't we make a Sticky that goes at the top of these forums with some posting guidelines and/or suggestions? Lots of forums have this feature and it's nothing instrusive or threatening - I don't even want to be involved in drafting it. That's so low-keyed a suggestion that it couldn't possibly hurt anyone, but I can't even get a light discussion about it going and Nigel is quick to veto anything I say now without providing a better idea of his own.

Why am I even bothering to pursue this topic when so many seem interested in keeping the status quo? One member here said it well:

"If I were to come upon the Arranger Forum as a newbie today would I be interested in sticking around? I can't really say. All I know is that everything has its ebb and flow. Right now this forum seems to be ebbing. Maybe it's the lack of new information, maybe it's the interests of the newer members. Whatever it is, it is. We can all make the SZ whatever we want it to be as long as we stay active. When we move into the background, others will step forward to take our places - and make it their own.

[This message has been edited by cassp (edited 04-13-2005).]"

Here is the current guidelines for posting, written by Nigel I assume:

"Please keep discussion to music related topics. Vendors are welcome to make product announcements & participate. Offensive postings will be removed, as well as warez related messages or any messages that may infringe copyright. This is simply to ensure a constructive & useful resource for you to use."

The current FAQ conerns how to use Smilies and such. With the exception of the "music-related topics" there are no real guidelines. Couldn't this stand a little updating, if only to "ensure a constructive and useful resource"?

[This message has been edited by The Pro (edited 04-29-2005).]

Jim, I certainly appreciate your interest in furthering focussing arranger keyboard specific discussion here, and your points are well taken, but the bottom line is that both the forum members & our administrator (Nigel) have spoken, and the changes you've propsed have not met sufficient interest for Nigel to implement them. I've spoken with Nigel privately on the telephone and he says part of the reason is the limitation of the current Synthzone forum software itself, of, to institute your requests, would require taking the entire Synthzone forum down completely (losing access to all past postings) and starting all over again developing from scratch an entirely new forum with new software, which would require all members to register again as new members. In addition to the MANY long hours of programming work required to bring it all back again, all prior valuable postings (from 1999-2005) would be unretrievable via the new system. I'll admit that ours may not be the forum with the latest 'bells & whistle' features, but it (to me) is functioning quite well providing the most important feature of all, a place where arranger keyboard musicians and enthusiasts from around the world (and of all persuassions) to freely express themselves on all topics of common interest (principally arrangers of course), but with the occasional OT post now and then to promote friendship & commraderie as well.

Jim, if you (or anyone else here) has the time or inclination to build a better arranger kb forum "mouse trap", then I'm certainly all for it. I can't speak for Nigel, but I suspect that in addition to the current SZ forum maintenance work already being performed by him, that with his many other commitments already (9-5 day job, weekend gigging, etc, there's no time available for him to take on such a big project. In the meantime, I feel our forum remains the best arranger forum out there now and more than satisfying my arranger keyboard forum fix.- Scott

When I was a full time contributor I didn't read every post. I read mostly the post where Dave got all fired up. I also read post by Dave and others that had informed me about how I could start a one-man band. That was my primary interest. To me it’s all about being somewhat successful at doing a one man band performance.

Most of the styles on most of the popular keyboards in the past to me were really boring. Again the 4 bar loops on every tune is still boring to me. So I skip the “How wonderful my keyboard is cause it has 50,000 sounds and I can tweak every one of them.” I don’t need 100,000 sounds to tweak. I won’t live that long.

So many of the topics, "either on or off topics" are not at all interesting to me. I simply don't read what I consider boring or uninteresting to me. You should be able to do the same.

Like some post here by people who consider themselves better musicians than others and have posted songs claiming to be jazz players and all they do is play a variety of the melody on three or more choruses. How insulting such a post is to a person that plays real jazz improvisation. Again, after discovering such a post, I simply go to another post that I’m interested in.

I can’t understand why everyone can’t do this and mind their own business and just read what interest them. Quit fighting, that’s for me and Dave to do. We’re in construction! Musicians should be a step above bricklayers and wallpaper hangers.

I hate long-winded post. I usually quit reading after the first 300 hundred-word paragraph! I think only Dave and I should be allowed to ramble on. The rest of you should just post brief and to the point post like DonM, Gary, Fran and Cavanaugh. Tom am I murdering the spelling of you last name? One of my most favorite aunts was a Cavanaugh in New Orleans.

If I just have to read post here about tweaking your keyboards sounds and listening to 6 choruses of melody on your posted tunes, I'm gonna order Gary's Kick-a-poo juice by the 55 gallon drum size and get loaded before I come back.

Scott: you know I respect you but you obviously haven't read my latest posts in this thread. First, the entire forum went down not too long ago anyway and we lost a lot of posts then, which would've been the perfect time to upgrade the forum software if that was required. I'd welcome a shutdown if it would improve the forum - other forums do it.

But more to the point, even my smallest request like updating the FAQ is being rejected - does that require updating the forum software too? Why isn't anyone answering that? I've tried to compromise down to the smallest possible degree and now my proposals aren't even being read before being rejected apparently.

Forget me - Nigel's registration statement is a plea to keep topics music-related and even something that basic is widely ignored, even by you Scott. There's nothing more to discuss, not that you guys were listening in the first place.