Main Forum - good source of info or tedious self-promotion?

[shonky]

I know the radio sections changed round so obviously there's going to be loads of radio threads in there now, but now it seems like "new dubs up on myspazzyvirbclicksclusive", and some fairly tenuous links to again get people to look at their dubs, check their mixes, listen to their show, go to their events which could just as easily be dealt with in the appropriate forums.

To be honest, the more I see someone self-promoting, the less I want to listen to them, and all this attention whoring does rather get on my nerves. DSF generally has fairly low key adverts apart from in the main forum itself. Fair enough if someone else is bigging their tunes (that aren't part of their crew) but it is getting a bit annoying to my mind.

What do you people think?

[contakt]

I think we need more discussions about wobble and Rusko.

[auan]

Dunno, I only read the bottom 3 and Events North these days.

[shonky]

I think we need more discussions about wobble and Rusko.

Yes, there's definitely a lot of scope there. Maybe something else about the similarities between drum and bass and dubstep should be covered too, haven't seen that for about a week, bound to be some new area that hasn't been covered there.

[*grand*]

i am not a fan of the main forum anymore. I am out of touch with it.. to me the main forum used to be more of an insight in the experience of dubsteppers worldwide,now it's pretty much as shonky put it. If any thing i check it briefly every now and again mostly lurk in the hideout.

[__________]

I agree with you 100% shonky. people are taking their own music too seriously!

if you want to be promoted better, make better tunes and you will get people talking about you.

too many NU BEATZUP ON MYSPACE threads.

big fat sigs with 10 myspace urls suck dick too

[BaronVon]

Far too many appreciation threads.
People getting worked up and overenthusiastic about music that has the longevity of the latest Pop Idol winner.

[deapoh]

As £10 bag said, build better tunes and you'll get the deserved exposure. I have been sent many demos over the past few years and sadly had only played a handful due to the quality not being so high. I have found and put out tracks from artists where I happend to go on their myspace who didn't comment on everyones page saying "Check out my dubs" or anything and have found their work to be a lot better. Have confidence with your productions and you'll reap the rewards later.

Anyways I don't think we should take the right away from allowing people to promote their stuff. It's just that there are more people in the scene and more of them are self-promoting to try and establish a name.

[dubluke]

yeah far too many people taking themselves too seriously in a number of ways, and too many people who just seem to be on here for the sake of whinging, causing beef or complaining about queueing and club soundsystems, or accusing each other of P2Ping unreleased burial or something

big up the ninja hideout, much more fun

(by the way before anyone destroys me for being a tnuc i'm exaguratting a little for laffs)

[thinking]

it's tricky to create and maintain a balance though, and it's always the same quandary when you're moderating a busy forum. Too easygoing and people take the piss and others complain that there's too much spam, but too heavy-handed and peeps draw for the izan comments and there's bad vibes all round.

We could be more militant about moving every thread about tunes into the Dubs forum, but it's just another thing for Mods to do and people to complain about.


Constructive criticism is always always welcome though, as is any suggestion you might have to make the forum better - there's always room for improvement.

[corpsey]

LISTEN 2 MY TOONS THEYRE BANGING

www.myspace.com/ganja4eva

[dubluke]

I JST STRTED MKIN WBBLES - MY MAIN INFLENCES IS CSPA & RSKO - CHCK EM OUT YH?

[xor]

I was on an IDM forum the other day, and an Electro-Music forum and neither of them allow advertising or bigging up of tunes etc. That is the extreme, and bloody crap it is too. Like Thinking said, there has to be a balance - I don't think the main forum is so bad that I don't won't to check in there anymore.

It's still a small scene, and I'm all for promotion by the peeps working hard to write/release their's and other's tunes.

[stanton]

I dunno, sometimes the main forum is pretty good, people making interesting threads and proper discussion going on and sometimes it's a bit gash. The same with the SNH, sometimes it's funny and interesting, other times its waste. Ham is great in moderation, but a man cannot live on Ham alone. if something is boring then post something interesting.










long live Ham (I know thats an oxymoron by the way)

[badger]

I dunno, sometimes the main forum is pretty good, people making interesting threads and proper discussion going on and sometimes it's a bit gash. The same with the SNH, sometimes it's funny and interesting, other times its waste. Ham is great in moderation, but a man cannot live on Ham alone. if something is boring then post something interesting.

yup lots of crap in the main forum but there is sometimes some pretty interesting discussions, and it can be a good source of knowledge on new releases/websites etc.

whilst you are right that you can't live on ham alone, i'm sure you'd agree that life is far richer for the joys of ham touching.

[thinking]

if something is boring then post something interesting.

I think that's the most important thing - the beauty of the internet forum as an entity is that it's fairly democratic. If people are interested in your topic, it will stay up, if they're not, it won't. Posting more interesting stuff will automatically weed out the shite.

[datura]

I pretty much agree with everything said so far..there are some interesting threads in the main forum but there is a lot of repetition in discussions and too much self promotion (which as Shonky says puts me off checking it which is self defeating)..

[*grand*]

I dunno, sometimes the main forum is pretty good, people making interesting threads and proper discussion going on and sometimes it's a bit gash. The same with the SNH, sometimes it's funny and interesting, other times its waste. Ham is great in moderation, but a man cannot live on Ham alone. if something is boring then post something interesting.


such is life i suppose.









long live Ham (I know thats an oxymoron by the way)

[seckle]

all big forums have the same dilemma when they reach a certain level of traffic. there has to be one place that serves many functions at the same time and the main board is that place on this site. dubway from day one has been against slow moving forums, and i totally agree with him on that. thats why you've seen this site try many different ideas over the years. some work famously, and some fail famously but we keep trying to make this place organic, and adaptable.

with more than 140 hours of streaming radio per week, well over 60 radio shows and more than 5 radio stations, the radio issue is going to be by far the most contested area of promotion. you can bet that it's not going to get any easier for radio in 2008 either.

labels have it just as tough, because they have to announce releases, start a buzz, a follow up and then further announcements when those tunes get in the stores so like radio, they need the biggest possible impact that this site can deliver.

more than a year ago, we thought about having a "promotion only" sub-forum, but as with the issues surrounding radio, we predicted that people would lose their minds over that idea so that concept got binned very quickly.

what we don't want to do is to make a forum so subdivided and sectioned off that people don't know where to begin. here's an example of that: (no disrespect to electro music or their forum by the way. just using it to illustrate.) :
http://electro-music.com/forum/

[blizzardmusic]

You complain about people promoting their tunes in the main forum, but when Vista put five new tunes on his myspace and put a promotion thing in the main forum, no complaints... When I do it, you all complain like pansys. Its coz I'm a kid innit.