i used to sympathise with your view:
Stop Moving The Bloody Threads From All Music Discussion
that was around 18 months ago. i was going to say that i think the situation has become "worse", but really something more has happened in my opinion:
- bebo/myspace have perhaps taken away somewhat from the social aspect of a-m.com
- in the last five years, the number of local bands playing in aberdeen venues, whether they are online or not, has grown a lot. i think this is in part to do with the growing number of venues willing to put on local live acts. the point being that if bands were all to ask for feedback, most likely they wouldn't get any and you would have a lot of zero-reply threads
- as ian said, the music discussion does seem to turn over a lot more quickly than the feedback forum.
I don't live in Aberdeen anymore, but I do like being able to keep up with what's going on gig wise through this website. I like the feedback forum: i wish more people used it, but in a way, i've come to appreciate its 'solo' forum nature. its purpose is clear and i think it is effective for those that use it.
i think some people (myself included) wished more for the aubl forum kind of feedback, which to be honest a-m.com hasn't seen for about 4 years in my opinion, in the same manner and scale. however i don't think that is the fault of a-m.com - i think the popular music scene has changed a lot and brought in a lot of new faces. back in 2001/2002, i seem to remember the scene focus online being metal/punk/ska - where as these days i would say it is more pop/indie/extreme.
the infrastructure has never been lacking with this website, on the contrary i think it is almost too much in the forefront: i think sometimes that the almost OCD like categorisation of forums and sub forums can make interest wane, because it is more work for some people to have a 'casual browse'. it must be a difficult balance to keep between hands off approach (with the risk of losing visitors who can't keep up with the pace of change) versus the strict forums categorisation that has been seen in the last couple of years.
to be honest i am surprised Neil still has the stomach to keep this website going after so long, though i have to commend him for doing so (does this website never have downtime?? christ!). i would be interested to see usage statistics over the last 3 years, to see the variations in active member counts over seasons and over changing web trends such as bebo/myspace etc. etc.
it would be interesting if one day this website was suddenly switched off, to see what people would miss the most - i can guess it wouldn't be the feedback forum (for most people), yet i am sure a lot of the smaller, low post but high readability forums would be missed, such as musicians corner, classifieds, feedback forums.
at the end of the day, there are websites online that have the same purpose as the feedback forum, and are very popular. i suppose that if we're honest we like the idea of the feedback forums here because the readership is local and smaller, so if we do something good, we are more likely to be noticed and respected! how vain we are!