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[Bob]

The feedback forum must go. It is an error in planning, a misguided attempt to achieve I don't know what. Quite simply, it sucks.

What the feedback forum does: It creates an unnecessarily separate location for local musicians to receive critiques outwith the general melee of 'music discussion'. But what is 'music discussion' if not feedback of one kind or another? What is aberdeen-music's music discussion forum for, if not feedback on the music scene of Aberdeen?

If all things were well and good 'music discussion' would, by rights, BE the feedback forum. The feedback forum simply kicks local music and its concerns into a dimly lit corner of what is supposed to be OUR LOCAL music forum. It relegates conversation regarding Aberdeen's artists from the Premier League into the Vauxhall conference with one deft stroke.

"Yes yes, we have a local music scene, but don't worry, we've neatly swept that under the carpet!"

I suggest that by allowing local musicians to post up material for discussion in the busier music discussion forum they would receive more feedback and attention, and that the one remaining forum would become far more relevant to what this whole website is supposed to be about, "the music scene of aberdeen scotland".

[Old Gold]

It's just the internet. I wouldn't look too far into it.

[Lucky Rathen]

Ah Bob, never one to stir up a hornet's nest.

[Dave]

Interesting. Anyone else got views on this?

[Dan Atom]

Bob is right in a many number of ways, to be honest.

[Frosty Jack]

There may be some confusion here as to where the division lies. The separation is, or should be, based not on whether it's local or not, but whether it is someone seeking a review of their own work. For example, you could start a post saying "Black Atom are great, aren't they?" and that would be just as valid as saying "Smashing Pumpkins are great aren't they?" - both would be 'Music Discussion'. But Rass or Mac posting "Here's a new tune, what do you think?" would be feedback. And if Mr Corgan ever did sign up and post "Here's a new tune, what do you think?", I'd stick that in the Feedback Forum too. It's about the poster's intention, not location.
I believe discussions are ongoing as to how to change the forum description to clarify this, maybe this would help.

[soundian]

I think that if you posted material that you were requesting feedback for in the music discussion forum it would quickly become a "second pager" and therefore achieve nothing, which in all honesty is not much less than it's achieving at the moment.
(I had a quick look, music discussion first page goes back 4 days,feedback forum first page goes back a month)
I think the problem with the feedback forum is that to give feedback on a song the listener has to both have strong views on it and the ability to put these views into words other than "I like that" or "that's shit" because most people, quite rightly, don't regard these as constructive.
Perhaps an anonymous, one time per user rating system would get better (certainly more) results than expecting people to explain WHY they like/hate something.

[Lucky Rathen]

In some ways I agree with Bob - allowing local artists the chance to expose themselves (ummm....) should be pretty high up in Ab-musics objectives. People just don't read the feedback forum, instead concentrating on the discussion about bigger name artists in Music Discussion.

However, who's to say that if they two forums were amalgamated, people wouldn't just skip all the posts about local bands and just read the ones about the bands they like anyway?

I agree that perhaps the whole feedback thing does need an overhaul, but I don't know if merging it with Music Discussion is the answer. As tehe person above me said, maybe a ratings system would work, where a person could link to their track and allow a user to give it a rating say out of 5, and write a comment about what they thought of it - similar to the Boopoll on the front page (but without the obligatory ridiculous fourth answer).

[Bob]

Originally Posted by Frosty Jack

There may be some confusion here as to where the division lies. The separation is, or should be, based not on whether it's local or not, but whether it is someone seeking a review of their own work.

In that case the forum should be renamed and radically re branded to reflect that. The description should be changed to something along the lines of "For artists seeking an in-depth, constructive review of their work ala Rocksound, Kerrang or NME - if any of those were actually any good".

Perhaps finding a core group of reviewers who could work with ab-music and can string a few sentences together would be an idea, along the lines of absolutepunk.net

For those who simply want to get attention for something they have created and get maximum exposure they should be encouraged to post it in music discussion. If people then want to provide feedback they could do so without having to worry about the thread being moved.

Originally Posted by Frosty Jack

For example, you could start a post saying "Black Atom are great, aren't they?" and that would be just as valid as saying "Smashing Pumpkins are great aren't they?" - both would be 'Music Discussion'. But Rass or Mac posting "Here's a new tune, what do you think?" would be feedback.

But that simply stops Rass and Mac generating maximum exposure for Black Atom on music discussion, because you'd have to have balls the size of watermelons to post in music discussion saying "My band are great!"

A quick view of music discussion will quickly show that hardly any of the discussion on there is ever about local music, and I think one of the main reasons behind this is the existence of the feedback forum. Perhaps Frosty, this is in part due to the confusion you're speaking about, but whatever the reason I think we need to do something about it.

The music discussion forum of a site called ABERDEEN-MUSIC rarely, if EVER has any discussion on the music scene of Aberdeen.

Something is wrong here. Can you imagine how this must look to the 3rd party observer who comes to this site trying to find out about our music scene?

"Yeah, I went on aberdeen-music but everyone was talking about Smashing Pumpkins and cover songs and Britney Spears. Couldn't be much of a local music scene up there".

Originally Posted by soundian

I think that if you posted material that you were requesting feedback for in the music discussion forum it would quickly become a "second pager" and therefore achieve nothing, which in all honesty is not much less than it's achieving at the moment.

Maybe it would, but while it was on the first page it would receive as much attention in 3 days as it would in a month of languishing at the bottom of the feedback forum. And for those threads that sparked an interesting discussion, or that people truly did have an opinion on, it would serve to provide much greater exposure and interest for the artists involved and everyone else involved in the music scene.

That can only be a good thing.

[spellchecker]

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!