The Other Site

[sungfw]

Yeah I think I'd bail on this site other than to sell stuff if I had to sift through political and religious threads in the "new" pile like on TTF. Please don't start those.

I don't recall needing to sift through political and religious threads on TOS. As I recall, politics and religion, (with the exception of the "Read da book" thread) were almost entirely confined to specific sub-forums, not scattered willy-nilly among the other threads, so you could avoid them by simply not entering those sub-forums. (I also seem to recall that there was an option in your forum preferences not to display those sub-forum headings or any posts in those forums, but I may be remembering another board.)

No reason that model couldn't work here.

[BGuttman]

Most Forum software allows a user to "Ignore Board". I know we encouraged anybody who didn't want to see the Religion or Politics boards to tick the "ignore" box.

I like the idea that if we were to introduce these they would be an "opt in" (i.e. you needed to know they were there in order to see them).

[Bach5G]

As much as I liked those discussions, if I had a vote, I would vote against bringing them back. Guns, Christ and Trump. Maybe not.

[PaKETaZ]

If it’s not an obligation to see it in my “unread posts”, you can do what you want...

[sacfxdx]

This is a trombone site. Should all be music related at least. No politics, religion, guns, cars, houses.... plenty of other sites for that stuff.

[timothy42b]

This is a trombone site. Should all be music related at least. No politics, religion, guns, cars, houses.... plenty of other sites for that stuff.

I don't agree. My experience with a number of sites is that if you make the signal to noise ratio too high, you get minimum contributions and it's all from a serious few; it's the diversity allowed that gets a site to critical mass and produces enough interaction to be useful.

I do think it's useful to limit the controversial topics, along the lines of the Civilization and Humanitarian principles cited by Steven Pinker in his recent book, Better Angels of our Nature. (highly recommended, by the way, it will probably change your way of looking at the world)

[ghmerrill]

The dichotomy here echoes what I've found in community bands: some are run primarily (almost solely) as musical organizations; others are run primarily as social organizations. There's certainly room for both. I prefer the first and avoid the second, but that's just my own inclination and choice.

However, if in this context there are distinct forums and fairly clear rules/expectations, then people can make their own choices. I sure don't feel the NEED for primarily social/political/whatever forums in the trombone context, but I also wouldn't walk off in a huff if they were created. If you don't want to be involved in them, then just ... don't be. The burden is really imposed not on the participants of TromboneChat, but on its administrators.

[harrisonreed]

I just remember when "show unread posts" put up about a million threads about Jesus, Trump, and healthcare. I don't care to sift through the detritus, and I'm on a phone, so going through options to disable different forums is something I don't know how to do.

[sungfw]

This is a trombone site. Should all be music related at least. No politics, religion, guns, cars, houses.... plenty of other sites for that stuff.

So ... the News & Announcements, Comments & Suggestions, Tangents sub-forums, and most of the threads in the Technology and Everything Else subforms should be eliminated, since they're not music related?

[ghmerrill]

I don't care to sift through the detritus,... going through options to disable different forums is something I don't know how to do.

This sort of control is really pretty clearly described in the FAQ and amounts to just making a couple of clicks. It also appears that currently a user is "unsubscribed" from all forums by default, and a positive action must be taken to subscribe (and hence receive notifications of postings). Similarly for threads.

So -- if this is correct -- no one would be seeing any posting alerts to a new forum unless he subscribed to it explicitly. And in any event, unsubscribing from it requires only clicking on the "subscribe forum" selection in the Forum header strip (though I'll grant you that the way the box and checkmark is used in this is completely counter-intuitive).

But the main point is that it appears that the site admins have set things up so that if a new forum were created, you wouldn't be bothered by it unless you explicitly chose to be.

Correct me if I'm wrong (in which case I bet the admins will fix that issue immediately).

[BGuttman]

When you have two approved posts you are subscribed to ALL boards in this Forum (with the exception of a few that are for Administration only).

If we add new Boards to this Forum they will be available to everybody unless we create a new class of user who is able to read all the "unlocked" boards and the "off-topic" boards.

I get to see a couple of Boards you as a general user can't see, and the Administrators see a few Boards even I can't see.

[harrisonreed]

Yeah, but it ends up being something you end up seeing and you learn stuff you wish you didn't know as bout other forum members whether you wanted to or not.

[ghmerrill]

Yeah, but it ends up being something you end up seeing and you learn stuff you wish you didn't know as bout other forum members whether you wanted to or not.

Just from seeing the title of a thread? Golly, I must really be insensitive. Or maybe I just don't care.

But I get your point, and there would be nothing wrong in implementing some mechanism to suppress the sort of display (on a thread or forum/topic basis) that you find objectionable. There does seem to be a bit of sloppiness in the design within phpBB of all that: the idea of "subscribing" to a forum or thread isn't really what most people would mean by subscription (it conflates making the thread/topic/forum visible with being notified of postings to it), and it would be nice to create (for example) a "My forums" list that you could modify and maintain easily and in an obvious way, I suppose. But that would require custom modification to the board software.

I'm prepared to just ignore stuff -- like postings about the Kerbal Space Program.

[harrisonreed]

I firmly believe that if you can land a probe on Gilly, you can apply that dedication to lip slurs! For science!

[sacfxdx]

This is a trombone site. Should all be music related at least. No politics, religion, guns, cars, houses.... plenty of other sites for that stuff.

So ... the News & Announcements, Comments & Suggestions, Tangents sub-forums, and most of the threads in the Technology and Everything Else subforms should be eliminated, since they're not music related?

Yes. Just my opinion.

[sungfw]

So ... the News & Announcements, Comments & Suggestions, Tangents sub-forums, and most of the threads in the Technology and Everything Else subforms should be eliminated, since they're not music related?

Yes. Just my opinion.

You're certainly entitled to your wrong opinion.

[timothy42b]

Yes. Just my opinion.

You're certainly entitled to your wrong opinion.

I could agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong. Attributed to Winston Churchill.

[BGuttman]

Do you think the posters of the "other site" have pretty much seen by now what type of person Danny Shelton really is?

Have you tried logging onto the "other site"?

[Neo Bri]

I don't know who Danny Shelton is...

[ghmerrill]

A defensive tackle for the NE Patriots. How he got into this discussion is something of a mystery.