The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Discuss anything related to audio or music production.
stxlm
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The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by stxlm » Tue Dec 10, 2019 12:26 pm

The Music and Audio Production subforum is absolutely overrun by posts about problems people are having. There's simply no room for discussions about actual "Music and Audio Production". And I think that is sad.

This subforum could be the go to place to discuss making music in Live, with only small adjustments. Right now, it's a tech support forum.

I know the "Tips & Tricks" subforum exists. But not every aspect of music production is a trick.

siliconarc
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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by siliconarc » Tue Dec 10, 2019 1:07 pm

The User's Help Exchange subforum is still there but it's been locked for years - since Ableton released the Answers help site. Then the Answers site closed cos barely anyone used it. Maybe the UHE will be unlocked again if enough people ask for it, but i dunno - i don't have any idea how many people come here these days. It was a lot busier years ago...

chapelier fou
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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by chapelier fou » Tue Dec 10, 2019 1:47 pm

I’d like the UHE to re-open. Golden years !
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Tarekith
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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by Tarekith » Tue Dec 10, 2019 3:14 pm

We'll think about it, thanks for your thoughts everyone.
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pottering
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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by pottering » Tue Dec 10, 2019 6:40 pm

I'm against it, people already treat other users like servants, demanding immediate answers and complaining about the help they get (again, from other users), will be worse without that warning in the locked Help forum.

Should be the opposite, should enforce more harshly the "this forum is not for support" rule.

Copypaste link to support >> Lock thread.

Boom, end of story.

[edit: Thinking a bit, no matter how the forum is organized people are going to behave the same. I think I'm gonna be OK with new subforum or not.]
Last edited by pottering on Thu Dec 12, 2019 5:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Angstrom
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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by Angstrom » Tue Dec 10, 2019 6:41 pm

I didn't even realise Answers had closed.
I guess that's how engaging it was. There was no reason to hang out there.

If only someone had criticised it relentlessly when it was launched perhaps they'd have realised it was a bad idea.

😉

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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by Tarekith » Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:26 pm

That was the biggest issue with both Answers and the Help Exchange Forum. The only people who visit those places are the people with the problem, not the people with the answers. At least with people asking in the Music and Audio Production sub forum, there's a chance someone who can help will actually read it.

We've been tossing around some ideas for re-organizing the forums a bit, we'll think about this aspect some more.
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Angstrom
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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by Angstrom » Tue Dec 10, 2019 10:58 pm

Probably linking it the forums from main Ableton.com site might reinvigorate them a bit.

But forums are weird. The old people get annoyed by the novices asking "how do I make the beats sounds good" and the new people get very insulted when they are told "perhaps you should check out the manual for your cracked software". Both of these are as a result of flaws in the solution supplied.

Forums have flaws, alongside benefits.
The benefits are - they are a good shit talking zone very good for drifting threaded single topic conversations, but ... the Reddit branching tree model is probably better for nice divergent topical branches.
The forum model is like the pub, it's loud and fun and dominated by the loudest characters, but not necessarily the best for authoritative facts.

The pitfalls are - there's no library of knowledge attached. No Wiki. Look at the pinned threads here, these show the shortcomings of the Forum model. great ideas un-categorised.
Common answers ought to be updatable in a user editable wiki, searchable, tagged, with MVP status conferring some edit / admin / ranking privileges. There used to be some knowledgable cats on here. But time dudes. They used to contribute. All that knowledge is lost now, like tears, in rain.

The "Answers" solution suffered by being isolated from any kind of community. There was no incentive. It was a library staffed by volunteers in a desert.

tl;dr
fork some decent forum software, incorporate a "Tips, tricks and common questions" wiki for user contributions. Moderation will be OK if Ableton actually invest in their own community.

steko
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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by steko » Tue Dec 10, 2019 11:38 pm

Tarekith wrote:
Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:26 pm
We've been tossing around some ideas for re-organizing the forums a bit
If you're already at it: could you please rename "The Lounge" to "MacBook Pro", or maybe even better "Asperger's Shithole"?!

Yes?

:x
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miyaru
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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by miyaru » Wed Dec 11, 2019 12:28 am

If you're already at it: could you please rename "The Lounge" to "MacBook Pro", or maybe even better "Asperger's Shithole"?!

Yes?

:x
Why so negative? Better be constructive to get improvement.........
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The_Subject
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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by The_Subject » Thu Dec 12, 2019 12:11 am

What else would you discuss?

But as in, in reality, if you look at the numbers of posts that are about something other then "help me with my problem", actually you'd end up with about a post a week, for what you might as well use carrier pigeon or fax.

Unless you are saying that the true elite are scared away from the forum for fear of n00b! but if that's the case you are drifting into an elitist in-group clique and and out group.

I ask for help, but I also read a lot of things I don't comment on and I learn in silence. EG all 11 odd pages of the most obscure knowledge thread was all amazing, but I wouldn't dare say I have remotely good enough knowledge to input things into a conversation like that. However I also try to help when I can - in particular if I see someone whose first few posts are going replyless down the feed. I was that person a while ago, I hope I've gradually become less so, but I feel like your elitist board would be dull and lifeless, whereas the help me board would give no help. But if, even without the help, a novice becomes a master on the "help me" board, then they'd have friends and connections that when they stopped needing the help they would stay in "their" board.

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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by [jur] » Fri Dec 13, 2019 11:16 am

Thanks all for your feedbacks. As Erik said that’s something we’ve discussed and I’d personally like some kind of improvements... not sure what exactly though so please keep your ideas coming.
Sure, the forum is not what it was 10 years ago, lots of resourceful people have moved to other places, internet uses have changed etc... Still, I’d be very happy to find and apply ideas that would bump this forum and help finding quality informations and constructive discussions.
Send us ideas for Christmas :wink:
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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by yur2die4 » Fri Dec 13, 2019 5:33 pm

Funny thing for me is, when I first started using the forum, UHE was the primary area I would go to. I’d occasionally check out the production one to see if there was any excitement, but I mostly just liked helping people get un-stuck so they could understand the software better and move forward.

When that shut down, I eventually started checking out the other parts of the forum more regularly haha.

A combination of it being less busy, the software being more popular, and YouTube offering a lot of solutions, I think makes it such that far fewer people are going to randomly take the time to hop into this forum.. which requires a little effort to end up at in the first place, and ask for a help question. But if they’re that desperate, we can hopefully find a way to help them get it sorted haha

Edit: on a side note, I’ve been more busy with other things lately so I’m not contributing as often lately as I did in the past.

siliconarc
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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by siliconarc » Fri Dec 13, 2019 5:40 pm

[jur] wrote:I’d be very happy to find and apply ideas that would bump this forum and help finding quality informations and constructive discussions.
a link to here from the main site (on the help page?) would be a good start..

pottering
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Re: The Forum needs a new subforum: "Help & Troubleshooting"

Post by pottering » Fri Dec 13, 2019 8:09 pm

I have one indirectly related suggestion:

Put back the search option in the online manual.

Could be in any way, a search box, a loupe icon button that shows a search box, a link to a search page anywhere, anything.
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