THIS FORUM’S FUTURE: what do you want to see? 🔥

[[jur]]

Edit – Also, is it me or have there been a lot of long downtimes recently?

It's definitely not just you...

[Machinesworking]

A few things are already great, the fact it has a suggestions section, but maybe break that down even further? Almost all of my suggestions are UX oriented at this point, my request for better integration of keyboard shortcuts is completely different than requests for Atmos support or a new additive synth etc.

The elephant in the room. This forum moved so quickly years ago from full on anarchy to zero tolerance for any sort of political mention that it "killed the vibe", and traffic crashed for sure. KVR has a section for off topic, but I get why that would be hard to moderate. Personally I hate how VI-Control is moderated, some things slip through, others aren't tolerated at all. I don't know what the answer is there, but along with that there's probably something like three times as many "influencers" on youtube etc. talking about Live. Goes back to the Answers suggestions people have, youtube is useless for any real knowledge on a program like Live, so improvements to the way the search function works to narrow things down and maybe again a break down of various parts of Live rather that major categories. For instance Live can host videos and M4L has Jitter, but there's no video section of the website.

In short since it's not going to be a place for deep discussions of off topic things, then right away gear it heavily towards the technical side of Live, make it even more a place to learn the program etc.

[Matt_Quinn]

Dark Mode
An actual link to it on the Ableton site so we get some fresh blood here.
The ability to upvote helpful posts
The ability to hide annoying users
Image hosting
A modern frame work that works better on mobile devices.
Some actual interaction from Ableton employees.

To be honest I haven’t spent much time thinking about what could be improved on the forums, this is just off the top of my head.

All of that but especially the promotion/advertising of this place as a resource. Almost no one knows it exists! It is crazy, especially considering how much incredible information I've gotten here over the years before traffic died off due to moderation & social media. There are some relatively active Facebook groups for Live but they are very fragmented and full of bad information.

[Wriggle]

Despite being a member for 10 years I only have 5 posts because I haven't used Ableton much compared to other DAWs. I recently purchased a Push 3 and have enjoyed using it with Ableton. Had a few headaches that I have managed to sort out and generally finding I am more productive with Ableton. I ran into an issue with audio timing that I wasn't able to figure out myself so asked a question a few days ago. I put lots of detail in as you suggested in your sticky post. I have currently have had 89 views but not a single answer.

I have asked questions on the Logic forum in the past and members couldn't be more helpful. I suspect this is partly Mac culture but the Cubase forum is excellent too. I appreciate that my issue may be down to my own lack of knowledge but the reason we have fora is to streamline the problem solving process. Pooling knowledge is a good idea. A forum whose members read posts but don't reply isn't just pointless. It is a waste of resources including the time of other users.

My lack of responses has lead me to purchase a Floating Point Multiclock, £500, to see if that fixes the issue. I specifically asked in my post if this would help. No response. If it doesn't help then I will be sure to mention that I am returning it because the Ableton forum has an unhelpful culture problem. I am not here for "likes" or to make friends. I am here for help and ultimately if users won't help I have to contact Ableton technical support which means they are spending less time developing the software - and that impacts unhelpful users too.

[RobrechtV]

My lack of responses has lead me to purchase a Floating Point Multiclock, £500, to see if that fixes the issue. I specifically asked in my post if this would help. No response. If it doesn't help then I will be sure to mention that I am returning it because the Ableton forum has an unhelpful culture problem. I am not here for "likes" or to make friends. I am here for help and ultimately if users won't help I have to contact Ableton technical support which means they are spending less time developing the software - and that impacts unhelpful users too.

That question has been up for less than three days. In those three days, the forum seems to have had technical difficulties and has been down more than it has been up. I suspect those who did manage to read it just didn't know the answer and didn't want to write something that may not be correct (I personally couldn't tell you the answer and I've been using Live intensively for many years). That has nothing to do with being unhelpful. It's not your fellow users' job to know everything, and it's certainly not their job to stop you from impulse buying expensive gear. Very weird to blame *everyone who didn't immediately answer a difficult question on the internet* for that decision.

And now back to the subject of this thread: I've been thinking about upvoting as well, as a means to surface helpful posts. The downside is likes/upvotes/favorites can become a bit of a popularity contest, but maybe they help to keep the vibe positive?

[Angstrom]

If it doesn't help then I will be sure to mention that I am returning it because the Ableton forum has an unhelpful culture problem. I am not here for "likes" or to make friends. I am here for help and ultimately if users won't help I have to contact Ableton technical support which means they are spending less time developing the software - and that impacts unhelpful users too.

Logic forums are linked from the main website https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/resourc ... d-learning
Steinberg forums are linked from the main website https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us
Ableton forums are not linked from anywhere, not https://www.ableton.com/en/help/ nor anywhere on the Ableton site.

The reason you got no responses is because this is a ghost-town. Where once there used to be hundreds of posts and comments a week now there are less than 20. The mods will be able to comment on the concurrent users, but I suspect this forum now has a very low number of signed-in members.

Around 10 years ago there was a thriving community here, but it was unmoderated and a few users caused issues. Strangely at the same time as Ableton decided to add moderators they also decided to hide the forum. And since that time the forum has died off. I think the management wanted to offload the legal and administrative burden onto the (then) growing social media platforms. Viewing community as low value, and therefore disposable was not the smartest move. They handed their community over to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. and lost integration.

[Machinesworking]

Ableton forums are not linked from anywhere, not https://www.ableton.com/en/help/ nor anywhere on the Ableton site.

It's in your user account, on the main page, but that's it.. Unless you're signed in you do not see it anywhere.

Around 10 years ago there was a thriving community here, but it was unmoderated and a few users caused issues. Strangely at the same time as Ableton decided to add moderators they also decided to hide the forum. And since that time the forum has died off. I think the management wanted to offload the legal and administrative burden onto the (then) growing social media platforms. Viewing community as low value, and therefore disposable was not the smartest move. They handed their community over to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. and lost integration.

well to be fair, Ableton employees started this thread right? it's just typical Ableton behavior IMO, glacial!
But hey, when it does happen it will happen in a great way!

[[jur]]

Around 10 years ago there was a thriving community here, but it was unmoderated and a few users caused issues.

We started moderated at that time yes. But to be fair, that thriving community was already dissipating for a while and one of the reason was the exactly the mess this forum had turned into. Maybe we should have acted sooner...
This was also a period where social medias grew like crazy and the trend was to move over there.
This forum is actually linked to in Live's Help menu but it's indeed impossible to find from ableton.com and I really hope this will change. Why the hell people are going to reddit to chat about Ableton stuff??
Anyway, I also miss a period where that community was thriving. This forum is a goldmine of informations that we want to preserve and cherish, let's see how we can improve things and get the cool kids back

Thanks everyone for your input, that really valuable, keep 'em coming.

[RobrechtV]

It's true that the exodus to social media has been a force in itself, regardless of how well a forum is managed.

The Kemper Amps forum is a paragon of how it should be done. Cutting-edge forum software, many active and helpful official mods from Kemper headquarters, even the inventor Christoph Kemper often chimes in. As a result, yes, it is a very active community, but still lots of people prefer to shoot off their question in chaotic Facebook groups, where they'll get unengaged drive-by answers from people who see something drift by in their feed and, even though they've never used a Kemper, reflexively shoot off some recording dogma they've half heard in a YouTube video, before said question is irretrievably buried in the endless stream of new content so someone else can ask it again verbatim the next day. Why? Laziness, probably. A forum requires you to sign up, look for the answer yourself first, find the correct place to ask your question. In short: engagement.

Some of those people will probably never come back. But to others, a few improvements could make a lot of difference to highlight how much better a forum is as a knowledge base – more attractive forum software (that doesn't go offline large portions of the day), Ableton responding from time to time, better surfacing of important content and of course more visibility for the forum itself. (I happened to notice myself recently that there's no link from ableton.com and I found that very strange.) And the more people return, the better it gets.

[Wriggle]

That question has been up for less than three days. In those three days, the forum seems to have had technical difficulties and has been down more than it has been up. I suspect those who did manage to read it just didn't know the answer and didn't want to write something that may not be correct (I personally couldn't tell you the answer and I've been using Live intensively for many years). That has nothing to do with being unhelpful. It's not your fellow users' job to know everything, and it's certainly not their job to stop you from impulse buying expensive gear. Very weird to blame *everyone who didn't immediately answer a difficult question on the internet* for that decision.

Often a sign of having no response to valid point is to play the man and not the ball. "Impulse buy" "weird"

Thanks for your input. You are clearly not part of the solution.

[[jur]]

Ok, let's not derail please.
That can't be so hard, right?

[[jur]]

The Kemper Amps forum is a paragon of how it should be done.

Thx for the hint, will have a look at it

[Machinesworking]

The KVR software for the forum is pretty much the best there is IMO, for the simple reason that every subforum and thread can be searched independently without going to an "advance search page. Has anyone mentioned how slow this forum is these days?

[[jur]]

Has anyone mentioned how slow this forum is these days?

It should feel smooth again since today. Are you still experiencing the slowdowns?

[Machinesworking]

Has anyone mentioned how slow this forum is these days?

It should feel smooth again since today. Are you still experiencing the slowdowns?

Yes, it's sluggish at least 8 times slower than any other site.