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

[[jur]]

Hi everyone,

We’re currently brainstorming on the future of this lovely 20+ years old forum.
We have plans, ideas and are aware of what’s been requested over time, but we’d love to have a fresh perspective on your wishes.

• - What do you like in other forums that you're missing here and why?
  - What do you dislike or even hate on this forum?
  - What (and when) makes you go and ask/discuss on socials or other forums, Discord & co rather than in here?
  - How do you browse the forum? By sub-forum? By using the "Active Topics" or any other quick link? etc...
  - How do you think this place should work and offer for the next 20 years?
  - How to make this forum THE place to be, share, talk, collaborate etc about music? What feature would make everyone leave socials and join us here?

Let’s ignore the upcoming technical challenges, let’s just get crazy and share your most fancy ideas.

Thx folks!

[Pandamonium]

The fact that's it's been going for 20 years tells me you are doing something right, and old adage "If it ain't broke" comes to mind. However, it would be great to see some of the abes chiming in bit more from time to time.

[[jur]]

Who said it ain't broke?
There's common requests like dark mode, image hosting, smartphone mode etc that are not about fixing stuff but about quality of life.
I'm confident we'll do it the Ableton way: same home, but better than the previous version.

it would be great to see some of the abes chiming in bit more from time to time.

Noted!

[login]

A dark theme, this is the only page I visit where a blast of white burns my eyes.

[lincolnkid]

I've only just got used to this place and now they wanna change it?

[Angstrom]

The short lived "answers" experiment could be resurrected by closer integration with a new community space.
Answers failed mostly because there was no reason for people to answer. In the forum it (used to be) a social space, so it was a conversation equivalent to when I asked my friend in the pub how I ought to insulate my kitchen ceiling . In that conversation he responded with advice and my other friend suggested an alternative and then my experienced friend corrected some misunderstandings and we all learned and had an interesting exchange.


Use of machine learning to scrape the knowledge here, run it by a fact check and then use what's in the forum to prompt more responses, that could reinvigorate the asking and answering of questions. But the AI responses should not close the topic, they should open it up..

Eg: user asks "does Ableton use efficiency cores"
If nobody answers after a day the AI says "Ableton Live prioritises performance cores exclusively since version x, though it is possible but unwise to activate the pre mode using both cores. There are some discussions here here and here, on the forum, And a post by one of the programmers here. If you have any questions about that topic ask away"

Then ... if anyone answers it should wait a day again!

If at any point real people answer, for example the first question, the AI should by in fact check mode.

So if someone says "Ableton refuses to use efficiency cores and got paid off by Apple to only use performance cores " a small community note correction is appended.

There's a lot of terrible opinions delivered as facts online, so perhaps that might be a good way to leverage the 20 years of knowledge here. But rather than use AI to shut down discussion, prompt it to open the discussion up, and then step back.

[Tarekith]

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.

[[jur]]

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.

[scg]

+1 for image hosting. There are forums where you can just upload images directly and include them in posts, which is super convenient. And even though the forum obviously isn't an official source of tech support, participation from people involved with Ableton is always nice, and can provide insights that end users may not have.

[[jur]]

Another question:
How do you browse the forum?
By sub-forum? By using the "Active Topics" or any other quick link? etc...

[chapelier fou]

I use roughly two forums, https://www.elektronauts.com/latest and https://llllllll.co/
I like that every category is displayed in one big list, but still clearly tagged with their categories.
I like that they have dark mode.
I like that you can share pictures, embed bandcamp, and share small files.
Sharing files, even small files would make the M4L much more useful in my opinion.

[Pandamonium]

Who said it ain't broke?
There's common requests like dark mode, image hosting, smartphone mode etc that are not about fixing stuff but about quality of life.
I'm confident we'll do it the Ableton way: same home, but better than the previous version.

Fair enough, I see Dark mode is popular, personally I prefer it light, so as long as it's optional, fine. And yes, smartphone mode and the ability to attache files and pics would be useful.

Also, would hate to lose the years of history and knowledge stored here, so let's not lose all the old stuff!

[[jur]]

I use roughly two forums, https://www.elektronauts.com/latest and https://llllllll.co/

What do you think about the never-ending threads design? It seems to be a quite popular design but I personally always feel lost with this non-stop scrolling, I think pages are way easier to navigate.
I'd love to have feedbacks about this. Am I just too old-school?

[[jur]]

Also, would hate to lose the years of history and knowledge stored here, so let's not lose all the old stuff!

That's THE number one priority.

[RobrechtV]

The interface could be smartphone-friendlier.

The editor especially, with the old bbcode tags, is not the most fun to use on a small screen. Creating a bulleted list, as you noticed yourself, is a pain.

• - What do you like in other forums that you're missing here and why?
  - What do you dislike or even hate on this forum?
  - What (and when) makes you go and ask/discuss on socials or other forums, Discord & co rather than in here?
  - ...

Some other forums can send (optional!) push notifications (for new replies etc.) through the web browser.

It's currently a little siloed: if you don't actively visit some of the subforums, there could be all kinds of interesting discussions there that you never get to see (apart from the latest post being shown in the overview). A sidebar with the most popular threads from all over the forum would be nice.

Edit – Also, is it me or have there been a lot of long downtimes recently? I mean it's not me, according to downforeveryoneorjustme, but is my impression correct that it's down for quite significant portions of the day sometimes?

(And I just want to add that there is of course a lot to like about the forum and the above suggestions are not complaints! )