You spew your opinions worse than a bible thumping Jesus freak...

[TechnicalBarbarity]

i think having designated threads for those sub genres is enough. Making separate sites for each sub genre will only take away from this place, which in my opinon is the most tightly knit(regardless of the constant bickering), active metal community online.

edit: anyone remember the name of that one other metal forum that was pretty active a few years back? Was it "all-metal" or something?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

imo the site needs to condense more than anything. Metal forums in general are getting quieter, and some of the specialized ones (like ThrashUnlimited) have pretty much died. This place still gets a good bit of discussion, but aside from maybe some of the official band sub-forums here, it's pretty much GMD and off topic that get most of the attention as far as I can tell.

 

[no country for old wainds]

bring back opeth chat off topic and the number of active users will double within a week!

 

[no country for old wainds]

but yeah, forums are dying alas. metal archives is still going i suppose, idk what that's like nowadays (i tend to get banned on sight), but metal rules went a lot quieter, metal judgment died, raging metal, metal hall, the shadow kingdom board, hellride, all these boards went more or less tits up. it sucks.

 

[rms]

This may be an interesting time to pose this question...

Once I get the site converted and moved over, it will serve as a template for a few new sites I want to launch, that are all genre specific. I will still inter-link them from here, and vice versa, but each site would be specific to genres (and branched off from that genre.

So, I'm talking:

UltimateThrash.com
UltimateDeath.com
UltimateDoom.com
UltimateHeavyMetal (Old School)
UltimateDjent.com
UltimateHardRock.com
UltimateProg.com
UltimateRock.com
UltimateMetalX.com (to cover the Nu genre)

and there are more (including non metal genres).

The idea is that, some of these audiences don't mix very well with others. But, some do perfectly, but could be expanded upon content wise/band forum wise/fest wise etc.

My key is to somehow make it easy that you can share a user name across them all, but that seems to be an elusive holy grail so far (only reason I have not done it sooner). At worse, I would let existing members know first so they could reserve their user names before the sites officially launched.

What are your thoughts on this (whether you would use or not)?

I think separating genre pigeonholes people into not experiencing another world.

 

[MetalAges]

I plan on launching those sites regardless, and by regardless I mean, if you all didn't want to go there and just have sub-genre sections stay on here, for here, that's totally cool also.

It will be more than just a general section forums. I will approach bands to try and start getting forums going again as a viable band tool. There are a butt ton of bands in those various genres, which if I just ran them all under here would be way too overwhelming. And like I said, some genre fans don't intermix well (as strange as that may seem). They will also have content frontends (zine).

Forums have declined no doubt, thanks in large part to Facebook. Thing is, I hate the facebook experience. Bands put all their eggs over there and now they can't even send out a message and reach all the people that "liked" their pages. With the new software I'm building upon, I want to try to pull out a lot of the functional aspects from Facebook (liking posts, people, tagging others, posting pics/video inline vs. linking outside stuff, etc.). Will it work? Who knows, I'll give it my best shot though.

You do have a good point rms and that's why I want to make sure all the sites are easy to bounce around to from each other.

Why not just reserve those URLs

(I already own them)

I appreciate the feedback (and welcome more of it).

 

[The Butt]

I might be misunderstanding (I hope I am)... but you should definitely split the website into genre-specific categories, if your goal is to kill the boards.

 

[The Ozzman]

Again, he is not killing the boards

One suggestion is to try and get bands with a larger fan base than the ones you have. I know Opeth's is pretty large but that was shut down maybe partially because the fan base was so huge you had more clashing personalities.

you come off like an asshole sometimes. Is this what you intend on no?

My disposition irl is not generally friendly (ie I seem like a very cold person) although I am friendly if you talk to certain people about me. People think I'm cold because I don't go the extra mile to say hello to people or strike up a conversation unless it's something that interests me (ie metal, table top gaming, fantasy novels, etc).

It also doesn't help that I don't sugar coat anything and I'm just extremely truthful in most circumstances. In others, I have to be a bit more tactful in how I word things so I don't get fired or significantly maimed.

Grant and Rick can vouch for this as they've actually met me. Also Keith/KMADD from UM Old School. I hung out with him for a majority of Mayhem Fest this year and he's a cool cat.

I'm a dick here for multiple reasons:

1) Over the course of 9 years, the general disposition of this place hasn't changed. It is extremely difficult to correct this when it is ingrained in the culture. I'm surprised it took Deron this long to address it in such a lengthy manner.
2) People don't seem to like listening to instructions I give them. I tell them 'don't do this' and they are like a 9 year old child and disobey anyway.
3) When someone makes anything I do more difficult than it needs to be, I get extremely irritated. I've lashed out at people at work before because of this very situation.

 

[CiG]

How about, when someone asks a genuine question (like the thread Deron referenced) moderators have a higher standard of conduct, but if it's the usual offenders having a little tiff, you treat it in a much more lax way?

Because I know I'm quite prone to conflict but I'm never a dick to people that genuinely want to know things or ask things, what happened in that thread was pretty ridiculous.
Every thread doesn't need to turn into a shitfest.

 

[The Ozzman]

Where does the line get drawn though? It seems like every thread has 'a little tiff' every day.

 

[CiG]

Exactly, and so if you come down on every little incident, you'll essentially be crushing the life out of the threads, it seems to be the way a lot of people use the forum and in all honesty this is easily in my top 5 most civil music forums I've been on.

Again, I think it's just a matter of keeping threads on topic if they're as specific as educate me on the roots of Metal.

 

[The Ozzman]

Exactly, and so if you come down on every little incident, you'll essentially be crushing the life out of the threads, it seems to be the way a lot of people use the forum and in all honesty this is easily in my top 5 most civil music forums I've been on.

Again, I think it's just a matter of keeping threads on topic if they're as specific as educate me on the roots of Metal.

Well, I guess it could be something like:

If the tiff is related to the thread somehow (ie: arguing whether Venom is black metal) then that would be okay. When the personal attacks start, that's when the moderation could begin?

That seems fair.

 

[CiG]

I would definitely work with boundaries like that personally.

 

[MetalAges]

Again, he is not killing the boards

One suggestion is to try and get bands with a larger fan base than the ones you have. I know Opeth's is pretty large but that was shut down maybe partially because the fan base was so huge you had more clashing personalities.

I'm surprised it took Deron this long to address it in such a lengthy manner.

This is a very good question, and probably has been my biggest downfall as an admin. Opeth forum is a prime example. I didn't admin it the way *I* would run a forum because I a) inherited it from someone else, so the culture was there prior to me and b) I wrongly assumed the band was "ok" with the behavior and the way the forum ran. It ended when one of the members (maybe several) made an insensitive remark about a musician passing away - who happened to be a friend of Mikael's. That ended that.

Same kinda goes for here. My personal thoughts on the way a forum should flow isn't the way it currently runs. But, if I were to go making a bunch of rules and changing things (which I tried in the past) I get shit flung at me, berated, etc. - not so much lately, but years past. Several here were some of the offenders (in their younger days). The funny thing is, I can't tell you how often I get asked to wipe old posts from some of those old fellas. Funny Continued below...

How about, when someone asks a genuine question (like the thread Deron referenced) moderators have a higher standard of conduct, but if it's the usual offenders having a little tiff, you treat it in a much more lax way? ....

Every thread doesn't need to turn into a shitfest.

You saying that made it click with something I didn't mention yesterday. I'm not clueless enough to not realize a lot of the banter are friend's giving each other a hard time. But, when you factor in that this isn't a completely personal playground, and you have lurkers, other visitors who may not be as tight, or new users in general - the banter comes off as people arguing, fighting, complaining, and just being outright rude. So, I understand that 60+% of the time it's among friends, but lots do not. That's why I had considered in the past converting this over to something more clique' (for lack of a better word) than a general metal forum that represents Ultimate Metal. Hopefully that thought process is more clear now (it's not changing, don't worry).

If the tiff is related to the thread somehow (ie: arguing whether Venom is black metal) then that would be okay. When the personal attacks start, that's when the moderation could begin?

That seems fair.

I'm cool with that. It's the derailing that is the issue (a lot of times due to the previous statement).

 

[viewerfromnihil]

In my experience, splitting genres into sub-forums kills boards. Discussions carry on within them for some period initially, but the discussions die down sooner or later and the sub-forums die one by one until the corpse-forums kill the whole board. It happened to two sites I moderated (along with The Butt), to couple of other smaller sites I visited periodically, and I think it was tied into the downfall of All-Metal. Not even Metal-Archives has genres separated into sub-forums anymore (I think they used to?).

I think the fact that this site consolidates most of the metal discussion into one forum helps to keep the place running (after all, UM is one of the few decent metal boards left)--if discussion about one genre dies down, the discussions of other genres keep the forum afloat.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Not even Metal-Archives has genres separated into sub-forums anymore (I think they used to?).

If they did it was before my time, but it's worth noting that they currently have stickied generals in the recommendations forum, and even there the thrash, prog, and miscellaneous metal threads are very inactive. Most of the forum's thrash discussion concentrated into a single thread on probably the most active metal forum, and it's still too slow.

 

[UltimateApathy]

Secondly, this forum is largely swayed to the heavier stuff, which is my least favorite stuff. It annoys me so much, I've thought of renaming this section to something else and starting a new General Metal Discussion.

Looking forward to the new "Pop Metal" forum section...

 

[no country for old wainds]

i think the line between discussion and personal attacks is usually pretty clear, myself. as long as the mods are sensible about making that distinction and acting upon it when required (edits, warnings, bannings in extreme cases etc) then all's good. i do think people should be allowed to plead their case in more ambiguous instances though, it is possible for someone's tone to be misinterpreted or whatever.

 

[MetalAges]

Looking forward to the new "Pop Metal" forum section...

I'll have you know I do own UltimatePop.com - and I have a sweet tooth for 80s pop youngster! Haha.

i think the line between discussion and personal attacks is usually pretty clear, myself. as long as the mods are sensible about making that distinction and acting upon it when required (edits, warnings, bannings in extreme cases etc) then all's good. i do think people should be allowed to plead their case in more ambiguous instances though, it is possible for someone's tone to be misinterpreted or whatever.

Always a warning first, if not two. Banning is an absolute last resort and I personally tend to dislike using it. Sometimes people give me no choice though.

 

[UltimateApathy]

UltimateThrash.com
UltimateDeath.com
UltimateDoom.com
UltimateHeavyMetal (Old School)
UltimateDjent.com
UltimateHardRock.com
UltimateProg.com
UltimateRock.com
UltimateMetalX.com (to cover the Nu genre)

Just noticed that there is no "UltimateBlack".....