First off, I wanted to apologize for some of the behavior I've shown over the past few months here. We certainly have a community filled with many opinions, and I feel as of late certain discussions have turned from generally pleasant ones, to slightly less then pleasant. It has never been my goal to drive people off, but I have a feeling I may have helped contribute to this recently. I am going to work to improve in this area, and feel free to call me out if you feel I've crossed the line. I hope others are willing to speak up, even if it is someone like myself with a red name who is doing it. Ultimately, this community is not mine, but something that belongs to everyone here. If there was ever a time where I felt I needed to stop hosting it, I'd hand it off, much like PaulH did years ago. I hope no one feels that just because I host the site, I am somehow exempt from following the general guidelines of having a polite and civil discussion. If anyone has any concerns whatsoever regarding this or sees a conflict of interest, feel free to speak up.

I'll admit, part of what drove my behavior in certain posts recently was due to what I perceived some others were also doing. However, I chose poorly in my way of handling it. Instead of pointing out some of the nitpicking was getting out of hand, I tried to mirror the behavior, to the point of upsetting Bitt. And I think my repeated posts going after Matt anytime I see him going after Bruno have probably caused some more recent issues. I want to specifically apologize to both Bitt and Matt here for doing so. Countering what I perceived as bad posts with additional bad ones does nothing to improve the situation.

To address the situation more directly, I'm asking for people to try and be a little less antagonistic with their tech posts (or as Tony F calls, them, religious discussions ). I've been guilty of this myself, and it's something I'm going to work on. I'd ask others to do so too. Ultimately what people choose to use is their choice. I'm sure my own recent behavior has just reinforced Matt's reasons for avoiding any Apple products. There is a fine line with evangelism and zealotry that once crossed, just turns annoying for those involved on either side.


With all that said, I'd like to see what others think about the future of this community. Clearly it is shrinking, just as a nature of being one based on products that haven't been on sale for over 6 years now. There are a number of old regulars who have stopped posting, or post far less frequently. There is still enough of a group here though that continues visiting daily, posting hummingbird photos, or their latest band exploits. Anyone have any suggestions on changes to the forums that they see as beneficial? Or any insight in general they would like to offer? I'd like to keep this a welcoming place open to any discussion. There has been some really good ones over the years on a number of touchy subjects, threads that couldn't exist in most other internet communities. I hope to see that continue, and will do my part to try and keep things civil.

I know I wouldn't visit daily (or at all) if I didn't respect the opinions and thoughts of others in here, including those who I sometimes disagree with. To this day, there's still no other forum where I continue to read and post in like I do here. Most other forums are a limited-time offering when I first pick up a product or a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of thing when a product I own/use is in perpetual beta. I don't consider any of them a community and never will.

I hope the forum is still running 10 years from now and we're all still active with it.

Even when not posting much, mostly due to little time available, I've always come here at least to read, because interested in the many ideas, and opinions, and thoughts board members would offer.

So, others will probably come up with great ideas to improve this place. That'd be great, and I'd love it. But I couldn't come up with anything; any technical improvement I could think of appeared trivial to me, as what I value most, here, is people, for as obvious as it may sound.

And I think most board members come here for my same reasons, rather than for the Empeg itself.

Very recently, I decided to buy my first reflex camera. I've got friends into photography, some of them professionally. And I gathered information from them which was mostly confused, at times fanatic, very often inaccurate. In here, as usual, I got mostly few, clear, sincere opinions, some crucial facts, a lot of useful and clear information.
This is great, technically, but mostly the sign of intelligence and intellectual honesty.

Interestingly, I was not surprised. Over the years, I got used to it, as in many other cases, disciplines, topics, I've found the same intrinsic intelligence and honesty.

This board was blessed by the presence of many intelligent and sensitive people; so, if I had to think of ways to improve this place, I'd only hope that "the magic" continues.

And many sincere thanks, Drakino, for hosting and maintaining and the work you put in this.

I always thought a lot of the shrink was due to people disagreeing over political issues. I just stop reading threads that start getting too "religious" I always though instead of just ignoring those threads like me people stopped coming all together.

Ever thought of sending an email out to everyone registered and saying hey we're still here ?



I doubt anyone thinks that, when I see a post from you I don't really even think about you hosting the site.

If you want to restructure the site I would suggest just having announcements, for sale, general, and empeg. I would guess many of the posts get ignored in the less popular sub forums because they are so infrequently posted in. When there are not a ton of posts the it's better to have less forums so the posts there are get more visibility.

I've gotten busy with life at various times and been away from the board- but I'm always glad when I return. This is a singular community and one which exposes me to a lot of new ideas and information. The only downside is that it has become small enough that there can be a lull between interesting discussions- when life gets busy I sometimes forget to check and lose track.

But I've participated in many forums and nothing compares to what this place is.

I suppose I'm still out of the loop as I have no idea about the tension you are referring to in this thread. I'm just glad you've been keeping the place going and enabling the interesting types of conversations we do have.

Really? I can get frustrated at what I perceive as willful ignorance, but I don't think I've ever thought that of you. Maybe, once in a while, I think you might start to take your position of devil's advocacy too seriously, but I don't think you've ever upset me.


I certainly appreciate it, but, as far as I'm concerned, there's no need.

If anyone is guilty of causing offense, I'm certain it's me. I've been called any variety of synonyms for "brusque", most less family-friendly. Most of the time I'm not totally aware of it. (Though, admittedly, sometimes I am.)

A general shrinking of the number of forums seems like a good idea as Matt pointed out. Other than off topic, most of them are lucky to see 10 posts in a week (and some of them none). If that were to happen, however, it sure would be great to continue to search all the old stuff and leave it around for posterity.

Seems like a lot of people drifted away with many of the religious/political discussions a few years back that got pretty heated. Many others as they stopped using or sold their empegs. Normal attrition I suppose.

I don't post very frequently, but I read the forum every day, unless I'm prevented from doing so by travel or something else. I'm not much of a talker in real life and that's reflected in my online presence as well.

I think it's been a bit much fanboy vs fanboy at times (even though some fanboys are fanboy-in-denial... ), but if I'm not interested in the topic, I just stop reading that topic instead of stop reading the forum. As Bruno said, this is the only forum I've been reading over many years. There's been other forums I've read maybe a month or two, but then the interest in them has just dropped. Not so with this one.

I don't think reducing the number of sub-forums is neccessary to keep people here. I don't have any interest in the Receiver or the Central so those sub-forums are just minimized.

Stig

As has been mentioned above, I feel this is more of a community than a forum.

One thing that sets this 'community' apart is the level of maturity and education displayed in the postings (bad spelling is a pet peeve of mine, although I must admit, my grammar is not always up to scratch).

I have not been able to contribute as much as I would like over the years, partly due to time constraints and partly due to a limited knowledge of the mainly US-centric and often IT-based subject matter, but I do enjoy reading threads here and I too would hope that this forum continues despite reduced membership numbers.

A big thanks to Tom too, for putting in the time and money over the years.

Same as Stig says goes for me as well. I don't post all that often, and if I do it's usually a question , but I read the forums almost every day. This is the only forum I've ever come across which holds so much information and knows pretty much everything about anything (anything I could think of anyway).

I'd hate to see it fade away. I really hope it's still here twenty or more years from now.

In psychology there's the term 'flashbacks' meaning people can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when certain important things took place. Like eg., most people still remember where they were when they heard about the Challenger space shuttle exploding.
I have several of these events in my life in which this forum plays a role.

Eg, when I first heard about the 9/11 attacks, I was reading this forum. I will never forget that. I can even remember the post I was reading at that time. When my wife went into labour of our first, I was reading this forum before I took her to the hospital,...

This is just to say this forum is important to me, and so are the people running it and posting on it, even if I've never met most of you. Some of you I have met, Tom being one of them. I really hope this will happen again one day.

I have to say I don't recognise you in your description of your behaviour Tom. I would have never identified you as someone who was upsetting anyone else here.

I visit this place every day and I'd be heart broken if it went away. It is still the place than I come to for answers to all sorts of odd questions

I'm not sure how cutting down the number of forums would change anything, I expect the people who come here daily know what they want to read already and I don't think you are suddenly going to drum up a load of new traffic by moving things about.

It's certainly the place to come for all sorts of answers, the membership may be small but is highly intelligent. I don't use it much but it's definitely a good thing.

Defiantly a community, not a forum!

I got married recently, and as many of you know I met my good lady through this community. At the wedding I was genuinely moved to see a group of empeggers had gone to massive lengths to attend, flying huge distances and going to so much trouble. When I first saw them all smiling at me, I had to go and have a "moment" I was very touched.

I found it particularly hard to get though my little speech seeing them all there, it meant so much to us both. Can anyone guess who the distance travelled prize went to ???

I was having a chat with RobS that evening (who appears to get getting younger BTW!) and we both said the same thing, many in this community are largely unaware of how much this place has changed some of our lives. Tom I think you are one of these people, your quiet influence has kept this place going yet you seem unaware of the massive respect you are due. I don't really see what there is to apologise for.

I think it has done a good job so far so I don't see why much has to change. I do like the mass email idea to prompt a few long lost friends to return. I always found the empeg stuff interesting of course, but Off Topic is why I stayed and even attended the meets.

Cheers

Cris.

This place is a bastion of sanity in a world otherwise populated by text talk. One of the managers here even writes email using 'words' like 'tks u'. It drives me absolutely nuts.

I'm like Stig, I'm a daily visitor but infrequent poster. Either because I feel I don't have anything to offer to the conversation, or my point has already been made.
I do know that if I've a question, be it grammar, how to boil water, what car to buy, or how to configure a complex network switch, I'll get a proper and intelligent answer from the forum along with a good sprinkling of humor and a note that if my toaster ran linux it would be much easier to interface it with the fridge and coffee maker.

Echoing comments from others here, this is one of the few forums I've stuck with through thick and thin, and it's due to the quality of the participants. It's been years since I've powered up my empeg (*sigh*), but the set of people who once said "yes, that's perfect!" is exactly the right group of people to come to for other quality advice and opinion, along with the occasional bit of far out invective.

If it's not been clear already, I have a bizarre interest in the minutiae of daily life in other cultures and societies: the kind of knowledge that people completely take for granted. It seems that there are a number of others here with similar interest.

If you find something odd, I'd personally really like to hear about it, and hear how it would be done in Australia.

Tom, I haven't seen you in the way that you apparently see yourself here.

I've been taking it a little easier here in the last few weeks because I want to avoid the heated discussions. I don't feel like they're healthy for me or the board in general. Sometimes I think everyone could take a step back (certainly myself included) and take a deep breath and carry on a rational conversation.

But yes, I still consider this one of the most important sites I visit. Top-three, really (with GMail and Google Reader being the other places I spend all my time). I can't count how often I check this forum in a day, which might not be healthy either

There are definitely some people I wish were still posting here, but I also think there's a good group here still. I don't know what the future of the board will be, but I certainly hope it lives on as long as possible.

Agreed.

What we call a religious war here, others from outside this community would regard as a polite and civil discussion. We've got a different bar here. Most other places, it's not considered a flame war until it devolves into all-caps and an invocation of Godwin's Law.

Heh, it's a testament to this board that it took me forever to hear about Godwin's Law.

Oh, I don't know... it's been a long time since you Bitt'ed anyone on grammar or spelling.

My first thought on reading Tom's post was... "uhhhhhh.... what?" But now I'm thinking maybe it's a pre-apology for the upcoming election season?

This is mostly what triggered my post (well, that, and some recent reflection due to a potential job change). Your step back from the tech here was noticeable enough to me at least, and it happened at a point when I was somewhat being intentionally antagonistic. And it's the second time this year I've noticed "heated" discussions in the tech areas of off topic that seemed to drive some folks away (at least from the immediate discussions).

As others have pointed out here, the bar for this community is usually much higher then other communities, and it's something I'd like to keep that way. The commentary here has generally been much better then the communities at Engadget, Gizmodo, Reddit and such, though it has seemed to dip a bit towards their direction at times.

Oh god, don't get me started on Engadget comments. I can't speak for Gizmodo, but the Engadget commenters are awful. I so often want to contribute a rational thought to a post, but get turned off by the comments I read there.

I've always heard that Reddit is better than Digg, but I guess that's a seriously low bar to set...

But yes, I've always considered the empeg boards to be a sanctuary, and still do.

I don't think reducing the number of forums will keep people here but I do think it can generate more discussion. I know next to nothing about programming so I pretty much ignore that forum. Then once in a while I look at it and see posts that are interesting but long since dead.



I agree with Bitt I find these kind of things interesting too.

I definitely agree that this is a community, not a message board, and it has transcended its original purpose. There are times I wish the whole thing could be organized/located/named to reflect that- but there are two fears I have

1. While I only ever look at OT these days, maybe others are using other parts of the board and are still really into the empeg side of things

2. I fear messing with things is a good way to cause people to leave- people don't like change and messing with the status quo could end up messing with a few aspects of things people really like about this place.

That being said, I've felt for a while that it would be nice if the organization and styling of this board matched the things I value here- namely exposure to ideas I don't normally get in my everyday life and thoughtful discussion from good people. I do occasionally refer to threads from this board, and it's always an awkward point in a discussion when I do:

I was reading a thread on the internet yesterday- no, not just anywhere on the internet, but from this great community with really good insights . . . well, actually it was build around a car mp3 player . . . no this was back before iPod and everyone had them. It was the best product ever. You wouldn't believe how much they sold for, but it was totally worth it. Anyway, the thing I read was . . ."

I think this forum layout has its reasons. Re-organizing is a nice idea in theory, as I tend to associate/translate it into "improving". Bu that is how detailed the idea gets.

Practically, I think this forum, in its form, has very much an historical value for many of us. I can quickly go through it, it "makes sense", it is as familiar and friendly as it can get.

I also completely understand the idea of reducing forums would favor interaction, but the only ways to do that I can think of would entail moving many threads into some "old threads" section of the forum, possibly re-distributing others, merging others into one single forum; it is a lot of work, and I don't know if I'd like it for sentimental reasons, in spite of the potential practical benefits of such a thing.

I love this place too, there are some really smart people on here and you can ask a question about something and be pretty sure that somebody on here will have a solution or at least a good amount of information to share.

I've met a few people off here and they've all turned out to be as great in real life as they are on the board, whenever I have a moment free I always find myself here just to have a look at what people are saying, I probably check in here at least once a day.

It's just an awesome place.

Daily reader here.

Ross

Bitt, I meant that I do not feel qualified to contribute to threads discussing say US politics or US health care or even many tech subjects for example, not knowing enough about the subject matter. I would not really feel comfortable making what could be seen as an irrelevant comment along the lines of 'this is how we do it over here', which although it may be of interest to some, others may see it as perhaps an arrogant attitude of 'so this is how it should be done'.

I try to follow the dictum:

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt"

Well, I certainly don't want to force you to be uncomfortable, but I don't think a personal accounting of how things appear to you would be considered arrogant.

If we're talking about something on a public forum, I think there's the implicit question of "how do you feel?"

But, again, if it makes you uncomfortable, don't do it.