The Lounge?

[Jeff Foster]

I guess the "Announcements and General Bulletin Board" topic pretty much fits this bill so maybe it's redundant. Still, I'd like to see a topic area that has nothing to do with saxophones whatsoever. I got this idea from "Moe's Tavern" on the Fender Discussion page, where I've been a member for some time. "Moe's" is for general discussion, getting to know each other better and so on. No gear posts allowed. You can talk about anything you want as long as it's not too political or controversial. It's a lot of fun. What do you think? Could we have something like that at SOTW? If so, what might it be called? "Moe's Tavern" is already taken.

[Bill Mecca]

Jeff,

we had something like that on the old forum, and that is where things started going downhhill (at least to my reccollection). I don't know if Harri and the moderators would want to go down that path again, although with the new forum there are safeguards.

[Harri Rautiainen]

Billmecca,

your recollection is correct.
We want to stick to anything saxophone related. Going to politics, religion, etc, is very flammable, especially right now.

Harri

[Pete]

My take ...

I really enjoyed the Discussion Place topic on our old forum (the "tavern" you're talking about, Jeff). It's one of the only places where I could carry on cogent discussions about a variety of topics with people that at least share one thing in common: a love of things saxophone.

Unfortunately, way too many people abused that area: it was kinda like instead of a rational discussion sitting at a "bar" (I don't drink, so I can imagine), it was like a motorcycle gang (no offense to our motorcyclist members) came in and decided to spraypaint all the walls, destroy all the furniture and insult all the other folks sitting at the "bar".

Now, a good deal of those problems were definitely caused by some of the trolls that hung out on eesites. This problem has been mostly eliminated by this forum's protections, but we've still had cause to ban three or four people in the past month or so. Additionally, some of the problems we had on the Discussion Place were caused by SOTW members getting offended at other peoples' posts.

This latter problem still has not been resolved. Here's an example:

A couple weeks ago we had a troll post in a couple of threads drumming up support for the anti-Iraq-war-march that occurred in several cities throughout the world. Many people took offense to these posts and I personally got about a dozen e-mails on the topic.

Admittedly, the poster should have been (and now is) banned because he repeatedly disregarded SOTW forum rules, but these kind of posts occurred often in the Discussion Place. I can envision getting dozens of e-mails asking me to remove any post listed there!

Finally, there were a few people who left SOTW because of posts in the Discussion Place. Some of those people I do miss.

=========

Now, phpBB is a much more flexible forum than eesites. It's possible to set up an area (called a "forum", in phpBB terms) that can be only accessed and seen by certian members. It MAY be possible to do that here and have a designated bouncer (phpBB allows a "moderator" access just to delete and move messages).

Kind of a "Joe sent me" type of arrangement, keeping with the bar/speakeasy analogy :)

IMHO, that's just way too much work and I don't think it's what's wanted. I think what's wanted is a non-moderated forum in which everyone can participate and only the real jerks are bounced when necessary -- and the bounced person's status in no way affects what goes on in SOTW proper, possibly with all participants having different user names. I think this is for a different forum provider entirely. Maybe we'd link to it.

I'll start a poll about it here, but it's up to Harri to continue with the idea. It's his forum.

[Jeff Foster]

It's definitely risky business. Again, the FDP is all I really have to go by. They have the same problem you're referring to but they're very tenacious when it comes to policing those kinds of shenanigans. They'll lock a thread in a heartbeat if it turns political or goes outside the bounds of their posting guidelines. Recently they've had to post a couple of warnings and cancel a few accounts of people who refuse to follow the rules. It's still a lot of fun but, I don't know, maybe more trouble than it's worth?

[jazzbluescat]

My opinion is that if it's more trouble than it's worth, forget about it.
I like the idea of this sax & sax related board. Besides, extraneous stuff has a way of creeping into discussions(of which I'm guilty)as it is. A "lounge" thread might serve to fracture the board into various factions, detracting from saxes.

{And, if you/we should decide to have this topic, please don't call it "lounge." Because, for some reason I want to think "lizard" everytime that I hear "lounge." (Not that I have anything against lizards.)}

[Kosma]

I also think another discussion place is a bad idea. I rarely looked at the old one and posted on it even less. I don't come to the saxophone forum to talk about al-jazeera. Random discussions are more along the lines of a chat room than a forum anyway. I never visit ANY other forums, but I imagine there's one for every subject one can come up with.

[Mike Ruhl]

Ditto Kosma's comments.

Mike R.

[RatBatBlues]

I didn't regularly visit the old discussion place because it was very unpleasant. What was worse was that some of that unpleasantness between members carried over into the other forums.

I vote definitely no.

[Ritchie]

I agree, SOTW should stay on topic, it is a saxophone discussion forum, and the risk of a general area outweighs the benefit. If anyone feels another place for general discussion is necessary, a new forum should be started by this person. There are already a lot of sites, forums and chat rooms in the internet where you can discuss almost each and every topic.

[LBAjazz]

Hey what's wrong with the Lounge Lizards? John Lurie is a great alto player. I believe he plays a VI.

[Pete]

Modified and created, at Harri's request. Please continue posting suggestions for appropriate names ...

[pfox]

Does Al Jazeera have any CDs out? I've never heard him play!

[Kosma]

He sounds just like Kenny G.

[Balladeer]

My vote goes to keeping things on the topic of sax. One year ago, I suggested that SOTW have a chat room. My reason was to get some responses more quickly. However, the information I was hoping for would have been 100% saxophone.

[woodwindmaster06]

I think that this forum should be devoted primarily to sax, but a little non sax stuff would be okay

[Stacey]

How about naming it "Harri's Bar"?

[Morry]

How about "The Green Room". It's where we can hang out and chat before the performance. :-)