Suggestions for Maidenfans.com

Jon

Jon

Administrator
Staff member
Hi all,

I'm sure some of you will have noticed my increasing changes behind the scenes over at the homepage (http://www.maidenfans.com/) and now that I'm starting to get things in shape at their new home, I'm interested to know what you'd like to see added or returned to the site.

Feedback on the current state, or pie-in-the-sky ideas are also very welcome.

Cheers.
 
Hi Jon!

I just wanted to post something here to let you know I'm not ignoring your post here. I've been giving it some thought, but I'm not quite ready to post anything concrete yet.

However, I will post this publicly for everyone to know...
There was some discussion among Jon and the mods a couple weeks ago about re-organizing the forum to clean it up a bit. Here was my idea:
  • Music Discussion

    • [li]Iron Maiden

      • [li]<Album forums - the old "Commentary" forums, moved here now that the IMC is gone>
      • Maiden-related bands forum
      [/li]
    • Musicians Forum (lesser beings welcome too :p )
    • Trade Forum
    • Polls / Survivors (we rarely have non-musical polls, I think this is safe under music)
    [/li]
  • General Discussion

    • [li]History (appropriate subforum for this community)
    • Can I Play With Madness? (bring back this forum's correct name!)
    [/li]
  • Community (a forum for original art, music, etc... birthday threads, personal news, etc... )

So for now, I'll throw this out to the forum... a good idea?
 
I like SMX's suggestion.

I would however like to add a "World news/politics/etc" sub forum for "General Discussion". That is the subject for many threads in said forum. Also a "General Music Forum" (as in non Iron Maiden/solo projects) instead of the "Metal Fans" forum.
 
With my idea, news and politics threads would be in General Discussion like they are now (instead of one of the subforums). Same for non-Maiden music: in the Music Discussion forum. All the threads from Metalfans would get moved there.
 
I think it's good to get rid of the term Metal (Fans) Forum, and to regroup all non-Maiden music together.

I always felt that talking about Pink Floyd sounded weird in both the General forum and the Metal forum.

What will be the best place for non-Maiden music?

Here:

SinisterMinisterX said:
  • Music Discussion

    • [li]Iron Maiden

      • [li]<Album forums - the old "Commentary" forums, moved here now that the IMC is gone>
      • Maiden-related bands forum
      [/li]
    • Musicians Forum (lesser beings welcome too :p )
    • Trade Forum
    • Polls / Survivors (we rarely have non-musical polls, I think this is safe under music)
    [/li]
  • General Discussion

    • [li]History (appropriate subforum for this community)
    • Can I Play With Madness? (bring back this forum's correct name!)
    [/li]
  • Community (a forum for original art, music, etc... birthday threads, personal news, etc... )
Click to expand...

or here:

SinisterMinisterX said:
non-Maiden music: in the Music Discussion forum.
Click to expand...
 
The Community forum would be for music created by forum members. Everything else would go under Music Discussion.
 
I don't see (room for) non-Maiden music here:

SinisterMinisterX said:
  • Music Discussion

    • [li]Iron Maiden

      • [li]<Album forums - the old "Commentary" forums, moved here now that the IMC is gone>
      • Maiden-related bands forum
      [/li]
    • Musicians Forum (lesser beings welcome too :p )
    • Trade Forum
    • Polls / Survivors (we rarely have non-musical polls, I think this is safe under music)
    [/li]
Click to expand...

Another category will be added?
 
Shadow, I Don't think that's a good idea, Musician forum is pretty much dead without us helping it.
 
Shade is right. My apologies if my post was unclear.

The Community Forum would be for any original works of art by forum members - whether that is music, drawing, poetry, anything.

On the other hand, we would find (for example) Foro's Scar Symmetry thread and move that to Music Discussion.


And again: this is still just a suggestion from me. It's not (yet) a plan.
I'd really like to hear some alternative suggestions, if anyone has some.


Jon also said "pie in the sky" ideas were acceptable. Here's one that we (Perun, no5 and me) came up with in the chatroom:
Allow members to post a text file of their favorite quotes to the server. Then have a random quote generator which people can use in their signatures. Perun's plan was to have a random Manowar quote in his signature.

In theory, that sounds easy for Jon to build. I've built a random quote generator before, and it's really simple. And if Jon needs or wants help, I'd be glad to share my PHP code with him. (But this is so simple, he shouldn't need much if any help... :bigsmile:)
@ Foro:
No other category.
Non-Maiden topics will reside in Music Discussion, like politics topics do now in General Discussion.
But there will be subforums listed at the top of Music Discussion for Maiden and the other stuff I listed.
 
So no apart subforum for non-Maiden music? Well, let's give it a shot.

I like your suggestions SMX, this should work better than the current "subdivisions". ;)
 
Forostar said:
What do you exactly mean Mega, and what's your idea?
Click to expand...

Well, I think seperating the Musician's forum further will only hurt it.
I mean, there's a post per month there as it is, so with even less stuff to talk about (with the compostions being moved to a forum for themselves), both will be even more dead then they are right now.

I can understand seperating Metal from other genres, because there's alot of activity in that forum, but doing that to Musicians is pointless.
 
I disagree. By separating it, it's going to be less buried in the forum.

So there might even be more attention for it.
 
Foro is right. We'd be moving original art to a forum that would also contain birthday threads and other personal news. We might even move the 100k thread there, since it has developed into a community chat thread. Such a forum would likely get much more attention than the Musicians Forum.

The "new" Musicians Forum would be for threads about (for example) playing guitar or music theory. You're right, it might not get much activity. But such topics are of interest to a specialized group - large enough to get their forum but still an area some people wouldn't have any desire to visit.

The same logic goes for my History Forum idea. We have lots of threads about that, so that sub-community deserves their own spot, but not everyone cares.
 
SinisterMinisterX said:
The "new" Musicians Forum would be for threads about (for example) playing guitar or music theory. You're right, it might not get much activity. But such topics are of interest to a specialized group - large enough to get their forum but still an area some people wouldn't have any desire to visit.
Click to expand...

I also thought about more attention for own songs as well. People who might not be into the technical matters of music, still might like to hear what others have made. In the new set-up I hope more people will notice this.
 
Here's my idea. It's basically the same as SMX's, but a bit clearer.

  • Music Discussion

    • [li]Iron Maiden

      • [li]Former Commentary Forums
      • Maiden-related bands forum
      [/li]
    • General Music Discussion
    • Musicians Forum
    • Trade Forum
    • Polls/Survivors
    [/li]
  • Off-Topic

    • [li]General Discussion
    • History Discussion
    • Can I Play With Madness?
    [/li]
  • Community
 
What about the idea that YouTube vid's can be embedded in a post rather than just a link - much like images are. This is something they do over at last.fm.

Just a "pie in the sky" suggestion. :D
 
There's a simple mod for SMF (this board's software) that allows Youtube embedding via [youtube] tags.

Regarding doing "general music" forum, i'm up for it, a lot of people here (most?) enjoy non-metal music as well.
If Jon needs help with coding anything, i can offer my assistance and very limited time.
 
Albie said:
What about the idea that YouTube vid's can be embedded in a post rather than just a link - much like images are.
Click to expand...

If the system can embed the video, but only start the download when you click on it, then that's OK. But I'd be opposed to anything which forces me to download clips just from looking at a page.
 
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