Promoting music/etc on Twoism: YOUR views needed please.

[Mexicola]

Hi Twoism

as some of you are aware, from time to time, our little corner of the internet attracts the attention of various people, including those that appear to sign up purely to promote their own work - be that an LP, radio show, whatever.

Some of you have expressed, often quite strongly, that you find this annoying as you've invested time and energy into the forum over a number of months and years before posting links to your own work. Why should someone drop by purely to self-promote, without taking the trouble to contribute anything else to the forum?

On the other hand, there is also the view that providing the output being linked is relevant to this forum, and not (for example) merely looking to flog cheap viagra, knockoff Ugg boots or claiming we've won the Ugandan National Lottery, what harm could it do? In some ways, we could even consider it flattering that we've sufficient clout online for some to want to promote via Twoism?

Personally, I genuinely understand both viewpoints and can see positives and negatives to both views. Certainly, I'd never want Twoism to become cluttered with spam and have to trawl through dozens of threads advertising music before I could find the 'real' discussions. Equally, when some people genuinely want to share something interesting with us, is it that harmful?

So, myself and Ae would like your thoughts on this please. How would YOU like to see Twoism handle this thorny subject in the future?

I've set up a really basic poll to collect the overall opinion of the forum. Feel free to suggest and discuss potential approaches here too. Let's brainstorm some ideas! Can't promise 100% these will be adopted, but we're genuinely interested in hearing what you guys think and if we do see a clear and sensible improvement that we can work with, we'll give it very careful consideration.

FYI - I've enabled 're-voting' in the poll, so you can amend your vote as the discussion sways your views (or not). After 30 days, the poll will close so Ae, myself and the other mods can review the results and comments.

Thanks
Mex

[Cupz]

I find it difficult to vote, especially seeing both arguments side by side here. On the one hand I firmly believe everybody should be free to post music on twoism. Posting work can be a great fun way to introduce yourself, spark discussion and even admiration. On the other hand I can feel enormously cheated and as if "I fell for it" when somebody is only around to promote his music and I put time in comments that don't get read. It makes me reluctant to welcome people with the open arms some of them obviously deserve, and that in turn might make people think twice about posting music in fear they will be treated the same way or even just posting on tracks they hear. I've stopped posting for a while pondering exactly this dilemma and guilt.
This is all etiquette and the line between cool and annoying is very undefined, almost impossible to judge right. I wouldn't want a fundamental shift in how twoism treats new peeps and new music but if this problem would be solved accurately it could lead to a better experience for both people posting music and people listening to it. I also wouldn't want this forum to be a bunch of elitist fucks with strong quality control....gah this is hard.

I'm going to think about this a little longer.

[The Telepathic Kid]

What is Twoism primarily, a community or a place for musicians to post their work?

I feel it's the former, and we're just being taken advantage of if we allow the latter without some respect to the community.

[Mexicola]

So what would be good I think would be for some discussion around how you'd like us to approach this in future. I have some ideas but I'm keen to hear your thoughts. Good to see people voting, but please give us some commentary too. Don't be shy!

[Cupz]

I'm not that good in calculating changes, but maybe only allowing posting links when someone has posted a number of posts (like 20 or something) in the boc sub-forum. I think that should demotivate most of the fakers and maybe even turn some peeps only out to promote into regular posters, part of the community. Then its simply a matter of the good judging by our lords and saviors, the mods. I've seen this on tons of other forums, so clearly its doing something. Again, I have no idea what side-effects this will have.

[Jonse]

I'm not sure why this is necessary. I think it all should be left as is.

I have posted my stuff here before but not nearly as much as some others who release a lot more. I have to ask: who is genuinely annoyed? The time you've put into the community really has little to do with promoting a release. People are always going to register and post their tunes without doing much else and in return, people will largely ignore them, considering they generally do that in the first place and 80% of self-release threads go largely ignored.

I can't think of many issues this site has had in the past four years regarding those kinds of threads. There's someone who spams their stuff every now and then and they almost always get called out on it. The "what you're working on right now" thread is exactly as it should be and I think threads about a release from a twoism artist are fine, so long as they aren't making more threads than necessary (like another thread to promote the same release instead of a bump).

In the same way that I don't think this board would benefit from more rules and moderation, I don't think some sort of policy regarding promoting one's music is a good idea - or promoting any music that isn't about BoC, for that matter. We generally deal with ourselves so well by online forum standards, which is why rules are thin and that sort of thing works here. Common sense is all that's required. People who are genuinely promoting something and exist as a twoism member should be very visibly distinct from those that exploit the community like they exploit others.

[Lazerize]

I voted "other."

As a newcomer and long-time lurker (the level of discussion is pretty high sometimes....a lot of astute BoC archeologists here!) I wouldn't feel comfortable promoting my music before interacting with the community and expressing my love love of BoC and respect for all you out there who enhance the experience with your insight into their music. It would feel like taking advantage otherwise; it would be crass. So I think that newcomers should be allowed to, just out of respect to freedom. We're losing so many in the real world, so it would be nice to have more here. But maybe in the "New Seeds" thread there could be a note regarding self promo by newcomers, saying something like "If you're a musician you can promote it when you join, but it would be polite to hang around and become a part of the community before doing so."

[Jonse]

I voted "other."

As a newcomer and long-time lurker (the level of discussion is pretty high sometimes....a lot of astute BoC archeologists here!) I wouldn't feel comfortable promoting my music before interacting with the community and expressing my love love of BoC and respect for all you out there who enhance the experience with your insight into their music. It would feel like taking advantage otherwise; it would be crass. So I think that newcomers should be allowed to, just out of respect to freedom. We're losing so many in the real world, so it would be nice to have more here. But maybe in the "Please Read" thread or whatever it's called there could be a note regarding self promo by newcomers, saying something like "If you're a musician you can promote it when you join, but it would be polite to hang around and become a part of the community before doing so."

That's probably the most ideal thing. Some sort of "tips and methods for music promotion on Twoism" sticky. No guidelines per se, but just some general notes about how the community feels about this sort of thing and how best to handle it.

Also don't hope my point before comes across as negative to what TTK said because I understand his feelings about the matter completely. I in fact now recall, if I am remembering correctly, that it was he who called out a particular user (that may or may not have the name of a rodent in his handle) on this sort of thing. That's when I saw the most complaints about it. I feel though that even if it can be annoying, things here definitely work best without the natural flow being disrupted. Not only is this board an anomaly of kindness on the internet, but it's a board that actually feels free. That's why I love being here.

I would also like to add that I do remember from the moment I signed up (with the intent of posting normally) how exciting it was to be able to share music I had worked on with a community that's into the sort of niche it resided in. I think this is definitely one of the things that attracts people to registration on twoism and I think the amount of people who partake in the community and enjoy that process of sharing their work here greatly outweigh those who come here to do nothing but share their work.

[Waterbagel]

It's kind of an awkward subject. It doesn't quite feel right with regard to the whole "some members take months before posting any of their own stuff" point, but at the same time.. How would you moderate that? 20 posts? 30 posts? 10 posts in the BoC sub-forum? All seems rather arbitrary. Could attract some crap-posts just to hit the *magic number*.

As long as the solution doesn't end up being one stickied thread in Random Sound that is for all self-promotion. It's the e-equivalent of owning a record shop and throwing every new release you get in the same bargain bin, all haphazard-like. Good gets tossed with the old. Well-known gets thrown about with the "I'm just here for the SP".

[Cupz]

Damn, some great comments. Its not exactly helping me make a decision. I agree with every notion made so far. Maybe twoism is already handling this situation the best way possible, through community effort....but it might improve discovery if it was solved.

[Mexicola]

Excellent posts all, thanks each of you. Particularly good to see some newer people chime in too.

Keep going guys. As we've already seen, its a tricky subject so the more we talk, the better we light the route forward.

[Negamuse]

Voted 'let em post if its relevant' - obvs if its unconnected music thats a bit... why post here? Moderate irrelevant stuff off tho. Music is easy to miss if its small artists so anything helps me discover it is good.

Would rather people only posted music if they were community members but if you make that a rule all thats gonna happen is people making a few token pretend posts and come on... thats not 'community'. If theyre gonna stay id rather it were for honest reasons like 'they want to'.

Edit: and the other thing is its easy to ignore posts if youre like 'who the f is that?' Its not like we have that much traffic its problematic to sift through to find our stuff

[triststephens]

I've found out about so much excellent music over the years so wouldn't want to put people off posting. That said, those with no other purpose but self-promotion are irksome.

[Techboy]

As long as the solution doesn't end up being one stickied thread in Random Sound that is for all self-promotion. It's the e-equivalent of owning a record shop and throwing every new release you get in the same bargain bin, all haphazard-like. Good gets tossed with the old. Well-known gets thrown about with the "I'm just here for the SP".

I agree strongly with this, I actually think the increase in big mega-threads here has been part of the reason things have slowed down so much recently. I'd think I'd be much more likely to read a bunch of threads than the "post what you're working on" thread, that's bad enough as it is without another one.

[The Telepathic Kid]

on a personal level

I probably just have to stop taking this whole thing so seriously.

[IanRedpoint]

I feel that we're largely self-moderating in this anyhow. If someone new posts some music of theirs and then doesn't stick around to nurture the discussion, then we all largely lose interest and their passing presence is forgotten anyway.

I don't think arbitrary post count requirements work. All you get is a lot of pointless throwaway posts that add nothing to the threads they're in. If someone has something interesting to say then they will naturally contribute anyway.

I think we also have to be careful not to confuse people who naturally don't post that much (for whatever reason - shyness, time constraints etc.) with shameless self-promoters. For example, an artist like Rykard or Ciaran Byrne may not post here that often but I don't think anyone would accuse them of only turning up for self-promotion.

I'm all in favour of a set of soft guidelines for artists wishing to talk about their music on here. All we can do is encourage them to be a part of the community. Beyond that it's ultimately their choice.

[mesjnr]

Can the people who have a problem just not listen to the stuff by those who appear to have come simply to post their music? They don't have to click the links.

Seems weird to me to censor anything or try to inhibit certain behaviours that aren't offensive or aggressive. If there's a chance I'll hear some music that I like, I'm willing to give most posters on here at least half a minute of my time (more for the regular posters but that's my choice) if they post material.

It's possible to be too precious about these things, especially when the power ultimately lies with the reader. Everybody has their preferences for how the board should be, but it's tricky to force these things without losing the essence of a free message board.

[Cupz]

Twoism is full of wisdom, all given insights are amazing.

I'm voting other for now, as I now think a good solution would be to sticky this thread long after all wisdom is gathered as read-me-first regarding the subject. Not as law but as information.

[Fireal420]

this is a public internet forum. people should be able to openly spread their music. as long as the self promoting is going into the proper threads and parts of the forum, then nobody should be getting all worked up.


id like to leave you with one very important thought, the same people on this forum who are trying to stop the spread of music and self promotion, might be back again next year to complain about a book or a tv program. if you can be told what to link and post, then it follows that you can be told what to say or think.

[Cupz]

I agree with Ginsberg here, but then I'd want to freedom to severely disagree with a salesman as well, even if I look like an idiot doing so. And I do have faith in our admin sect-leaders and I'm sure they won't harm the freedom in this community. All hail the mighty Aesreddexi.