The Twoism Wasteland (and how to fix it)

[Cupz]

So, Twoism is slowly turning into a friggin wasteland. I think there are about 10 people that post here, and only rarely. The Twoism artists that use twoism as their main release platform (myself included) are starting to wonder....why bother?

Why bother making a new thread if it probably ends up sinking to the bottom with no more then 7 posts (5 beying from the author himself)..

There are no more discussions here except for a flame-ware in the BoC Forum and an "I agree".

So I come with a sollution:

-Everybody that still has a little love for the boards and don't want to see it disappear, POST! Post your ass off.

-We need a Twoism Artist subforum, each artist or album with his own threads.

So thats my 2 cents. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DISCUSS!

[747Music]

I'm with you man. This place is dead. I haven't had a single response for my music posts in a long time. It's discouraging. And I know I'm not alone.
Let's liven this place up with a little effort.

[TaoTapeTao]

I agree completely. Though I admit I only joined recently, it's rare that someone responds when I post anything involving my own music. I do admit I'm not always keen on responding to other artists' work but I do browse the threads and check out everything I can. I think a subforum thing wouldn't be a bad idea.

[IanRedpoint]

Yeah. I'd like to see a Twoism Artists sub forum too. I wonder if the lack of feedback on here is partly down to the fact that it is often easier to leave comments on Soundcloud?

[Synthestesia]

We need to mend this website with time, love, and compassion. and weed.

[fujee]

I love this place and fully back the notion to get this place moving faster. I sometimes feel I post a little too much when I see my username across 3/4 main forums and no one has replied in hours/days

But the relaxed, slow nature of these boards is kinda attractive, at least you can get your post written and consider a response in a good amount of time. Some boards I post on have too many users posting and it all gets lost.

[Mexicola]

But the relaxed, slow nature of these boards is kinda attractive, at least you can get your post written and consider a response in a good amount of time. Some boards I post on have too many users posting and it all gets lost.

Yeah, this really ^^

[OverTheHorizonRadar]

I normally don't post here, but I do enjoy reading all your posts usually. It's sort of part of my daily routine now, you guys are so special!

[cubistking1906]

The flame wars are shitty. I vote to nuke all dissenters.

And I don't mind that this is a smaller forum since the boc forums over at WATMM are even more of a bummer than this, primarily because the larger crowd means more trolls show up.

It's a shame we are all scattered across the world because we could probably have an awesome bonfire party if that weren't the case.

[mechanismj]

The flame wars are shitty. I vote to nuke all dissenters.

And I don't mind that this is a smaller forum since the boc forums over at WATMM are even more of a bummer than this, primarily because the larger crowd means more trolls show up.

It's a shame we are all scattered across the world because we could probably have an awesome bonfire party if that weren't the case.

It's been done.

Cupz sir, you took the words right out of my mouth.

[Cupz]

And I don't mind that this is a smaller forum since the boc forums over at WATMM are even more of a bummer than this, primarily because the larger crowd means more trolls show up.

yeah. watmm is even worse off then us. The discussion regarding the classic artist is wearing thin as well. We're just not getting as good and as much budget produced "idm" nowadays (for lack of a better term). Clark and a few others are the only one remaining strong, I think.

I don't hear any music like what we make here on twoism anywhere else (with this tight of a quality filter, even though that filter is not programed but created by the community autodictorial)

[pianoforte]

But the relaxed, slow nature of these boards is kinda attractive, at least you can get your post written and consider a response in a good amount of time. Some boards I post on have too many users posting and it all gets lost.

Yeah, this really ^^

Agreed.

WATMM is a complete wasteland, a sort of IDM /b/ if you will. twoism is much more rewarding intellectually than any other forum I have ever maintained a presence on. You are all incredibly warm, friendly, INTERESTING people that I have come to consider as friends.

I find it comforting to know that there is a place online where I can come to talk about how much I love cassette-tape hiss and not only be taken seriously, but have people agree with me wholeheartedly!

I unreservedly thank God or whatever is out there for the day I joined twoism.

re: having people post here more often, I personally haven't seen there be much of a problem with that. Sure, threads don't always get vast numbers of replies, but you can't expect a community who listens to Stars of the Lid with undivided attention to be replying to every single thread on here. I mean that in the very nicest of ways, Mexicola

If we really wanted to step up the level of activity here, I have a few suggestions:

1. The upgrade of twoism.org/forum/ to the much more secure and up-to-date phpbb3 forum system (which, by the way, allows direct multimedia embedding - unlike phpbb2) has been discussed for at least a year, very likely longer, but hasn't happened yet. Obviously, an upgrade would have to be handled very carefully because of the risk of database corruption and losing all of these posts accumulated over the years. Why not play it safe and treat /forum as an archive? The new phpbb3 system could be located at forums.twoism.org; this would also open up the possibility of providing other sections of twoism.org, perhaps member blogs or other things.

2. twoism.org t-shirts/stickers/buttons/other merchandise would be pretty interesting, and I'm sure many of our members would purchase such things. Revenue from items purchased could go toward Ernis hosting costs. a quick mockup of a dark twoism shirt.

3. Site promotion could also be handled by fliers, microbuttions, etc. similar to what DuckDuckGo and Ubuntu are doing for marketing. I'd love to see more promotion of the One On Twoism compilation series, as well - it could be done a similar manner to the site's fliers and other promotional materials.

Just a few ideas.

p.s. I would happily become a moderator if the influx of users makes it necessary to maintain an increased presence of mods. Also, I can help with the new forums.twoism phpbb3 setup, if that's how we decide to go.

[Aesthetics]

Twoism always went through periods when it comes to the density of posting. This has to do with musical events/releases and seasonal influences and of course the group of members which are active at a certain point. I'd also like to have this place a little bit more crowded when it comes to posting but this is a process which is difficult to steer.

When it comes to responding to "twoism artists" I agree with you. The amount of feedback has drastically dropped over the years, I reckon this has to do with the growing amount of "twoism artists". A few years ago there were only a couple of artists here and the addicts who visited this board knew all of them. A topic like every few weeks popped up and it was easy to follow them and give feedback. Nowadays there are a lot of "twoism artists" and there is like one topic each week to check out. This frequency is much higher so one gets more selective what to check and what not. Even the artists who want feedback don't give feedback to other artists a lot of the time...
Until about 2 years ago I responded to almost all artists who posted their stuff but nowadays I can't keep up anymore. Hence, I can't even check all the music I'm interested in.

A perfect example is the latest One on Twoism volume. Only 20% of the selected artists responded to the topic. 10% of all the artsits who contributed songs to this volume have responded... 90% of those interested don't have the decency to give feedback to the compilation they were almost part of. This still amaze me.


Once you devide this board into another seperate forum, the community will be scatered even more. Like I said in the past and what I trully think will happen is that once there will be a subforum it will be a subforum where mostly "twoism artists" hang out. This way you'll only devide the group even more and drift apart the solidarity and cohesion.

[Aesthetics]

I only just read your reply pianoforte. It took me more than 45 minutes to finish my post

Your ideas about phpBB3 are striking with mine but there is still a huge barrier. We'd want to have a similar design to this board. To do that a lot of editing of the design has to be done to make it look like this one. 4 members have offered help but non of them picked it up.
Even if we decide to start with a new look I don't want it to be a standard layout which are available on the net. Again, there is editing needed of an existing layout and this is the problem.

Perhaps we should do a contest? What do you reckon, does this place have enough designers (with spare time) to give it a shot?

[Aesthetics]

When it comes to merchandise I'm all game. Though we tried in the past and it never got off the ground. But now I'm thinking of it, nowadays there are a lot of on demand sites so there is no invest risk. We just only need good designs...

[pianoforte]

I only just read your reply pianoforte. It took me more than 45 minutes to finish my post

Your ideas about phpBB3 are striking with mine but there is still a huge barrier. We'd want to have a similar design to this board. To do that a lot of editing of the design has to be done to make it look like this one. 4 members have offered help but non of them picked it up.
Even if we decide to start with a new look I don't want it to be a standard layout which are available on the net. Again, there is editing needed of an existing layout and this is the problem.

Perhaps we should do a contest? What do you reckon, does this place have enough designers (with spare time) to give it a shot?

I do think a contest would net some good results, but wouldn't you say that for the moment it is more important to have an up-to-date and secure forum than to have a forum that looks exactly like everyone would like it to?

I say upgrade now, design later.

Again, if we were to run a contest, I think a good design or two would come out of it, but until then I think we need to think security.

[Jonse]

I'd support a place for the Twoism artists specifically and a board would be nice, but for the most part I honestly don't see why that's anything other than This Random Sound. I mean, if it's a thread about some Twoism artist it really isn't much different than a thread about any other artist other than the fact the actual artist will be posting in it. Does it require a separate subforum?

[Lens Larque]

This board is a balloon

[pianoforte]

This board is a balloon

And you, Mr. Larque, are a rodent. In the kindest possible way

[Waterbagel]

I think one of the biggest sources of the "no twoism artist feedback" problem, echoing what Ae said, is that there are simply so many artists. I haven't been around too long, but I can already see the difference from when I joined.

I feel like.. Before, people joined twoism. Then, after some posting and getting to know everyone, decided "Oh, I have music I can share with these guys! Here! Enjoy!" Then, everyone knowing this one person pretty well begins to think "It would be cool to hear what kind of music this friend of mine produces!"

Now it seems that there are often people that join twoism with the main purpose of spreading their music in mind. They have not been around much; their name does not strike anyone as familiar. There's no already-existent personal bond between the artist and the community that draws the community to their art.

Apologies for any lack of understanding.. brain is fried from work today!