What makes this site work?

[Teebs]

1 hour ago, ezbass said:

I congratulate you on you Pythonesque derail. Well played.

Python Derail:

[Frank Blank]

3 minutes ago, oldslapper said:

No! You topiar 😝

Actually no...

[BassTractor]

41 minutes ago, Skinnyman said:

Pee-er

- "Is he a No.1 too?"

Edited November 27, 2019 by BassTractor

[SpondonBassed]

[oldslapper]

6 minutes ago, Frank Blank said:

Actually no...

Win! 

[Twigman]

¿Qué?

[Ted Theodore Logan, III]

4 hours ago, miles'tone said:

I think you misspelt 'Orvillian'. 

 

 

Ah... Thank you kind sir 

 

I am forever confusing that large, teal bird with the English novelist... Easily done, I suppose... 

[Skinnyman]

3 hours ago, SpondonBassed said:

Beat me to it with that one 😁

I think that makes us one-all doesn't it?

Edited November 27, 2019 by Skinnyman

[Skinnyman]

Sorry, couldn't resist...

[Si600]

Edited November 27, 2019 by Si600

[SpondonBassed]

2 hours ago, Skinnyman said:

Beat to it with that one 😁

I think that makes us one-all doesn't it?

If you say so.  I wasn't counting.

[odysseus]

On 25/11/2019 at 17:13, paul_c2 said:

The second thing which really helps is the admin/moderation team being long-standing and thus quite experienced - too often I've seen sites where mods come and go; and the new ones either don't know technically how to do things, or the 'power' goes to their head and it goes all a bit wonky, then they eventually make a fatal mistake or burn out and go crazy.

I agree. I used to mod on another non-music-related site, and mod quality makes a huge difference to the operation of a decent forum.

[lemonstar]

Sorry bit of a long reply - I appreciate the replies.

This is insane - seeing a thread grow like this from such a dull question - it's like I planted magic beans - it's spun out of orbit a few times but... to be expected I guess.

It was a serious question - I spend a lot of time wondering about things and I've never quite been able to put my finger on why a site that I've been on since early 2008 has never (imho) really flourished - but finding basschat has given me something to compare it with. I don't want to name the other site as the owner and mods are doing a "pretty good (*)" job and are investing time and effort in it (and the owner/admin is forking out to keep the site up too). I drifted off it quite a few years ago and but came back to a couple of years ago but it's still got the similar problems (imho) that bothered me then even though it has changed in a some obvious respects - it is actually powered by the same software platform as basschat so it looks uncannily "similar" to basschat but the visual appearance and structural differences, I think, are important.

I went on a web traffic comparison site (https://www.similarweb.com/) to see if there really might be a difference in activity and you can see the difference is huge:-

BassChat

Global rank ~135,000,

Arts & Entertainment/music rank ~1800

The site has been getting 370,000-300,000 page views per month over the last 6 months and of that traffic

About 60% are users that login directly to the site

and 40% get there via a search

and a fraction of a 1% gets there via social media.

 

The other site

Global rank ~1,300,000,

Arts & Entertainment/music rank ~16,000

The site either isn't hooked up to Google analytics to make any traffic data available or it's just very low but

About 25% are users that login directly to the site

and 67% get there via a search

and 5% get there via social media

 

But the question is - percentage of what figure!? I think basschat is way more active - just looking at the list of logged in users.

I think the internet dream is failing in some respects - the impersonal "firing shots in the dark" social media looms large over the world of special interest user forums these days. I worked as an electronics & software development engineer for most of my life and can remember being in a a group of engineers going up to a local uni to a lecture on the internet - the focus was on usenet groups, the Mosaic browser, Yahoo! (who maintained a page with an ever growing list of links to a other web pages) and Archie was a primitive search engine.

The differences between basschat and the other site as I see are -

Basschat has a far higher percentage of its users logging in or logged in to view pages - however you interpret all these figures it speaks volumes about engagement and the community aspect (well that's what I think) but I was interested in why.

I suppose it's obvious to say moderation style must be a factor - and I think it is and maybe it's the demographic in terms of age, geographical location and degree of focus - I think basschat is a lot narrower in its range of interest and aims than the other site so that I think helps draw together a more cohesive community anyway. The other site could, I think, divide itself in two - at least in terms of clearing up the user interface (which is an issue imho) for the two main groups of users (as I might want to see it - I think you have the amateur and the pro oriented musicians - there's an overlap but they often don't have the same concerns - gigging, contracts, production process and physical product issues, marketing, promotion, etc)

The other site is a .com not a .co.uk site and I think this makes a difference - a .com domain is likely to be higher up the list of search results for people in the US and elsewhere, i.e. outside the UK, for people looking for a musicians forum. The other site has a definite international feel to it which I don't think helps it - there is less cohesiveness as a consequence and time zones also interfere with real-time comms sometimes - but having said that, I have great contacts there in the US, Japan, Australia

The user interface isn't half as well organised as basschat - if I compare the main landing pages - basschat has a simple vertical list of forums with some (not too many) top level structure (The Local, Gear, Performance, Guitar Chat and some (a decent number of) sub forums under each (Under "The Local" Introduction, General Discussion, Off Topic...) - you can see a lot on that first page and it doesn't take much scrolling down to see pretty much everything on offer on the site. Just that top level structure putting "the community" aspect at the top is so right. This is a familiar structure that you see in a lot of open source forums phpBB, Simple Machines Forum, myBB - it's common, it's basic and it seems to work fine.

The other site has customised the interface using features in the wrong way imho - it doesn’t use a simple nested (main heading with subtopics underneath) vertical list - it uses several rows of "playing cards" - each card has an image on it symbolising the main forum heading and on the card, under the image, is a list of links to sub forums) - unfortunately, because of the real estate this uses up, this means you have to scroll down a lot to see everything and it's just not easy to pick out and read the sub forums. The ordering of the forums and the organisation of the sub forums is all over the place and is the main reason it's confusing to navigate around - I have put my point privately a couple of times about a year back but nothing really changes. Personally - I think these features - the playing card layout would work fine on a site selling clothes for instance so you’d have playing cards with symbolic images for shoes, bags, blouses, trousers, etc - anyway - basschat visually and organisationally just makes so much more sense - I wonder if there was ever much experimentation with the basschat site layout of whether they just went with what was probably the default, the vertical list and stuck with it.

(*) moderation. This must be the hardest thing to get right - just getting anyone to do it is hard enough let alone finding the right people. The mods on the other site are active in their own right on the site and spend a lot of time welcoming new signups and responding - and there always seem to be a lot of new sign ups but subsequent engagement is weirdly low. I've not encountered any real issues with the mods other than one mod ticking me off privately for "mentioning another site" a couple of times (this was about a year ago) - it felt like Chinese style democracy in action - I think it's ridiculous - the site mentioned is only active (hugely so) for about 2 months of the year and only overlaps with a very reduced set of interests covered by this other site.I got the impression so far that basschat isn't going to be so touchy about that kind of thing.

Basschat is more gear oriented - the other site is very weak in that respect unfortunately (and inexplicably), but it's stronger on the music creation side of things. Socially it's pretty inactive - at any one time you're lucky to find a handful of people logged in but the site must have many thousands of users - it's been around a long time. I think the international user base is partly to blame - time zone issues as well as differences in culture. Also the other site seems to be to be preoccupied with musicians leaning towards the professional rather than the amateur end of the spectrum - with two main groups of users coming from and heading in different directions the site is like a crossroads without any traffic lights - confusing for everyone - mainly the bedroom/kitchen/open mic level musicians like myself who don't harbour any unrealistic expectations.

Anyway - I'm going to pile my belongings into a shopping trolley and wheel everything round to basschat.

[lemonstar]

On 26/11/2019 at 20:08, Richard R said:

I recently finished reading "Watching the English", which is a serious anthropological study of English culture disguised as an entertaining pop culture book. Looking at many aspects of life the author tries to identify essential English traits, and there are longish discourses on pubs, special interest groups, and male friendships. There is no claim that good traits or bad traits are exclusively English, but she does try to work.out what the combination and proportions are.

BassChat works because it's like a proper but very friendly local pub full of blokes with the same interest. Very quickly if you understand the culture you are welcome, and if you don't then you aren't shunned, you're still welcome unless you're offensive.That culture includes being helpful, gentle teasing as part of bonding (stop sniggering), occasional willingness to share important stuff, accepting that it's not winning an argument here that counts it's getting the wittiest answer in, and a few other unwritten rules that I suggest you read the book to find out. It is almost a textbook example of the better traits of national character.The mods are the equivalent of the bar staff. 

I think the Bass Bashes help a lot as well. I have only been to one so far, but having met some of these folks they are now real people, not just strange avatars.

The only other forum I have found vaguely comparable is the Sound On Sound forum, which is also fantastic. However it is more focussed on the topic in hand and less likely to get sidetracked.  By soup, for example.

I scanned through the calendar link at the top but can't see any Bass Bashes listed - where do the dates/places get posted? I'm a regular reader and I've picked that book up a Watching the English book couple of times - I buy a second hand books for a couple of quid several times a month - much to the annoyance of my wife, I have too many books - there's almost no fiction and a lot is technical - maths/statistics/chemistry/physics/science etc for my tuition work. I'm sure I'll bag that book before long.

[Silvia Bluejay]

Thanks for that very interesting site comparison, with technical bits, @lemonstar. I'm on several other music sites too, but Basschat is the only one I visit regularly and I'm happy to have been moderating since 2012.

To answer your query about the calendar, after the interface redesign in Nov 2017 we have been trying to figure out how to get the best out of it, but IMO it's still not user-friendly enough: every event has to be added to it manually (which is fine), but then, well, they stay there. No reminder feature, no particular main page prominence to the calendar, etc.

I think that's another feature the admin team will be looking at in due course.  @charic is our developer, and he's working on this site alongside his day job, so his availability is limited, and there is always a need to prioritise tasks.

[lemonstar]

34 minutes ago, Silvia Bluejay said:

Thanks for that very interesting site comparison, with technical bits, @lemonstar. I'm on several other music sites too, but Basschat is the only one I visit regularly and I'm happy to have been moderating since 2012.

To answer your query about the calendar, after the interface redesign in Nov 2017 we have been trying to figure out how to get the best out of it, but IMO it's still not user-friendly enough: every event has to be added to it manually (which is fine), but then, well, they stay there. No reminder feature, no particular main page prominence to the calendar, etc.

I think that's another feature the admin team will be looking at in due course.  @charic is our developer, and he's working on this site alongside his day job, so his availability is limited, and there is always a need to prioritise tasks.

OK understood - I used to have a Joomla/Moodle/Wordpress/etc site and I know how tricky it can be finding the right add-ons for a site - plus the configuration and patching/maintenance. I now have a much simpler site for my work.

I just found the Events sub-forum which lists the bashes.

thanks

Neil

 

[Richard R]

4 hours ago, lemonstar said:

Socially it's pretty inactive

BassChat is definitely more about the chat than the bass. The bass bit is the starting point, but it's the social chat that is really why we keep coming back.

And the occasional cake.