About Forum Changes

About Forum Changes


Big Picture View of Changes at Guitar Tricks

Over the last few years there has been a wholesale shift in the demographics of the Guitar Tricks site. While we once primarily attracted a young, rock and metal inspired membership, we know have a much wider range of people.

If you have been a member for more than 3 years, then you have seen the membership change from "you and your friends" to "you and your friends and your friend's mom, and your other friend's dad, and your doctor."

Another big change is we are attracting people who are not in the habit of joining guitar sites. This is the single biggest factor that influences our recent decision-making:

Our new members are not so web-savvy as our old members.



Think about your own experience: how many websites have you signed up for? I personally have signed up for at least 100.

These new members are not in the habit of signing up for web sites. Everything is new to them.

Here are some things they do that are different from those of us with more experience:



- some will ask us to delete their account once they are done with it.

- some don't understand that a forum "signature" is not a part of your post.

- some don't know the difference between a forum and a chat.

- some need telephone support to get logged in.

- some use their real name or email address as their username.




These differences have affected our decisions over the past six months. From a long-time member's perspective, these decisions might seem strange. Let me try to explain why they were made:



Specific Topics of Change


Member List

We removed the member list last year, because it caused an undue load on the server. Search bots would spider the whole list, thousands and thousands of pages, every day.

We have since moved to a new server with more capacity. However, we did not reinstate the member list.

The primary reason for this is that many new members don't understand that their username is going to end up on a publicly-searchable memberlist.

Remember, they are new to this and they are very concerned about their privacy. They are also often using their email address or real name as their username.

So, for their privacy we decided not to reinstate the member list.



Chat Room

We monitored the chat occassionally throughout the last year, and daily for its last few weeks. Usually the chat log looked like this:

10:00 am username_A logs in
10:00 am username_A logs out
2:00 pm username_B logs in
2:00 pm username_B logs out

Basically, anyone who went to the chat room found an empty chat.

Many of the usernames who we saw in the logs are not regular users. So, they come to our chat, check it out, find it is empty, and never come back and never post in the forum.

We think we are doing these people a disservice by showing them a chat that isn't there.

Remember these are new people, who maybe don't know the difference between

- broken chat
- my browser doesn't work right
- nobody there


We thought it might make sense to "up the ante" and put in an audio chat. I have run audio chats before, it takes a lot of moderation, so it probably isn't appropriate for a public forum. However, in Full Access it might be fun.

So, I went to the Full Access forum and put in a thread with a test audio chat to see what the response would be. Exactly 1 person went there.

At this point I concluded that nobody was really interested in chat, and that it does more harm than good as an empty chat, and I removed it.

It took 7-10 days for anyone to notice.

That would have been another 7-10 days of dead chat.

It doesn't seem like a wrong decision, if you look at it from the newbie perspective.


So hopefully now you have a better understanding what we are trying to do. I am sorry if it looked like we were just removing things for no reason.


Jon

Not to be argumentative Jon, but I really don't get where you're coming from. If I understand correctly, you are removing features from the site because new members are joining it who don't know how to use them...or simply don't understand how web sites work (or else are on dial up...which I don't understand, because I'm on dial up and have used the chat quite a few times). So rather than give new members a chance to learn how to use features and let old members keep using them, you just remove them. I don't get it.

If these new members are so concerned about their privacy that they don't want to be on the member's list...why are they using their real names and email addresses as usernames? If they don't want people knowing their names and email addresses, not having them at the top of every post might help. :confused:

As far as the chat, it must have been monitored extremely occasionaly if for the past year you didn't see anybody in there. Maybe for a while people haven't been in there for the same reason as me: they've been busy. But I used to be in there all the time, and I was rarely alone for long.

I've been reading a lot of posting about the topic, and lots of people said that we should get the chat back, newbies included. Exactly one person disagrees.

Granted, that one is the person in charge of the site. But I don't see why the person in charge of the site wants to make the members unhappy, and from what I can see, that seems to be exactly what you're doing.

Originally Posted by: acapellaNot to be argumentative Jon, but I really don't get where you're coming from. If I understand correctly, you are removing features from the site because new members are joining it who don't know how to use them...or simply don't understand how web sites work (or else are on dial up...which I don't understand, because I'm on dial up and have used the chat quite a few times). So rather than give new members a chance to learn how to use features and let old members keep using them, you just remove them. I don't get it.

If these new members are so concerned about their privacy that they don't want to be on the member's list...why are they using their real names and email addresses as usernames? If they don't want people knowing their names and email addresses, not having them at the top of every post might help. :confused:

As far as the chat, it must have been monitored extremely occasionaly if for the past year you didn't see anybody in there. Maybe for a while people haven't been in there for the same reason as me: they've been busy. But I used to be in there all the time, and I was rarely alone for long.

I've been reading a lot of posting about the topic, and lots of people said that we should get the chat back, newbies included. Exactly one person disagrees.

Granted, that one is the person in charge of the site. But I don't see why the person in charge of the site wants to make the members unhappy, and from what I can see, that seems to be exactly what you're doing.

Amen to that. :rolleyes:

You mean I shouldn't use my real name? Woops. :o

No I hadn't noticed the absence of the chat till today, but it was an enjoyable feature when visited. I guess I can feel both sides on this one.

And I think GT is generally very helpful to visitors, those who struggle with English, noobs, the elderly ;) , or anything else...any questions are always encouraged, but we can't help them if they never ask, being unable to navigate the site sufficiently on their own. Dunno though...guess there just needs to be expansion in ideas of more informative ways to welcome those just joining. Absolute Absolute Beginners Guide, or just a few specific guidelines somewhere somehow.

I would have to agree with acapella as well. I find it hard to believe that people didn't post on the forums or join as a full member because the chat was empty.

As for the Voice Chat I bet most didn't even know it was here. I for one rarely go on the Full Access Forum because most of the action is in the open forum. It would make more sense to me anyway to post new features in the open forums. It might even be a draw to those who aren't full access to join just to have access to such a resource.

Hey it's just my 2 cents. You run the site and it's still the best site of it's type out there.

Maybe along with beginner guitar lessons, you should be giving out beginner internet lessons too. just a thought ;)




that was meant to be a joke, so I hope you didn't take it the wrong way :rolleyes:

hmm i guess i understand the privacy thing and thats fair enough...but i dont think that the argument on an empty chat would lead to ppl not signing up...we have hundreds of new signings every week or less (im not sure) and its still constantly growing...out of the many thousands im pretty sure not everyone participates in the forums...the chat thing is currently being resolved amongst the gt community and perhaps we could make the (to the chatroom!) thread as a sticky or something and maybe make a few announcements on when are 'chat nights' or whatever to let the public know whats up and when to go for it...

i dont really think its how many ppl that sign up to the site..i think its more important for ppl to sign up and participate

just my 2 cents

Originally Posted by: PRSplayaMaybe along with beginner guitar lessons, you should be giving out beginner internet lessons too. just a thought ;)




that was meant to be a joke, so I hope you didn't take it the wrong way :rolleyes:

Actually, that is part of what is happening.

Every day we get a lot of people who just have trouble with the basics of signup/login.

The fun thing is because we have a paid service, we can afford to pay somebody to help them. So they get to learn how to login into a website and it is all just part of the experience.

Originally Posted by: acapella

If these new members are so concerned about their privacy that they don't want to be on the member's list...why are they using their real names and email addresses as usernames? If they don't want people knowing their names and email addresses, not having them at the top of every post might help. :confused:

They don't really understand that they are signing up for a forum at all. Some of them have never been to a forum before.

They sign up for the site to get online guitar lessons, and they see that we have a forum, but they don't really understand the implications.

Imagine your grandma signed up for GT, and you get a better idea.

The important thing to understand is there are a lot more of these people here than there used to be.

Jon, I don't even begin to understand what running a site like this takes. But it seems to me that when you use words like "DEMOGRAPHIC" I think it means that "Those that have been here a long time" are of little importance, rather it's the "new" fellows that rule the roost. I find that counter intuitive. I'm the first to say things need to be nice and orderly, but I've seen very little objectional postings on this site. As far as anyone that thinks that the internet is not what it is???? Come on!

I'll abide by what ever rules you set forth, but I must admit that I'll (as a demographic) be less likely to come back.

I love all you players out there. Don't ever stop playing.

I've rambled on enough :mad:

Originally Posted by: da_ardvarkI'll abide by what ever rules you set forth, but I must admit that I'll (as a demographic) be less likely to come back.

Not to suggest that I speak for Jon or the site but, personally, the way I view my job here is that I have a responsibility to everyone here.

When the community was small that meant doing my job one way, as the site and the community have grown, then that's meant changing certain things because the dynamics were different. Now that the types of users who are here are changing more drastically to less internet-savvy users, then that means I have a responsibility to help protect them.

Nobody here is a "demographic" to me (nor to anybody else, I believe), but we instructors and moderators (and especially Jon) have to be conscious of the types of groups of people here because otherwise we're unable to serve them. And unfortunately, that's going to mean certain compromises in other areas – be it for overall site performance or so that the forum is less confusing to someone who's never used a message board before.