I guess since a forum’s life is totally dependent on its members willingness to engage, it appears IRD is on its deathbed 
🪦
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Yes. It’s weird how the engagement has been slowly but steadily decreasing over the past few months. 
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I figured that. I am totally bummed, Where am I to go? Can friends reunite if they find another site like before. I would have rather had a tooth pulled. so sad
edit I should have contributed financially. At the end I was going to but thought the site was heading down.
Very few folks were doing new original stuff. I thought that is what IRD was all about?
my email is pbfeak@sbcglobal.net. Please include me if there is to be another site?
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Wow, I have been working overtime all year because of this pandemic thing so no time to really spend on recording maybe there are others like that and with the return to “normal” people will become engaged with their passions again? I hope so I sure do enjoy having this community to connect with.
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About the only thing I can think of is finding ways to encourage collaboration early in the writing/recording process to engage more on the creative side of things.
Once a song is recorded, it is really hard to give constructive criticism, which at that point becomes more personal preference rather than concrete help. There are so many people who are very good at recording now that it is typically hard to find fault with the recording itself vs. the song structure and/or performance.
Finding a way to help get a song off the ground might encourage more participation and discussion vs. telling someone what you think a snare drum should sound like. There’s a lot of talent available here that could be contributed if the right format for doing so was better defined.
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I have been one of the missing for months now, but I never intended to be gone forever! I am back and will try to devote more time here, starting with BTR.
For me it has been immersion in the real world that I don’t have to wear a mask to enter. It has been very compelling.
The censorship that exists in the nonmusic forums since 2020, however, needs to end. What kind of social interaction website restricts members from discussing controversial subjects, especially political? A really bad one. I’d rather be at Facebook and all its insanity.
I want to talk about the origin of covid-19. We shut that thread down and yet today Biden has renewed the investigation into the Chinese. It was and has always been a heated topic, but our site decided it was off limits, largely because some members couldn’t handle the banter. It didn’t matter which side you were on, it was taboo.
Same with politics. Monitors elected to cowardly ban politics in 2020, and right now Trump is publicly claiming he will be reinstated President in August. And IRD is silent. Not even respectful, adult conversation here!
It is more buried alive than banned, as nobody sees those topics even posted, so you might as well be talking to yourself!
I do not care if you voted for Trump. I didn’t. And I am extremely relieved Biden won. It is such a narrow majority, however, it has not been possible to stop the filibustering without Joe Manchin’s approval. The question is if 2021 is the end of this no-talk filibuster. But, guys, this topic would not appear on the home page, like how I found this very important topic.
I think if people want to leave IRD, they should do so angry or sad but not bored or ignored.
I have collaborated with and been helped by various members here, and some more tried to. And even when nothing usable came of it, it is a wonderful learning experience. And I see it happening to almost everybody here, to various degrees, and it is a precious thing. I have heard the music resulting from that, and I hear the songs we all bring forward on our own. I read the posts in BTR and often, if not too above my expertise, follow the progress of others. Speaking of which, Bob, my last visit to the forum was viewing your reply to Garden Wall, and I left you hanging but not forgotten. I will visit that thread next.
I really hope this is not the end, but maybe we need to light a fire…
So go back to FB. Where is your excuse for not being here anyway? You come in with this BS just as the site is about to go down and slam the site for not letting you have it your way.
Pathetic
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I hope it’s a cyclical thing, and I know I’m guilty of coming and going until I post something for myself. Andrew, and others, have been providing life support for a while, and we should all be pitching in to repair the holes in the boat.
I do agree with Steban that very few topics should be off limits, knowing that makes for a lot of work for moderators when a referee is required. Wee all come here for the music connection, so any interaction has potential for the site, since I often find multiple sandboxes to play in once my interest is sparked.
It’s a fun place to visit, I hope we keep it going.
redwingbob@bellsouth.net
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I have no excuse, Paul, except I’ve been avoiding all internet interaction since the end of March, including FB. But I am always encouraged to be here by your animosity toward me. It feels real, and I don’t have a problem with you or your politics. There’s more to people than that, including you.
That’s the thing. Once you are here doing whatever, you stand a good chance to become interested in something else, probably musical.
I’m betting that we’ve all seen the decline in traffic on this forum. I’m still checking in for a few hours every day. I’ve got a ton of original music crap that I could post but I tend to often think that people don’t want one person to overrun the forum with all their own music. I’ve also got a lot of songs that I think people here wouldn’t like. For example, I’ve got a few songs with some risqué and vulgar lyrics that some might consider very offensive. I also have songs with “ghost” lyrics, filler lyrics that are really goofy. Most of my songs are demos and not fully arranged. I would rather post something that is mostly complete, maybe 80 or 90 % done.
I’ve been thinking of throwing up an instrumental or a cover song recently but I’ve been hesitant because it seemed like nobody has been around this forum. I’m always procrastinating and finding excuses to not post my recordings. Maybe I’ll post something soon.
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Posting it is always better, especially before it’s completed, where there’s a theme full of raw ideas. Every once in a while someone will chime in out of nowhere with a suggestion that just magically gets the wheels turning. I like contributing in that way a lot more than discussing snare sounds.
Another suggestion would be having a category discussing how anyone has been able to monetize their music or recording/engineering/production efforts. I’m not talking about taking over the world, but any tried and true strategy that allows you to keep yourself in the game would be very valuable.
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It’s a music site. MUSIC. MUUUU-Siiick. Recording. If you want politics, go to a POLITICAL site. If you have every site the same, with all of the same topics, then there really is no way to tell the difference between them, they all become the same. If I got to the Guitar Center, they don’t have CNN on their screens, they have music videos. There is a reason there are only music videos playing at the Guitar Center. I come to this site to get AWAY from the world of politics and to get lost in the world of music. I stopped coming to this site because it was becoming a war zone for political topics. I don’t want to hear about a filibuster on here. The net is already polluted with politics, we don’t need it here, it just divides us. You can’t hate a person over in the political thread and then come over and review his song objectively in the bash this song section. You just want to argue politics everywhere you go because whining is what you live for. You’re basically demanding that we add whining to the site to meet all of your whining needs. Join a whining site, they would love to have you. But don’t try to turn everything into facebook. I bet if there was a cooking forum, you would want that to be bitching about politics. They don’t have boxing matches at the yoga center for a reason. Because people are going to the yoga center to chill, not fight. So just tell me, is there anything sacred left? Or would you like there to be a political argument in every single setting where there are people?
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I’m trying very hard not to be combative here, because I really believe that we’ve had enough “aggro” (as we say in Oz) around here for a loooong time… but I have to say @WeGotLost James makes a LOT of sense.
What I noticed when endless threads that amounted to controversial arguments about non-music related themes dominated the forum was that membership participation started to drop off dramatically. Sure, the few who were passionately arguing were here all the time… but the rest of us… well, we just backed off.
I tried a number of times during that period to start music-related discussions in the hope of involving some who were actually here for the music. Unfortunately, because of the way the main page of the site works, those threads were immediately buried out of site. It was extremely frustrating, disappointing and downright annoying!
Here’s another thing to consider for those of you who insist on taking every thread down a controversial rabbit-hole. Many long time supporters of this site (myself included) do not live in the USA. Imagine if 2 or 3 people from Australia (for example) got on here and filled the active threads up constantly with bickering about our domestic politics, including long dissertations about the various governmental policies and stouches occurring in our news… Imagine if those 2 or 3 people referred to Australian political figures and their current goings-on as if it was the most interesting thing, and assumed everybody else would be familiar with and interested in what they had to say?..
… Would you be disinterested, annoyed and frustrated? Welcome to my world.
Amen. Well said.
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Any discussion about how to keep the site going is relevant. I get your point about U. S. politics; we consider it to be of worldwide importance, which is probably a sign of arrogance.
I guess the key is to concentrate on music related topics and see if there is enough to keep the site afloat. I’m sure it’s possible with the proper prodding.
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This is something that I didn’t think about, but makes perfect sense. If a site is global, then it needs to be inclusive. It is rude to invite a co-worker over to your family’s cookout and then talk to just your family about things that don’t include the co-worker.
The reason I stopped coming to this site is before I engaged in the political thread, I would post and others would respond. After I posted on the political thread, I posted a question about people using LUNA from UAD. Not one person responded to it. My gut was telling me no one was responding because of my political views. So I had a friend of mine post the same exact thing a little while later and she go a lot of responses. So I left this site. Could it be that I just posted at a time when no one was on here that really knew about LUNA? Possibly. But I think I could feel a coldness towards my posts after that. I also had a private chat with someone else on this site who was getting really hit hard on the political thread and they said they were leaving the site for a while. Websites is going to reflect what society does. If we dox people and refuse to give them jobs anywhere, just because we don’t agree with their political views in real life, then we are going to harbor the same feelings and desires for that person on a website. The more bias and contentious a site becomes, the less people are going to feel comfortable being who they are, and the more that sites focus becomes fixed on fighting rather than what ever it was originally intended to do. I doubt the mission statement for IRD was “to create a hostile environment for those who record music”.
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Guilty. I’ve never thought of myself as “contentious” in the slightest, but I found I couldn’t just sit by quietly while others spouted dissertations that I found quite offensive and bigoted. This stopped being a “happy place” for me to spend my limited time.
I got here originally because of a couple of contests. But those stopped happening. I stayed around because I genuinely enjoy some of the great folks on here, their generosity with sharing and the depth of audio mixing knowledge, and some very interesting side discussions about NASA and quantum physics. The political stuff is poison.
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The real problem here is that this is now an unmoderated forum. On a moderated forum the forum policy violations in this thread alone would be dealt with but that’s not the real problem here.
I think we all remember Brandon Drury. He was an active, hands on, involved manager. There was always something going on, promotions, clinics, videos, contests, that’s how you bring in members and keep them involved. If you want this forum to continue I think that’s what has to happen here and it has to come from the top. @holster is a great guy but he needs to either get involved on a daily basis or else sell this forum to someone else who will.
Politics is part of life, just like music is. Politics can be objectionable to some just like music can be objectionable to some. You can’t keep politics out. Remember @Emma 's thread about “GearSpace”? Emma isn’t very political as far as I know but that’s where that thread went. The key again here is MANAGEMENT. You can’t hide this stuff in an invisible category but you can develop a realistic policy to keep it under control, plenty of other forums are able to do it.
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Well frankly, none of us know what is going on with the management of the site, so logically, it is really up to us as individuals to self-moderate if we wish to preserve it somewhat… Is that so difficult?
Do we always need a policeman around every corner to ensure we drive in a safe and responsible manner? Surely, if we are grown up enough, and have enough of a well developed sense of public accountability and responsibility, we can think through the possible consequences of our actions, and adjust them accordingly…
If you can see that something you are saying or doing is objectionable to others, then why would you insist on keeping on doing it?.. Especially if it is effectively destroying the environment you are inhabiting… Essentially, you end up with the audio forum equivalent of Easter Island.
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Clearly you have not see how I drive. 
“it is really up to us as individuals to self-moderate if we wish to preserve it somewhat… Is that so difficult?”
I think history has shown that there is always going to be someone who ruins it for everyone, as the saying goes. I am all for it and I think if you have a small group that respects one another then yes. But I think there is going to be friction if you add controversial and emotional topics. I vote for Andrew to be the forum Police officer. He has my vote. He is objective because he’s not involved in the US political scene.
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I got the impression that the site slowed down a bit more than usual right around the time Michelle stopped showing up here. It could be just a coincidence but I have contemplated that some IRD members will have a tendency to want to “show up” here if they see that their favourite members, or members that they value, are frequenting the forum. I think that kind of psychology is at play here. Also people tend to shy away from the forum when there’s only a few members online at a time. We all probably feel more engaged and wanting to communicate when we see 20 active members online than when we see 3 or 4 members online.
I have no issues with the political aspect of the site except that as Andrew mentioned, US politics might not feel very relevant or important to other countries over on the other side of the pond. Up here in Canada we tend to be just as aware of US politics as US citizens, so it doesn’t feel foreign or distant at all. I had no problems reading the political stuff even when reading things that I absolutely disagreed with. I find it a bit disturbing that people can’t allow others their own opinions, even if they seem like insane opinions. In Bash This Recording I’ve read opinions that I absolutely disagree with too, but I’m not interesting in ramming my opinions and ideology down other’s throats. We all have our own beliefs and I can say for almost certain that if each of us knew one another’s exact beliefs we would all feel disdain for everyone. Beliefs are just imaginings. We shouldn’t be too tethered to what we believe because it doesn’t equal absolute truth. We’re all products of our environment, experiences, genetics and probably some other things. We’re basically all brainwashed and there is nothing that we can do to fully avoid our conditioning. The only choices we can make is to think, act and behave deliberately, not reflexively and emotionally. That means choosing tolerance and acceptance when faced with opposing views and ideas. What are we gaining from being “correct and right” all time? The world will never be free from opposing views, and if we all believed and thought alike then this forum and the world would be in serious trouble. We need a bit of contradiction and opposition to grow.
So, in summation, 
a political thread would be fine if there was a way to set it to the side of the main forum. Otherwise, politics seems to create too much disruption here and pretty much everywhere else.
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