Discussion about (re)organising the forum

Resources
#1

I've been thinking about whether, in distinction to "Show your creations," we should create a category or threads to share ideas that deal with a specific topic. For me it would be about finding out what approaches and ideas other people follow and not necessarily about discussing whole pieces of work.

Even though I now have the topic of live sampling and live looping in mind in particular, this idea can certainly also be expanded. For example about ideas where you control TidalCycles primarily with a MIDI controller or other special approaches.

Would be very interested in how the community sees this! :slight_smile:

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#2

In similar vein I also have been pondering a sub dedicated to code snippets and work in progresses. Tidal Q n A seems too high brow or generic (albeit probably currently the right place...) for chit chat regarding everyday coding and syntax problems while the lounge perhaps too laid back?

I'd love to see a dedicated code workbench type of a sub with very hands on style of discussing case studies while learning Tidalcycles.

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#3

Shall we turn this into a general thread about organising the forum? It hasn't fully completed its transformation into a general community forum, so now could be a nice time to think more generally about how we should organise the discussions that have already taken place, and see what's missing?

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#4

Cf. issue trackers in gitlab or github: the structure is flat (two levels: each issue is a thread, like we have here) but navigation is greatly enhanced by labels. Each text can have several labels, and this allows for flexibility (also, by later re-labelling).

Does the forum software here allow labels?

It would still need discussion - what should be the (initial) set of labels, when should they be applied (by whom), and how would new labels come into being.

#5

For a flat view, you can click on 'latest'. Then the categories are like labels, although each thread can only have one label.

#6

Can we simulate labels? E.g., each label could be a virtual user? Because the software shows users' symbols in the list of threads per category. But it'd be awkward to manage (posting gets more complicated).

NB: I recently learnt that "Dr Awkward" is a palindrome. See also http://tmbw.net/wiki/I_Palindrome_I . I wanted to post some tidal-encoded TMBG to the "Algoraoke" thread (a great idea of which I became aware only recently) but it seems I'm not allowed to (I don't see a Reply button). I guess I have to subscribe to the course for that? And I really should.

Back on topic (forum organisation): Looking at that thread (Challenge: Algoraoke!) it does have two labels (Learning tidal cycles course, Challenges).

#7

Actually it seems discourse does support labels as topic 'tags', so we could enable that. I'm a little unsure about how useful they'd be as a 'folksonomy', unless we were really careful about applying them.

Sorry that was a misconfiguration - that should be fixed now. Let me know if you see anything else like that, it'll be unintentional.

Kind of, but not really - it's in the 'challenges' category, which is a sub category of 'learning tidal cycles course'.

#8

Maybe we should really make this thread a general topic about this forum.

I also like the idea of this forum evolving into a general community forum. I hadn't even thought about whether that was currently the case or not.

The longer I think about it, the thought occurs to me that the four types of documentation also apply in part to this community forum (mentioned here Updating the Tidal website and documentation)
The difference to the official documentation is that this forum is more dynamic and therefore always a bit more up to date, but the concrete contents are a bit harder to find (I think in comparison)
In addition, the references are more widely spread in terms of content in this forum. And we have the possibility to directly exchange with the community members. We plan and discuss projects like the Solstice Marathon here and so on.

To determine what is missing and how we can structure the forum in general, it might be good to have in mind the four types of documentation and extend it with additional categories like events, announcements and lounge. But this is just an idea and I don't have the experience to organise or structure such a forum.

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#9

As a quick way to make progress, I'd suggest adding a "Showcase" category -- the length of the Share your creations thread has grown to show that it warrants a wider corner of the forum beyond a single thread.

I'm not sure how that category should be managed -- we probably don't want a single new thread for every new piece by someone, but the current single-thread is becoming unwieldy. Maybe having a thread for critique (post and get feedback), another for new release announcements, another for fun experiments worth sharing... but maybe it's worth just starting with the new category and see how things go?

(regarding the wider discussion around forum organisation, I tend to prefer this breaking-out of popular threads or topics into categories, than trying to plan an a priori internal taxonomy)

#10

Hm, are long threads really a problem? Lines has sharing threads that are at 6.5k replies and 539k views: https://llllllll.co/latest?order=posts

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#11

Imho in certain situations these long threads might actually be preferable. Long, easily scrollable threads covering stuff like board members creations or similarly the Algoaroke tracks are lots of fun to skim thru. Also when participated, the board gives a head up if the thread progresses.

Only with technical (Tidal syntax etc) problems I'd see long threads getting messy and counterintuitive to read.

#12

Ah I didn't know this was a thing! Well disregard me then :^)