Save the Basement?? Yes or no???
Well, the society is settling in nicely, and we are now up to 500+ members! WOOP! But as always, I like tinkering to make it better for you and for me. The one forum I love but is still a bit awkward is the Basement. We are sharing and even talking about music in the Lounge and in the Society Hall, on top of that, we have a coffee shop that needs more love and attention. So, what do you think? Should keep the basement? Should we drop it and move all this into the Coffee shop? Or am I not thinking "big enough" and we need to expand to a 5th room of who knows what.... Share your thoughts! This is your hangout too! How can we keep improving this place? 8)

I could go either way. I like how the Listening Lounge and Basement offer separate but equal merits (sharing music vs. talking about music) but in all honestly you could very well combine the two. A lot of threads pop up at once in the MLL, so I'd be afraid some plain music discussion threads would get lost in the shuffle... So I guess that settles my decision. Maybe you should encourage more discussion threads about certain bands or music news in the Basement, and then it wouldn't look so much like the red-headed stepchild. XD

I like having separate areas for musical and off-topic posts. :)

The only thing I don't like about the Basement is the "ANTICIPATION" threads.... (Coldplay, Wolf Parade, Sigur Ros...) Then after the record comes out and is posted in the MLL, I can't decide which thread to post my comments in... Hmm. I don't think that helps with the decision making here, but I can definitely see that the Basement is lagging. Honestly, I don't look much in the Basement, only if it pops up on "View Posts Since Last Visit" which is my favored method of viewing.

I voted not to keep it but I'd like to change my vote. It's best we keep it as we do need a clear boundary between General Discussion and General Music Discussion.

I think that we need a 5th for the posting and discussion of music people recomend/like/likely to be discussed i.e. the "good" music. Not to take anything away from the tireless and much appreciated work that Fulltext does, but the MLL is a bit cluttered. or perhaps make this the point of DITB and send Band survivor etc to the coffee house.

I keep going both ways in my head... Even though I think the Coffee Shop will suffice for all discussions (it's not that crazy in there yet), the music geek in me likes having the basement. The Lounge and Society don't change, Vinyl is vinyl and the lounge is where we share. Check done. So, maybe.... just maybe... for now, while we are still building, we combine the basement & coffee shop until it's too much, then break them back up again? But then... I don't want to! That's why I need your help.

I just set up the Basement & Coffee Shop to be viewable (but not post-able) by non-members. Maybe that will entice a few more participators?

I like that thread. Wish more people used it. Could even "blog" there, you know?

Just a thought, should we break the lounge into 2? One for leaks, one for released? Or is that too much?

true... true... the two main things people come to d/l are new leaks and requests. That's where the thought came from. I hope they are easy to find now (they are for me), but if it's a bit convoluted from the incredible sharing, just tossing it out there.

Well then that brings up the question of if you want old shares posted here or not. This board could be for new leaks only and let members find older stuff elsewhere.

I'm pretty strongly in favor of keeping the Shop & the Basement separate. The Shop can really get going from time to time and the Basement is fairly active as well; i think there is a strong risk of stuff getting lost in the shuffle if they're combined. I think the off-topic conversations are enough to warrant a separate area. And it's kind of cool to geek out in the Basement discussions.