I think these should be set up before the forum is open to the public. I liked JR's initial ideas of having an outlet for commercial vendors, a review section, a gear swap section and an upcoming event section. What do you guys think?
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Some ideas for forum sections (in addition to the regular stuff)…
1. Commercial vendors need an outlet. People like Roman selling Viawave, Ryan selling Vapor, Clearwave, GR Research, PE, Mad, Meniscus, etc. I don’t want to run a store front, but these guys can drop a line and mention a new product line or announce a sale. We will be sure to provide a separate and distinct ToS for this section.
2. Group buys… This will be popular.
3. Special purchases/sales/buyouts/clearance etc… - members only can post strictly non-commercial items (keep people like Steve over at Apex Jr from flooding it, just an example – not sure he even knows how to use a forum).
4. Same with classifieds – if Peter and Ryan want to sell something, they can provide a short post in the commercial forum. I don’t want to discourage commercial involvement, but I don’t want to pander to them in any way, either.
5. Reviews. We will moderate this one heavily – not to protect someones ego (as in if someone posts a negative review about anything JeffB or Wolfie has done, it typically gets marginalized and brings out the crybabies in both of them) but to make sure they are not out of spite and malice. I can see someone like Zissy bombing that forum with his whining bullshit. The guidelines will link to a few formal reviews on the web that we agree represent the tone and nature we want to see, perhaps two positive and two negative reviews as examples. I want to encourage people to develop their writing skills and critical thinking skills so we will only allow reviews that demonstrate a certain level of proficiency. We will obviously let people defend their product/design/whatever but only if they can be professional about it. Stereophile does it right, and I believe our community possesses at least the talent level of anyone over there. I believe a forum full of well written reviews will gather a lot of attention for us on a national level – that is how Audioholics more or less got started. We have people who can measure, people who can write in flowery language, people who have access to a lot of different gear at many price points.
6. Gear swap – I bet this would be popular, as well. Different from classifieds. I send you an amp, you send me a DAC, we play.
7. Upcoming event announcements. They can use our forum or use it simply to announce and provide a link outside.
https://www.chestergroup.org/newyorkaudioshow/2016
I am going.
Related: I think next year I will be trying to go to Lonestar or RMAF in addition to Axpona.
Classifieds
Announcements
Commercial
Group Buys
Gear Swap
Reviews