Custom Member Title

[Veracohr]

All right, I just now discovered one must have 3000 posts to have a custom member title.

 

I've been here 5 years and I have only half that!

 

Commence spamming: now!

[abasio]

Good luck!

[RTP]

Hello,

 

we've now lowered the level of posts necessary to 2000 posts.

 

All people over 2000 posts therefore qualify for the custom member title. Please check your post count and your profile if you are eligible.

 

I have updated Moni's post at the beginning of the thread...

 

greets RTP

[HolyLight]

There should be a possiblity to get a bonus multiplier added to your posts, like a buff in games. So that for a while/some days, your count towards the custom member title increase faster. Perhaps a bonus could be added depending on how much liked content you manage to get in a day or so. Could be encouraging for participation/creative posting.

Psynews Aura Bonus Multipliers. 

By the current pace, I will reach a custom member title when this forum is completely dead. It just took me 13 years to reach 1000 posts. 

The optimal solution is to lower the requirement to 1000 posts. 

[staffan]

Should there? Well if the activity will rise I'm all for it.

Personally I've got no idea what to have as custom member title, any ideas? =))

[HolyLight]

28 minutes ago, staffan said:

Should there? Well if the activity will rise I'm all for it.

Personally I've got no idea what to have as custom member title, any ideas? =))

Hmm I don't know what I would put either, btw some of the admins/mods or just veteran users have the same title in green like "mad old ones" referencing the cthulhu mythos. Is that like a psynews private group, or automatic when beeing member for x amount of years?

In rebellion to that we could put "mad young ones" but I'll probably be around 80 years by the time I reach 2000 posts. Soo mad old ones would be a better fit

[Veracohr]

The Mad Old Ones and Family of Light titles were assigned manually.

[Penzoline]

On 4/9/2020 at 11:43 PM, Diaks said:

Hmm I don't know what I would put either, btw some of the admins/mods or just veteran users have the same title in green like "mad old ones" referencing the cthulhu mythos. Is that like a psynews private group, or automatic when beeing member for x amount of years?

In rebellion to that we could put "mad young ones" but I'll probably be around 80 years by the time I reach 2000 posts. Soo mad old ones would be a better fit

They were assigned some years ago to some members for their contributions to the forum or the fact they were here from the very beginning. Tbh I'm up for anything that might help psynews activity. Now that I have very little else to do.

[HolyLight]

2 hours ago, Penzoline said:

They were assigned some years ago to some members for their contributions to the forum or the fact they were here from the very beginning. Tbh I'm up for anything that might help psynews activity. Now that I have very little else to do.

I have been brainstorming some around psynews. Some reflections, psy trance (gonna use it as an umbrella term) seems more popular than ever, I went to a rather big rave with psy trance for the first time in many years, here in Sweden just before the corona outbreak.

And it just hit me that of the around 1000 to 1500 people who I think attended, probably no one is an active member here. So that's around 1000 people right there, who are invested in the psy-culture, be it superficially, or as a lifestyle. That aren't participating here. That's such a wasted potential I think, and that's just one out of many parties. So I've been testing some different scenarios in my mind, I thought about what the essence of this forum is, and came to the conclusion, that on the surface it's the review section. 

But as we noticed, the real essence to some was the spam-fest/trolling in the offtopic section prior to its closing some time ago, which apparently killed off much of the activity here? Which I think was a good thing in a way, a clean house to start over. This forum needs creative people, who likes to write reviews and contribute in other ways. 

Which leads us to the next bulletpoint in my brainstorming session. Which is a point we've already discussed before, the thing about where people hang out online nowadays. With facebook beeing the main one, I'm thinking that a review section on facebook doesn't really work with the style of participation/engagement/business model of the facebook platform. 

So what options are there then? My impression is that the parts of psynews that would work best on facebook are the news section and the party announcement sections, as well as the promotion of your own music section. And the general section of course, thouse combined is what facebook activity feeds look like. Would it be possible to synchronize those sections with facebook somehow? So that when a thread is made here or atleast when a thread is approved by a mod/admin, that it's published on facebook then?

This is the thing that sucks with facebook, the total control over content is somewhat lost, and has to be adapted to their rules/guidelines etc. Would be cool if there were some kind of integration between these type of bulletin board type forums with facebook. Which there proably isn't hence why facebook has cannibalized on all other social media platforms. And because the platform is rather gated, by means of strict rules on what passes in and out. (except if it generates money to facebook, then it's all good in the hood :P) Facebook should change name to Fakenewsbook. 

The other thing I'm thinking about is how this forum can be promoted, to reach a wider/new audience. Two things struck me then, one would be ads on facebook, those are targeted really good to a custom target audience based on interests. I see a potential there for psynews to become a behemot on facebook. By using the platforms full potential and adapting to it. Perhaps reshape the concept of what psynews is, the reviews could perhaps be kept here like now, and if the psynews group grows, people could be encouraged to register here and participate. But I don't think that's a realistic scenario unfortunately, as it fragments the user base between platforms. 

The cons as I see it with facebook, is that when looking at other big communities on there, there isn't much substance. It's mostly people spamming links/self-promoting their music/dj-sets/parties. And heated debates, facebook has pretty much dumbified a whole generation lol. That is something which I think sets psynews apart, the review section is a good place to analyze and compare music. And also to get other peoples perspetives. But on the other hand, I see and participate in lots of other forums like psynews, that is, forums outside of facebook, but which focus on other topics than psytrance.  So I don't think that regular forums are a thing of the past (yet). Plenty of activity on the other forums I frequent, which focus mainly on music production etc. And who knows what comes after facebook.

Another idea I had, which you might already have done in the past/or might be doing already now. Is to distribute psynews flyers at rave parties. 

So in conclusion, there's still hope and lots of potential. The psy/goa/all other psy subgenres scene is as big and popular as ever, not into the mainstream as in the 90's of perhaps or... hmm (Infected Mushroom).  But still probably a much wider reach nowadays. People travel all over the world to go to the biggest events, and people here in Sweden and elsewere have a huge selection of underground parties to choose from every week, prior to, and hopefully after corona as well.

I think psynews would thrive on facebook if it was hosted as a part of a big label there, but that might be against facebooks rules? For example Suntrip Records label page on facebook and it's separate community group has way more followers/active users than the psynews facebook page.

Unfortunately if I have understood the situation correctly, Suntrip owner Mars isn't as involved in psynews as before? Because if I would have been the owner of this forum and Suntrip, I would have merged them somehow.  But hey that's just me. I don't know who owns what on this forum today, so I'm just guessing here. Maybe he wasn't owner before either? What the hell do I know. 

btw this post should earn me 922 posts, so that I reach the 2000 posts mark for custom member title. Because I spent more time on writing it than I've spent on psynews overall since joining the forums.

[Penzoline]

Quote

And it just hit me that of the around 1000 to 1500 people who I think attended, probably no one is an active member here. So that's around 1000 people right there, who are invested in the psy-culture, be it superficially, or as a lifestyle. That aren't participating here. That's such a wasted potential I think, and that's just one out of many parties. So I've been testing some different scenarios in my mind, I thought about what the essence of this forum is, and came to the conclusion, that on the surface it's the review section. 

It's always been the review section, definitely, however people these days don't really care to make more.

Quote

But as we noticed, the real essence to some was the spam-fest/trolling in the offtopic section prior to its closing some time ago, which apparently killed off much of the activity here? Which I think was a good thing in a way, a clean house to start over. This forum needs creative people, who likes to write reviews and contribute in other ways. 

Yes it was, unfortunately it made the place miserable for a lot of users.

Quote

 

Which leads us to the next bulletpoint in my brainstorming session. Which is a point we've already discussed before, the thing about where people hang out online nowadays. With facebook beeing the main one, I'm thinking that a review section on facebook doesn't really work with the style of participation/engagement/business model of the facebook platform. 

So what options are there then? My impression is that the parts of psynews that would work best on facebook are the news section and the party announcement sections, as well as the promotion of your own music section. And the general section of course, thouse combined is what facebook activity feeds look like. Would it be possible to synchronize those sections with facebook somehow? So that when a thread is made here or atleast when a thread is approved by a mod/admin, that it's published on facebook then?

This is the thing that sucks with facebook, the total control over content is somewhat lost, and has to be adapted to their rules/guidelines etc. Would be cool if there were some kind of integration between these type of bulletin board type forums with facebook. Which there proably isn't hence why facebook has cannibalized on all other social media platforms. And because the platform is rather gated, by means of strict rules on what passes in and out. (except if it generates money to facebook, then it's all good in the hood :P) Facebook should change name to Fakenewsbook. 

The other thing I'm thinking about is how this forum can be promoted, to reach a wider/new audience. Two things struck me then, one would be ads on facebook, those are targeted really good to a custom target audience based on interests. I see a potential there for psynews to become a behemot on facebook. By using the platforms full potential and adapting to it. Perhaps reshape the concept of what psynews is, the reviews could perhaps be kept here like now, and if the psynews group grows, people could be encouraged to register here and participate. But I don't think that's a realistic scenario unfortunately, as it fragments the user base between platforms. 

The cons as I see it with facebook, is that when looking at other big communities on there, there isn't much substance. It's mostly people spamming links/self-promoting their music/dj-sets/parties. And heated debates, facebook has pretty much dumbified a whole generation lol. That is something which I think sets psynews apart, the review section is a good place to analyze and compare music. And also to get other peoples perspetives. But on the other hand, I see and participate in lots of other forums like psynews, that is, forums outside of facebook, but which focus on other topics than psytrance.  So I don't think that regular forums are a thing of the past (yet). Plenty of activity on the other forums I frequent, which focus mainly on music production etc. And who knows what comes after facebook.

 

The problem with facebook and psynews is that those groups are much more specific and already have a following. We'd be trying to squeeze ourselves into a space that's already taken. However facebook is a good platform to promote the forum, the problem is we need people who are willing to spend the time to update the page, which we really don't have right now.

Quote

Another idea I had, which you might already have done in the past/or might be doing already now. Is to distribute psynews flyers at rave parties. 

This would require printing flyers and spreading them out all over the world, this is logistically very hard. This would work better if psynews as a platform was like what goabase etc. are, which is having a dedicated proper party calendar. I think it would get a lot more people looking and participating at the site, but we'd have to do huge overhauls and hire someone to do coding and information gathering for that. I don't really know how goabase gets all their information on parties. Maybe promoters submit it themselves?

Quote

So in conclusion, there's still hope and lots of potential. The psy/goa/all other psy subgenres scene is as big and popular as ever, not into the mainstream as in the 90's of perhaps or... hmm (Infected Mushroom).  But still probably a much wider reach nowadays. People travel all over the world to go to the biggest events, and people here in Sweden and elsewere have a huge selection of underground parties to choose from every week, prior to, and hopefully after corona as well.

I agree there is a lot of people and potential. Psytrance festivals are huge.

Quote

I think psynews would thrive on facebook if it was hosted as a part of a big label there, but that might be against facebooks rules? For example Suntrip Records label page on facebook and it's separate community group has way more followers/active users than the psynews facebook page.

Psynews is considered very neutral, affiliating ourselves with a commercial platform is not really feasible in my eyes.

Quote

Unfortunately if I have understood the situation correctly, Suntrip owner Mars isn't as involved in psynews as before? Because if I would have been the owner of this forum and Suntrip, I would have merged them somehow.  But hey that's just me. I don't know who owns what on this forum today, so I'm just guessing here. Maybe he wasn't owner before either? What the hell do I know. 

Mars gave psynews to the current administration years ago. I actually don't know why the platform wasn't merged with the label.  I guess because the forum is dedicated to psytrance as a whole. For example the suntrip FB community naturally grows because the label releases goatrance people want and consume. There's a natural growing following. psynews doesn't actually release anything, our content is made by the members, if we don't have members creating content, we don't have much to give and get excited about. It's kind of a catch-22. Again with some ideas to make participating more exciting, interesting and/or rewarding this course could be corrected better.

Quote

btw this post should earn me 922 posts, so that I reach the 2000 posts mark for custom member title. Because I spent more time on writing it than I've spent on psynews overall since joining the forums.

[HolyLight]

Thanks a lot for clarifying some stuff I didn't know  and for taking the time to read through my questions!  My thoughts on psynews and the suntrip facebook pages was clearly a bit rushed and not so fleshed out.

 As you pointed out, the scope of psynews is of course broader and its focus is not solely on goa trance. Which might be due to my almost singular focus on goa trance.  To me psynews is the number one goa trance resource in tandem with discogs. But it's probably at the same time, the number one psytrance resource for other users!