Have hard time understanding why bitwig isnt more popular here, its the only daw ive tried that is as fun to use as hardware and the only daw that it feels like 3rd party synths isnt needed. It even have very many presets thats useful for songs. When i tried ableton i only found maby 2 presets that could use in a song…
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I found that video pretty frustrating. He keeps going on about what he doesn’t want but it’s all innuendo, same thing in the next video where it seems like he’s processing being bullied online. Nothing concrete about what will make his community great or how to engage. I like his videos and his practical approach to making music so I hope he sorts it out.
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Seems pretty straight forward. He wants a forum that:
- Is focused on a topic (Bitwig)
- Promotes many voices, not focused around a influencer and their fans
- Is explicitly Q&A based rather than a place to hang out and shoot the shit.
He wants to make this happen by:
- Making a new forum disconnected from his youtube presence and persona.
- Employing strict moderation to enforce:
- New topics are questions.
- Questions are outwardly focused (“How do you…?” not “How do I…?”)
- Replies are on-topic.
Don’t know if this will work. Or if the goals he sets out are important to many people. But the plan is pretty concrete. I’m certainly willing to give it a go.
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Think taches is quite smart, that community will help him get those 1000 true fans thats needed to reach financial freedom
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Community talk
Summary
I want the same and this here forum is the sanest place I’ve found lately. Stating what you want is great to build expectations and then enforce them but that requires methods to get there and stay there or it remains imaginary. I’m not at all aware that he’s been grilled on forums and that’s sad and I hope he finds a way around it. I do think that he should omit his negative personal experience entirely when he’s presenting what he is looking for in a community. However valuable his experience is, it’s not required as a contrast to describe what he wants to build and introduces tons of baggage. That said, I don’t understand why anyone would grill him for anything at all, he’s charming and seems to enjoy educating. What more could you ask for?
Creating a community basically means a discord server or a forum but there is no reason to expect change unless some restrictions with enforcement or members selection criterion are made. What will the community do and what will be the incentives for members to engage? I’m all for it and I’ll join but I need to hear something concrete to take it seriously.
He literally enumerated the restrictions he’s put in place and how he’s enforcing them (then I paraphrased them, again, above). Whether the community responds to this incentive structure or buggers off to some other corner of the ’net remains to be seen. But it sounds like he’s doing exactly as you suggest.
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More
Summary
Moving focus from his online persone to bitwig might be a good idea but I don’t think he should give up his patreon. Forcing new topics to be questions isn’t realistic, there is more to talk about or more ways to phrase topics within scope of a bitwig forum. Asking people to converse cordially and to engage with others in a particular way is also a hard target but having community guidelines and moderators is standard practice.
Respectful conversation borne from a desire to learn or share experience and knowledge is the occasional fruit of a healthy community, not the product of a strict framework of limits to expression. It would be nice if he said that he’d proactively post and encourage posts of the positive nature he described but that’s not the takeaway I got, his anger is mixed in.
I’m not bashing the guy, I’m asking what is actionable and different from what’s out there.
1 Like
(Oops I just posted this as a reply…)
From what I see online, most forum posts are one of two things:
A) A question seeking an immediate answer to a personal problem
B) A statement about something someone feels to be true
Neither inspires much engagement, unless someone enjoys solving others’ problems all day with the former or feels strongly enough to debate opinions with the latter. This structure tends to build low-quality interactions.
So… there is only really one rule for the new community I launched:
NO “I, ME, MY” POSTS.
This prevents posts falling into either of the above problems.
The reason I “imposed” this rule is:
-
If you have a problem you want to solve, you must ask how others solved it for themselves, not how they can solve it for you.
-
Instead of stating “I think this about this”, you have to ask what others think. You can then share your opinion in the comments the same way as they are.
SO, FOR EXAMPLE:
How do I do achieve X?
How did you achieve X?
OR
I think Y.
What do you think about Y?
It’s also helpful that most people are using their real face and name, creating a sense of cordiality and respect that seems more rare in anonymous forums.
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I hear absolutely no anger.
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All this is basic knowledge and it’s a good approach to take. How do you plan to get these results? I see that you are encouraging it with your own posts but what happens when people share something valuable that is not formulated along the framework? Also, how will you deal with moderation, edge cases and conflicts? I registered and read something about points which can be an interesting incentive. I’d love to know more.
If someone shares something that isn’t formatted correctly, they are politely asked to reformat the post via DM.
If someone shares something wildly off-topic, the post is removed and they are notified that it did not follow guideline #2 (posts must be Bitwig related)
If someone is hostile and behaves in a way that would get them kicked out of an in-person event, they will be removed.
Skool works with a leaderboard system. You get +1 point anytime someone likes one of your posts or a comment. This would indicate they appreciated your question or viewpoint.
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That sounds like a typical community guideline setup, minus the format. It may decrease activity over time but it’s impossible to tell beforehand. Bitwig needs a place to hang and share knowledge so thumb’s up.
Well I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel here. Just trying to provide a supportive and inspiring space for people to come together around my favorite DAW.
In regard to activity, we’re actually already one of the most engaged communities on the whole of Skool (out of tens of thousands) - ranked #6 in music overall and are averaging just shy of 2,000 individual interactions daily already.
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I really hope it works. Bitwig is missing a solid community.
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Bitwig are also supportive of it! I’ve got a call with them on Monday so we can further discuss collaboration on the idea 
@monquixote have you joined us yet?
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Not yet, first I’d heard of it, but I’ll give it a look.
For anyone who is curious… come check us out 
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What about the “I just want to share with you my messy drafts and my goofy sound design tricks” posts ?
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If you want to share your goofy sound design tricks, you could post something like this:
What are your goofiest sound design tricks?
Then… people respond.
Then, and only then, you chime in with YOUR goofy sound design tricks as a comment that then further adds to the discussion.
In regards to sharing music (finished OR drafts)…
This is a note from a thread for sharing tracks. All tracks are shared in comments under this one post.
To keep the timeline from becoming full of track shares, we will have a new post every month where we can post our tracks and breakdowns of how we made them.
I think it’s best to keep track shares confined to a single post per month to keep the timeline from getting too fragmented as I’ve seen in other communities where members post their songs.
It ends up leading to lots of posts with little to no engagement taking up space as recent posts.
It can be hard for members to meaningfully engage with other members music unless they are TRULY moved to do so (as sharing your music is an “I, Me, My” thing again). Sharing our songs on a single post makes it an “Us” thing where we can congregate around one place rather than splintered posts leading to vastly segmented attention.
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I really like your concept and approach. Many of my sentiments and critiques of other forums and communities have been addressed.