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did a whole bunch of forums just get merged?

3K views 23 replies 8 participants last post by  fezziwig 
#1 ·
That or there's a weird forum glitch, because I'm only seeing three Guitars and Gear forums...?
 
#5 ·
^ J good feedback... it's definitely unfinished & feedback is welcome. I believe the Prestige subforum will be merged into the other guitar forum as you hit the nail on the head that google search changes things greatly vs the past (at any traffic level). Having more active topics over a wider range in one area certainly improves discoverability and someone seeing something of interest with less clicks.
 
#6 ·
I was looking to make an announcement on this before it went live but it's still a "work in progress", so hopefully the site regulars will help shape things here.

I think folks were finding traffic in individual sub forums to be rather light and that this was liekly contributing to lower conversation rates, the idea of merging things together in this way is to try and get a bit more "cross talk" going, using one new post to drive other new posts.

Steve's not helping with the current slow release schedule of the JEM, so we had to take it upon ourselves to try and do something ;)
 
#10 ·
The Jem and JS are certainly not lacking for new models in recent years. Not counting finishes as different models I get 14 distinct models this decade.

UV77RE (2010)
JEM505 (2010)
JEM77FP2 (2011)
JEMEVO (2012)
JEM70V (2012)
JEM7V7 (2013)
UV70P (2013)
UV71P (2015)
JEMJR (2015)
UV77 (2016)
JEM77P (2016)
JEM777 (2017)
JEM77WDP (2017)
JEMJRSP (2018 )

I think it would be pretty tough to say that they're not constantly offering new things in the Jem line. There's something new pretty much every year. Most of the signature models offer far less variety than the Jem.
 
#11 ·
Back to the topic at hand, I guess the main question that needs to get answered is what is the purpose of this forum? Is it a forum about Jems as the name implies or is it more of a general Ibanez forum? The answer to that question kind of dictates how the forum "should" be structured.

I've always thought of this as being more of a general Ibanez forum, which if you look at the official Ibanez forum, I think you would quickly decide that it is. The Jem is the halo model that brings people in. It's an aspirational model. A vast majority of people will never own one and will instead have some kind of RG or possibly some other model.

So to a typical person, it's cool to think about a Jem but really what they'll want to discuss is the RG. If you go look at Sweetwater of something, you'll find a bewildering array of those: Prestige, Genesis, Premium, Iron Label. What is the difference between those? Which one should I buy? That's the kind of question I see most people interested in. The largest and most active Facebook groups are structured around that concept: discussion about the RG and anything that is based on an RG, which would include the Jem and Universe (I realize the the RG is derived from the Jem, not the other way around...just go with me). In these groups, discussion about all those varieties of guitar peacefully coexist without too much MIJ snobbery.

One thing that I think is extremely poorly served in Facebook groups is tech. As soon as someone asks a tech question, it's effectively gone within a day or two. The nature of Facebook does not lend itself to permanence. To me that's the real potential draw to this place: people come for the tech and stay for the discussion. I think it will be hard to revitalize this place on guitar discussion alone. When I can point my phone at my guitar, take a picture and seconds later be having a discussion about it, that's a big draw. The mobile interface to this forum is just never going to be as good as Facebook.

By focusing on tech, there would be a real reason to come to this page. I see tons of references to Rich's site for this reason. But those are static documents. Plus there's really nothing there about wiring, which comes up constantly.
 
#13 ·
Thanks for getting back on topic & the feedback. You've hit the nail right on the head. Guitars are unspecific now in that the Ibanez stuff is a blur. More MIC/MII less MIJ sold too. For example when I was posting an AZ master thread... which "forum" did it belong? How about the RG550 (MIJ but not Prestige)? Times change as do the categories so making it easier to see more topics of discussion is good. OTOH pickup/wiring advice is served well in a separate forum. There is no harm in someone coming to post, ask a question & leave for a while.

The value of "jemsite forum" is the informed & helpful replies you get now & visible for reference. Sure you can look up a model quickly on the web and get static specs from a wiki and some pictures but that gives you an incomplete picture and generic/static info... sometimes it's enough sometimes people want more. When they want more these inquires just don't invite 5-page follow up discussion. Which is fine.
 
#15 ·
I was reinforcing your earlier point. Even if you don't count the three swirls or neons as distinct models, the Jem has been extremely prolific compared with almost anything Ibanez has done.
For example when I was posting an AZ master thread... which "forum" did it belong?
It seems like people generally consider it a mature RG if that means anything.
OTOH pickup/wiring advice is served well in a separate forum. There is no harm in someone coming to post, ask a question & leave for a while.
I wasn't implying merging the tech section into the rest of the forum. Not sure if it seemed like I was implying that? What I meant was to feature the tech section more prominently. I feel that its underserved within the Ibanez community.
 
#14 ·
Interesting, thanks.

For purely historical reasons, I'm sorry to see the seven string forum go - Ibanez was the first company to offer a production seven string, the 7620 was, after they got blown out for pocket change, the de-facto starter seven for countless players, and that forum eventually led to the split-off to sevenstring.org... But, at the same time, I'll be the first to admit it doesn't get a ton of traffic these days, so I understand why it was consolidated.
 
#16 ·
The value of Jemsite is decades of valuable information and discussion, if you google an issue relating to these guitars then a Jemsite thread pops up. That said the RG/Jem facebook group is massive and very active, someone posts a problem on there and within minutes they will have a bunch of solutions, some of them pointing to Ibanezrules or Jemsite but usually in the form of freeflowing discussion. Of course as mentioned it's gone as quickly as it came, into the abyss.
 
#17 ·
This feeds into another thought I had. Why not just embrace FB? The whole "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" idea. What about some kind of partnership? Would have to be with the Ibanez RG Series Fans one for obvious reasons. There are a bunch of ex-Jemsite people there who recognize the value of this forum and realize the limitations of Facebook as an information platform. Rather than making what is probably a futile effort to win back the everyday conversations, why not focus on making this THE central resource for Ibanez guitar info. To that point Keith Harrison's Wiki page should also be embraced here.

In my mind the days of one source for all your needs are past. It's more about specialization in some area. For Jemsite to thrive, it should focus on being the best at something.
 
#20 ·
^ more good feedback thx. I'm just considering all POV with no skin in the game.... I get the facebook (private) group thing including convenience, simplicity, networkability & discoverability. Totally.

But I honestly ask why would VS want to shift traffic/info (searchable text) over to FB instead of here (where it owns the content & can generate revenue to sustain business rather than hand ad $ to FB)? If they own - lets use a random round number - 7000 communities/sites/forums why would they want to do that in scale either?

I'm honestly curious.

I fully get it that FB/Social drives possible SALES & promotion of actual products to sell. What is JEMSITE selling? I've felt social media could improve Jemsite DISCOVERABILITY & engagement... however it's actually rather well covered by search/siri/etc. no? Grant it, I'm not aware how FB groups can be directly monetized which I believe the site owners would want no?
 
#22 ·
But I honestly ask why would VS want to shift traffic/info (searchable text) over to FB instead of here (where it owns the content & can generate revenue to sustain business rather than hand ad $ to FB)? If they own - lets use a random round number - 7000 communities/sites/forums why would they want to do that in scale either?

I'm honestly curious.

I fully get it that FB/Social drives possible SALES & promotion of actual products to sell. What is JEMSITE selling? I've felt social media could improve Jemsite DISCOVERABILITY & engagement... however it's actually rather well covered by search/siri/etc. no? Grant it, I'm not aware how FB groups can be directly monetized which I believe the site owners would want no?
I'm certain who VS is? Based on context I'm assuming the Jemsite is owned by some entity that owns a whole bunch of forums?

So I wasn't looking at this as a sort of slippery slope that could infect a whole range of communities. I was treating Jemsite as a discrete entity. The way I approached it that it costs a certain amount of money per month to host the forum and allocate a certain amount of bandwidth on the servers. As traffic to the forum drops, the revenue it generates drops. How low does it need to drop before the site is in the red? And if the site is in the red, what is the motivation to keep it going? I think we're all in agreement that traffic has really dropped off here. But what seems more important than that is, is the forum attracting and retaining new members? Or is it basically like the Elks Lodge with a few old dudes sitting around complaining about stuff? My worry is that it's much more of the latter, which should be extremely concerning.

Back to FB, what I see there is that people try to use it like a forum but it isn't really good at that. So what I'm asking is would it bear the most fruit to focus on improving the forum in the areas where FB groups are lacking? My assumption is that focusing on improving the discussion ultimately won't work. It will just be the same old guys who were fine with the old format anyway. So returning to your original question about why would the owners want to point outside their ecosystem, I think the answer is that you have to go where your customers are. You would be betting that any loss you'd have from that would be offset by traffic coming back for the compelling features you're offering.
 
#21 · (Edited)
Actually, I do not see a problem here. Generally all forums have it to itself that various people with different resources of knowledge write here and sometimes it may turn into a trash. Forum is not database. Although on the other hand I have no problem searching for topics that interest me. The principle of professional forums is that inappropriate posts are removed or moved, topics with answers closed and repeated questions sent back to the search engine. Of course, I realize this means a lot of moderation. I'm not sure how much this forum is professional and how much discussionable. I'm sure there is a lot of knowledge here.

>I do not really understand why I should use facebok to search if I have google? Maybe I'm old fashioned!?
:)

J.
 
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