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This to me looks like a split is the obvious suggestion/choice. As far as I can see this section is now found in the stack exchange network as the "sound" section. But the title of the section at the top of the page is sound design.

By now I think it ought to be clear to the mods that the old SocialSoundDesign users and the music/live/general sound users of other stack exchange sections see what sound design is and what type of questions are appropriate so differently that a joint section won't really do anyone any good.

My personal guess is that in a short amount on time many/most old SSD users will stop coming (some already have as far as I can tell as they don't participate as they used to). Thus further making the amount of general "sound" questions outnumber the more niche style film/TV/games type of sound design that was discussed on the SSD site.

I do not want the SSD community to vanish, I liked it, a LOT.

Comments on this?

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    I really appreciate your thoughtful comments and think your idea of a split is entirely appropriate. Sorry to the other mods and managers, but I just don't see a "Sound Design" forum and a "Sound" forum as the same thing.
    – Jay Jennings Mod
    Commented Mar 14, 2014 at 1:16
  • 2
    @JayJennings - I'd certainly be interested in seeing statistics on how the site has been doing since the merge and how much, if any cross over there is in the user base. If this is simply ruffling people's feathers because it isn't what they are used to but the site is growing, then I'm not sure it is a problem, but if the site isn't growing and we are alienating the community we do have, then I think I'd agree. Clearly there are people who don't think they fit together, but I'd also like to see what stats from the site show about it before I cast my personal vote either way.
    – AJ Henderson Mod
    Commented Mar 14, 2014 at 15:58
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    @AJ Henderson, I can't provide stats but I can tell you that I've personally seen at least two of our most active members publicly announce their departure from the forum because of the influx of questions not related to sound design - which most here would classify as "noise" that needs to be sifted through - as well as frustration over "new" moderators frequently voting to close posts and delete answers that don't fit the more rigid meta guidelines. Besides those two, there is ample evidence from other SSD member's questions and comments that this new forum is not headed in a good direction.
    – Jay Jennings Mod
    Commented Mar 14, 2014 at 16:28
  • @JayJennings - yeah, but that doesn't tell us about who new might be coming in. I asked TimPost if he could look in to some specific stats since he's the only one with sufficient access to the data to really mine it for what I was asking about. It is sad to lose great users, but if we get 5 great users while losing 2, then it's still good overall for the community, though unfortunate to lose those two. My gut tells me we probably haven't, but without hard data, that's just a gut worry.
    – AJ Henderson Mod
    Commented Mar 14, 2014 at 16:33
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    Well if the above statement about loosing users is representable for the mods, then I guess we will just have to take our SSD luggage and go away. That statement sounds like that the format of stack exchange and it's overall community is valued higher that the individual small communities within the stack exchange network. There's no way you can know as you don't have the knowledge of what sound design is (according to our definition) then you have no qualification in comparing if the new members compensate for those who leave.
    – ErikG
    Commented Mar 14, 2014 at 16:46
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    I cast my vote for a separation. @AJHenderson The wealth of knowledge that left is not something that will be easily filled. They were contributors who were at the top of their game and having them dispense the wisdom and experience they had was a privilege that we were allowed in SSD. I am sore because these are people I look up to and I have no confidence at the way sd.se is currently running that it will attract people of their caliber. Not all the members of SSD may have been professionals but it was a platform for people who wanted to dedicate their lives to sound design hung out.
    – user6513
    Commented Mar 16, 2014 at 7:54
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    @AJHenderson And if you can't see, I reckon there's a lot of spiteful voting going on at the moment. So that would be an indication of the current situation of this community. Sound design is a profession driven by passion and we already have to fight so hard in our jobs just to get the filmakers to understand us. Why does it have to be so hard here too?
    – user6513
    Commented Mar 16, 2014 at 8:00
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    I want to let you know that I have seen this (I saw it when you posted it) and I am working rather hard on a reply detailing actions I think everyone is going to feel better after reading. However, it's lengthy, involves a few other people I still need to hear from, and may take another day for me to post (Part of it was reconnecting with Andrew). Please be patient, I will have this written out as soon as I possibly can, and I've heard what you wanted us to hear.
    – Tim Post Staff
    Commented Mar 17, 2014 at 14:41
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    +1 split. SSD was highly specialised and that made it so good.
    – georgi
    Commented Mar 17, 2014 at 22:29
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    +1 for a split here. Also, I'd like to add that as a musician, general audio guy myself, I'd be interested in hopping over into a sister site that is for music or general sound and participating where I could but I'd like SSD to be pure to it's roots of Sound Design for and by Sound Designers. That's the appeal of SSD, even as a musician I don't want the merge of the two.
    – user7731
    Commented Mar 18, 2014 at 15:48
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    +100. SSD was something unique. I was mostly just stalking it, but it really offered something not available anywhere else. What we have here is just another place where people ask about soundcard configurations, synth lead sounds, links for production music (wtf) and so on. Million places like that already in internet, but no other strictly film/game sound design focused place. Split it.
    – sauli
    Commented Mar 19, 2014 at 9:09

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
5

There are: 5 math sections 2 animation Biblical analisys and various religious sections (why not merge them? Perhaps not...) 5 sections related to various game subjects 10 different computer and programming sections

But sound should all be tossed into one?

5

This is where things are, currently.

Another split, for technical reasons alone, isn't feasible. However:

  • I'm speaking with Andrew, and other members of the early Social Sound Design community to come up with ways to make this better, and we've got some good ideas on the table that I'm going to be sharing in a separate post as soon as we all finish playing email tag.
  • We want to fix this. A lot of planning that involved founders and moderators from all sides pointed at everyone looking forward to a larger, more inclusive site (more on this at the end)
  • Things in the engine itself can be better utilized to accomplish this.

SSD and AVP had quite a few tags in common (when I say AVP, I'm speaking to the audio, not video side). Everyone involved, after looking at both sides, agreed that bringing them together would result in a stronger community that would attract more people, and lead more people to sound design. Our biggest worry was that a more strict subset of users would come into the new site and immediately begin closing things - this is something that I actively worked to prevent, and everyone seems (now) happy with a focused, but relaxed environment.

We saw the existing community continuing to do what they do, while enjoying the occasional question that was within their expertise, but perhaps not really in the realm of sound design. After many rounds of 'did we miss anything?' during planning, this wasn't considered.

I'm working now to use all of the buttons, dials, toggles and sliders I have available to me behind the scenes to better tune the system so that it shows you what you're interested in more effectively. I'm also on a hunt for some of the lesser quality questions that were migrated over, which I'm shipping back and just closing on video. And a lot of other things, I'm genuinely upset that so many people are so unhappy, I want to do my best for them, and I know I can make it at least better.

I do not want to end up with two extremely insular communities trying their best to get along on a single site - that's one of the problems we were trying very hard to fix. However, participation should be opportunistic, you just happen across something interesting that's out of your usual domain and find that you can answer it.

Please give me a few more days to get this all together - Conversations are traversing emails, instant messages and oceans over time zones. I also need to have a meeting with my team when I've finally got a plan together. I think I can fix this to the degree that everyone is happy, but I have to make sure.

I'll open and feature another meta post detailing what I'd like to do, then discussion to refine as needed can be had.

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  • Hi Tim, I appreciate any work and help you do in creating a better environment for all here. The atmosphere is currently poor from my perspective. AVP folks are basically telling me my questions are not welcome eventhough they seem to be very healthy additions to the community. It's lame and it sucks. Thanks.
    – user7731
    Commented Mar 19, 2014 at 17:10
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    @Brad I started to reply to you in a comment, but then all this text just started pouring out of me so I opened a different discussion instead.
    – Tim Post Staff
    Commented Mar 20, 2014 at 15:39
  • @Tim: thanks for the (much needed) head up on the way things are being steered. Would love to hear the details, hope to be able to help out (although being very busy).
    – Arnoud Traa
    Commented Mar 20, 2014 at 16:58
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    10 days later. . . . . .
    – georgi
    Commented Mar 29, 2014 at 9:30
  • @TimPost Did you ever get around to creating that other meta post detailing what you'd like to do? If you did, can you edit your answer to link to it?
    – Steve Urban
    Commented May 11, 2014 at 22:05
1

There won't be a split - read this post

Social Sound Design / Audio-Video Production Merge Post Mortem

"All in all, I feel as if the project was a great success"

Seems there is an incredible disconnect between what the original users of SSD created & what the new SE admins have decided will be. It is quite odd really, but not the first time such things have happened - Yahoo managed to kill off a few great user groups a while back as well. There is a very important lesson to be learnt here in creating anything online: don't set up anything that others have admin control over.

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    you do realise Tim that the post is quite old. In fact it was after that post got started that they received most of the feedback that they did it all wrong. I'm still quite sceptical if they will be able to create a place I feel is worth to stay at. But I'll give them a few more days. TimPost said that he would post a text about how they see this working.
    – ErikG
    Commented Mar 27, 2014 at 6:24
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    @tim prebble - It's pretty clear from Tim Post's words above that a split will not happen and this merge will be a rather generic sound Q&A with some sincere efforts to keep SSDers around. I'm not confident that SSD folks will stick around. The level of off topic noise is too high. With that - when there is a void, there is opportunity. If someone felt ambitious enough, an SSD like forum would be a great success.
    – user7731
    Commented Mar 27, 2014 at 18:36
0

unfortunately this is not the first post on the topic, here are four more i wouldn't call "duplicates" but they actually address the same issue in an ever-so-slightly different way each.

Is this a sound design forum - if so, what are the boundaries of that definition?

What really happened to sound design?

We need to narrow down our scope and help center guidance, your opinion is needed!

Social Sound Design / Audio-Video Production Merge Post Mortem

what a mess :(

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  • These posts are related - thanks for linking to them, BTW, it's a helpful resource - but none of them is a call to split the site into two communities. None is even close to being a duplicate, IMO.
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Commented Mar 14, 2014 at 3:14
  • As one of them is "mine" I can't see them as dupes either. That's why I Wrote this question separately. One asked for a clarification of what and why it happened, this is a suggestion for a fix. And I have participated in all of them I think.
    – ErikG
    Commented Mar 14, 2014 at 6:08
  • i didn't mean to say they are duplicates! on the contrary
    – georgi
    Commented Mar 14, 2014 at 19:12
  • It wasn't I who down voted your answer, although one would think so reading my comments.
    – ErikG
    Commented Mar 16, 2014 at 9:34
  • votes are not important.. only what's being communicated.
    – georgi
    Commented Mar 16, 2014 at 10:19
  • @ErikG - I'm one of the downvoters. Downvoting on meta simply means that I disagree; there's no cost to rep.
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Commented Mar 20, 2014 at 23:07
-1

I once again agree entirely. It seems to be the only way that will make everyone happy. But, is it even possible to split the forum and retain all the SSD posts?

-1

If it's technically possible, i would say do it. But it would be another transfer phase and that could mean things can go wrong.

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