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

Question

A few months ago, we had two communities; the sound enthusiasts on our site for audio and video production, and the community that had been flourishing on Sound Design. The two seemed like, and are, a natural fit for one another in one place and so far things have been working out quite well.

Originally, I was worried that our more conditioned users would find the somewhat subjective and broad questions on Sound Design and, due to how we've conditioned them to strive for a high signal to noise resource, close questions that the Sound Design community felt were serving them well.

As with all of my predictions, the opposite has happened, and this is broadly due to us not taking a bit of time to hash out what kinds of questions we should entertain here.

We envisioned the combined Sound Design site as a great resource for people that are:

• Designing sound, both amateur and professionally
• Working on endeavors that go into designing sound, such as:
  • Configuring and using recording equipment
  • Effects and post processing
  • Mastering / production
• Acoustics, to achieve desired effects or quality
• Other things I'm probably forgetting, but you get the gist

The current help center topic guideline currently says:

of interest to at least one other person interested in sound design

... this needs to be narrowed down quite a bit. The main topic of this site is Sound Design, which encompasses many skills where someone can be at an expert level and able to answer questions. We need to talk about where the bar for on-topic (and in the spirit of the very open and friendly original topic guideline) falls in the realm of interesting to someone working in sound design.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with the question that I've linked, but think about it in the context of other sites, and how it might be asked:

• Cooking - If I put all of these ingredients in a bowl, I'll get a cake?
• Stack Overflow - All of these files compile to one executable file?

It's just far too broad and doesn't state something one hopes to actually accomplish. A good start to a minimum bar is a requirement to clearly specify what you're trying to actually do, and the results you hope to achieve. Beginner questions should be fine, but they've got to give us a good indication of what they're trying to accomplish. For instance?

Does a compressor deal with someone suddenly screaming into a mic?

... bad.

How can I use a compressor to normalize output levels when I've got sources that tend to randomly quadruple in volume?

... better.

I'm using a [brand] compressor with [other setup], but I can't get it to clip where I want. Here's how I have it set up, what did I miss?

... much better.

You can extrapolate that example to other things, such as questions involving Pro Tools, field recorders, etc.

What I've stated is only an example to help get the discussion moving, and I believe this is something we're going to need to make several passes on in order to perfect. The result of this should be a more refined scope, after which, we can have additional discussions to fine tune the various points that we establish.

It's important that we get input from as many folks as possible. Use answers, as many as you'd like, to bring up certain questions you feel are problematic and why. Give any thought as to how you think they could be made to fit better, or if we should consider placing them out of scope.

At the end of this, once I've consolidated everyone's input, we'll have the following things:

• Better guidance in the help center page (which mods can edit)
• A draft of several custom close reasons, should we see a clear need to add some
• The beginning of a consensus when it comes to scope.

I can't reiterate enough how important it is for everyone to feel good about this - this is a process that we normally undertake during a private beta period, but it works just as well later on. We're talking about things going forward, once we've gotten things tweaked and everyone is content, we can consider looking at older questions, but I'm more inclined to leave those alone until good reason surfaces to address them individually.

Let the discussion begin and remember, we're all here to make this resource as informational, friendly and fantastic as possible. There are a few discussions of individual questions here on meta, I'm hoping to consolidate discussion here, and ideally get something in place within a week or so.

Answer 1

I'm prepared to wait a week or two to see what eventuates with the off topic stuff, but this is a forum right? I don't want it looking at my tags or whatever to decide what to display - I want it to display the most recent active questions ie new questions or questions with new answers... In that mode, if most of what is listed is irrelevant to either film sound design, field recording, game audio, or issues or work closely related (eg theatre sound design, new tools etc) then its really no longer much use/relevant to me & theres no point visiting... (I don't want to waste my time tagging & filtering/blocking irrelevant material - it would be like clicking 'unlike' on most of the current questions, is that really how I want to spend my time online?)

Live sound/PAs have nothing to do with sound design. How to program a synth belongs in a music forum How to record music belongs in a music forum At the moment, imho six of the first ten questions shouldn't be here

To be honest I am surprised to read you imported so many irrelevant questions - isn't it usual practice to do an audit pass on data before importing? Could you not have gone through & prioritised the data or deleted irrelevant questions? It seems this process has blown the focus of SSD - imagine if any other site dumped a ton of irrelevant info on to their front page... It seems an unwise approach & (as with here) I would tend to give up on that site for a while (weeks/months) and if when I return it really isn't much better, then that site becomes history... which is a shame if the original SSD has been lost due to some need to constantly grow the site

c'est la vie

Answer 2

No music production; no live sound; no home theater audio; no audiophile types of questions please.

As selfish as it may be, I really want the old community back the way it was. It was a wealth of information at any point of time, and though there wasn't as many questions being asked, the ones that were posted generated a lot more discussion and the results were always useful to all of us. We had many people with a wealth of experience (tim prebble, Stavrosound, and Jay Jennings to name a few) and it would be terrible if they left the site because of the clutter in this site now. There is nothing appealing about the questions currently being posted. I appreciated SSD because it was a place where young and/or struggling sound designers needed help overcoming problems that they were facing and the community was there to aid them. Sound design is really not that simple and SSD was a place we could learn without all the rubbish clutter that usually goes along with the sound discipline. So please just let this be a page about sound design for film, tv, and animation. Let everything else filter off to a general sound page.

P.S. Please, listen to Tim!

Answer 3

I'm definitely not by any stretch considered a professional when it comes to sound design. My experience lies mostly in broadcasting, various kinds of studio work and field recording.

I'm not positively certain that questions boiling down to "I've got all this stuff, how do I hook it up?" are good for the site in the sense that they're questions that would engage more experts. On the other hand, they do provide some "Hey, I can answer that!" moments for users that are a bit shy to answer more difficult questions.

Still, I think there can be an expected twist to them that might make them useful, more interesting and more attractive to people at higher skill levels. If they're more about acoustics than actually plugging things in and getting them to work, then they might be a better fit. A question about setting up a PA for a live gig isn't all that interesting, but if you've got strange nooks in the room that do weird things to toms and snares, then it does seem to go to another level.

That said, I wouldn't want to discourage gear questions - but that hasn't been the case from what I've seen. If someone is having a hard time getting a recorder to work, or something else, and can explain a specific problem - that's been well-received.

In short, I think holding true to Sound Design is a good idea, and there's some wiggle room in there for broader, but still interesting questions that fit under that umbrella. They might not be strictly about sound design, but they would be of interest to those that design sound.

I'm in no way calling this an absolute - this is purely just thoughts I had while I was going through a bunch of questions during the massive tag cleanup we've been working on. Feel free to agree, disagree, - this is just like any other opinion you'll see collect here, I just happen to have a diamond next to my name while writing it.

Answer 4

I'm using a [brand] compressor with [other setup], but I can't get it to clip where I want. Here's how I have it set up, what did I miss?

... much better.

I was under the impression that most members of SSD know how to deal with compressors and EQs but were missing practical advice discussion on application or aesthetic e.g. not "how" but "when" and "for the purpose of pushing the envelope in which direction". I'd go even farther and suggest that even asking those wasn't a big deal, things were so far out already, and that was a Good Thing™. It made SSD an unique spot, distinct from say JWSound or Gearslutz. But not now, in its latest form :|

Answer 5

I agree that some of the recent questions have veered pretty far away from the sound design topic. To some degree its because the concept of sound design is so niche, and when it's introduced to a broader audience it's not completely understood.

As such we get questions about setting up a PA, etc.

Is there a place in stack exchange for basic music recording and live sound questions to go? IMO those are off topic here as well.

Answer 6

The folks in charge should take a real hard look Tim Prebble's very honest response. To lose such a talented, insightful member like Tim would be a real shame. I'm a musician, general audio guy as well as a sound designer and they are very different things. I loved SSD because it didn't have all the noise and was a very focused community of high caliber sound designers like Tim Prebble. When I want a forum on making synth patches, I go elsewhere, a question about protools, the DUC, gear - gearslutz, etc. etc. SSD was where I went when I wanted a community of true Sound Designers speaking of that craft and profession. I don't want SSD now SD to be a place where "anything any sound designer may have interest in" to be appropriate. I wish it to return to a place where sound designers talk about things specific to sound design, not live audio, not recreating synth patches, and not setting up USB mics. My two cents.

Answer 7

I think we need to be cautious about biting the noob. Just the audio production side of audio/video production seemed to have more activity than SSD had due to being open to a wide variety of sound related questions. It's easy to forget that all experienced people started as beginners at one time. Additionally, if you accept basic questions, your pretty rapidly get a solid base of intro question & answers and the rate of questions about new things should drop as they are closed as duplicate and people learn to understand to use the search.

Similarly, a lot of frustration seems to be about signal to noise, but this is a Q/A site, specifically NOT a forum. The point isn't to follow all the content, the point is to learn from questions about topics you are interested in and to be able to help people out when they have questions.

Tags exist for the explicit purpose of being able to categorize questions and follow the topics within a site that you are interested in. StackOverflow is the most successful of the SE sites by far and they don't say "we're only going to take expert questions about writing web applications", they take questions on any language, on any platform, of virtually any skill level.

People filter it down so that they see the questions they are interested in and those of us who actually are interested in a broader base of questions (yes, we do exist, we just avoid highly insular communities) help make sure that questions are tagged properly so they don't slip through the cracks.

The power of a community driven Q/A site like this is that a broad range of questions can be meaningfully categorized and condensed so that people looking for help can get it and people who know their particular areas can focus on those areas. This isn't a forum and it shouldn't be treated like one.

That all said, I think that this site, by nature of the communities that were merged together, ends up with a fairly broad scope. I don't think it is fair to exclude members of either of those communities as a result of the merger without offering them some home. Thus, I think we do need to be open to any questions that relate to sound design or production from a beginner level up through advanced. Otherwise, it would basically boil down to one part of the community voting the other part off the island.

I do think we can safely focus on sound related stuff rather than music though. Music design sounds like it wasn't really on topic for SSD and didn't seem to have a particularly strong spot on AVP, though it was perhaps tolerated. I think the key distinction on that front is that how to distort or alter a sound is probably on topic, but how/what to play is probably not. For example, the recent question on "Can you great people help me create a certain bassline please ! Thanks in advance :" is really more of a music question since it is focused on what to play, not just how to make it sound a particular way.

Answer 8

My experience is in two main areas - making live performances sound good (ie configuration of PA systems in venues) and creating/recording electronic/rock/blues music in the studio.

My thoughts:

On topic

• I don't know enough about the whole creating effects from scratch side of things, but it is obviously the core of SD.
• Tweaking sounds, recordings or samples to fit a requirement
• As we don't have a music recording site (is definitely off topic for music production and practice) I think questions on PA's etc can fit here. Not how to plug them in, but as Tim says, how to make them do something specific, sound-wise

Off topic

• How do I make the sound from track 'X'
• How to connect this
• What is the best mic/recording device/X

I do tend to err on a site's scope being more inclusive rather than less, as you can always add tags to your block list or alternately to your favourites in order to see just the content you want.

Answer 9

I really don't want to see music production related questions here. Questions about mixing drum beats, making deadmau5 synth lead or tweaking guitar effect chain shouldn't be here. All of these things would fall into broad definition of sound design, but I'd rather see this place be about film/tv/game sound design like it used to be.

Maybe there should be music production stack exchange for music related sound design and mixing questions? I really didn't expect the flood of these questions considering there are already many places to ask these. Every second music genre has own forum somewhere and then there are places like Kvraudio and Gearslutz.