rest in peace to this wonderful place that was hijacked to become an alt-right agitprop center 
as much i wanted it to improve i think this was only inevitable. esp now that we have 5^7, which actually gives a shit about diversity and love :3
whatever post ur fav comments from raās history to prove to me that there was somethings to be salvaged from it
this mix and the below mix series were posted in the comments of the basic channel feature
http://waxtreatment.de/podcast/
so far i like both lots.
sucks, but discourse degeneration has been the theme for a good minute now. even here theres not much exchange, just post and reactā¦would be nice to begin having conversations in text but weāve all got too many notifications to follow anything upā¦i understand their decision but iām curious to see how this plays out with events and ticket resales cus they were a good resource for thatā¦
I think itās an ill thought reaction to an issue RA obviously struggled with for a while. The reasons for keeping comments far outweighs the justification for removing. Plain and simply it does not fit in with their business model any more. Itās no longer a community, itās a tastemaker trying to drive itās readership to what they see as new and interesting.
Iāll keep my cynicism to one side with regard to how they make the decisions on what fits that criteria (I donāt think itās been on artistic merit alone for a long time). However you view it, itās a barrier. Something we need less of in 2019.
curious, what do you think their business model is now as opposed to what it used to be? more of a promoter in the events/festival sense than an internet ad revenue churning mag?
Exactly that.
Curating nights and festival stages across the globe seems to have removed the critical eye they once cast on the scene and replaced it with a pretty uniform view on who and what the readers should be listening to.
Itās resulted in a really small subset of artists being given a disproportionate amount of airtime across the site.
The relentless PR on behalf of Peggy Gou, Black Madonna and a few others irked a few simpletons to come out with ignorant and unforgivable comments for sure. For the opinion piece to label the comments section as one big hotbed of sexism is simplistic and unfair.
Thereās a whole host of female DJs who are shown the utmost respect on there on a regular basis - Dr Rubinstein, Tama Sumo, Lakuti, Steffi, Sonja Moonear, Margaret Dygas etc etc.
If RA had any interest in upkeeping a community it could have actually enforced proper guidelines, banning trolls etc. but itās just no longer in their interests to. A shame.
ok maybe this is a good time to say this ā usually i think ājust be positive about what is good itāll shine thru if everybody does thatā but sometimesā¦
Why is RA still focusing so much on the baitest, bland, corporate house/techno/electro which is still doing exactly the same thing as was done, better, 20/30 years ago. The constant attention via reviews, eventsā¦
In the reviews a dubstep/dnb/club/fwd record has to always be pushing boundaries, innovating etc. (which is fair) ā but then thereās 4/5 stars being dished around to these megamelt tunes
Thereās so much good stuff going on as well!
*edit: this question also applies to previously cherished places such as phonica, corsica, fabricā¦ the interesting records and nights come thinner and thinner
Agreed, there is a thread on the state of criticism on this forum that hits similar points, but for me something thatās obvious is that music journalism will never be the fourth estate independent of the scene that it used to be because of a few trendsā¦
one is the general nature of a lack of heavyweight asshole reviewers who will shred bad music apart
two is that reviewers nowadays are often aspiring producers/musicians/promoters/have vested interests in not stepping on toes and impressing people
three is that everyone makes more money (or stays in business) as long as none of these things change
four is that identity politics and political correctness storms routinely banish people from their scenes, creating this weird disconnect of super militant comment policer types (downvotes) and super out there trollsā¦and before you @ me, yes there are good things about this too re: sexism and general manipulation/creepyness/patriarchical issues
five is that folks like truthtoof, that new member who just signed up who was bashing bwana, vancouver house, and other popularly hyped djs that chooses to go against the grain, gets SHIT on rather than engaged. i was starting to like them, and im really bummed cus i just began to actually comment in those threads.
RIP froobs, djteakoze, relevant advisor, djnathan, etc etc other people i laughed at or learned from
so the question is
HOW DO WE MAKE THIS PLACE THE BETTER ALTERNATIVE THAT FILLS IN THE GAPS???
a lurker can dreamā¦
bit harsh, they do give decent coverage to more left of field releases plus the bait stuff usually gets panned in reviews from my experience
i suppose this depends on ur definition of left of field releases tho really
and i suppose further to that sites like RA get to decide the āoverton windowā of what is leftfield and what is bait by what they choose to cover. without comments u can never get other insights on reviews or new recommendations, just have to trust there taste
yes perhaps a bit harsh
i just really donāt understand why it gets any coverage at all though, really, why it dominates promoters, festivals, record shopsā¦
anyway this is when itās good to focus on whatās good again haha
Itād be cool to get RA to run another piece on this forum to migrate some more folks over here.
whoās got strings they can pull?? it would benefit the salty RA commenters and ultimately us folks here seeing as we have legit mods and a good foundation establishedā¦
Itās weird to hear people describe the comment section like it was somehow 4chan circa 2007 or now for that matter. People were largely tired of the politicking and obvious bias that was going on. I never dropped racial or sexist epithets as far as memory serves nor did I see anyone else really drop anything of the sort. We were sarcastic, sure, but I donāt think there was anything truly egregious out there but if you got an example, please post it.
It was good while it lasted to be honest. There was dissention in the ranks but what do you expect? I think offloading the discussion to twitter/fb/ig is a shotgun blast to the foot and will ultimately be their undoing but stranger things have happened.
Anyways gg no re. Will definitely miss a few posters for sure.
I just joined after I say this forum linked in the RED (tracker) forums, and Iām glad to be here!
Itās sad that they closed the comments down because they do have a great community at times and Iāve both learned a lot and got a fair amount of great musical recommendations through them, although I agree to it becoming worse because of a few selected assholesā¦ So I wonder why they didnāt enforce a stronger hand in moderating the comments instead. It wouldnāt take too long and would hardly even be one full time position.
I do agree RA has focused more and more on their own events and āconnectedā artists, but I still think they are doing a good job overall. They need to get their money from somewhere and running a free online magazine purely on ads isnāt what it used to be.
because pop music sells. its catchy. it casts a wide net. it pulls in new fans. it makes money. it succeeds, economically. cus everybodyās gotta make a living.
itās a sad day today. generally browsing through the comments through the years any signs of sexism, racism, homophobia, or transphobia were always downvoted by the community. the real reason i believe is a sensitive reviewer or two canāt handle the criticism on their usually off the mark reviews.
RA was host to lots of annoying cunce, dickheads, trolls, and generally mean people thru the comments, as well sketchy, off-point reviews as what u said. Regardless, there were a good amount of nice and alright people throughout. I guess I saw the warning signs when there was a news article about the Trump administration doing something with musician payment, with the comments allowed. (RA shouldāve never allowed that to happen lol, it mustāve been a mess). That was before that one article about the Palestinian music scene was posted with comments disabled. At least trolls moving over to twitter can just be blocked lol.
This is, as a moderator it burns you out a lot to go through these comments and moderate them. Or, in other words: the forum moderation as understood 10 or 15 years ago is not enough today. It has no place. There are more people, hence more harmful even psychotic people are there giving their opinions and threats.
Having said that, hi all, I just registered because I need somewhere else to comment randomly.
I gotta cut you short on that one. In the time that I milled about in the comment section, I saw no one threatened, nor was anyone doxxed or had their livelihood/personal life fucked with. If Iām wrong, please link me to something because I didnāt see any psychopaths there either and if that sort of thing had actually happened, wouldnāt that have warranted an outright ban of the account, and justifiably so? I definitely saw some salty comments that were maybe a bit harsh, sure, but for the most part it really just boiled down to dissent. If people disagreed with someone like truthtooth and his blasts on Bwana/Ciel for instance, they could simply downvote him into obscurity and move on with their day. Maybe Iām weird, but I enjoy seeing both sides of the coin when it comes to artists and music; Iām not interested in a site where everyone ballwashes each other and slaps each other on the back. I like a little mud slinging, it keeps the blood warm.
The mods knew there was no good way of controlling this thing though, but they made attempts; including manipulating comment scores or outright deleting ānegativeā comments. Hell, even the thornier subjects, like the Israel/Palestine articles were preemptively locked because even they knew it was a powder keg. The only way they could have come out on top of this whole thing would have been stricter moderation and taking a couple of staff members away from the keyboard because they certainly didnāt help matters one iota, or at the very least, utilizing a central RA account to respond to people in the comments section like they did with the QT article or the Ben Aqua mix. The writers barely made any attempt to justify or defend their subjects on things such as Nastia or Peggy Gou, they just locked the door, scrubbed the comments and pretended it never happened. Thatās no way to do business.
What blows my mind is all the people that obviously visited the site cheerleading the comments section closing because it was so terrible or whatever. Where were these people when all this was going on to throw their $0.02 into the ring and push back or make a well reasoned counter-argument? They could have done so at any time if they had something to say, it wasnāt like registrations were closedā¦
While I donāt think losing the comments section is some great shame, there are a few things Iāll miss. Specifically it could be a great way of congregating (alternate) opinions on tracks/mixes and events. I always particularly enjoyed reading what people thought of a specific night out, because everyone can have such wildly different experiences. Having reminders of it helped cut through the haziness when remembering it the next day or even a while later if you ever had a look back through your calendar. Itās just unfortunate that canāt really be replaced now because of how well RA was set up for that particular thing because of their events pages.