Suggestions needed...

[mojotron]

Aron - you created something special here. And, although people come and go, this forum is robust enough to survive with it's unique nature intact - in spite of periodic intermittent discontent. I'm not sure if I would do anything... except kick people out - as per the usual reasons - and perhaps suspend people, form logging in, if they start getting hostile.    

... why do the designers not sell pedals?

.... I love it here. Let's just be buds.

Well my respectful friend, good question by the way - because I don't think it's that obvious. This is what I see from my perspective... (just from a guy on the sidelines - who has dabbled in this) In order to sell pedals you have to build them, market them, tons of logistical work - and if you have kids/family there is a lot of nail biting and risk. And, the nature of small business is that when an opportunity comes up - you have to be all over it like white on rice - even when you don't want to. This is not what a lot of people want - a lot of people want more autonomy from their job, other people don't want their hobby to be their job, some people just like to come up with ideas and share them hoping they will get another good idea back, or the original idea refined, someday.

Selling pedals means building a lot of the same thing - and IMO it just gets old after the initial rush of putting something together and selling it. Not to mention that it takes enough time to do it right and if you have to work a day job - that gets old fast.

> I love it here. Let's just be buds
Yep, you hit the nail on the head - IMO!  

[choklitlove]

some of the designers do sell them.  but people still steal them.  and that's still taking money for something that's not theirs.  and the designers are still upset about that, and rightfully so.

[Barcode80]

alright, here is my obligatory weigh in as a semi-newb

there is nothing wrong with the forum. period. it's like saying guns kill people. people kill people, not guns. people kill forums, not posting, sharing, etc.

things i have a problem with:
1) people who get mad when people don't answer a question. it's frustrating, for sure, but none of us "owes" anyone else anything, and most of all people that have contributed so much

2) people who sell pedals with no relationship to the designer without compensation or at least asking

3) people who are sensitive about their "knowledge." knowledge doesn't demand respect, manners do. if you are good at what you do but are an asshole about it, piss off, no one cares. if you deserve respect, you get it, but treating people like people is how you get it, not by being a good designer/builder/etc.

4) people that bash contributors because they don't always have time to answer your "how do i bias a transistor" type question 8 million times a day. I too have PMed RG and others frequently. sometimes i get answers, sometimes i don't. but you know what? R.G. doesn't owe me a damn thing, and if he doesn't have time to piddle over my novice skill, i'm okay with that (no sarcasm here, i'm serious). he is a great designer and a smart man, and if i want at any time i can pick up some books and start learning, so the answer to my questions are ultimately mine to find. sometimes, someone helps, sometimes no. get over it, this is a message board, not a college classroom.

5) double standards - meaning zvex, to name one. i'm okay with the fact that people choose not to post their stuff out of respect for their wishes. but i saw someone get reamed for posting a pic of their fuzz factory... HUH?!?!?! so i can't even clone for my own use and show what it looks like? nice. circuits are combinations of parts. they are not in any way, IMHO, protected. schems and layouts, however, clearly are. i don't remember who said it, but i think i remember someone saying "you don't see ibanez and boss giving us shit." i'm not saying something providing someone's livelihood should be posted and/or copied and sold. but damn it, if i reverse engineer something, make my own schem and layout, no one needs to tell me i can't share it.

things i don't have a problem with:

1) people who lurk here for R&D. someone did a lot of work to write books, and no one gets mad at someone using that knowledge in a book for their own gain. let's not put ourselves in any other light than that

2) people who make money off tweaking other designs. 99.9% of everyone here is using a mac or a pc, both of which use an operating system that is tweaked from the same original OS that xerox wrote for their own line of computers.if someone can take something existing and make it better, let them make a buck. invention is not necessary for innovation

3) vets berating newbs for not using the search function. of the 100's of questions i've had, maybe 4 or 5 weren't answered by the search function. laziness.

as for suggestions, aron, you can do nothing. however, everyone else vets and newb alike can get off their high horses and treat this like a community and not a preschool playground and quit bullying each other.

thank you, however, to those who still try to stay above the fray and act like grown-ups.

[joegagan]

Aron you do a wonderful job, and I think many many people will agree with me that you deserve KUDOS, not angry PMs.
sorry you had to experience that.

After reading all 5 pages, here are my views, capsulized for EZ reading

-the forum is generally OK> I think the some of the people who are leaving are great contributors but if events are bugging them too much they probably needed a break anyway

-A private area or members only forum just doesn't work on many levels. doesn't really solve the probs and is a nightmare to set up and enforce.

- more rules and/or more modertaors isn't the answer either, this is not only impractical but creates as many probs as it solves.

- if there are fewer new designs being posted than the old days for theft reasons, this is just the natural ebb and flow of life.

I actually posted a suggested solution in one of those controversial threads. I think it deserves discussion and consideration

It involves a new sticky that tells everyone there is an 'honor system" licensing agreement in effect for circuits designed or heavily contributed to by members of the forum. While it won't prevent the blatant thieves from stealing, it does at least address the issue so that anyone visiting knows the lay of the land here.

again, thank you SO MUCH Aron for creating , providing and maintaining such a great site.

[brad]

Make users tick an agreement box before their reply is posted to ensure that they know that any information they give out may be used by others for profit.

[ulysses]

Make users tick an agreement box before their reply is posted to ensure that they know that any information they give out may be used by others for profit.

i wrote on on my latest layout that it may not be used for profit - if you want to make money - do the work yourself

i dont know how people sleep at night selling someone elses work. on this side of the world its like asking karma to kick you right between the balls.

ulysses

edit:typo - should really use the preview feature

[brad]

No, the agreement's not to stop people copying for profit...

...it's to stop people from posting the information in the first place if they don't want it to be used for profit.

Ticking the box would indicate that you've agreed to "release" your work into the public realm.  That way, when your design is copied, we can all say "well you ticked the box!" 

[ulysses]

i think it is time to sort the wheat from the chaff.

contributors from leechers.

let the chaff play amongst themeselves - and the wheat can help them if they choose. it may seem trivial but it does play an important part in keeping the established members happy.

ive only been here a year - im not trying to imply importance - im willing to earn the required srtipes - but losing long term members because the chaff pissed them off is really not a good thing.

i dont want to seem like a winger - but it seems like there is a lot of take and not a lot of give going on here.

most boards on the interent require people to earn their stripes. i speak from experience - being a member of several tiered forums. I often dont have time for the chaff when there is so much good stuff going on with the other wheat lol   thats a good thing. althogh it may not seem like it initially - it does incourage good netizenship. by the time people earn the respect of others they are well on the way to being well recieved by other "good folk".

i think its high time people earnt their stripes on this board. i would like to see a tiered forum - who knows - perhaps it exists and i have not been invited?

cheers
ulysses

edit:grammer - damn it

[RaceDriver205]

i think its high time people earnt their stripes on this board. i would like to see a tiered forum - who knows - perhaps it exists and i have not been invited?

Yeah I am afraid we're going to need a bit more proof your top-tier material before you become one of us.

RaceDriver205 - Level 7 Supreme Master Forum-Member with 250HP and +8 Armour

[ulysses]

i think its high time people earnt their stripes on this board. i would like to see a tiered forum - who knows - perhaps it exists and i have not been invited?

Yeah I am afraid we're going to need a bit more proof your top-tier material before you become one of us.

RaceDriver205 - Level 7 Supreme Master Forum-Member with 250HP and +8 Armour

haha - as i said - im willing to earn the stripes

unfortunatly i dont have any hit power or armour..

cheers
ulysses

[dachshund]

This forum has an established "tone" which is very positive and generous. Folding a bunch of restrictions onto an open forum will force people into behavior that isn't natural. I can't imagine it would be a good move.

The "read this first" thread does not mention ethics. Perhaps it could be redone with a paragraph about the intent of the forum, the community, and the issue about lifting designs for profit. State that people will be banned for such behavior. Isn't that what they do on other forums?

You can't control what people do with internet posts. I think the most practical solution is to call people on their unethical behavior, as people did in the threads that led up to this.

Perhaps people should use the PM system for anything you want to have some control over.

I've been here for about six months, posting occasionally. I was surprised that people posted layouts. I thought this made it too easy, you didn't even have to look at the schematic. I was an electronics technician back in the 1980's. While I never got very good at the engineering part, I do like to puzzle over the schematic. If I have half a clue of how it works, then I lay it out myself. But then, I'm doing this for fun, personal satisfaction, and to have some good sounding things on my pedalboard. Or just more dorky looking things on my pedalboard

I'm hopeful that everyone will continue to participate. I've only gotten two pedals to work... I'm counting on y'all!

[The Tone God]

I have made my comments on the idea of a separate forum and I why I think it is a bad idea previously so you can refer to that when discussing the topic.

I don't think any licence/agreement will do anything at all. For one it is almost completely unenforceable and secondly obviously those who are taking information do not have a sense of decency to begin with so why would they care about a licence ? Besides as I said earlier it is not the forum's job to protect voluntarily shared information. If you want to use a licence then you can place it on your own work yourself.

You know the funny thing is the thread that cause this current round of flare ups was pretty lame IMHO. It didn't bug me one bit. I guess I've been around the net long enough to develop thick virtual skin. Things are fine. We just have to stop dwelling on this and GBTW. Please no more threads about this or the mood of the forum. The topic is old and busted.

Now I have starting thinking about my FX-X entry.

Andrew

[zarathustra]

i think it is time to sort the wheat from the chaff.

contributors from leechers.

let the chaff play amongst themeselves - and the wheat can help them if they choose. it may seem trivial but it does play an important part in keeping the established members happy.

ive only been here a year - im not trying to imply importance - im willing to earn the required srtipes - but losing long term members because the chaff pissed them off is really not a good thing.

i dont want to seem like a winger - but it seems like there is a lot of take and not a lot of give going on here.

most boards on the interent require people to earn their stripes. i speak from experience - being a member of several tiered forums. I often dont have time for the chaff when there is so much good stuff going on with the other wheat lol   thats a good thing. althogh it may not seem like it initially - it does incourage good netizenship. by the time people earn the respect of others they are well on the way to being well recieved by other "good folk".

i think its high time people earnt their stripes on this board. i would like to see a tiered forum - who knows - perhaps it exists and i have not been invited?

cheers
ulysses

edit:grammer - damn it

Given my tenure here, I don't really have any business getting into this discussion, but I must say that I don't think this sort of tiered system is the right solution at all. It smacks of elitism (the synthetic internet variety, which is the worst kind), and I can't imagine any reasonable criteria for separating the "wheat" from the "chaff." Post count and registration date are criteria often used on other forums, but they would be counterproductive here; e.g., I consistently read very insightful and helpful posts from users who have low post counts or have registered only recently. That's a potentially large source of information to exclude.

One of the strengths of this forum, I think, is the democratic way it mixes together hobbyists and neophytes with old hands and outright experts. There will always be "noobs," or dead weight, or chaff, or whatever you want to call them, but that's a fact of life, and not just on the internet. What distinguishes the true experts, I think, is a willingness to share their knowledge rather than establish artificial boundaries between themselves and the "chaff." It's great to have a whole bunch of guys like that on this forum. Virtually all of RG's posts I've read have been both informative and written clearly enough for the laymen (and I'm sure that's no accident). Mark Hammer seems to be an endless supply of information, and he's always willing to share it; that dude's knowledge is surpassed only by his patience. I'm sure there are many others like them, but I haven't been here long enough to figure them all out.

Anyway, a big thanks to all of you generous fellows who give your time and knowledge freely. It really is appreciated. I realize there are a few bad apples out there, but I'm willing to bet that most of the users here are just hobbyists who think building pedals is pretty damn fun. I spend 10 hours a day writing; if I didn't have something else to do with my hands than type on this stupid laptop all day, I'd go nuts! I have no desire to build pedals commercially or become an electronics expert, but I try to learn as much as my time allows and avoid asking stupid or redundant questions.

As for actual suggestions... I don't really have any. Ha! I do think some of the ideas mentioned are good, though:

• When posting layouts/schematics, a disclaimer informing designers that posting their ideas puts them at risk of being stolen (the ideas, not the designers!)
• When registering for the forum and/or viewing layouts/schematics, a disclaimer informing users of our honor system and requesting that they not profit from others' ideas, at least not without permission (threaten permanent banning, social ostracization, tarring & feathering, public caning, etc.)
• A last one that probably won't be too popular: why not just make all of the forums (except the beginner project) and galleries viewable only to registered users? Registration would still be open to everyone, of course, but anonymous lurkers would no longer be able to silently drop in for a few choice ideas then leave. I was amazed when I first found this site and saw all the user-designed layouts and schematics. I was amazed first because they're awesome projects, and second because the designers were being so generous in giving their ideas to the public. But I was even more amazed when I read posts in these forums from designers upset about their ideas being stolen. Huh? Maybe I'm just a glass-half-empty kind of guy, but that seemed like a no-brainer to me. I figured they'd be expecting that.

Whew, I thought I'd sworn off long-winded posts.

[markm]

The thing that strikes me about this thread and all the others lately that revolve around the subject being discussed here is that for the amount of people that have legitimate and honest suggestions to try and rectify the problem, there are just as many that can't resist the temptation to rub just a little bit more salt into the wounds of the BB.
The best course of action right now, right this minute, would be to leave the situation alone, stop aggrivating the subject with more and more "ethics lectures" and the aggressive "off-color" tantrums and get back to standard everyday operation.
I'm a firm beleiver that things have a way of working themselves out naturally and in time if allowed to do so.
Refusing to let nature take it's course with this situation is a bit like trying to put a square peg in a round hole and is bound to be the demise of one of the BEST forums on the net.

[black mariah]

Refusing to let nature take it's course with this situation is a bit like trying to put a square peg in a round hole and is bound to be the demise of one of the BEST forums on the net.

[joelap]

I havent been reading much of this thread, but then again I also havent noticed any of the problems that have been mentioned thus far.  Maybe too much solder fumes in my brain to notice haha.    I'm just stopping by to say one thing and offer a suggestion completely irrelevant to the issues thus far.  Aron, this site is fantastic and I couldn't begin to tell you how grateful I am for folks like you who host this site, and for guys who know so much about this stuff and still take the time to answer all the noobish questions people like me may have.  Regardless of all the crap that may flare up from time to time, it is inspiring for a guy like myself, who is a junior EE student, to see guys who know so much that are so willing to help.  I hope one day I'll be able to help others the way you guys have helped me.  Just felt like sharing to lighten the tense mood a bit, that this website has done IMO immense amounts of good that will always outweigh the negatives.  Now a suggestion... I have a russian (black) small stone, and I spent around 2 hours or so searching this site and google for info on fixing the volume drop, as well as any other tangents I found for other mods (color mod, etc).  I find with a lot of searches, many threads will come up that have unanswered questions or one or two posts in them, but are irrelevant.  I was wondering if it'd be possible to implement a ranking system, such as 0-5 with 5 being the most helpful and 0 being the least helpful for search returns?  Not for individual posts, but where I could search for, say, "small stone mod sovtek" and then rate the returns on a scale from 0-5 based on how well it answered my search query.  That way, when others go to search, most helpful threads for that query will appear first, or it could have the ability to sort by relevance (like now) or by user rating.  Again, not sure if its possible with this board program or not, but worth a shot to suggest.  I hate to ask questions that have already been answered like that, but sometimes the searches return a lot of dead links or unanswered questions.

Again thanks for the great site, and I apologize if you weren't looking for a suggestion like that at the moment.

Joe LaPorta

[KMS]

jeeeeeez guys......all this band width....

I can tell you what would be worth stealing much more than any circuit design on this forum.

This is not a joke and maybe it can be done........but so far.....nada.....zilch......no way....that is all I see.

A viable solution to the top posted problem would be worth billions.

If you get figured out ,sell it quick, because there are so many forums and copyright holders out there looking for this same solution that diystompoxes would become the innovator and leader in a new copyright protection industry worth billions.

I have been to so many forums with this same problem....and seen all kinds of systems.....one of the most popular is the "elite system of segregation and prejudice which could just be called degradation"......were members earn some kind of status rating and then most folks can see that half or more than half of the high status members are not worth a crap and conclude that such members must just be good at sucking up to the web owner.  Then after a year or two the high status members get in big fight about this same issue and then the forum looses the most important members. I'm not sure why this idea is so attractive and popular.....but it never works. If some of the guys want a designer forum......they can go to tripod.com and make their own free forum and lock out anyone they want......don't need diystompbox for that.

We all know who the the real electronics genius are around hear....we don't need no damn status rating.....unless we are ready to watch it all blow up in the biggest fight you ever saw.

Like I said, when you get it all figured out....sell it quick......before someone else steals your copyright protection solution.

One thing that we don't know about the members is which ones are here for what reasons (not a solution to the problem) but it would be an advantage to all members to be able to use the resources and share knowledge not yet tapped into on this site. For example if one ore more sub forums were committed to Music Writers FX and Software, Cover Music FX , and Guitar Modifications then we would be able to advance our knowledge in those areas with current members (a benefit to all). In addition, if the user data was analyzed in those sub forums, then correlations could be made from the statistics (amount of posts by different users and which forums those posts are at) where diystompboxes could then at least have some indication about the real demographics of the members and draw some conclusions about how to optimize marketing strategies.  Not to forget that such data could also be used to draw conclusions about which members are here for electronic design and which ones are here for the sound/music.

If a new forum is developed......it will use resources......and no need to do that unless money can be made or potential marketing/statistics acquired that will culminate in to a gain.

Cheers

[RaceDriver205]

There is no problem. People argue.

[gez]

No they don't!!

[slacker]

Oh yes they do.