Sorry Murray. Wasn’t trying to get any glory…just making a point. But you did write “King of the Forum” about me;-)

Hmm, well, not quite, some of us were there both at the beginning and at the end.

Anyway, I share the annoyance at all the old posts being autocratically trashed, given the support that some of us lent the old forum in the last four and a half years.

No forewarning, acknowledgment or understanding of the point either.

Presumably, all of these posts will soon be trashed as well?

I do think somethings about this new forum (apart from it’s usability) are good:

1) I think that the chance to talk about songwriting in general might attract more users…as opposed to the focus on the previous forum of putting songs up for critique.

I don’t know whether it is easy to get a positive critique enviroment without some face to face contact…without some sort of relationship with the folk who are critiquing. I speak as someone who gave a lot of critiques on site…and as someone who got defensive about some of the critiques recieved;-)

I get critiques on a one on one level in other places, and they proved to be more helpful, and easier to digest than the “from a distance” impact of the forum. Maybe it’s a british thing!

Anyway, I feel this forum could be more useful as a place to talk about songwriting in general rather using it for the nitty gritty of song critiquing. Others might feel differently of course.

2) I do like the fact that this forum feels potentially more connected to the UKSF in it’s present format. However, for it really to feel part of that scene staff members, and possibly resident students, need to be getting involved in the forum on a regular basis. Maybe you could persuade some of the “known” names that you are connected with to get involved. I realise that it can be a very vulnerable enviroment, where some people will start to get lippy…but hey … for everyone of them there are 5 (?) who are generally wanting to discuss and grow in their writing. Even if they are pretty defensive in the process!

I appreciate the attempts to get it right that you are making. I don’t think that you are far off the mark…if you can return to the usability of the old forum and include a more direct involvement from UKSF tutors.

We’re trying this new comments-based system at the moment, and we want to find out what people think of it. If there is demand for something closer to the old forum (as this feedback seems to suggest) then we’ll explore that further.

Joe, Simon & the admin team

I’m asking here because my attempts at following the “contact us” links have not led to any contact.

Plus, I would still be interested (I asked above) to know if there is an archive where I can access all the posts from the previous forum. I committed many hours of time and many thousands of words to that, and it would be a shame if our perusings were lost in the ether.

The forum even if it wasn’t used as much as was hoped, is a good place to advertise your wares, apart from being a potentially useful resource for songwriters. If forum members start to feel like second class citizens then it can reflect badly on UKSF as a whole (this is even happening in some ways to huge institutions such as the BBC). Better, from everyone’s point of view I feel, to have no forum at all, than a half-hearted attempt at one. Sorry if this sounds overly critical, but it looks like that could be the way it’s heading if you’re not careful.