RIP to WATMM Discussion thread

  On 1/30/2025 at 11:19 AM, usagi said:

sorry but this is a failure to understand what makes this place a community. the site or platform owner does not make the community, they provide a space for people to come and build it up with their individual contributions and personalities, without which it would be nothing. yes, the often thankless work it takes to create and maintain that space deserves respect, all other things being equal. but saying that the community has to live or die on the unilateral decision of the owner is wrong, it demeans the place and devalues what makes the community special and worth having. especially going forward where everything on the internet is aggregated and click-driven and soulless and impersonal. these spaces are vanishing.

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The community doesn't live or die on the unilateral decision of joyrex, one of us just has to start a new forum. Anyone up for it?

Like, this site could easily have gone dark without warning, if something had happened to joyrex. Its really good that he's been able to give us some warning so we can get organised.

  On 1/30/2025 at 11:19 AM, usagi said:

sorry but this is a failure to understand what makes this place a community. the site or platform owner does not make the community, they provide a space for people to come and build it up with their individual contributions and personalities, without which it would be nothing. yes, the often thankless work it takes to create and maintain that space deserves respect, all other things being equal. but saying that the community has to live or die on the unilateral decision of the owner is wrong, it demeans the place and devalues what makes the community special and worth having. especially going forward where everything on the internet is aggregated and click-driven and soulless and impersonal. these spaces are vanishing.

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I agree and I also feel that this is how things should be, but we all know the reality is that Joyrex can do whatever he wants.  Everything is under his control.  Any actions beyond just shutting it down would be altruistic, beyond who knows how many altruistic acts that we don't know about over the years.

Perhaps we should've asked about community control and ownership a while ago, but that ship had sailed.

Found this gaff after a life-changing rta. The rehab was beyond brutal. I’d get in from heavy physio weight exercises, an arthroscopy, pelvic pin adjustment or trauma therapy & decompress with shared knowledge. Had to find a new mode of listening without percussion & many of you helped.

If archiving is possible, try & actualise it because there’s a greater distillation of a massive range of musical topics alone. Shame I only found about a tits thread recently ………

Thank you, everyone. Have no answers as to what next, some times you just have to be grateful a place such as this existed in the first instance.

DIOLCH.

  On 1/30/2025 at 12:36 PM, Fnorder said:

I wish I still had the old one to do a side by side comparison.

  On 1/30/2025 at 12:52 PM, zazen said:

The community doesn't live or die on the unilateral decision of joyrex, one of us just has to start a new forum. Anyone up for it?

that's not quite the same thing though, is it? the history will be gone.

I can understand sensitivity around handing over possible private data e.g. DMs to new owners but I'm sure there's a compromise. worst case scenario you could wipe some of that stuff and retain what you can as a best middle ground.

  On 1/30/2025 at 7:16 AM, Stock said:

Regarding the Discord/Reddit debate: an alternative might be Lemmy which is a fediverse Reddit.

We could create and host a whole instance which would allow members to create as many subreddits (ie, subforums) as they want. We could have a superstructure that could be isolated from other instances if you're not interested in other types of communities. Imagine a Reddit front page, but with 100% of "watmm" content.

Yes it still has the downsides of the Reddit system, but at least we wouldn't be limited with only one subreddit which would be flooded by so many different discussions.

Plus, the registering process is made a lot easier than other fediverse platforms such as mastodon, mostly thanks to high quality third party apps. I am thinking of Sync which was a very popular Reddit app, now dedicated to Lemmy.

It would also be a more "ethical" solution than Reddit and I think this is important for a lot of people, myself included.

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I'm actually exploring this option - this seems somewhat closeish to a forum. The only issue I can see is members creating sub-forums for everything, which would dilute the usefulness of somethings. But I haven't looked closely at the controls that creators may have.

Cant say owt other than bu-bye and cheers for the CWLP fundraiser, you'll be missed.

I'm speechless. Not been here anywhere near as long as most other users but I can't believe this site is going to disappear. All other alternatives (Discord or Reddit or whatever) are honestly such downgrades from the forum format.

  On 1/30/2025 at 1:36 PM, usagi said:

that's not quite the same thing though, is it? the history will be gone.

True, it might be possible to scrape it into an archive or something.

But how often do we go and look at old threads, really? There are some classics but there's also tens of thousands of old threads that aren't very important.

A new forum with the same-ish people would have plenty going on without all the history. Fresh start, looking at new releases, people will start new discussions about the old releases in time ...

  On 1/30/2025 at 2:26 PM, zazen said:

True, it might be possible to scrape it into an archive or something.

But how often do we go and look at old threads, really? There are some classics but there's also tens of thousands of old threads that aren't very important.

A new forum with the same-ish people would have plenty going on without all the history. Fresh start, looking at new releases, people will start new discussions about the old releases in time ...

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Nah, I use the search functionality all the time to look over historic conversations related to music/film/tv/news and how it was discussed at the time. That might be the most depressing sentence I've ever typed but I can't deny I'd miss it when it's gone.

  On 1/30/2025 at 2:26 PM, zazen said:

True, it might be possible to scrape it into an archive or something.

But how often do we go and look at old threads, really? There are some classics but there's also tens of thousands of old threads that aren't very important.

A new forum with the same-ish people would have plenty going on without all the history. Fresh start, looking at new releases, people will start new discussions about the old releases in time ...

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All the music threads like "Vapourwave" or "Let's have your jungle" all have hundreds and hundreds of youtube videos or recommendations for some great tunes. Found out about so much music this way.

  On 1/30/2025 at 2:35 PM, chenGOD said:

All the music threads like "Vapourwave" or "Let's have your jungle" all have hundreds and hundreds of youtube videos or recommendations for some great tunes. Found out about so much music this way.

Ok true. But asking joyrex to transfer ownership is asking him to do work, and he's done doing work.

We could just start those threads again

Or ... What are the implications of scraping some of the best threads as static html and hosting them elsewhere? who holds the copyright to all this stuff, officially?

I think before we as a community jump to any conclusions or rash decisions, we should take some time to explore the possibilities and then initiate a course of action before June 3rd. Joyrex has only just made the announcement, and everybody is trying to provide a solution right away.

A lot has already been said here. Sad to see it (probably) go. Lots of lols have been had, good music, good art posts, etc. etc. My thanks to Joyrex and all the mods for keeping WATMM running for so long.

Like others have said it's a really special place in this weird, bland, nondescript social media internet world we've been living in the last couple of years.

It would be really cool if someone would take over, so this place could keep going. But a lot of people, me included, can't be arsed which is fair enough.

Reddit of course doesn't quite cut it.

WATMM is the shit

  On 1/30/2025 at 2:31 PM, MichaelListon said:

Nah, I use the search functionality all the time to look over historic conversations related to music/film/tv/news and how it was discussed at the time. That might be the most depressing sentence I've ever typed but I can't deny I'd miss it when it's gone.

This lol

The problem with discord's quoting AFAIK is there is no way to quote only a single segment of someone's post. EDIT: and no way to easily quote something from one channel in another channel, besides providing a link.

Plus of course it would be a pity if it's not publicly searchable/visible. I have some gripes with Discourse but IMHO it would be preferrable. We could join the ranks of llllllll and elektronauts.

  On 1/30/2025 at 3:14 PM, th555 said:

The problem with discord's quoting AFAIK is there is no way to quote only a single segment of someone's post. EDIT: and no way to easily quote something from one channel in another channel, besides providing a link.

Plus of course it would be a pity if it's not publicly searchable/visible. I have some gripes with Discourse but IMHO it would be preferrable. We could join the ranks of llllllll and elektronauts.

yeah i think discourse is the way to go as well

  On 1/30/2025 at 2:44 PM, chenGOD said:

we should take some time to explore the possibilities and then initiate a course of action before June 3rd. Joyrex has only just made the announcement, and everybody is trying to provide a solution right away.

for sure…i’d say it’s a necessity to have at the very least a set placeholder of a place/places well before that date of closure for these walls. lots of people could get lost in the shuffle of shifting to wherever else may be an option if there’s no set in stone places or at least people to contact in the loop of whatever persons are coordinating/implementing the new. it’s basically already February is all i’m saying…June will be here quick

  On 1/30/2025 at 2:44 PM, chenGOD said:

I think before we as a community jump to any conclusions or rash decisions, we should take some time to explore the possibilities and then initiate a course of action before June 3rd. Joyrex has only just made the announcement, and everybody is trying to provide a solution right away.

I was thinking maybe try multiple approaches to a continuation, and see which one pans out the best. If we put all our eggs in one basket again, we could end up back here down the road.

ffs reading all the reactions in this thread legit brings tears to my eyes

Good seeing put to words the feeling that I think a lot of us have about WATMM. Spent my formative years here as well. It's full of creative free thinkers over here.

Forgot to say: whatever happens, wish you all the best, take care.  And let's prevent WATMM's legacy from fading away somehow.

I fear having multiple parallel options spring up and having the community splinter off into separate tribes. I’m sure that’s probably exactly what will happen but hopefully most of us will end up sticking together. It’s times like this that I really wish I was more knowledgeable on web stuff. 

  On 1/30/2025 at 2:31 PM, Nowonos said:

Nah, I use the search functionality all the time to look over historic conversations related to music/film/tv/news and how it was discussed at the time. That might be the most depressing sentence I've ever typed but I can't deny I'd miss it when it's gone.

Nah its not bleak. The archive is full of hidden treasure, the Ask Autechre and the AFX Soundcloud dump threads are documents for the ages.

Often I'll discover some old techno/electro record I think is fantastic, will google to find more info about it and more often than not the 4th or 5th hit down will be a watmm thread with about 8 posts in it and I'll think shit how did I miss this at the time.?

  On 1/29/2025 at 5:57 PM, Adamovich said:

Anyone? @Rubin Farr @mcbpete @chaosmachine @Herr Jan

I would help chip in or possibly take over paying for its billing.  I am completely hands-off because these machines, per their community, tend to govern themselves.  

im youtube.com/midinerd fwiw

  On 1/30/2025 at 2:44 PM, chenGOD said:

I think before we as a community jump to any conclusions or rash decisions, we should take some time to explore the possibilities and then initiate a course of action before June 3rd. Joyrex has only just made the announcement, and everybody is trying to provide a solution right away.

that's what we're doing though, discussing options. but there is obviously a clear first preference to retain the current format and history because any alternative is losing something or other.

  On 1/30/2025 at 3:37 PM, J3FF3R00 said:

I fear having multiple parallel options spring up and having the community splinter off into separate tribes. I’m sure that’s probably exactly what will happen but hopefully most of us will end up sticking together. It’s times like this that I really wish I was more knowledgeable on web stuff. 

not if we stick with the obvious choice. this is actually a downside of discords I've found, people group into cliques.

Can only say that for me this is the best site on the internet and will be very sad to see it go. 
 

I’ve also as a relative latecomer looked at lots of old threads about music I wasn’t around to discuss at the time so I echo the people hoping the old stuff can stay online somehow

I don’t really have anyone in real-life who shares my interest in the idms and I think this place has an ?atmosphere? that isn’t to be found on any of the other big electronic music discussion places.

at the very least the meme thread must be preserved