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Can someone share the story of the HC decline?


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Funny, I had written something about the state of the site but it looks like an edit caused the whole thing to cap out. How did this forum go from thriving in 2001 to having hardly anyone here and 1/2 broken all the time? Seriously, it makes no sense that other forums don't seem to have these problems.

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Locking people out of their accounts may be a partial clue too. :p

 

HC has long been a centre for darwinian selection, with the quick mocking the weak and causing merriment for those in between. All that got reversed and sanitised a while back, and it's family-friendly now without the egotistical nut-jobs and spammers

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They are studying this site at The Harvard School of Business as a case study to see how many different catastrophic ways a website can kill off it's user base and keep limping along telling the remaining few users they are fixing it, while not fixing it, but implementing more errors and glitches.

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What the pox happened to signatures, or is it just crappy Safari?

 

Sigs were pulled over from the previous software as HTML... the current software is vBulletin... so they don't look "right." You can edit your sig and convert it - here is a link to a thread with the how-to instructions for that:

 

http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/Forums_General/acapella-50/31114540-signature-quick-and-dirty-fix

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OK, this will be my longest post ever, but it won’t let me post this, so I’ll try to split it up, giving me errors … anyway, this is how I experienced the demise of HC …

 

In the beginning :

The year was 1995. I stumbled upon OLGA and thought I struck gold. Thousands and thousands of guitar tabs, but it kept me busy for years, I printed boxes full of these OLGA guitar tabs, all wrong …

Harmony Central got my attention in 1998 or so, while researching gear.

I discovered the reviews and used these as a benchmark for acquiring gear.

I started lurking at the forums in 1999, and finally joined in 2002. My first thread was a question about a pedal purchase I was about to make, wanted some feedback. I got feedback within an hour. I bought the pedal, it was a Frostwave Resonator.

Trolls were funny, the community was great, perfect balance between garbage threads, spam and informative threads, no mods back then, there were some flameouts and the occasional serious internet fights, people came and went.

Some stayed and participated, like myself.

It was the great era of HC forums.

 

 

June 2005

Musician’s Friend Buys Harmony Central

It was all good

Forums became moderated

Still a thriving global community

 

 

August 2008

The connection has timed out

The server at acapella.harmony-central.com is taking too long to respond.

The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few

moments.

If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network

connection.

If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure

that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

 

HC reached the limit, too much info, too much users, it was time for new hardware , hmmm, and new software, imminent changes ahead, a lot of good peeps from HCFX left and formed their own forum.

 

 

2010 : the Jive debacle, bye bye User Reviews

AN OPEN LETTER FROM CRAIG JOHNSON, HARMONY CENTRAL CEO

Dear Harmony Central,

We listened.

Harmony Central is not just a web site, nor is it bits and bytes. It is a community. This community has been loyal and supportive, and we have been happy to provide a home for what we feel is the most important community in the music world.

Unfortunately, that home has been falling apart at an accelerating rate due to a combination of hardware and software issues, many unique to our situation. To keep the community alive, we made a decision to switch to a more capable platform. Our intention was to take Harmony Central into the 21st century with a site worthy of all of you.

As you know, that is not what happened. After a week of operation, it’s painfully clear HC 2.0 is not ready for prime time. However, we’re also aware that many people are getting familiar with and enjoying the new site, bugs and all, and we respect their opinion too.

So, we are working to create a “hybrid” site. For example, there have been virtually no negative responses and many positive responses about news on HC 2.0, so it makes no sense to roll that element back to the 1.0 version. On the other hand, user reviews on HC 2.0 are, frankly, broken. There are no articles in the 2.0 Resource Center, and due to the video player only recently becoming stable, only a handful of videos in the 2.0 Media Center. And the forums...

This is clearly unacceptable.

Our plan – and there are significant technical challenges, so bear with us – is to maintain those elements of 1.0 that work until the equivalent elements in 2.0 are equal or better, regardless of how long that takes. For example, if you want to go to user reviews, then you could access the 1.0 version until we are absolutely sure that the 2.0 version is better. If you want articles, you’ll go to 1.0 because that’s where they are for now. Same with videos.

Forums are a special case. Our plan is to make most forums available as HC 1.0 / VBulletin forums. There will be some exceptions (like Pro Reviews, as they have so much rich media, and archived forums, as it makes no sense to re-migrate them as they get limited traffic). If particular moderators want their forums on 2.0, that’s fine; if they want to stay with 1.0, that’s fine too. If they want, they can even moderate both and steer them in different directions. We want the moderators – the unsung heroes of Harmony Central – to have full freedom in charting the course of their own communities.

Concurrently, we plan to keep the 2.0 forums open for two reasons. First, these forums need a lot of changes for them to meet our (and your) expectations, so we need a “test lab” to try these changes. Second, based on user feedback, there are people who see the huge potential of the new format but don’t like the implementation, so who better to direct us on how to improve it?

Unfortunately, getting 1.0 back into the picture brings back its problems as well. But if all goes according to plan, 1.0 will remain viable while 2.0 will continue to improve with the help of the community. In a way, it’s the same kind of transition as when Apple went to OS X or Intel chips; old and new platforms were supported until the new platforms were up to the task.

One fact remains certain: We can’t have a site where things don’t work, or that people don’t want to visit. We recognize and deeply regret the disruption to the community. The hybrid approach is risky, but either rolling back completely to 1.0 or trying to tough it out with 2.0 are even riskier. And details need to be worked out: What happens with re-directs? Will you have to log in twice if you want to visit both 1.0 and 2.0? Will 1.0 crash and burn before 2.0 fulfills the community’s expectations? Will it be possible to migrate the 1.0 forums to 2.0 if 2.0 is also live?

So please, this isn’t the last word; this is the first word. But we wanted to let you know as soon as possible what we hope to do. We are certainly aware it’s a compromise, but after studying all the possibilities, it’s the least objectionable combination of a quick fix while simultaneously laying down the long-term foundation we have to pursue.

Finally, I want to express my deepest appreciation for our exceptionally hard-working team of moderators and our editorial staff, who have taken the heat for problems not of their own making – particularly Craig Anderton. They made a heroic effort to make a problematic site work, but in the end, even they couldn’t. They have all served as extremely strong advocates for the community. The course of action we are pursuing is based on their input as well as yours.

Reading over your feedback on the new site, yes, I saw anger but more than that, I saw passion for what Harmony Central represents. We do not want – ever – to interfere with that passion.

Your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you for speaking, so that we could listen. We can’t promise this will be a glitch-free process, but we will do everything in our power to give you the site you want now while simultaneously building you a better one, with your continued (and greatly appreciated) assistance.

Sincerely,

Craig Johnson

CEO, Harmony Central

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April 2010

The Jive debacle did not get a well deserved prize for worst forum format ever.

personally, I consider it to be the 1st major attempt to use the community in some MC marketing ploy, hmmm , also first big member purge.

Simple case of a corporate entity taking over a community built site (originally), then trying to reformat the thing and change up the whole interface without any regard to how the community would react.

 

May 2010

Dear Harmony Central Community,

We will be shutting down the Jive ("HC 2.0") forums Tuesday morning (May 18) at 3AM Pacific Time. The forums link in the top navigation bar will then become a straight link to the vBulletin forums.

Jive search will be reindexed that night, and all 2.0 forum posts will be removed from search. Nothing will change for those using vBulletin already, but for at least the short term the community will have to live with two accounts, two profiles, and two log ins - one for the vBulletin forums, and for the content part of the site (articles, videos, etc.).

We deeply regret any inconvenience to those who liked the 2.0 forums, and want to thank you for standing by our attempts to renovate the forums to include more functionality. Unfortunately, we cannot continue to maintain two separate forum structures. Based on comments from the community and the traffic stats, there is an overwhelming preference for the vBulletin forums. Although the problems with the vBulletin forums that served as a motivation to change them remains, we are working on solutions to these problems. Please bear with us if there are occasional system outages as we work on this.

We also apologize for the short notice, but we want to implement these changes and fixes as soon as possible.

The content part of 2.0 will remain, and several fixes in that section are being made concurrently with the forum switchover: News articles will now display properly once you get past the first page, the session timeout is being increased to avoid people being logged off during long sessions, and user reviews will display the overall rating and number of reviews. Additional fixes, enhancements, and updates are forthcoming, and we will keep you informed of these.

We greatly appreciate your patience during this difficult transition to improve Harmony Central's reliability and functionality. Our commitment to creating a better site remains unchanged, and we will continue listening to the community in order to make sure that commitment takes the right direction.

Again, thank you. We believe the worst is behind us, and the best is yet to come.

-- Your Harmony Central Team"

 

So they brought back the vB forum, still no search engine.

Then Kaboom,

both Jive and vB went down

Crappy servers

 

hc.jpg

 

September 2010

Pedalbuilders and knowledgeable members are bowing out. Regulars leave.

Content becomes mainstream

Chat crüe teams up,

Immaturity ensues

Traffic continues to decline.

This is the worst period of the forums. After another member purge, the forums did not recover and things started to deteriorate.slowly.

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jump to

 

January 2013

Time for a big change.

Lithium

in my opinion, another attempt to use the forums as a marketing tool, to use metrics on the community to analyze what gear is most talked about ...

 

Announcement: IT’S TIME FOR THE NEW PLATFORM!!

 

Before the end of January, Harmony Central will move its forums and content to a new platform.

Frankly, we’re pushing this ahead of schedule because we just can’t wait any longer to have a functional, stable home for what has got to be the most loyal and patient online community on the planet (maybe even the galaxy).

We’ve been testing, running the workflow past regular users, checking off bugs, and we admit it, doing a few burnt offering to the Gods of Endless Code . . . and so far, all signs say “go.”

However, there are a few of what software manufacturers refer to euphemistically as “known issues” (translation: “we know it’s a problem, but we haven’t been able to fix it yet”). Namely...

At a certain date (we’ll announce it, but it’s soon), all content and posts will be migrated to the new platform.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that anything past that date can’t be part of the migration process, which is fairly lengthy. So, posts after migration starts will be gone forever.

If you post the answer to the meaning of life after migration begins, please save it and re-post in the new environment. Private messages and attachments in vBulletin can’t be migrated.

Anything embedded in a post (YouTube video, image, etc.) will migrate; it’s only files attached to the message that will be lost. We may have multiquote at launch, but probably not.

We will not have Open Jam or the Political Forum at the outset.

We need to limit traffic until we know things are working.

Yes, that sucks. Yes, I know. I've argued against that decision and there's nothing I can do about it.

There will be no reviews of any kind—pro reviews, user reviews, or review articles written by our staff—until February, and possibly March. Separating them out lets us switch over to the forums sooner, and we don’t think anyone will consider that a bad tradeoff.

 

Are we nervous? You bet. We all remember what happened with the “revision-whose-name-we-dare-not-speak.” But one of the problems before was that we moved from a site that was falling apart, yet still mostly functional, to one that was dysfunctional. This time, we’re moving from a dysfunctional platform to one that shows tremendous promise.

 

Two more things. First, much of the non-forum parts of the site will have to be reconstructed. You may run across articles that haven’t been formatted properly, or are missing audio examples. We’ll be going through the articles one-by-one and prepping them, which will be time-consuming but also gives us a chance to do some tweaks and revisions. It’s all good.

 

Second, and most importantly, you have no idea how grateful we are for those of you who didn’t give up on HC. If you think this has been frustrating for you, imagine how we felt as we watched the site we’ve poured our lives into fall apart. Yes, we’re nervous . . . but we think our faith will be rewarded. And as a result, we think yours will be, too.

 

You have our deepest thanks and respect. Now, I have to stop typing so I can go back to crossing my fingers.

 

--Craig Anderton on behalf of the entire Harmony Central team (including the hamsters who kept the vBulletin servers running, No worries--they’ll be getting a generous severance package, and get to spend more time with their families.)

by Anderton at Jan 9, 2013 7:50 PM

 

Later that month

 

Not long after this announcement, Anderton jumped ship and posted following message :

 

"Let me clarify a few things.

I have consulted to Gibson on and off for seven years. It has always been a wonderful, challenging, and educational experience. I was asked to consult again on another project, and went to Nashville for a meeting. There I was offered what is essentially the opportunity of a lifetime. I was the only person under consideration for the job, and Gibson made very sure that I would take it.

 

History repeats itself. When I moved my SSS forum from Musicplayer.com in 2005, I had seven offers of where to take it. HC wanted to make sure I would choose them, and acted accordingly.

 

Obviously, it was very difficult for me to leave HC. But, I also felt that I could leave now because of several factors:

 

There is a 90-day transition period where I will continue in my present capacity, and oversee an orderly transition. In fact, Gibson specifically said that taking good care of HC during this transition was a priority. So, your being stuck with me for a while longer is actually part of my job description with Gibson

 

We now have a solid hardware foundation for the platform, which allows doing so many things we couldn't do before.

 

Although I'm the "face" of HC, this has always been a team effort in the strongest possible sense of the word. Losing any one of us would have equal impact. Conversely, all of us can fill in for each other at a moment's notice.

 

The current team will be augmented. The exact details remain to be worked out, but I've recommended some people who I think are a perfect fit for the community.

 

The new platform indicates the depth of commitment that MF has to Harmony Central. Yes, it was probably pushed out too soon because the old platform was non-functional, and I was a factor in saying it was worth the risk because an incomplete platform was better than no platform at all. So, I take responsibility for that gamble. However, work behind the scenes is ongoing. The punch list is extensive and shaped by the feedback from the community.

 

And by the way...I'm not dying or going to Mars or anything. HC will always be a click away on my computer. I will continue to update articles when possible, and don't be surprised if I nuke some spammers whenever I see them

 

I believe Harmony Central's best days lie ahead. As long as people like Phil, Jon, Dendy, and Chris are involved, they know how this ship needs to be pointed. They are as good a bunch of people as you will find anywhere, and they understand and respect this community.

 

I do have one advantage in that I know what the plans are for the future. I don't think it's my place to say what those plans are, but that gave me the confidence of knowing HC would be in good hands.

 

Again, let me emphasize that working with Gibson on this level is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I definitely have more years behind me than ahead of me, and it was "seize the day" time. Even companies I consulted to for decades, to whom I will no longer consult, were happy for me and conveyed the dominant opinion..."You would have to be insane not to take that opportunity."

 

You're in very good hands, far better than the situation we've had the last couple years when we didn't even know if the forum would open when we clicked on it. I am not being pushed away from Harmony Central, I am being attracted to Gibson...big difference.

 

In a recent interview, I was asked why I thought HC had such staying power,and the implication was that I had something to do with it. It's not me, it's not even Phil. Jon, Dendy, or Chris. I said "It’s the community that has the staying power and makes Harmony Central what it is. I’m just a very active part of the community. You don’t give credit to the wine glass for the wine that it contains."

 

It's gonna be fine."

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March 2013

Pron threads

Trolls make a return, closed threads are open again, mods cannot issue bans

Spam threads

Cheap kitchen units, superman costumes and your usual load of vuiton fannypack offerings.

Things may have moved

Passwords need to be reset.

Hang in there, stay tuned

Time to bring the Harmony back to Harmony Central

the Forums refuse to die

 

April 2013

Special Announcement:

 

Beginning at 5 PM PDT on Friday April 4 2013, Harmony Central will be in "read-only" mode for an estimated 40 - 65 hours. There may also be brief periods when the site is taken down completely during this time period. That's the bad news. The good news is that this is being done in order to bring the User Reviews back! Thank you for your support and patience - we appreciate it!

 

It would take another 9 months before the reviews made a return, siince the return of the User Reviews, not many reviews are being submitted any longer.

 

Also another member purge

 

May 2013

Important Announcement About Harmony Central by Dendy Jarrett

 

Dear Harmony Central Community Member:

Harmony Central has been getting a lot of attention lately—the forum structure is back to a familiar environment, the Home page focuses on editorial (with the return of the ever-popular news feed), and many User Reviews are back. (Most reviews dating back to 1996 are also in the database, however they are not being searched properly. We’re working on this, and hope to resolve this issue soon.)

Harmony Central’s Mission Statement is “Educating, entertaining, and empowering the world’s largest online community of musicians.” Unfortunately, for several years Harmony Central has been banned from public schools, libraries, music conservatories, university music departments, and the like. Additionally, various ad agencies have refused to advertise due to the extreme nature of some forums, as well as language.

This needs to change, because it costs money to provide a community like Harmony Central—and it’s discouraging that some institutions aren’t even allowed to know we exist. Furthermore, Harmony Central recently became Safe Harbor Certified, allowing musicians as young as 13 to have access to the site. The next generation needs to be able to tap Harmony Central’s incredible expertise.

Therefore, we need to provide a more civilized environment across all of the forums. Starting Thursday, the Off Topic forums will become Opt-In forums that require you to request access. Once you’ve been granted access, you’ll see them on the forums list just like you always have, and will see no difference going forward even though they’ll be hidden from general users.

Also, over the weekend we’ll be turning on a limited language filter (for the non-hidden forums) to restrict language that’s not appropriate in a public setting. The bottom line is that Harmony Central will be shifting to a PG-13 status as of Friday, May 24th, 2013.

We hope you will embrace these positive changes, and that they will improve your experience at Harmony Central. As always, thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Dendy Jarrett

Director of Harmony Central Communities, for Team Harmony Central"

 

the spammers swiftly adapted their strategies and started posting spam threads offering Fisher Price Toys

 

Also, bleep

 

December 2013

forums are a wasteland,

new members are signing up every day, 25% spammers, 60% non posters, shills

HC still claiming to be the biggest community with over 500.000 members, the global community is shattered, nearly 20% of the traffic is coming from spammers

Site is frequently down for maintenance.

 

An announcement that the days of bad strategic choices are over.

Rumors of a big change ahead

Hurrah.

 

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March 2014

There is currently 1 user on line

People are desperately trying to log in.

 

March 7, 2014

ANNOUNCING THE ALL-NEW HARMONY CENTRAL

 

We're pre-empting this week's edition of Music Gear Weekly with a very special announcement: Harmony Central is about to undergo a major renovation! We've been working behind the scenes for months on an all-new platform, along with the return of everyone's favorite forum software, vBulletin. Now it's time to have all hands on deck as we prepare to "flip the switch," so to speak, and ensure that everything is working as it should. The new Harmony Central has a fresher, brighter feel (as reflected in Music Gear Weekly), along with fully functioning user reviews, powerful search functionality, and of course the aforementioned return to vBulletin in the forums.

 

When you log in for the first time, you will be prompted to reset your password. Once complete, we recommend you clear your browser's cache. Then log in and start exploring!

 

If you run into any problems, Team HC is here to help. We'll be active in the Feedback Forum answering questions and making sure the transition is as smooth as possible.

 

Later that day:

Important Notice

We are currently experiencing a site wide login issue and are working diligently to fix it. Please stand by. Thank you for your patience.

Team HC

 

and finally

No_user_zps35ca3610.jpg

 

You know what

Let's start over again.

I think it can only get better from now on

 

 

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March 2014

There is currently 1 user on line

People are desperately trying to log in.

 

March 7, 2014

ANNOUNCING THE ALL-NEW HARMONY CENTRAL

 

We're pre-empting this week's edition of Music Gear Weekly with a very special announcement: Harmony Central is about to undergo a major renovation! We've been working behind the scenes for months on an all-new platform, along with the return of everyone's favorite forum software, vBulletin. Now it's time to have all hands on deck as we prepare to "flip the switch," so to speak, and ensure that everything is working as it should. The new Harmony Central has a fresher, brighter feel (as reflected in Music Gear Weekly), along with fully functioning user reviews, powerful search functionality, and of course the aforementioned return to vBulletin in the forums.

 

When you log in for the first time, you will be prompted to reset your password. Once complete, we recommend you clear your browser's cache. Then log in and start exploring!

 

If you run into any problems, Team HC is here to help. We'll be active in the Feedback Forum answering questions and making sure the transition is as smooth as possible.

 

Later that day:

Important Notice

We are currently experiencing a site wide login issue and are working diligently to fix it. Please stand by. Thank you for your patience.

Team HC

 

and finally

No_user_zps35ca3610.jpg

 

You know what

Let's start over again.

I think it can only get better from now on

 

 

YEP!

let`s check this place again,

next year...

 

SIGH

ROLL EYES

(insert yer fav. smiley here...)

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Bieke's history is astoundingly well done. Not sure whether to be impressed or disturbed - get a hobby, young man!

 

.... oh, that's right: you have one. Bieke has refrained from analysis and judgement, but I think that it's worth noting that during the period covered by that history, the world has seen the rise (and often fall) of Friendster, MySpace, FaceBook, Smartphones (which means every portable app that has been developed), not to mention scores and scads of websites that have stable forums and an active user community.

 

Why was it so difficult here? You could point to a bad outbreak of Dunning-Kruger, combined with poor management, and you'd probably be correct. Notice that all of the communications from HC avoid any detail of problems? This is probably to avoid the embarrassment of revealing just how shallow was the knowledge base of the team, and just how small the budget was/is.

 

I've co-founded online communities and have seen them rise and eventually fall/fail. There will always be ups, downs, and life cycles, and of course change.

 

HC has been run by people who don't realize that they don't know what they're doing, and that's why it is where it is. That is the underlying issue, and it is why changes to software, servers, and etc. don't help. The problem is the crew, not the ship.

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Harmony Central never threw any posts away or archived anything, the database kept growing and growing and vBulletin was not up to the task. Simply archiving old threads (so they are still showing up in a Google search) would have solved a lot of problems, this is how TGP does it.

 

A lot of traffic comes from google, searching for keywords when they did the Jive conversion none of the links in google worked and that caused the biggest drop. Any forum needs a good mix of new vs existing members, etc...

 

Competition, there are a lot of new ways to get information these days. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other competing forums, magazines, etc... and people are going to go where they can find that information.

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YEP!

let`s check this place again,

next year...

 

SIGH

ROLL EYES

(insert yer fav. smiley here...)

 

 

 

hmmm, I would not wait that long, better check it end of this year

HC domain name expires on December 27, 2014

just sayin'

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