Forum Changes: Please Read

[Thriller]

UKMIX Forum Changes: May 2019

Feedback Survey

Thank you again to everybody who took part in the feedback survey earlier in the year - if you haven't already seen, the responses and results from these questions are broken down and commented on HERE.

Premium Users

We've begun the Username Amnesty, which runs until the end of May and we're going to give Premium Users their own colour, which should hopefully help make them more visible on the homepage. Look out for a poll soon in the Premium Forum where you can vote for the winning colour.

New Forum Structure

After your feedback on the proposed options, the team have decided to go with a refreshed structure to tie in with the upgrade from earlier in the year. As such, you will now see that the genre forums have been removed - all topics have been moved over (following a fair amount of time and effort by the moderators and admins I should add!) to our three new music forums:

• Songs
• Albums
• Tours

Another big change is The Retro now becomes The Vault! All songs over five years old are now housed in their own decade sub-forums, making categorising and search easier. The Retro Charts (name unchanged) can be found in their respective decade sub-forums.

Lastly, as stated in the feedback results:

• Celebrity Gossip and World News & Politics = World News & Celebrity Gossip
• TV and Movies = Entertainment

New Music Friday Thread

As previously mentioned, the forums homepage will be seeing a New Music Friday thread, which will present as a forum that directs you to the thread. urbanmusik has put himself forwards to manage this thread and keep it regularly updated - we hope this thread will help showcase the best in new music each week and encourage posters to discover and recommend more new music! This ties in with...

Spotify Embedding

Spotify embedding has been introduced on UKMIX to tie in with the NMF thread - this enables you to embed songs, albums or playlists within your post. See HERE for instructions on how!

Thread Formats

It's been agreed that a consistent thread title format will be put in place for the songs and albums - please create your new threads in the following way:

Artist - Title Of The Song Or Album (feat. XXX)
Artist - Title [EP] (only use for EPs in the Albums forum)

Please try not to add any extra information that clutters up the title.

Emoticons

New emoticons which will closely resemble the iPhone emojis will soon be added to our current batch, however, just to make it clear - these are hosted smilies, they are not emoticons (i.e. the Apple emoticon on your mobile phone will not translate to this software - you will instead use one of the centrally hosted smilies which look the same). Emoticons currently aren't easily accessible on the mobile site, but it is something that should change...

Forum Upgrades

In 6-9 months time, Wayne will be upgrading the forums again - this time to vBulletin 5 software. The vBulletin 5 software is considerably more mobile friendly and sleeker - at that point, he will also need to re-design the site as the current style is compatible predominantly on vB4 templates and a final decision on a homepage will be made. Thank you for your feedback on the homepage, it will all be considered when the time comes!

The current options available to mobile users are to remain on mobile style with limited functionality or use the desktop style on your mobile.

View Your Posts

The "View Your Posts" button is something that many people like to use - this still exists! Click on the "My Posts" drop-down arrow in the top-right of the desktop-view forum page. This gives you three options to view your posts, your threads and threads you have posted in.

Like Button

A "like" button will soon be introduced to compliment our user rep system, enabling you to like individual posts.

GIF Usage

Just to re-iterate what was announced a few weeks back, GIFs can now be used more widely:

• Songs, Albums and Tours
• The Vault
• The Lounge
• General Artists Discussion

GIFs should not be posted outside of these forums and there is a strict limit of one GIF per post. Excessive use or not adhering to these new rules may result in infractions being issued or the policy being reversed altogether after a review later in the year.

Facebook

Facebook integration is coming to UKMIX - we're not entirely sure what this looks like as yet, but it's another development to look out for later in the year!

[KEY9481]

I am so excited for this new structure, really happy about a tour section!
And I knew I was not crazy about GIFs lol.

[Tansike]

I‘m surprised by this change as more people voted for proposal 2 with genres instead of songs/albums.

Huge thanks for all the work, but I really have to say I‘m not a big fan of that change. Let‘s see if I‘ll get used to it.

[Thriller]

I‘m surprised by this change as more people voted for proposal 2 with genres instead of songs/albums.

Huge thanks for all the work, but I really have to say I‘m not a big fan of that change. Let‘s see if I‘ll get used to it.

We considered that, but only 16 people had voted on the proposals at the time of closing - absolutely dreadful number considering how many active users we have! If the contribution had been greater, we'd have definitely given it a lot more consideration.

[Goldmoney]

Great job, Wayne! I’m especially pleased for gifs.

I’ll definitely consider upgrading to Premium soon.

[Magnus]

Artist - Title Of The Song Or Album (feat. XXX)

This is incorrect according to the language rules for titles in English. This example should be:

Artist - Title of the Song or Album (feat. XXX)

[biscuits]

Hope you’re taking notes [MENTION=834]Thriller[/MENTION] hun

[aRat]

Like Button

A "like" button will soon be introduced to compliment our user rep system, enabling you to like individual posts.

Wait, users wanted this?

[menime123]

Wait, users wanted this?

Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get at least one... one day.

[Thriller]

This is incorrect according to the language rules for titles in English. This example should be:

Artist - Title of the Song or Album (feat. XXX)

We make our own rules here babes.

[Tansike]

We considered that, but only 16 people had voted on the proposals at the time of closing - absolutely dreadful number considering how many active users we have! If the contribution had been greater, we'd have definitely given it a lot more consideration.

Thanks for replying!

Yeah, I was surprised there weren't more voters in that poll as well. Anyways, I hope I get used to the new format. It just doesn't make sense at all for me, especially as someone who also roots for not so popular artists who will get lost faster now - at least that's what I think, so I'll see how it will be after a while, maybe my fears won't be true and it will all be fine. So still a big thanks for all the work you and others put into all of this, it's really appreciated even if I'm not the biggest fan of that particular change so far.

[aRat]

Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get at least one... one day.

Thank you, MenInMe henny

My dream is to have as many likes as the number of men that have come through your door

[beredy]

I still wish GIFs weren't allowed. It was refreshing not seeing GIFs everywhere.

[bm08]

Thanks for your hard work!

[Thriller]

Thanks for replying!

Yeah, I was surprised there weren't more voters in that poll as well. Anyways, I hope I get used to the new format. It just doesn't make sense at all for me, especially as someone who also roots for not so popular artists who will get lost faster now - at least that's what I think, so I'll see how it will be after a while, maybe my fears won't be true and it will all be fine. So still a big thanks for all the work you and others put into all of this, it's really appreciated even if I'm not the biggest fan of that particular change so far.

Hopefully it works out, but these things are always open to review further down the line! Glad you appreciate the efforts.

[IVyoncé]

Thanks for the hard work

[ViviLittleM]

hopefully I won't be lost lmao

[Preyoncé]

Thanks team. Though I think GIF usage should be allowed by Premium members. Maybe it would entice others to become Premium members?

[Marchum]

It’s just getting worse and worse for me, sorry to say.
Good luck with your work though, I respect that.

[KEY9481]

Thanks team. Though I think GIF usage should be allowed by Premium members. Maybe it would entice others to become Premium members?

!!!

[DnBLover]

I don't really like that genre threads ended. I understand that the diversity of ukmixers decreased massively, but still this will wipe out everything which is not commercial.

I also don't really like the gifs, but congrats on everyone for the work.

I'm not sure I voted myself, so that's that.

[Wayne]

I don't really like that genre threads ended. I understand that the diversity of ukmixers decreased massively, but still this will wipe out everything which is not commercial.

I would like to reassure everyone that the restructure proposal was discussed in detail by the moderation team, and we did consider the fact that many people still like to consume music by genre - I can't speak for everyone, but in my view UKMIX was behind the times with how we discussed music (we were one of the few remaining large forums to still have genre forums). Further, we were seeing a real decline in music discussion by forum...I initially only shared this with the moderation team but the below represents this point:

UKMIX: Last 6 Months Posting Stats(by forum)

UKMIX Forum	Last 12 Months	Last 6 Months	Last 3 Months	Weekly Average Last 12 Months	Weekly Average Last 3 Months	3 Month Decline
General Music Discussion	8,173	3,698	1,623	142	125	-12%
General Artists Discussion	102,236	60,253	17,877	2,317	1,375	-41%
Music Games & Survivors	35,296	15,878	6,926	611	533	-13%
The Retro	10,380	4,565	1,948	176	150	-15%
Pop	23,268	10,592	4,459	407	343	-16%
R&B & Urban	14,405	4,415	2,287	170	176	4%
Dance & Electronic	2,062	802	380	31	29	-5%
Rock & Alternative	2,134	868	442	33	34	2%
Country, Americana, Folk & World Music	460	141	91	5	7	29%
Chart Analysis	16,181	7,519	3,413	289	263	-9%
Artist Chart Analysis	53,040	23,835	9,786	917	753	-18%
Personal Charts	11,684	6,927	4,078	266	314	18%
Celebrity Gossip	5,880	3,046	1,924	117	148	26%
TV	10,903	4,230	2,460	163	189	16%
Movies	1,671	821	393	32	30	-4%
The Lounge	27,408	11,378	5,087	438	391	-11%
World News & Politics	3,751	1,750	823	67	63	-6%

What we've tried to do is consolidate the number of forums to make the experience a bit more seamless and in recognition of numerous underperforming forums - if the issue of genre proves to be a sticking point, we can always introduce genre prefixes which might prove to be a helpful middle ground for those that still like to consume their music that way. Also, a very valid point around pushing less mainstream music down was raised - we'll review this on an ongoing basis as we wouldn't necessarily want to stifle discussion on less mainstream music (but with a caveat that ultimately, the community determines what's popular via discussion).

[LOVE+FEAR]

Thanks guys, great to hear you are giving more priority to the mobile functions

[DnBLover]

Thanks [MENTION=11323]Wayne[/MENTION], sounds reasonable.

[divingmuffin]

[MENTION=11323]Wayne[/MENTION] and all the moderators, I respect the effort behind all of these changes. Thanks for your thoughtfulness and openness to feedback.

I am in the camp of: if it ain’t broke don’t fix it...but change is part of life. And perhaps users outside of Mariah Land were unsatisfied. I appreciate that although Mariah is a huge part of the forum that this is a general music forum with a diverse group of users.

Still happy to be a part of this community!