Kiwi

Oxblood has suggested I post my reply to him here and I have decided that it might help explain things a little better as this conversation has been repeated with a number of members of Bassworld in the past and most recently on Basschat.

As far as a political principle is concerned, I share Ken's views on free speech, however the reality of running a forum is different. This is a view I have held consistently through BW. Some of you may find that politically offensive, I'm sorry about that, but we're managing with the community interests at heart, not political interests.

[quote][quote][i]I am trying to help you find the right balance - it's just that our respective concepts of what constitutes balance are at variance. Mine is rooted in the basic principle that it is the forum members themselves who should decide what they want to say and in what terms it should be expressed, with the moderators intervening only if threads degenerate into personal insult, if slanderous statements are made that could get the forum itself into legal hot water, or if prompted to do so by complaints of offence from fellow members.[/i]

Ken

In an ideal world I would concur with your principle if everyone was capable of acting in a responsible and mature manner. However I think you're assuming that everyone shares the same ability to take responsibility for their actions where the mods and I know for a fact that this isn't the case - particularly where members post under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.

In our experience of running BW, many members are simply not interested in making a fuss about language use or other incidents even though they find it offensive because they simply wish to avoid confrontation. So no reaction by other members to an outburst does not equate with approval or acceptance.

On the positive side, you only have to look at the introductions forum to see people who have complimented the site on its friendliness and openness.

I don't believe that allowing a policy of self moderation would [list=1]
[*]be acceptable to everyone
[*]create an atmosphere of friendliness or openness
[*]encourage active membership growth
[/list]In fact I think self moderation would discourage posting by those who are less inclined to confront unacceptable behaviour. I think its important not to transpose a set of values an individual chooses for themselves and assume they're appropriate for a community. Thats why we have a team of mods to help run the forum.

It does permit a particularly vocal and confrontational minority to dominate the forums which is completely unacceptable to Ped and myself for a number of reasons, notwithstanding it makes managing a forum with any degree of perspective that much harder. That was what was starting to happen with Bassworld and I'm glad that the change in forum ownership has seen many of those problem individuals leave. Its improved the atmosphere palpably.

But getting back to the topic of the filter. I would like the filter to be more subtle than it originally started out so that those members that exercise moderation anyway will not notice anything. That's an evolutionary process.

I'm aware of your situation with SHG and to be honest I thought his action a little harsh so I think you will be able to use the word tosser without intervention in the future if its not used gratuitously.

[i]a situation where the moderators are experimenting with blanket bowdlerization of our discourse - with inevitably farcical results. I can only repeat here what I said to him: it's a sad state of affairs indeed when Basschat forum policy is effectively being dictated by the corporate prudery of organizations with which we have no connection and to whom we owe no duty at all.[/i]

There's no hidden agenda with this forum, the filter is an experiment because we want to raise the standard of conduct to create a civilised place, not cater to the lowest common denominator.

Hope this clarifies things.

cheers
Steve[/quote]
[/quote]

Apart from tidying up of typos, this post has had one edit for the sake of clarity to remove a point of misunderstanding between Ken and myself.

[quote name='pete.young' post='16264' date='Jun 12 2007, 02:49 PM']No, lets have that discussion in the open where we can all see it.[/quote]

No Pete, I don't want to do that. We'll deal with subjects concerning moderation offline thank you, as per the guidelines.

[quote name='guyl' post='16105' date='Jun 12 2007, 11:15 AM']Have you ever seen a decent bass head or preamp that has 3 inputs?

I use 2 upright and one electric and end up using little soundcraft notepad on top of my rig. Would love to get home quicker by reducing leads etc, but can't find a simple 1U rackmounted mixer (or pre/amp), with jack inputs and basic controls all on the front.[/quote]

No I haven't, I was just testing the water with Dave. Of course, the simple solution would be to buy a rackmounted mixer but like you, I've not seen one that combines:

1) Para eq
2) Less than 4 channels
3) Rackmounted
4) valve compressor

with inputs mounted on the front.

Ken

I'm happy to discuss this in further detail via PM.

[quote name='Oxblood' post='16026' date='Jun 12 2007, 07:54 AM']...and this morning, CK, your sloganizer signature has chosen to say "Easy Basschat". Now there's irony for you.[/quote]


Its lost on me Ken. We're just trying to manage a forum here and its a tricky balance to achieve sometimes. Why not help us find the right balance, bearing in mind we have a range of experiences, backgrounds and levels of maturity?

The mods have had to intervene increasingly in the last 7 days on posts containing excessive bad language. I don't know why its suddenly increased but it has and the filter is a much easier way to manage it than manual intervention. The filter is there to catch slip ups and lapses, its not going to prevent full blooded spleen venting. So if you're really determined to swear then you will be able to find a way, but why would any decent, mature member want to do that here? There are other forums someone can do that in.

As for shouting and use of exclamation marks, incorrect use of the apostrophe, use of text speak split infinitives and anything that bothers Guardian readers . No, we're not going to catching those but the mods do pick up on excessive use of caps when used by someone who appears to be less experienced in using a forum.

The final thing is that the filter has been set up with a list of about 30 standard terms, but it could be reduced down to about ten or so if, as andy_$$ points out, it gets in the way of posts. The filter has only just been set up and will require some tweaking to ensure it doesn't become disruptive, unfortunately, there's no way to do it offline.

So if you come up against a situation where you think that the filter has been unnecessarily disruptive to your otherwise normal use of the forum, drop me a PM and I'll have a look into it.

guys - we're just testing the language filter, its triggered by profanity and replaces it with cockney rhyming slang. The sensitivity needed a little tweaking but we couldn't do it offline unfortunately.

I tend to marinate a 15mm thick steak in teppanyaki sauce first and flash fry it for 4 mins each side. The inside has to be raw and the outside crispy

congrats! a lovely example

hey adam, welcome back Did you not get the BW bulk email?

as you can see, we haven't had the decorators in yet. Bear with us, hopefully we should have something soon.

[quote name='Mrs Tinman' post='15887' date='Jun 11 2007, 08:48 PM']Aha!

Was wondering why I had a PM that on first inspection I thought said

"Eh up wor lass" and then changed to "Eh up wor Myleene Klass"

Edited to add: its now gone back to "Eh up wor lass" - and I didn't feel a thing while you were doing it [/quote]

See, now we know that it affects PMs as well

[url="http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/english/a"]http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/english/a[/url]

Here's the dictionary I'm using as a guide, but it doesn't cover all the words my filthy mind can think up...

...we have two setting on the bad word filter. One is 'exact' the other is 'loose'. If '455' is loose then it will replace any occurance of that sequence of letters regardless of where they are in the text. If '455' is exact, it will only change it when it sees the whole word and nothing but the word.

LMAO

We're trying to sort out a profanity filter than uses [Blackpool rock]ney rhyming slang instead. But the sensitivity levels need a little work first.

You caught us with our army ants down Bear with us, we're still testing it.

Hey Bart - did you get your 8x10 new or second hand?

[quote name='DHA' post='15637' date='Jun 11 2007, 03:09 PM']Hi Steve,

The rack units have an EQ by-pass switch anyway. But, I could just not fit the EQ to reduce cost if requested to do so.

Dave[/quote]

Dave,

I usually run two matching basses so I don't have to bother tweaking the amp eq. mid-set.

If anything, I'd probably need a 3 band parametric eq to:[list=1]
[*]pin point boomy frequencies (typically 60-150Hz),
[*]boost attack (1.2-2.5Khz)
[*]Boost lost mids somewhere around 250-800Hz
[/list]No reason why there couldn't be complete coverage of the frequency spectrum with those three controls like on a mixing desk. Variable bandwidth for each band would be good to ensure specific resonancy peaks could be addressed without sucking too much from the rest of the amplified sound. The same system worked very nicely on my Eden WT800 and I miss it. Sometimes +/-15dB hasn't been enough for some situations, so a boost of +/- 25dB would be handy if possible - I may never need it but its nice to know that its there if I ever do.

Rest of my wish list:
The pre has to sound neutral like a mixer module - that is to say, I get the same quality sound with everything flat going through the preamp as I would when plugging straight into the amp. That applies particularly to the frequencies over 5Khz and noise levels . John East on this forum has used the mixing desk idea for his very successful j-retro preamps.

I also don't need to have a valve in the signal chain all the time. Sometimes it colours the sound too much for the Smith basses that I use (but sounds good for the Musicman and Celinder). The valve compressor's a good idea though, I'm not fussed about the crossover since my amps have it built in anyway. A hi-gain aux out for a subwoofer or extension amp would be useful (as can be found on some desks).

The effects loop could ideally be stereo (in serial) and a mono loop (in parallel like on my old Eden WT800 which was surprisingly handy). Stereo DI (which can operate as mono if needed) would be good as well as line outs.

Channel gain matching (as has already been mentioned) is important to allow match outputs of basses. An LED traffic light type indicator like on the Trace heads would be VERY handy to have for each channel. The ability to switch the valve compressor and effects loops in/out on each channel would be handy too.

Definitely at least two inputs/channels as well. I do use three basses in certain situations (fretted 5, fretless 5 and a 4 for slapping or thumpy retro sounds).

In an ideal world it would be nice to cater for three basses somehow but I don't know how feasible this might be.

Thats all I can think of

I don't need a compressor live when there's a tube in the signal chain. All of the compressors I've used sound too heavy handed otherwise. I do like to use a limiter at the end of my signal chain to even out the dynamics when I'm using the Deep Impact.

[quote name='velvetkevorkian' post='15547' date='Jun 11 2007, 01:00 PM']Whoops I just posted this in the basses forum. His description is pretty priceless.[/quote]

Can you sayyyyyyyyy [b]"pat-ro-ni-sing"[/b]?

[quote name='bass_ferret' post='14661' date='Jun 9 2007, 03:41 PM']There was a long and informative thread on bass talk - shame you did not ask before it was deleted.[/quote]

If you can remember any unique keywords such as bassworld, lighting or similar, you might be able to find remnants of it under Google cache.

I wonder if anyone's ever asked him for sound clips?

[quote name='Gazm' post='14625' date='Jun 9 2007, 02:21 PM']JTS US-8001D Wireless Receiver
Korg DTR 1000 Tuner
Behringer MDX2600 Compressor
Behringer FBQ1502 EQ (channel 1 used for compressor side chain)
DHA VT2 Dual Custom Bass
Sound Tech 802 amplifier
SWR Working Pro 700 head

No money left![/quote]



You must end up looking like this bloke if you regularly lug that in and out of venues and car boots.

[quote name='MoJ' post='15348' date='Jun 10 2007, 11:29 PM']and some that havent such as "Room balance EQ" (????)[/quote]

I can't speak for anyone else and their set up but I use the eq on the amp for address stage/room acoustics anyway.

Bass = fundamental tone/character
on board eq = coarse tone shaping for the bass according to the music style (before it goes to the desk)
amp eq = room acoustics (DI is taken pre amp eq)

Team it up with a valve head when you get the chance. The Stingray will make big sexy time with your ears.

[quote name='setekh' post='15144' date='Jun 10 2007, 05:09 PM']holy cows...is there any piece of good gear he [b]doesnt[/b] own? :wacko:[/quote]
Yeah, Burmans

I'd probably have his Trace Elliot V8 as I reckon thats the best designed of the valve amps. Don't know anything about those cabs though. I'm so fussy about the value for money that cabs give. I've heard Accugroove and Epifani and been less than impressed. I'm curious about Bergantino - never heard them.

I think Tom is infamous on Talkbass as a complete gear whore. He's got pretty much every desirable valve bass amp that's been made in the last 20 years, reviews gear for Bass Guitar Magazine and has even been endorsing Sadowsky amps.

Not bad for someone whose day job is an attourney, I can only imagine the kind of space he has to store all of that stuff.

which label are you with Wes?