If Christian is talking about a hub for his videos so he can maintain those discussions and comments for historical reasons like he mentioned in his vlog I am 100% behind him. Its a great idea, and a great way to engage directly with your audience, without having to deal with people who for some reason don't like it yet watch and complain afterwards. He has amazing content and his community really gets involved, I see no issue with him creating an enviroment for those people to chat with his vlogs being the centre of it all.
It he is suggesting a Vi-Control alternate where dissenting views, or views that don't agree with the moderators personal opinion or removed in the name of 'toxicity' then I am against it. The problem with a new hub like that is you have to have really unbiased people in charge, because who decides what is toxic and what is just a dissenting view. Like as others have mentioned, the HZS threads got really into it discussing a product. If this new 'hub' was ran by Spitfire then I would have been banned most likely, and possibly those who tried to agree....however if there was discussion on a competitors product, lets say Orchestral Tools release something...would the comments against them be regarded as 'toxic' so quickly. Also how and who determines to what degree a personal attack becomes toxic, like if someone thinks Christian isn't a very good vlogger, is that toxic? what if one member starts criticising another reviewers style or ability to do videos, is that more or less toxic than doing it to the forum owner.
I think VI Control is one of the most open and free places to discuss all things music creation focused. This place has its moments of negativity but very rarley would I use the word Toxic. And the speed at which people these days actually reach for that word 'Toxic' to describe it worries me about how much freedom would be permitted if they had control.
-DJ
I don't think Christian was aiming to squash all dissent - I think we should in general avoid trying to attribute mental states and infer intentions to people all the time, when none such were stated; he just said he was thinking of creating a hub, and asking for feedback as to whether that would be welcome. He was clearly also exasperated, and I get his frustration. There is no doubt, to me at least, Christian and Paul are decent people, who try to create decent products for a community and industry they care deeply about. They have definitely made mistakes with their latest one, both with the product itself, and its rollout, no doubt. But none of this was done with mal intent. He was simply asking the question if there is a way of capturing the conversation in a format which is less toxic. I don't object to the word 'toxic': it's clear what he means: the number of posts who clearly just revel in the name-calling, and are ecstatic when a conversation turns ugly, because they see it as entertainment, and get out the popcorn. I despise this. People can call me thin skinned all they like, but if that's what people come here for, and find it acceptable, then I disagree. It doesn't mean I have psychological issues (see how quick people were to start throwing insults - this thread itself is an indication of how much a problem there is) if I see the childish behaviour of some as unproductive, even from our more famous VI-C members.
I do agree with you Daniel that the value of such a hub would depend how it is run, and how dissent is addressed (I say this in my 'Comment' part of the opening post. Indeed, this is why I would be more interested in a VI-C approach if my suggestion were to be adopted of using video-based, rather than text-based contributions. If a company owns it, it is hard to see how it wouldn't become too restrictive, particularly when their customers have genuine grievances that they want to express. In my mind, this new suggested hub in the first instance would be the same structure and premise as VI-C, just accepting video-only input, not text.
But the video suggestion was just that, a suggestion, to open up discussion about how to raise the quality of debate here, so that we don't have to wade through 20+ pages, >70% of which is, yes,
toxic, to get to the remaining parts which are useful information, whether or not they're supportive to a particular product or developer. I think there's mileage in it, but if people have better suggestions, it would be great to share them.