Complaints, Concerns, Errors, Suggestions, and Ideas! [Feb 2017]

Due to the last thread becoming unwieldy, we're starting a new one! Just like with the last one, this is the place to talk about any ideas you have to improve Equipboard. Anything from a small bug you want to see fixed to a huge new feature is fair game.

As a new naming convention, whenever we feel these threads are getting too big we'll start a new one with the month and year appended to the end, so we can keep track of them chronologically over time.

You can still access the original forum thread here.

I'll kick off this new thread with a compilation of some of the issues people brought up multiple times in the last one (in no particular order):

• Member Equipboards should look and work more like pro artist boards (i.e. introduce categorization)
• Private messaging should exist
• New items added to one's Equipboard should be appended to the end of the list, not the beginning
• Should be allowed to upload more than just 3 gear photos
• Some gear should be grouped under an umbrella (for instance, 100s of color and year variations of a Fender Stratocaster)
• Should have a list on your Equipboard of gear you once owned

The issue that gets brought up more than any other is the first one, to make member Equipboards look & work more like pro artists, with categories. Micheal and I had a long chat about it and have a proposed solution to get the ball rolling. What do you guys think of the following:

You start out with your list of items you have looking like it does now. From the left column, you can choose to "Add a Section." You can then choose between the 40 or so pre-determined sections we have available: Guitars, Amps, Effects Pedals, Headphones, Keyboards and Synthesizers, Software Plugins and VSTs, DAWs, and so forth (for the 1st release of this you have to stick to the pre-determined sections - you can't add your own free-form). When you add a section, all the items on your board that match that section go into it.

In practice it would look like this: First I hit "Add a Section" and add Guitars first, and all the guitars on my Equipboard would automatically go there. My sections would now be:

• Guitars
• everything else

Next, I hit "Add a Section" and choose Headphones. All my headphones go into that one. Now my sections would be:

• Guitars
• Headphones
• everything else

This way, everyone can decide what sections are most important to them as musicians, and feature those first (as opposed to having their sections "frozen" in a certain order).

Thoughts on this?

This sounds like the best possible working solution we could hope for.

The idea of having to delete and reload all of our gear would be in risk of losing gear IQ points and any up votes... these are like badges of honour on the boards.

Being able to nominate our categories in the order that is most relevant to us as musicians still allows us to personalise our own boards to make them a true reflection of us as individuals.

I think this sounds great.

excellent

Just to clarify, when I say:

First I hit "Add a Section" and add Guitars first, and all the guitars on my Equipboard would automatically go there.

"Automatically go there" is dependent on individual items being categorized correctly. So if a guitar is categorized under "Solid Body Electric Guitar", "Hollow & Semi-Hollow Body Electric Guitars", or " Steel-string Acoustic Guitars", all 3 of those map to the "Guitars" section.

Michael and I jokingly call it Plinko (from The Price is Right game, here's a gif if you're not familiar). Items "Plinko" into the right section based on their category, i.e. they fall into the correct section provided they're correctly categorized. You probably already know this, because pro artist Equipboards work in the same way. :)

Plinko sounds like my writing process.

Not really... I just say that to give James those uncomfortable and uncontrollable sweats.

Awesome.

I think that enabling editing submissions without any source should be an option, because people who are checking for the artist's gear might find us not serious because of those sourceless submissions.

Brillianterrific

What about those items that have multiple images? They appear to be a failure as it seems that you can not do it on purpose and then it seems imposible to handle those images (which many times include redundant pictures that should be deleted and then many other times the main image is not even the best "choice" of the bulk and it seems that we can not fix that nor any kind of order).

Sounds great!

I had a thought the other day. I think we should allow multiple sources and photos to be added to submissions and the items themselves. Have a default of course, but have a sliding thingy to allow other sources to be added as further proof and extra photos of gear. In this, we could put all the different models as well. A submission for an Ibanez 405 could have additional photos showing the different color options and maybe custom versions.

I mean, just allowing a photo and a print source link would be killer, some entries I've done, particularly all the work I put into Pete Townshend, have had interview evidence and multiple photos available for each item.

There could be some feature to mark current gear or rules of adding gear should be more strict. Phil X contains 64 guitars and most of them are proved with FrettedAmericana movies. They give me no info what actually he uses

Very much agreed. For a while, we had people submitting any item ever touched by a reviewer as being "his gear". In these cases, items you know that aren't actually theirs but were just reviewed should be edited to include "#productdemo" in the source so that we can find them at a later time.

I'm sure the answer is yes, but that would still allow for say- Brian Eno and instruments that may not be used currently to anyone's awareness but were iconic & part of his early works?

Psyched to see the changes! I've been too busy w/ work so I still have yet to add about 70% of my gear, but adding them to the updated format would be awesome.

now if Ed Sheeran's fans will just refrain from crashing the servers again.... chewie, WTF? whatever guys!

Maybe his actions a spawning a new direction for hope for livemusic.

If crowds become tolerant of watching one person kick pedals to make music play and construct the song live on stage, perhaps the future of live music relies on someone with the musical instincts of a DJ or MC walking along and kicking animatronic versions of famous musicians no longer with us or grown too old to play and we can see live reenactments of Rolling Stones, Beach boys, doors and Beatles songs....

I mean, look its all rather Kraftwerkian without actually sounding like techno, like a real life "We Are the Robots" -- and yet....

I'm just getting old I think. I like the way things were when I was a young hot shot and I m suspicious of change...

but there's something too my nostalgic taste, because my son has a real preference for the music of the 60s thru the mid 90s over anything done since.... I try to be balanced but he's got a real preference for the past and a 3-year-old cannot be a navel gazing, musical curmudgeon like his dad!

well, Zach, I find myself scratching my head at all that modernity! Maybe its just because I don't like his music to begin with, it feels more generous to blame the tools.