Guitar Noise is a free guitar lesson website with hundreds of articles, tips and reviews for students of this versatile instrument. Whether you are a beginner, a lefty, a bass player or a singer, Guitar Noise has lessons on nearly everything and anything to do with the guitar. There are many talented musicians out there. The artist profiles section includes interviews with dozens. The forums, blog and podcasts help you keep up with this thriving community.
posted by netbros on Feb 23, 2009 - 11 comments

FreelanceSwitch covers many of the topics freelancers need to know about with their daily articles and tips. They run a freelance job board and have regular podcasts so you can learn a little something while you work or commute. Check out the FreelanceSwitch forums for support and advice from other freelancers, or check out their resources section. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Feb 4, 2009 - 4 comments

The Auteurs is a new web site (in beta) for film lovers--and, for those film lovers, Criterion has relaunched their site. Now with the ability to watch (some of) their films online for $5 (good for a week's worth of watching one title). The viewing cost is also applicable to the cost of buying the same title on DVD.
posted by Manhasset on Nov 25, 2008 - 22 comments

How To Disagree
posted by chuckdarwin on Mar 30, 2008 - 72 comments

I've thought a lot over the last couple years about the problem of trolls. It's an old one, as old as forums, but we're still just learning what the causes are and how to address them.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Feb 19, 2008 - 77 comments

The Muse's Muse Songwriting Resource is the place for songwriting tips, tools, interactivities and connecting with other songwriters around the world. See the section about musical instruments or get into the guitar player's guide. Start communicating with other musicians and songwriters in the forums and check out the music reviews. Lots to do, see, hear, learn, and most of all, enjoy.
posted by netbros on Aug 22, 2007 - 10 comments

Web discussion forums have some fantastic content. There is an excellent rank-ordered, categorized index of many of them, but the attempts to create a search engine for these forums, akin to that which already exists for the newsgroups, have generally failed. Let's wish Omgili some luck then. Maybe even do so in their forum.
posted by shivohum on Sep 25, 2006 - 12 comments

The New York Times reports that community forum sites like Digital Point Solutions' have created a system whereby forum participants share in the Google AdSense revenue (Revenue sharing FAQ). Digital Point claims that no gaming of the system has occurred so far. A google search turns up at least a handful of other sites that are doing the same (but no major sites, it seems), and the latest drupal adsense module apparently makes it easy to set up. Curious. [Full disclosure: I know nothing about any of this. I mean, I barely know what a 'blog is (and I'm sticking to that leading apostrophe -- it's the only thing standing between us and Babelian anarchy and we're not even sure 'Babelian' is a legitimate word so now we're really mired in the hypocrisy, huh?).]
posted by nobody on Jan 16, 2006 - 9 comments

Where to find nice posters
posted by Bighappyfunhouse on Dec 19, 2005 - 39 comments

For a while now, Warren Ellis has been doing web community stunts, such as the 12 hour forum, Scream talking, The Friday Stunt & probably a few things I missed, to which you can post links to remind everyone.

Recently he started The Engine.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Sep 18, 2005 - 15 comments

Creative COW (Communities Of the World) seems to be a one-stop... stop... for help with After Effects, Combustion, and other industry software of just about any type. While some (nevertheless incredible) tutorials are a bit difficult to decipher, they could also be much worse. The focus looks mostly to be on After Effects and other Motion Graphics software, but the forums are invaluable for just about anything you might need. Of particular note would be the Demo Reels forum, where anyone from Editors to Directors of Photography, and even Game Developers (former or otherwise) can post reels for criticism and even be approached for work. Some of them are incredible, even if you're not involved in the industry.
posted by shmegegge on Sep 8, 2005 - 8 comments

xixax is a film community/bulletin board. In addition to forums for new films (released and rumored), stuff on DVD, and tech goodies for filmmakers, they've got director forums for Wes and PT Anderson, Scorsese, Lynch, the Coens, Soderbergh and many others.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy on Dec 27, 2004 - 2 comments

Gamegeezers A new forum for the mature gamer. As the site says "... the new community for the "not so young" gamer. The reason we're setting this forum up is to provide a home for the great many of us gamers out there who are old enough to remember the beginning of this phenomenon known as gaming and are still going to be at it for the rest of our days. You will find no whiney teenage flamers here. Just a good wholesome community of GameGeezers who wouldn't admit to knowing what "l33t" meant if their life depended on it. "
posted by snowgoon on Jan 14, 2004 - 9 comments

"We often do this, changing the subject or saying something really obnoxious, to take the wind out of trolls' sails." Apparently, some people get paid to report on the contents of web discussion boards. What a sweet gig. Especially for a "journalist" who has no ear for irony, and doesn't know what "trolling" is. Quoting an Epinions reviewer as supporting material is a new low point in "news" reporting. (more inside)
posted by scarabic on Jan 24, 2003 - 22 comments

"The PRAVDA Forum" in English. Vlad Putin's homeboys serve up Colombian FARC manifestos, and grin- "Let's roll!" They invite you to mix it up with black blockers, American hawks, meglomaniac spymaster wannabes, Osama fans, Nazis and ethnic cleansers, irate Israelis, Pakstanis, Indians, hardcore feminists, peaceniks, dolphinsavers, conspiracy theorists, and the Chinese. Free speech in wartime, Russian Communist style. (Warning: Offensive content guaranteed.)
posted by sheauga on Feb 23, 2002 - 8 comments

"Biggest flame war of all time: Danny Boy - sentimental Irish favorite, or stupid song decried by true Celts everywhere?" A link to a discussion in another forum about how one prevents the banal from driving out the profound in online public-participation forums. (Their conclusion: ruthless and efficient moderation.)
posted by Steven Den Beste on Jul 3, 2001 - 4 comments

yahoogroups conversion of egroups is in full swing. I've been through the conversion from onelist to egroups, but now with this they're mandating a conversion to the Yahoo ID and killing off the old sign-in system - which was email address + password. Why *must* I have a Yahoo ID?
posted by artlung on Jan 26, 2001 - 30 comments

Censorship on a public Blog? - When someone posts a link to content that others find shocking to a public blog (in this case Flazoom.com) how should the blog-master handle it. This got me thinking about how we handle the content at MeFi - which is better? Removing the post a few layers, or bereating the poster with lots of mean comment posts?
posted by DragonBoy on Sep 18, 2000 - 24 comments

Another online discussion forum experiences growing pains. Lance writes: "glassdog.CLUB is a good example of what can go wrong in an online community." And so he's pulling the plug. Perhaps killing something while it's still young is the only way to keep it from growing old and dying miserably?
posted by ericost on Jun 27, 2000 - 26 comments

Kottke offers a good critique of online discussions (like MeFi), and he makes some excellent suggestions on how to improve them. He quotes an unnamed source: "The problem with online forums is that those who have very little to contribute participate the most while those with valuable information to share participate the least." Now, let's try to keep the conversation cordial...
posted by ericost on Jun 21, 2000 - 2 comments

Children are funny.. as sad as it is for me, most of the time, to have 15yr old kids be the majority of the crowd there, it's entertaining none the less. i wish it was that easy to start your own "business".
posted by sikk on Jun 5, 2000 - 1 comment

Bloat!, which has historically been a site with scathing reviews of popular weblogs, has in recent weeks become a source of excellent opinion and well thought out suggestions. For the first time, MetaFilter gets into the top ten, and I have to say some of the comments are right on the money. I hate posting information about this site on the main page, and T. Radhuis picks up on that. I'll be adding a couple links to the navigation, one being "news' with MetaFilter-centric posts and comments (and yeah, I understand that I just turned this post into another one about MF, I swear this is the last). I don't know about splitting the comments into good and bad, especially since posters would choose which thread to add their comment (which could be abused).
posted by mathowie on Jan 28, 2000 - 0 comments