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On providing support and forums through Facebook

14

Hi Synthstrom,

I am a relatively new Deluge user. Love your machine. However, I am a bit disappointed that you seem to be encouraging a more active community through your Facebook group.

I, like many others, don't use Facebook and never will. My personal information and privacy are worth more than that.

You already have a great space to meet and exchange with your users: here! Make this the primary meeting space for Deluge owners and dreamers like me.

Comments

  • 0
    darenagerdarenager Between a rack and a hardware placeBeta Tester Posts: 222

    +1

    It seems daft, and it ain’t 2010 anymore! :D

    Joking aside, official forums are a much better and more professional platform for user communities, sure a lot of companies* have social media accounts as well as official forums, but things like betas are catered for excludively on their forums, because well it is much better.

    *except Novation, they actually ditched their own forum in favour of Facebook, along with any chance of me ever buying their products again.

  • 0
    mrrafsmrrafs ukPosts: 63
    edited December 2018

    +1 knowledge shared is so much easier to find afterwards on a forum. Enforcing boundaries is also possible, price shamming is generally deleted/moderated on the main music forums and reddit. My first deluge user group posting got trolled in this way immediately. owch..

    What facebook is good for is checking out jams on specific pieces of kit via their user forums.... (and wasting your time by not making music) lol

    Post edited by mrrafs on
  • 0
    ACHoJACHoJ CanadaPosts: 3

    The only thing keeping me on Facebook is the Deluge community - which is crazy on many levels.

  • 0
    moosiqpiplmoosiqpipl Frankfurt am Main, GermanyPosts: 24

    +1 !

    ((qp))

  • 0
    OdoSendaidokaiOdoSendaidokai BerlinPosts: 326

    +1!


    Odo Sendaidokai from Berlin

  • 0
    JDiamondJDiamond Brooklyn, New York Beta Tester Posts: 17

    +1 not on Facebook either

  • -1
    Ian_JorgensenIan_Jorgensen Wellington, New ZealandPosts: 614

    Unfortunately Facebook was where we started.. Long before we had our own website and these current forums dont provide what we need for beta testing facilities and that is really all we do on FB that isn't here.

    The 'closed' users group is pretty slow tbh.

    If you need our support you just email us.

    Beta testing will remain on FB for the next while at least, its really not easy to pick up and move something like that, not to mention the shit ton of work ive already done verifying people's identities which i will have to do from scratch again if/when we move here.

  • -2
    Ian_JorgensenIan_Jorgensen Wellington, New ZealandPosts: 614

    Btw. Facebook doesn't force anyone to use real identities. You can sign up to it and just use as you would any forum. You don't have to provide it with data, be "friends" with anyone or use it beyond how you would signing into any forum.

  • 4
    asingleechoasingleecho CanadaPosts: 5

    @Ian_Jorgensen said:
    Btw. Facebook doesn't force anyone to use real identities. You can sign up to it and just use as you would any forum. You don't have to provide it with data, be "friends" with anyone or use it beyond how you would signing into any forum.

    Hi Ian, I appreciate your response and totally understand that managing a small business social's presence is a lot of work.

    However, being privacy conscious, Facebook still does track you over the internet once you have logged in to their site with a fake identity or not. Their apps also collect private information (geolocation, contacts, phone logs) that are breaches of my privacy I am not willing to give up.

    Just something to consider for your future interaction with customers.

  • 0
    amiga909amiga909 Central EuropePosts: 1,078

    Yeah, setting up a fake account and submit a request for joining the beta FB group should not take more than 10 minutes.
    FB works great for me for following official news, posting quick impressions and bug reports.
    would not call FB a "forum" per se, its structure is more like a blog. structure of FB is not suited for discussing stuff in depth: no threads, no search, well, nothing at all thats older than 5 Minutes ;-)
    here i like we have a list with all upvoted requests over time, imho this is very valuable. we accomplished this here in collaborative work and i dont see how this can be done in FB groups.

  • 2
    darenagerdarenager Between a rack and a hardware placeBeta Tester Posts: 222

    @asingleecho said:

    @Ian_Jorgensen said:
    Btw. Facebook doesn't force anyone to use real identities. You can sign up to it and just use as you would any forum. You don't have to provide it with data, be "friends" with anyone or use it beyond how you would signing into any forum.

    Hi Ian, I appreciate your response and totally understand that managing a small business social's presence is a lot of work.

    However, being privacy conscious, Facebook still does track you over the internet once you have logged in to their site with a fake identity or not. Their apps also collect private information (geolocation, contacts, phone logs) that are breaches of my privacy I am not willing to give up.

    Just something to consider for your future interaction with customers.

    Agree 100% with everything quoted here, oh well at least now we know the reason and the possibilty that in the future FB may not be required.

  • 0
    JDiamondJDiamond Brooklyn, New York Beta Tester Posts: 17

    Thanks Ian appreciate the response

  • 0
    Ian_JorgensenIan_Jorgensen Wellington, New ZealandPosts: 614
    edited December 2018

    aye, we currently use these various platforms as they are suited best. These forums are perfect for collecting peoples ideas for software suggestions as things are catalogued and searchable easily. We also use Facebook because it is a far better platform for immediate engagement and the response/feedback we need for beta development.

    Of course we don't want to put people in morally ambiguous situations, that is why both platforms are utilised - and you'll find there would be a ton of people who would be very disappointed if we exclusively moved our communication to this site away from Facebook which is massively convenient for a large portion of our user base.

    We try to balance both, but also, we're only ever an email away if support is ever needed.
    Overhauling these forums is a longterm plan of ours, but the current format is not conducive to discussion, however, it serves it purpose in being an indexable/searchable stop gap for resources and ideas.

    I am in daily communication with users on Instagram DMs, Twitter DMs, Facebook messenger, emails, website contact form, multiple FB pages and these forums - we give people many ways they can access us, there is no point limiting to JUST these forums.

    Post edited by Ian_Jorgensen on
  • 1
    WillWill Middle of NowHere, CanadaPosts: 236

    @asingleecho said:
    Hi Synthstrom,

    I am a relatively new Deluge user. Love your machine. However, I am a bit disappointed that you seem to be encouraging a more active community through your Facebook group.

    I, like many others, don't use Facebook and never will. My personal information and privacy are worth more than that.

    You already have a great space to meet and exchange with your users: here! Make this the primary meeting space for Deluge owners and dreamers like me.

    I'm with you 100%
    I am another Deluge lover who still refuses to go on FB, for a myriad of reasons.
    I would like to see Synthstrom act like other musical product manufacturers, and provide a portal (like this Forum) for it's users, not rely on social media!

  • 0
    Ian_JorgensenIan_Jorgensen Wellington, New ZealandPosts: 614
    edited December 2018

    @Will said:

    I would like to see Synthstrom act like other musical product manufacturers, and provide a portal (like this Forum) for it's users, not rely on social media!

    Agreed. That is why we do. :)

    Post edited by Ian_Jorgensen on
  • 0
    WillWill Middle of NowHere, CanadaPosts: 236

    @Ian_Jorgensen said:

    @Will said:

    I would like to see Synthstrom act like other musical product manufacturers, and provide a portal (like this Forum) for it's users, not rely on social media!

    Agreed. That is why we do. :)

    Hey Ian, After reading through this whole thread, I more fully understand your perspective.

    w

    ;0)

  • 1
    illobyteillobyte Beta Tester Posts: 6

    @Ian_Jorgensen said:
    Btw. Facebook doesn't force anyone to use real identities. You can sign up to it and just use as you would any forum. You don't have to provide it with data, be "friends" with anyone or use it beyond how you would signing into any forum.

    I did just that, but my account was suspended shortly after joining the open and 2 closed groups. I assume it was their real name policy, or the fact that I used an obscure celebrity's photo when they required a photo during signup. Appealing the suspension requires sending photo ID (e.g. driver's license). No thanks.

    I'm a little upset that I missed out on the 2.1 beta drop. But it's been a busy month anyway so I probably wouldn't have contributed much to testing.

    Anyway I get the decision to use Facebook and I'm ok with that, but I hope there isn't anything else aside from early beta testing that requires me to be in the FB groups. I do wish more people used this forum, or even the r/DelugeUsers subreddit, but FB is pretty ubiquitous so I can't complain.

  • 2
    Ian_JorgensenIan_Jorgensen Wellington, New ZealandPosts: 614

    Any important discussion that we start, I also post here. However, yeah, there is bound to be missed conversation - though this works both ways, FB users are missing out on tons of feature discussion and the other threads that popular here.
    Bugger that FB kicked you off. Some wiseass needs to create a FB profile generator which creates an original AI generated image and name to use for signups. I feel this would be popular.

  • 1
    j3threejayj3threejay USAPosts: 34
    • 1
      I am also not on FB due to privacy concerns and my own mental health.
  • 1
    udelugeudeluge germanyPosts: 61

    I'm also not on FB and I don't use any FB related sites or apps like whatsapp that only try to collect private data.

    I also put much effort to prevent FB to collect my data as it does from none FB users to, that visit pages with like buttons and other FB crap. uBlock Origin and Pi-Hole does a good job for this on my whole network and will be supported by OPNsense soon.

    facebook is evil

  • 2
    OllieOllie SeattlePosts: 14

    Ian,

    For over 10 years, I've been trying to explain to people who insist on using Facebook groups that this action alienates many people who choose not to use the platform. Generating AI or anonymous accounts seems excessive for users who just want to participate. Facebook seems to not be a good solution for several reasons. As a suggestion, Ableton uses Centercode for its beta program, which I have been a part of for a few years. I'm very happy with the platform and I would recommend taking a look at it. Thanks.

  • 2
    VondragonnogginVondragonnoggin California, USAPosts: 199

    There are a lot of cross posts as well. Asked here and solved there or tips there that don’t make it here. One unified forum would be great with a special access beta testers section if possible.

    I can’t bring myself to go on there anymore and feel it might go the way of MySpace at some point anyway. They have been losing users as younger people are using Instagram or Snapchat. I’m not about to sign up for any of that. I’ll leave that to the kids. Too much intrusion and hoops for privacy.

  • 1
    Ian_JorgensenIan_Jorgensen Wellington, New ZealandPosts: 614
    edited June 2019

    I appreciate everyones feedback, keep in mind, you're asking a lot more work of us, and it's something that will take time. We've been utilising Facebook since day one, far before we had a forum, we don't want to be douchebags and let down all those people who love using that platform and don't like using this platform. We don't want to go with one or the other at the moment when both are working fine.

    Just like our development of the product, our desire to keep everyone kinda happy means also kinda making everyone unhappy. There are no simple solutions that work for everybody, so people just need to understand that our users all have different preferences/needs, and as a company, we are trying to acknowledge that and do our best to work for all users, not a select number.

    Moving more and more content to the web and away from and being less dependent on FB is a slow process of ours, but it is a looonng slow process. Working on software features is more important to us in the short-term. Ideally we would see the main interaction with users be through here and not through FB, it's gonna take time though - we are slowly changing the website to make it better too.

    We're only ever an email away is someone is looking for urgent support.

    Post edited by Ian_Jorgensen on
  • 3
    NorisNoris AustriaPosts: 38

    +1

    @mrrafs said:
    +1 knowledge shared is so much easier to find afterwards on a forum.

  • 0

    Any updates on this?

    @Ian_Jorgensen said:
    aye, we currently use these various platforms as they are suited best. These forums are perfect for collecting peoples ideas for software suggestions as things are catalogued and searchable easily. We also use Facebook because it is a far better platform for immediate engagement and the response/feedback we need for beta development.

    I'd also love to be a beta tester. Creating a fake profile on Facebook is against their terms of use. I'd manage to do that but when I get kicked off, the validation effort you did was worthless. (Despite the fact that this company is a serious threat for the society which I don't want to legitimate in any way)

    We try to balance both, but also, we're only ever an email away if support is ever needed.
    Overhauling these forums is a longterm plan of ours, but the current format is not conducive to discussion, however, it serves it purpose in being an indexable/searchable stop gap for resources and ideas.

    Overhauling/replacing the forum would be nice but hey, this thing is working. I guess the replacement would be the ubiquitous Discourse software. (You could out-source some hosting and administration to discoursehosting.net, they also offer domain masking afaik)

    I am in daily communication with users on Instagram DMs, Twitter DMs, Facebook messenger, emails, website contact form, multiple FB pages and these forums - we give people many ways they can access us, there is no point limiting to JUST these forums.

    It's important for happy users to respond to them on many channels. However, a polite reference to the forums might be also in your interest:
    1. Everyone can respond to a forum post. This gives the community the chance to help you answering trivial stuff.
    2. You and your users can search for answers through all topics posted here.
    3. In the end, the reduction of main communication channels reduces complexity and saves time and effort.

    @Ian_Jorgensen said:
    Beta testing will remain on FB for the next while at least, its really not easy to pick up and move something like that, not to mention the shit ton of work ive already done verifying people's identities which i will have to do from scratch again if/when we move here.

    This sounds stupid but... Your forums are the perfect way for doing this. You are already sitting on the data. To buy a device, users have to provide a mail address. Just create a separate beta testing area in the forum. Access to this area is on request and only granted if the mail address in the forums matches the one give for purchase. There might be some edge cases which would require more effort but for the 80% this should be sufficient.

  • 0
    Ian_JorgensenIan_Jorgensen Wellington, New ZealandPosts: 614
    edited June 2019

    Unfortunately these forums are not suitable for beta testing. I set up a private forum and road tested the usability and reporting, and it's totally inadequate. There is simply no way these forums would work. Perhaps a platform like Slacker or Trello or Loomio but then we'd have to massively limit the number of testers, perhaps like 50-100 people max (which would piss a LOT of people off) and it would require yet another website/platform. Facebook groups are actually the greatest platform I've encountered for a massive amount of people to quickly access and discover information, to register their interest, download things, share videos/photos, url's and to react to things and check on discussions/see if things they want to mention are already mentioned.

    What is absolutely number one priority for beta testing is beta testing, and we can't sacrifice our ability to do it efficiently with an already amassed collection of 500 testers. Not being reliant on FB is a total goal of ours, but it's a long term one.
    Users want us to beta test quickly and efficiently. Moving to a less suitable platform is not the answer at the moment.

    Post edited by Ian_Jorgensen on
  • 0
    pbolgerpbolger ChristchurchPosts: 61

    @Ian_Jorgensen said:

    Unfortunately these forums are not suitable for beta testing. I set up a private forum and road tested the usability and reporting, and it's totally inadequate. There is simply no way these forums would work. Perhaps a platform like Slacker or Trello or Loomio but then we'd have to massively limit the number of testers, perhaps like 50-100 people max (which would piss a LOT of people off) and it would require yet another website/platform.

    I've experimented with Loomio. It's designed for collaborative decision making. I'd say it would be useless for beta testing. It's designed around proposing actions and voting on them. Trello: again, not really intended as an issue tracker. Slack: I dunno - maybe with some third party extensions it might work.
    I think I'd be looking at Jira, Bugzilla, Mantis, Redmine etc. Someone else suggested Centercode, but I suspect it's expensive.

    Facebook groups are actually the greatest platform I've encountered for a massive amount of people to quickly access and discover information, to register their interest, download things, share videos/photos, url's and to react to things and check on discussions/see if things they want to mention are already mentioned.

    You;d bloody hope so, with the money they have available for development. As a non-FB user I find the Facebook interface annoying: hard to follow threads, and full of distractions. Maybe you get used to it.

    What is absolutely number one priority for beta testing is beta testing, and we can't sacrifice our ability to do it efficiently with an already amassed collection of 500 testers. Not being reliant on FB is a total goal of ours, but it's a long term one.
    Users want us to beta test quickly and efficiently. Moving to a less suitable platform is not the answer at the moment.

    As an intermediate solution, how about merging the two FB groups and the forum? I can't see a good reason for a closed group on Facebook for user chat. If your competitors want to monitor it presumably they will have bought a Deluge anyway.

    This forum and the two FB user groups seem to be a mixture of randomly split and duplicated posts.

    Is it possible to set up this and a FB group to automatically cross post, so anything posted on either ends up on both? Then one could pick their favourite interface and not miss out on anything.

  • 0
    OdoSendaidokaiOdoSendaidokai BerlinPosts: 326

    What comes into my mind is https://github.com/ or selfhosted https://gitea.io/ with private repositories. This is made exactly for software development and issue processing.
    But it would take another round of authenticate the people.

    It's just an idea. I know it has to work for you and in best case reduce the work.


    Odo Sendaidokai from Berlin

  • 2
    Ian_JorgensenIan_Jorgensen Wellington, New ZealandPosts: 614
    edited June 2019

    Yeah, there are specific software testing utilities, but the purpose of our testing is to open it up to regular peeps, who might possibly already have accounts on platforms and use them for other purposes so are signed in often and check often - there is no way I'd move to a niche testing facility from the current one, haha, it's going to make way more people angrier than are currently angry :). It's the core issue with these here forums, there aren't a huge amount of users logged in all day seeing all posts. It's why FB is so perfect, the people who use it, are present all day.

    Lol, peeps gotta just trust us eh. The two different FB groups do serve a purpose to us. Basically there are the FB forums (open) and these forums which are open for people to discuss any content that is kinda on topic. We don't limit the users, we only moderate harmful speech and radically off-topic conversation.
    The purpose of the beta testers group has been well discussed already. The private users page is a the FB page than Rohan and I monitor. We don't pay close attention to the open group - which has FAR more discussion, plus we don't allow feature discussion on the closed group. If there were only one FB page, we wouldn't be able to distinguish between non-users making comments and claims and users and we wouldn't be able to gauge response to certain things as easily, plus we'd be bombarded by feature requests constantly (as you can see from these forums). It has nothing to do with competitors, and everything to do with limiting the amount of random crap that Rohan and I need to see.

    Yes, as far as having a facility where posts are cross-posted, that is something I've been considering...however, most of the posts on the FB pages are just people spouting...its kinda the thing about posting here, people tend to think about a thread before starting...on FB, people just start threads for anything off the top of their heads - which works in that environment, but not here.

    Almost every post I make on one of the FB pages/the official page, I collate and provide that info in our newsletters, so if you're receiving those, there will be no "official" information missed by not following the FB pages. Even all the videos I share, I include in each newsletter.

    I'm afraid people will just need to be patient. At the end of the day, people start their own communities when the need is there. We didn't start the 'open' FB group, so have no mandate to change it (merging that with the closed group changes the thing people signed up for - merging the closed group with the open group - the same), plus there are several other user started niche Deluge groups on facebook as well, ie: the German users one, the 'competition' one, there is the Reddit Deluge users thread, didn't someone start a Deluge Dischord as well? There are also popular threads on key forums...eg, many of our German users use the Deluge thread on sequencer.de - and though you might think this is all bad having things so fractured...I see it as important - people need to feel comfortable on a platform they enjoy and are used to and login often - I don't want to force all discussion to one place, and it works better if people discuss in an open environment where non-Deluge users can view discussion too.

    Post edited by Ian_Jorgensen on
  • 0
    paqpaq Posts: 4

    My fakebook account did work for a week or so, now I need to give a phone number to login, well no thanks.
    It's a pity because I really liked the discussions (and quick help) from the user group, and I was thrilled to get access to alpha firmware. Sorry for the validation trouble too,

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