Does anyone remember when...?

[Axewielder]

Thanks for the new signature Newc!

[VitaminG]

I don't disagree with any of that, but the moderation and administration are ultimately responsible for the way they've administered and moderated. This forum used to be patrolled with an Iron Fist. Moderation was done for personal reasons, not for the sake of neutral monitoring and there used to be regular complaints about that.

And the pay for classifieds is a rule that is partly responsible for much of that trolling pointing out that it wasn't welcome here unless you were a paid member. There are plenty of ways to build a community, that rule and the way it was selectively enforced or self policed had a lot to do with that too. Ultimately it was the fault of a site rule that wasn't properly moderated.

The whole Charvel vs Jackson collectors, or the whole World War Pre-Pro divided the site spitefully contributed greatly as well, but that could have been overcome, but by the time people started to forgive people, this site had already been mostly abandoned.

MOAIP drew a lot of traffic.

But the biggest detriment to this site is that it's not mobile phone compatible. iTrader is another plugin that should have been dealt with. A minimum post or time-frame for classifieds would have also helped traffic and would have helped keep users posting and contributing.

But people have been pushed away from here for many different reasons, all which could have been fixed with proper moderation and administration. Seriously, almost nothing has changed here in over a decade. If you look at any forum with any sizeable active user base, staff are always doing things to improve the site.

We're still on vanilla vBulletin after the custom icons got deleted. This site is less personalized than it was in 2002, it's only gone backwards this whole time, so if there are any wonders why only old timers post here is because that's a direct result of how much attention this site has received from admin.

all excellent points. I let my Platinum status lapse last renewal because I was sick of contributing to a site and seeing no improvements. I put my money where my mouth is for years, not because I ever sold anything in the Classifieds or felt an overwhelming compulsion to post in the Politics section. But because I wanted to give a little back. I don't mind paying tax if it benefits the community. How has my little contribution benefited any of you?

[AAEA]

make it a point to stop telling people how much their gear is worth. I see 3-4 a week doing this. charge em, thats what most appraisers do

[lepard]

I don't really have a problem with the people asking for values on their guitar or how much they should pay for a guitar they are looking to purchase. A lot of those posts are from people outside the United States and they have very limited access to info on these guitars. Pretty much every single time they contact Fender(Jackson) Customer Service by email, they are given horribly wrong information.

[eaeolian]

Blaming the internet is kind of lame. Look at SevenString.org. There are more Jackson fans there than there are here.

Because that place has been actively administrated...

As one of the Mods there, eh, sorta. There's a lot of Jackson fans there now because Misha plays Jackson - and they literally all bitched about their guitars when they bought them.

This place is not a fair-weather Jackson crowd, but there's just less quality because there's less to know, and more communities to divide our time.

[xenophobe]

all excellent points. I let my Platinum status lapse last renewal because I was sick of contributing to a site and seeing no improvements. I put my money where my mouth is for years, not because I ever sold anything in the Classifieds or felt an overwhelming compulsion to post in the Politics section. But because I wanted to give a little back. I don't mind paying tax if it benefits the community. How has my little contribution benefited any of you?

My membership status was reset the last time the board went down. I didn't particularly care, and after what 4 or 5 days of being down, a 6 month old backup was restored. I almost stopped posting. The content is only here for what seems to be to draw ad revenue. And it's kind of sad that much of the site still isn't google searchable, so when someone does search for questions answered here, this site isn't likely to show up on searches. I dunno, not my site, so it is what it is. But agreed, I don't see any reason to pay for classifieds, almost nothing actually sells here, so that's not really a service worth paying for.

As one of the Mods there, eh, sorta. There's a lot of Jackson fans there now because Misha plays Jackson - and they literally all bitched about their guitars when they bought them.

This place is not a fair-weather Jackson crowd, but there's just less quality because there's less to know, and more communities to divide our time.

Plenty of former members here are active there. Their user base has consistently grown because it's moderated and administered actively. This is supposed to be the main site for Charvel Jackson discussion and it could be much more active than it is, just nobody really cares.

[msaint65]

Multiple J/C pages on Facebook have to take a HUGE bite out of participation here....there's only so much time to go around. On the other hand, I trust most of what I read here - I trust very little of what I read on FB. Value added....JCF.

[VitaminG]

Multiple J/C pages on Facebook have to take a HUGE bite out of participation here....there's only so much time to go around. On the other hand, I trust most of what I read here - I trust very little of what I read on FB. Value added....JCF.

what are you talking about, man? Everyone on FB knows that Vai played a Carvin in Crossroads. And the logo was taped over so as not to offend Jesse Jackson

[Newc]

I don't spend all day on the FB JCF page, but it does pop up in my feed, and I still see a lot of "I've got this one for sale", followed by "you can't post for sale ads here".


I get that, I really do. You don't want people breezing in just to sell, you want them to hang out and pick a clique and join a faction. I get it. But here's the thing: no one cares what you want, especially someone who came into a guitar with a logo that doesn't match their current hero's logo. They don't have to care. They don't have to like the brand. They don't have to give one fuck about your website and your community and your rules. It's really that simple. Yes, they can, and should, take it to Ebay, because, for one, they're yet another anonymous fuck on the interweb, and only a complete dipshit will:
A) Take an anonymous fuck at their word that they're not running a scam
B) Send this anonymous fuck money for a guitar they claim to be in possession of

Ebay at least requires scammers to jump through flaming hoops that independently-owned fan-sites simply cannot do.

However, this is what becomes of people perpetuating the old saying "you can't blame a fuck for trying". Yes, you can. Whether the intention was noble or not is irrelevant - "I tried to score it cheap/sell it high - you can't blame a guy for trying!" is no different than "I tried to scam someone - you can't blame a guy for trying", because they both use the same old adage as their excuse.

As well, it's been stated several times before, because there was a precedent for it that required it to be said, but someone got burned by a scammer when the Classifieds was open-to-all and blamed the admins and the owners and the host for not doing the proper background checks on people who posted in the Classifieds.
Someone said they owned something and had pictures of it, got money, then disappeared. This is the buyer's fault entirely for not doing the things they should have done, but instead expected the admins, owner, and host to do for them. It's a classic case of "I fucked up, who can I blame for it?"

So then a bunch of shit got changed and that made a bunch of people unhappy because one person sent an anonymous fuck money, got robbed, and got loud about it.

Give them a rough estimate and send them on their way.

Disable PMs for non-Plat members except from Admins and you don't open yourself up to the "boo hoo I sent this new user money for a guitar he said he had and weh weh weh" again. Or just disable PMs for non-Plats and Plats with fewer than xx posts entirely, that way they have to have participated at least some reasonable amount before they can get "hey I saw your post about such and such lemme know if you want to sell it".
That's no guarantee scams won't still happen, but it's a start.


As for site "upgrades" - I see nothing wrong with the layout or the functions. I can post links to images, videos, and text, just like other sites that are under constant revision, like the SDUGF.

Aside from the Generator, there's no interactive content here such as wiring diagrams and such, because that's the domain of pickup and parts websites. While it'd be nice in theory to be the hub for wiring diagrams for all pickup manufacturers, that's a gig that demands either a shitload of time donated, or a shitload of money paid to do it.
Henrik's catalog scans and tremolo info project was nice, but the hosting of it was iffy. Is this a problem on his end or the host's? Only Henrik knows.

However, I don't see where there's a lack of any particular feature, other than mobile device formatting, which in itself isn't such a big deal for me because I don't live on my phone, and don't surf much on it. I have a laptop with a mobile broadband stick for surfing.

Maybe if more named players would make the switch to Jackson and learn to take care of their instruments on the road rather than going with every other brand that throws freebies at them like Skittles, we'd get more traffic. Maybe if the established players were more relevant we'd get more traffic.

[xenophobe]

Yeah, well whatever... opinions... as the saying goes.

I'm on far larger and much more active boards that have open classifieds... wherever you allow sales, bad transactions will happen, there's no avoid that.

The classifieds policy is directly responsible for members harshly trolling users and to a lot of people that's gotta be offputting. It certainly doesn't draw new users in, if anything it gives them reason to leave butthurt and never come back.

As for users coming in just to sell stuff, most people are aware of when that's happening. The whole argument you don't want people coming here just to flip stuff doesn't really work when there really isn't any traffic here anyway.

Most sites with paid memberships actually have benefits for paying memberships, not just access to classifieds. It's not like the classifieds here has mattered in a decade, if you don't like it, just don't look in there. At this point sticking up for a policy that was enacted a decade and a half ago is meaningless because this place is a ghost town anyway.

[markD]

Seems like I am in the minority, but after being here almost 14 years, I am glad that a bunch of newbs aren't around. I remember when we had an influx of new blood and some old timers were just dicks to EVERYONE. Even I went a way for quite a while. It was an uncool, uncomfortable place to hang out. Sadly, as was said in another thread some time ago, Jackson lost the war with ESP. Still a great guitar, but the superficial reasons players use to buy guitars (favorite player, etc.) combined with availability of COOL Jacksons just makes it harder to get one. Without one, what is there to discuss? As I have said in other threads, I pretty much sold ALL my J/C guitars over the last couple of years because I stopped playing metal and moved on. I still dig coming here and interacting with people I have "known" for years. Sadly, not much is posted these days - and I would like to see more stuff, but I would rather it be quality than quantity. Regarding the "how much is my guitar worth?" threads - eh, give an answer, be cool and MAYBE the person will stick around. NOBODY wants to be part of a community of pricks. We had that for a while. It seems to have gone away, and in the last month or two, I have seen more old-timers popping up again and getting active. Hopefully things will turn around.....

[Nightbat]

Sadly, as was said in another thread some time ago, Jackson lost the war with ESP.

I think this is the biggest reason for a lack of influx

You have 2 big names in music as Jackson endorser, but they don't cater to the 'new kids' and actually, are more prone to bow out within the next decade or so
If Whatshisname from Children of Bodom had gotten signed, you'd have seen an influx of enthusiastic kids flocking to the site

No mobile access (The place where the new generation lives) is one thing we CAN 'accuse' the siteowners of
JCF is distancing itself from the exact things that are current, just because rigid old fucks like me still load APP sites in their HTML draft (whenever possible) does not make it
as if the rest of the world will do the same

But the level of moderation (unless it's totalitarian) has no bearing on popularity of a site

[FunkyApocalypse]

As someone who initially joined JCF as a 14 year-old kid (turned 21 in February), it's been weird seeing how the site has changed. I definitely agree with the sentiments of seeing the oldheads knocking on newbs who come here asking questions as well as administration not making the site really friendly to people of my generation (I quite frankly don't give two shits about any site could be administered, as long as it can serve its purpose well in its format). The former isn't cool whatsoever; if there's people who come around asking questions trying to get acquainted with the brand of J/C and get knocked for having different musical interests then old school metals is unacceptable and very childish. The latter, although not a probably for me, can be a problem for others; my generation is very involved with handheld device (phones, tablets), and having the site accessible for such formats could help, and maybe an overhaul of the site itself.

Out of the admins' control, the brand of J/C is in a very awkward place. It seems the only way you can be endorsed/sponsored by either is if you're a virtuoso (Broderick, Govan), old school shredder (DeMartini), or in a world famous metal band (Demmel, Morton, Duplantier). Even then, the seeming unwillingness of J/C to try to nab up-and-coming bands (see: new waves of metal, thrash, even blues players) and well known bands seems to be killing them. It seems that ESP and Ibanez are getting everyone, while Jackson is still banking on endorsements of players who are in their late 30s and 40s and people who are fans of them. The only people playing Jacksons, that I know of in my demographic, are only people who know about J/C and are fans of those older players. Even I have grown out of my J/C love, as the only new guitar I've seen that is truly appealing is the So Cal Pro Mod. It'd hurt to see J/C suffer the same fates of BC Rich and Dean, but it would not surprise me if they did.

[pianoguyy]

As long as we are tossing around grimaces about the site:
I really have not yet gotten the hang of the search fuction.

I either get 0 results, or 14,000.

[BenoA]

I'm with Nightbat and markD... I really Think ESP has done a lot of damage.

I don't remember when I joined but back then I had like only 2 guitars... Now I have close to 20 (lost the count recently), my life has changed, the internet has changed even more, everything seems to be moving to Facebook...

This place doesn't have a mobile access.

I still come back here every day. It's the only forum I visit on a regular basis. The place is cool and most of the folks here seem to be from a similar musical background. To be honest, when the place here got slower, I tried to hang around TGP and got tired very quickly and came back here.