apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

A messageboard would be great. We have a terrific one over at fabprefab, and you have to to register in order to participate (keeps the spam out).

We don't seem to have spam or troll issues here and I have noticed that message boards tend to stagnate with blogs that allow comments and that are updated regularly.
Ppl seem to like the immediacey of a subject, comment on it furiously for a day or two and move on to the next blog item.
Take a look at gothamist.com to see this dynamic at work. Some good discussions get started in the comments but die out after about three days as ppl move on to comment again on other posts. In the meantime their forum is relatively dead.

I think the open posts work well for now and see no reason to replace them with anything else.
One thing that may be good is a set of auto updated links updated in real time or near real time that simply list the top ten most active posts in terms of comments logged by some factor of number of comments and time of update. Keep that updated in the middle column.

Forgot to add, fabprefab is not a blog so there is nowhere for ppl to comment except for the messageboard.

I think it would be great if adding a comment to an article posted the comment directly in a linked topic on a messageboard. Having a messageboard would also allow for more discussion not directly connected to one of today's posts. I don't think it would take away from the blog either, but it does require some work in monitoring.

Agree with jamie pup about showing a list of top ten most active posts or threads or something like that at the top of the page. Fancier still (and very desirable) would be some way to click only on new posts rather than having to reopen threads all the time that might not have anything in them, but I don't have any idea of the technology behind that.

Perhaps a (very) partial solution to Pixie's suggestion of having the capability of only displaying the comments that I haven't read before (which, BTW, I think would be great if it could be accomplished) is to time-stamp all comments so that the reader knows when each comment was made. So then if you at least kind of remember when you last visited a page, you can figure out where to start reading again.

agreed, the time-stamping is a great idea.

i like the concept of open threads, but i feel like some ideas/questions/issues get lost. they aren't really organized -- it is like a whole bunch of people talking at each other about anything they want (rather than exchanging with each other).

a message board would allow the discussions to be grouped around specific themes -- that feels more manageable to me.

I think it works well. Keeps things from getting stale. But, on the other hand, having comments is kinda like ADD. Just blurt it out, and often questions aren't answered, etc. What I've seen before, that works fairly well, is having both. People post in the comments, and when a subject gets heated or interesting, you move the thread over to the forum.

Time stamping would be great. What about submit to AT a specific question. Max & co will pick the most interresting ones and dedicate a thread to that subject. We can have 3 or 4 open thread at the same time but each will be dealing with a separate subject.

But open threads and comments linked to posts aren't a very efficient way of spreading/sharing information. Having a message board would be a significantly better way to access specific information. You could still have open threads there as well.

I like the message board idea too. Cuse -"having comments is kinda like ADD" - so funny, so true.

When started I thought these threads were primarily a space for weekend comments when the main site had no new postings. I think that was a good idea. Lately they seem to crop up randomly in the middle of the week or whenever. Message boards could be nice, but also could be unweildy to manage. I've seen some sites implode under the weight the postings and moderating needs to deal with all the "flaming".

I agree about adding time/date to comments. I think that would be helpful, as well as an auto-generated list of most active threads. I used to be part of a set of weblogs that were grouped/linked together, and they had a common menu of of most recent comments, which was also helpful.

Also, as long as we're talking about online community, here's an excellent article on the subject - A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy - shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

Maybe we could have vast open threads during the weekend but focus in on individual questions during the week? I would also like to see which threads have new comments, but since we don't log in here, I don't know how you'd tell...

I got a request from another AT reader to post a bit about sound proofing in the open thread. Some of this I've posted before, but hopefully people will find it useful.

Soundproofing an apartment is a big undertaking. A lot of people think that sound proofing is a matter of hanging up some heavy drapes, or putting some kind of egg-crate style foam on the walls. This is absolutely not the truth. Drapes and foam can be used as treatments to affect sound in a room, but are of little use at preventing sound from leaving or entering a room.

For simplicity's sake we'll break sound into three flavors - low frequency (the thump of the stereo coming from your left hand neighboor who spins hip hop) and high frequency (the noise made by your right hand neighboor when she's having an exceptionally good evening with intimate company). Now, to make things worse, we've got impact noise. That's because a 300 pound guy from Texas have moved in above you and is practicing his line dancing.

High frequency noise is kind of like a ping pong ball. It hits a surface and reflects off. Not a lot of force is transfered to the surface. High frequency noise is pretty easy to block.

So why then can you hear the happy exclamations of your neighboor? A lot of reasons, the chief of which is air. Sound is a lot like water, if there's a space it's going to find its way in. While you may think you've got a nice solid wall between Ms. Screams-a-lot and you, that wall is chock full of holes - electrical outlets, holes in the drywall for plumbing, air ducts, etc.. The sound could even be leaking out the gap under her front door, traveling down the hall, and entering from the gap under your front door!

Low frequency noise is like a brick. It's going to carry a lot of energy and smash right into what it's thrown at.

Your wall might as well be tissue paper to Mr. Hip Hop's subwoofer. Those bass waves are going to hit his wall, loose a bit of energy, and carry right through to yours. If you are particularly unlucky the wall construction actually acts as a drum and can amplify some of those waves! And of course those air gaps are going to carry the bass right through as well as they do the screams.

Impact noise is like bass only more so! The impact from Mr Two Step's boots are going to cause waves in his floor, and thus your ceiling.

But all is not hopeless! There are ways around this, but a bit of foam won't cut it. The best way to reduce noise is do uncouple your walls/ceiling/floor from everyone elses. Your noise won't leak out, their noise won't leak in. Build a new set of walls an inch or two away from your current ones, making sure that the new walls and old walls don't touch. Then plug up all the holes with air-tight electrical work boxes caulked with accoustic caulk. This is expensive, however, and not something a renter can do. You'll also need to do something about those big holes we call windows. Get the most glazing you can afford, and look for high STC ratings (that's a measure of noise reduction) on the windows.

You can also decouple walls by slapping up another layer of drywall separated by a damping device such as RSIC clips and Hat Channel or Green Glue (a spreadable damping compound).

Share a ventillation system with everyone? Build a vent hush-box. That's a complex item I won't discuss too much here, but if you're getting noise from your vents you may want one.

But what if you don't own, can't afford (or don't want) to undertake a major construction project, and still want to soundproof? Well, you can do a little, but not much. Buy some accoustic caulk and seal up every hole you can find in the walls where noise comes from. That means unscrewing electrical outlets and caulking around wires, caulking around the gangboxes of the outlets, etc. Get a good set of weather strips for your door, look into an automatic threshold seal (easy to install, about $150 do do a normal size door). Other than that there really isn't much you can do. Foam and wall hangings may make your space sound nicer (a whole other post!), but they won't do much to stop noise from getting in or out.

There are two sides to this comment/messageboard arguement-

sometimes, people tend to either 1. go crazy on message boards or 2. get turned off by what is being said and stop visiting.

Although we can't really moderate comments like we can message boards, I think the reason comments works is beause a lot of nastiness that shows up on boards just doesn't happen (maybe because that option of "reply to" and "quote" is not available in comments, and it's a lot of work to go through a thread and pull stuff?)

On the upside of message boards, if well moderated and people stick to etiquitte, having categories for subjects would be great. Much easier to get the answers you're looking for. It also might make the lurkers speak up more.

hmm..hard choice.
Well, whatever the outcome..just no yahoogroup board-type things please...the make me go insane.
(ps.I like the ideas of timestamps and "new reply" on comments- maybe even right next to the new comment so we can scroll right down to it...?)

Comments have their place, and so do messageboards - Hey! did I ever say that fabprefab was a blog? No. However, it makes sense to post certain things in messageboards, like what Max just posted above about sound-proofing. Then people can have actual DIALOGUES that are relatively organised, as opposed to a random water-cooler discussion that bounces all over the place. Oh, and I can't stand the Yahoo groups either..... The BB software that fabprefab uses works great, as long as people are required to register first.

I really like the freedom and informality of these discussions. For that, I'm willing to put up with occasional inappropriateness and ADD. And if I weren't scrolling down for new posts, what else would I do--work?

I think comments are an unwieldy way to have discussions. Particularly the "Open Thread" method. A message board would work much better. I rarely go back to check comments... I simply see what's new in my aggregator -- so most of the time I only see the comments made the first time I view a post. Message boards have much better systems for keeping track of new messages.

Justin, I think you missed my point. I am saying that message boards tend not to work as well for blogs (that allow comments) as they do for non-blog sites. That's all.

Someone go over to gothamist please, then come back here and say whether you agree or disagree with me.

When a mesage board gets so little traffic then the overhead with having to maintain it and the users surely means that its continues existence comes into question? There is only so much that the staff here can do.

I'm with Joan on this one. I'm not so web-savvy, so I'm not a fan of message boards.

BTW, I am a member of a few very successful forums with tremendous communities of like minded ppl taking lots of time to help each other. Sounds so nice and touchy feely? Well actually the one I used to spend a lot of time on was avsforum.com in the LCD and plasma section (so I know everything there is to know about these two technologies even down to the charge/discharge ramp up cycle in the subfield processesing of plasmas - I read the patents) and it is a lot of work to moderate.

Hi jamie pup, I'm a big avsforum guy myself. It's a great place to learn about anything to do with A/V stuff.

Thanks, folks. This is all EXTREMELY helpful. Mainly it's a technology issue. We'll see what we can do. All thoughts and suggestions much appreciated.

oh, and wouldn't Max be Max (the other one)?

jamie pup, I went over to the Gothamist board and had a really good laugh (loved the "Has NYC lost its soul?" thread). It's all apples and oranges, and I stand by what I said before.
How many of y'all are born and bred New Yorkers, by the way? I AM.

I like it, and read it...but rarely comment. Despite the topics sometimes changing quickly or being hijacked as referred to here on the site, I rarely pipe up for fear of pissing someone off. I don't see anything here about how to start a thread...etc. For example, I have a burning question I'm afraid to ask. I need to give my designer final approval in the morning on my foyer. I was putting in brown medium smoked ash oak flooring in my flat. My foyer is about 6 ft wide by 9 feet deep. It has a definite end point where I could change the flooring. I planned the hardwood all over, but the designer mentioned she would put a cream marble in the foyer to brighten up the area given I actually have a gracious foyer to take advantage of the space. I'm torn and can't decide. See ... is that a new thread ?

i like the informal open thread form (as a dial up dinosaur, message boards take way to long to load each page, and these open threads expose you to all sorts of random things at once, without having to go back to a menu and prioritize which ones to click on).

Maxwell - I love this site pretty much as-is. I think the "good questions" are grouped in a pretty findable way, and I know that not everyone wants to "apply" to BE a "good question", so the Open Threads are nice, too. But I DO agree that time stamps are a good idea. Ya know ... if you made it where the server automatically wouldn't accept a time-stamp that was less than a minute after another one from the same post-er, maybe that double-clicking and Department of Redunancy Department thing wouldn't happen.

Justin - I'm just responding to your question about born-and-bred; I'm an humble immigrant who defected the Confederacy in 1986 for artistic freedom and political asylum.

Joe - marble seems like a bathroom or kitchen thing to me, but might be nice in a foyer, since it would be very, very moppable. But, if your entrance isn't going directly outdoors (from which you would be tracking mud), I would prefer some kind of starburst or other inlaid wood pattern in the floor, so it's still wood, but makes a nice statement at the entrance. I think the cream marble might be kind of a shock to the system.

Just so you know, I didn't intend my question about "born and bred" to sound snobbish or elitist. I was just curious to see how many folks at Apt Therapy are from NYC or elsewhere. Reading the Gothamist thread just got me thinking, that's all.
Joe, marble in the entranceway would be brilliant. And practical.

thanks...btw...not a New Yorker here...Torontonian.

Love Toronto! Okay, so you're a native of Toronto - do you consider yourself a New Yorker? What constitutes a "New Yorker" these days?

Ok, I'll get sucked into this, and I'll probably get slaughtered for it...God no, I don't consider myself a New Yorker. I don't even consider some New Yorkers to be New Yorkers. I think there are two kinds of NYers. First, there are the natives, that is born and bred. With these folks, even living in the burbs like Queens or Brooklyn, I would consider them NYers. The second types are the transplants. If you're a transplant you may be able to claim to be a NYer, if you live in Man'tn proper, have lived there for 5 years, and have no shred of any other state's accent, participate in NY activities, and know it inside out. Example- Person from Alabama living in NY for 6 years, maintaining their accent, and not having a neighbourhood hangout, where the owner knows your name and what you order...not a NYer. I travel alot and get completely annoyed and embarrased when I meet someone and they tell me their from Toronto (and you can tell they're just not)...and then I ask them what neighbourhood they live in, and they give me the name of a town 80 miles away. I can only imagine how annoyed a NYer must be to be in the same situation. I would think NYers to be very territorial. And finally of course...every Tom, Dick, and Harry, wants to move to NY and does so...but having a NY address doesn't make them a NYer...being a NYer is a state of mind and you only get that by living there a long time through osmosis so to speak. I think there are things that city dwellers do that makes them a NYer or Torontonian. For example, a real Torontonian must hit Kensington Market at least once a month. A real TO'n skates at Nathan Phillips Square in winter time. I guess that may be anal but above and beyond some people may still think they're in a NY state of mind, when they really belong in a NY State Asylum.

Yep, that's exactly right - it's a "New York state of mind". (As the song goes......)
I have a terrible habit wherever I go....I refer to NYC as "the city", and automatically assume that whomever I'm talking to knows what I mean. I usually get a funny look. Bad habit, I know, but I'm a New Yorker, whaddya want?
NY State Asylum..... LOL.

Joe--
I vote for keeping flooring the same throughout, especially if your space veers on the smaller. And I actually like a foyer that's "visually compressed"... it makes the rest of the space seem to expand. But go with your gut.
(Hey, are you the Joe with Wenge cabinets?! If so, glad to hear the progress continues.When do we see pictures?!?)
And I had the good fortune of being in Toronto recently. In my limited exposure, I really liked that city. It seemed to have lots of the NYC benefits but an approacahable, cleaner, international feel. The sales tax was killer though, for a shopaholic like me!!

Patrick..i hope you researched your shopping as all the better design places are off the beaten path spread all over place. I just approved the cream marble in the foyer. The flat is 1000 sq feet, and given the remainder of the flat is hardwood, including the kitchen, (except for the powder room and ensuite), I thought I could get away with it and lighten the area up, given the closest window is about 30 feet away from the front door (dark stained birch). I kept the wenge wood for the bath areas. The kitchen I flip flopped on and went for a more scandinavian euro look, without being modern...brown ash hardwood, natural maple cabinets, stainless appliances, dark dark green granite counters with some smudges of medium brown in it, and a brown 17 inch by 3 inch brown backsplash. There's only two seasons in Toronto...winter and construction. When it's done I sure will post some pix, or at least send, as I'm incompetent when it comes to attaching pictures to these sites...vacation pictures could end up here if i'm not careful. Thanks very much.

Just as an aside...so many people kept saying marbles and limestones and slates are so passe, but I have to say...I go to europe often and love the marbles on floors. How can anything that has been used in floor design for 2000 yrs be passe...

Message boards would be so much more effective than the open threads. I have never had a posted question answered and I don't know if that is because people just don't have a response or if it was lost in all of the noise of the thread. I enjoy AT but overall I think it lacks organization, making it hard to find what you are looking for or get any feedback.

Message boards...

can be expensive(software) + time consuming to moderate/keep up and going

If you think your having server problems now...just wait till you get message boards up and going.

We all know what "AT" is/does/represents.

What AT needs to ask itself is if message boards will help contribute to their mission statement? or be a leach and divert resources that could be spent say....coming up with a spring cleaning comp. (or has that bird already flown the coop?)

Perhaps have the open thread linger near the top and off to the side? maybe a hybrid. Say a few threads with constant themes in a open thread section.

IE; one for tips/tricks
one for bedrooms,
one for gardening
one for evildoers (or am i the only one?)

etc

not a message board though...but some place in between


I promised myself i would do nothing all weekend...
now it's been spoiled.

Interesting perspective, and I SORT of agree with Joe, except that ... the way I see it, its kind of like when married guys have VERY feminine-sounding voices, and yet they have a lot invested in being considered straight, so I take them at what they say and kind of just figure that maybe it's kind of a good thing to believe that not all straight married guys are hulking boors.

So... I kind of think that if people consider themselves New Yorkers, they've gone through a certain amount of mental work to get themselves to drag themselves here, either at the urging and and with the support of family, or by whatever means they find necessary, and if their accents haven't caught up with that, so what? Depending on who I've been talking to (and who's listening) I'm thought to still sound very Southern at times by some; very New York at times by others, and very MidWestern by others after being here 19 years.

You're right Curtis...I was actually trying to be preposterous in my post and my criteria list, as I said, it's something very intangible that makes you a NY'er. The rest was somewhat, somewhat of a joke. When someone posed the question as to whether or not I thought of myself as a ny'er and what makes a ny'er. The fact that I saw a commercial on TV for Miss America fearfactor, just created a chain reaction in my brain, especially the image of a Miss Alabama type with her big hair and vaselined teeth,claiming to be a ny'er just because she moved there...It's actually complementary because I don't think anyone can be a NY'er and there are very few cities on the planet that you can say that for. I was looking into buying property in NYC. If I did would that make me a NY'er . No way.