Greetings Friends,
 
Today we'd like to share with you our first round of ideas for some changes to the forum and get your feedback. We understand that many of you call this home so we want to give everyone time to provide input or point out any horrible ideas we may have conjured up. 
 
Re-Organization
It's been awhile since we last re-organized the forums and it's long overdue for some spring cleaning. The below outline is our proposed new structure. Please note the names are by no means final just a rough outline of what we are thinking.
 
Products
 - SONAR Producer, Studio, Essential & Base
 - Music Creator
 - Cakewalk Instruments
 - Cakewalk Hardware (including V-Studio, Audio & MIDI devices)
 - Classic Cakewalk (including pyro, Pro Audio, Kinetic & Project5)
 
Feedback Loop *
 - Features & Ideas
 - Problem Reports
 - Forum Discussion
 - Cakewalk Store
 
Community
 - Coffee House
 - Songs
 - Mixing, Production, & Studio Techniques
 - Audio Software, Hardware & DAW Building
 
 
Moderation changes
We have been kicking around this idea internally for awhile but we'd like to find a more effective way at keeping conversation on-topic, civil and helpful to the community. As hard as we try - there just isn't enough of us to fully provide the support that the community deserves. 
 
We'd like to introduce community moderators.
 
Deep breaths.
 
All forums, with the exception of 'Cakewalk store' would be moderated by members of the community. We would work with the moderation team to write a FAQ for each forum that summarizes what can and cannot be posted in that forum as well as expectations and etiquette. Here is what we are thinking, please let us know what you think.
 
1] A small group of handpicked by Cakewalk community members will be invited on a trial-basis to moderate specific parts of the forum
2] We would like to intentionally start with a small group as a kind of trial-run to work out the kinks
3] A private forum will be setup just for this group so that they:
 a) can bring major issues to the attention of Cakewalk staff
 b) have a place to discuss moderation policy
4] Once the kinks are worked out with the moderation process we'd like to explore alternative means of promoting moderators, community elections or appointment by some measure of helpfulness etc.
 
* Feedback Loop Addendum
Features & Ideas
We would like to make it easier to consolidate ideas from the community and provide some means of gauging how much the community does or does not support an idea. The forum has some voting features we are looking into enabling in this section.
 
Community moderators would:
 a] Merge duplicate ideas.
 b] Lock/remove rants or posts that don't include enough information for us to act on.
 c] Relocate product-specific questions to the appropriate forum.
 d] Work with contributors to ensure that any proposed idea is fleshed out and something a developer at Cakewalk could just pick up and start prototyping.
 
Problem Reports
 
We want it to be easier for the community to collaborate on common problems that may crop up in our products. This happens today but it can get very chaotic and difficult to keep track of.
 
Community moderators would:
 a] Lock/remove rants or posts that don't include helpful information to resolve a problem.
 b] Merge and consolidate duplicate reports.
 c] Manage feedback and nudge contributors to provide helpful repro cases.
 d] Ensure that for any reproducible, verified issue on the forum that there is an associated CWBRN ID in our tracking system.
 
Forum Discussion
Basically a place to discuss forum-specific issues or problems.
 
Cakewalk Store
This is a revival of an old forum that we used to have that we'd like to bring back. This forum would be specifically for users having an issue with the store or their Cakewalk account.
 
 

It would really help to bring back the ability to take a screen shot of a problem and post it from our PC's. In some cases a picture is worth a 1000 words and can provide someone a solution much faster. Also, having a unique Avatar would be nice too 

I like it. Do it. 

No Coffee House?

I don't think they know some of us are always using Sonar even when we are in the CH fooling around but I'm always working on something. The Coffee House is on my screen when I'm taking a break etc. but some probably complain it's a waste of time and a not Sonar related. I have to say a lot of collaborations go on here under the water so to speak that most don't know about. It would be a shame if the Coffee House went away. The Coffee House maintains a SONAR comradery that is unique in ANY forum!

I like the idea of community moderators. I'm assuming the omission of the Coffee House was an oversight. If not, I'm gone. I doubt I speak for only myself.
 
Randy

Yeah, hopefully the CH stays intact.
 
One suggestion for community mods is something I see used on other sites. Give the user visible mod status if that's the direction you'd like to go but also allow them to click something in their profile or tools or whatever to switch over to a nondescript Moderator account. That way if they need to post something in a thread to calm down a fight it won't turn into a game of favorites, grudges or hurt feelings.
 
Just a thought. Seems to work well elsewhere.

The CH is the part of the forums that connects Cakewalk/Sonar to music and life in general in ways that cannot be categorized.
 
It seems rather shortsighted to have forums related to products designed to (we hope) facilitate artistic expression having no appropriate casual sub-forum for the discussion music, art or life - only products.
 
Or does Cakewalk no longer wish to facilitate artists and it's products are now only designed for purely commercial use?

A few thoughts...
 
I think the proposed streamlining will make the forums much more relevant.
 
Moderators? Well, I don't think it's necessary to take a deep breath. Compared to what's out there Cakewalk's forums are remarkably civilized. I suspect any moderators will deal more with organization and moving to places where threads will get the most attention, as opposed to policing actions. 
 
I love the idea of a separate forum for problem reports. Sometimes people post valuable input on some kind of problem that gets lost when it ends up being post #74 on page 5 of a thread. However I think to be effective, this is where moderation would really come into play to merge duplicate topics and encourage people to provide more information about a problem. I've seen these kinds of forums for other companies and when done poorly, they're whinefests that accomplish nothing but when done well, they make huge contributions by centralizing data and soliciting useful input from the community.
 
As to the Coffee House, off-topic forums are always a hot potato...but people are people, not just software users. Having a place for off-topic posts also keeps those posts out of the main forums. One option is to make them password-protected so forum regulars can get in, while keeping out the +91 Swami Babaji types and trolls. (We had to do that with the political forum at Harmony Central because people who had zero interest in music but did have political agendas would ruin it for everyone). Really, it's up to you guys...it's always difficult to decide the best way to handle off-topic forums, but I think it's probably worth retaining. 

I think versions of Sonar/Cakewalk before X1 should be stuck into one single forum, Sonar X Series should be in another.

Also Coffee house should be renamed 'Cake hole'.