A Bit of Tape Op History

The Tape Op Message Board (hereafter referred to by its self-designated nickname, TOMB) is an offshoot of the bi-monthly magazine, Tape Op. The magazine was launched in April 1996 by an enterprising young studio engineer and recording enthusiast named Larry Crane. Since then it has become the magazine of choice for both self-taught novices and professionally trained musicians, engineers, and producers interested in the art of recording. Its byline is "The Creative Music Recording Magazine," and its editorial tone, layout, and user-centered focus certainly appeal to a broad cross-section of creative types involved in making and recording all types of music.

Subscriptions to the magazine are free, thanks to the healthy advertising it brings in. The free subscription means you receive each issue via 3rd class mail, which sometimes results in slightly damaged (or missing) copies. If you prefer, you can pay for a subscription to receive the magazine via 1st class US mail. Anecdotal evidence--based in part on the editors comments themselves--suggests that while most readers choose the free option, readership is extremely dedicated and consistent. This is reflected in the letters column in every issue, where the same names appear frequently over time (yes, I've been a devoted subscriber for a few years now).

One question I wanted to explore going into this assignment was whether the online forums were dominated by the same "experts" that commonly replied to readers' letters in the published magazine. Or, as a possible alternative, did certain forum members themselves come to be seen as voices of authority?

Demographics and Statistics

It is impossible to gather certain demographic information from the TOMB, simply because most registered users do not choose to include a great deal of information about age, gender, economic status, ethnicity, or race. (None of these indicators are required fields when registering.) However, it is possible to glean some interesting facts from the available data. As of November 26, 2007, TOMB users had posted a total of 424973 articles, and there were 10720 registered users. Most users ever online was 212 on Mon Jun 25, 2007 7:16 pm. Based on a very rough review of user profiles, members are predominantly male, although certain female members maintain a strong and vocal presence on the various forums. The web site administrator is, in fact, a woman, and she acts as moderator on two of the forums.

Of the twelve active forums, the most popular by far--based on number of posts--is Gear Talk (57,181 posts), followed by Recording Techniques (36, 530 posts). The fifth most popular forum is Buy/Sell/Trade, with well over 14,000 posts. The disparity in numbers between this forum and the other more popular ones mentioned above suggests that while the TOMB does serve as a viable alternative to eBay and craigslist, most members are there to discuss recording and equipment, not to buy/sell/trade. This indicates a greater degree of discourse, too. And while some members are clearly frequent contributors, it appears that lurkers are not as common as some research on other virtual communities suggests (see Preece, p. 87). Out of 200 randomly sampled members, the average number of posts (i.e., mean) per user was 54. However, a more careful reading of the data betrays the usefulness of this number. The mode of the data set (or number that appears most frequently) was actually 0. The standard deviation from the mean was a whopping 267! Perhaps the more useful statistic was a calculation of the trim mean, which is the mean after 10% of the "outliers" were eliminated (i.e., the top and bottom 10%). This number resulted in an average of 10 posts per member.

Conforming to Preece's Requirements

The TOMB certainly fits Preece's basic definition of an online community (Preece 2000, p.10), as it consists of

• people who interact socially in seeking to fulfill individual or common needs, with some playing clear roles as moderators
• a shared purpose, that is, the exploration of all things related to the black art/weird science of recording music
• policies both written and unwritten, such as posting rules, netiquette, and membership requirements
• a "computer system" to support and mediate the social interaction; in this case an old-school online bulletin board platform, phpBB

When a user first attempts to register for access to the forum (if s/he wishes to be anything but a lurker), s/he's presented with a list of posting rules, along with some random new member info. This immediately establishes the tone and spirit of the message board and lays out clear yet simple ground rules for becoming a registered member. The first rule states "There are no rules. Just kidding." Farther down the short list of rules, you encounter: "7. Post responsibly - we don't really want to have to be keeping an eye on the bad apples! Remember, the board and the magazine are free! 8. Speaking of apples, eat some fruit, it's good for ya! 9. Oh yeah, don't bug the web folks with silly questions. Only smart questions"

Clearly the folks from TapeOp who created the TOMB convey an irreverent, lighthearted attitude that encourages friendly interactions in a comfortable environment. This parallels the hard copy magazine's editorial tone. The registration process consists of a basic one-page form with typical fields for user name, password, email address, occupation (required to avoid spambots), interests, web site URL, a signature field, avatar upload tool, etc. Only the first four of these are required, but most members choose to include a web site address and additional information about themselves.

Building Social Capital Pt.1

One of the interesting aspects of the TOMB is how relative unknowns within the community can rise quickly to a position of prominence through sharing of unique recording knowledge or experience from which others in the community may benefit. This can take technical forms, such as how a certain microphone placement, using a specific but inexpensive mic, resulted in a killer sounding guitar track or vocal take. Or it could take more of a social form, like how a full-time studio engineer or producer stays positive day in and day out even while working on projects with bands whose music he or she doesn't care for one whit. One entire recent thread, titled "do you ever want to just quit the whole deal?", addressed the discouraged attitude the initial poster admitted to having about working on so many projects like these. Nearly all the numerous respondents replied with varying degrees of empathy, words of encouragement and advice, and generally supportive feedback.

This example seems to contradict Wellman's assertion that strong, intimate ties foster greater levels of emotional support (Wellman and Frank, p.235, in Social Capital), for the message board members in this thread were obviously not close friends or even casual acquaintances. Yet by later in the thread, the original poster wrote how much he appreciated all the good feedback and how it had really made him question some assumptions he had. In fact, by page two of the thread, about 30 posts in, a new poster wrote: "I hardly ever say something "rules" but TapeOp'ers absolutely rule. You guys are the most REAL virtual people I've ever not met." If that's not a reflection of real emotional bonding and a shared sense of community, I'm not sure what is!

Building Social Capital Pt.2

Another interesting aspect of the TOMB is that it truly personifies what Rheingold, Wellman, and others have come to understand, that thriving virtual communities often benefit from a mixture of interactions that occur in both cyberspace and physical space. There exist two separate and distinct indicators of this as related to the TOMB. First, one of the message board forums is called, "Hookups - Regional activities, job openings, studio searches, local beer nights." This forum exemplifies a real-world carryover of activity, discussion, and community building. It also plays on Granovetter's strength of weak ties theory by facilitating job connections between TOMB members who might know each other only by user name or reputation but not through any sort of close relationship. A home recording enthusiast in Portland, Oregon who's ready to make the leap into a more professional role may connect with a studio owner outside his immediate network and land a job based on the social capital he's managed to accrue by posting intelligently within the TOMB.

The second indicator is the creation and huge success of the annual Tape Op Convention. This event began humbly enough in 2002, organized entirely by Tape Op editor/founder, Larry Crane, and his publisher, John Baccigaluppi. That year's keynote speaker was Steve Albini, the very highly-revered recordist/musician, whose work with Nirvana, Big Black, Shellac, and countless others bands had already made him something of a Godfather figure in the TOMB community. His very presence lent considerable credibility and draw to that first Tape Op Con, which was lightly attended compared to later years but received rave reviews from the hundred or so people who did attend. This buzz coursed through the message boards and created great anticipation for the annual conventions that followed. Relationships formed online were reinforced and strengthened through face-to-face interactions at the Tape Op Cons.

Trust, Conflict Resolution, and Norms

Although the TOMB doesn't operate like a traditional citizen media site, it does exhibit some characteristics inherent in sites defined as such. One of those qualities is the sense of trust that develops around certain members, based on the quality and veracity of their posts. Trusted members become sought after voices of reason and opinion, especially in the most highly read forums such as Gear Talk. Interestingly, it appears that the most highly trusted members of the online community are not always those who seem to be the most trusted in the hard copy Tape Op magazine letters column. This could be do in part to the fact that the editors of the magazine refer certain correspondence to specific, established experts, whereas the TOMB caters more towards unsung heroes and amateurs answering each others questions and responding to each others comments. Conflicts are kept at a minimum, not through rigorous moderation of the forums, but rather through the congenial spirit and self-policing attitude of the members themselves. One example of this I stumbled upon was where one member referred to a previous poster as "flaky" for not staying in the production game for longer before getting discouraged by lack of steady income. Another member posted soon thereafter that the other poster sounded awfully judgmental. The first poster then apologized for his use of the term "flaky" and offered a more balanced comment.

Unlike how many visitors to citizen media sites are willing to contribute visual but not verbal material, members of the Tap Op community typically don't post photos of their gear or of microphone setups, for instance, and seem quicker to rely on descriptive text. I guess recording enthusiasts are more verbal creatures...or perhaps they think in musical and verbal terms but don't choose to communicate visually as often.

Into...or Out of the Blogosphere

When blogs first started to capture the attention of teaching faculty, which in my experience was around 2003-2004, I often was asked "well, what's the difference between a blog and a discussion forum, like in Blackboard?" I struggled at first to provide a clear explanation for them, in large part because blogging was new to me too back then, and I was only beginning to discover the rich possibilities they presented in terms of teaching and learning. Later the differences between the two became clearer:

• blogs usually centered around a single author, with readers reacting and responding to his or her thoughts, while discussion forums were often more organic, with multiple authors creating threads based on their own lines of inquiry and numerous readers responding based on their own interest (or as a participation requirement)
  
• blogs were more non-linear insofar as they often included external links that encouraged traversal to other sources, whereas discussion forums remained more insular and linear
• blogs were presented in reverse chronological order and organized by category and keywords, while discussion forums were arranged chronologically by threads
• blogs were usually public and open to anyone to read and comment; discussion forums were, at least in the case of Blackboard, closed to a specific set of users
  

I started thinking about these differences again as I evaluated the TOMB in terms of sociability, usability, and social capital. After all, the Tape Op Message Board is somewhat antiquated in terms of the software platform that supports it (phpBB) and is less like a blog than it is a discussion forum. And yet, in many ways it seems more sociable than most blogs, is as easy to use, and exhibits social capital building through weak ties or, as Burt calls them, structural holes. Various individuals within disparate geographic networks serve as brokers of information which connect not only these networks themselves but also the otherwise disconnected people within them. Each of Lin's four elements for social capital are present: information flow; influence of certain agents (experienced studio engineers/producers) on other actors (newbies looking to break into the recording business); social credentials (individual member's "street cred" and connectedness to sought-after resources (be they jobs, gear, other professional relationships); and reinforcement (creating a sense of an individual's self-worth by being a part of a vibrant, friendly, hip-nerdy community). And there's certainly plenty of that other element that social network analysis researchers value so highly: reciprocity.

All things considered then, the TOMB stands as a compelling example of an online community, even though it is based on older technology and lacks many of the Web 2.0 features present in so many of today's heralded social network sites.