That’s not what it said … please don’t misquote me.
@James_I – can you show me a thread about ideas/workarounds/discussion about how to not use folders in Roon?
I’ll get it reopened.
The pro-folder-browsing topics should get closed/merged when discussed anywhere but the #roon:feature-requests category.
Sorry, forgot about this one. This one devolved into a mess and we decided to put our foot down here.
There are only 2 things we feel so strongly about that we will not even entertain the idea of implementing: folder browsing and UPnP/DLNA streaming.
I’m happy to have you guys discuss ideas/workarounds, but it’s not fruitful to discuss why this feature is important when we are not doing it. It just fosters bad behavior.
Moderators will not close a thread that is started about ideas/workarounds for lack of folder browsing. They will edit/prune it to keep it on-topic. but feel free to open up that topic and discuss ideas/workarounds. I will probably contribute to it as well.
What caused me to start the thread was watching these two get shut down:
The latter especially looked like a sincere exchange of information that could have been useful if it had it been allowed to continue.
Well, I feel this is somewhat misguided, in the sense that I am pretty confident implementing either would grow the user base, albeit I am not a DLNA user (it really frustrated me and I avoid it like the plague) and I have my Roon library organized to the point where folder browsing would seldom be useful to me. But I have to think there are a fair number of folks that install Roon, point it to their audio file folder and have it indexed, and then go to play an album to see how it sounds and they can’t find that album, decide Roon is garbage and go no further – some of those are the ones that started threads asking about folder navigation and why isn’t the most obvious means of finding something available.
Browsing by folder structure to get your feet wet in Roon but with a familiar organizational scheme might bridge that gap and bring users to appreciate other (better for music) navigational schemes. I also believe there are occasions when it could help with problem solving - i.e. where is that album in Roon and why isn’t it showing up? I need to navigate to it somehow to see where the issue is.
But that said it is your product. I can’t make Roon implement anything, and to be honest, I care much more about being silenced when I state my opinion than I do about those as potential features. Topics don’t need to be locked unless they devolve into insults etc.
This goes along with my sense that in general there is a group of Roon users that are almost religious about it, literally to the point of being hostile to other points of view. I promote Roon to all my friends and other music fans. I have, many times, had someone install Roon on their phone or ipad so they can drive my collection and see how great Roon is. But there are others that seem to almost take personal offense to any suggestion Roon can be improved, or that a given feature would have value to some. And to me shutting down any suggestion of folder browsing is a representation of that.
Merging seems fine to me. Keeping the forum organized and relatively easier to use is great. Closed, without the purpose of mere organization or preventing flame wars is what gets to me.
I appreciate everyone’s point of view. I don’t appreciate if it is just done in a mocking fashion or “because Roon said so.” To me, closing perfectly civil discussions is a representation of authority gone bad. I grew up an authority-resisting punk rocker and it’s just who I am.
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With the perspective of a few days, I think the word I was reaching for was Censorship. Put up with a little censorship to keep threads from getting personally nasty, or to keep them organized, is OK - a tough line to draw but understandable objective.
Censorship to stop a discussion people otherwise want to have (as evidenced by their continuing posting on it), dead horse or not, is censorship. If that is a soap box, I’m not sorry to be on it.
Yet another censored thread, albeit related to album cover display instead of folder browsing. Admittedly it wasn’t a particularly productive dialog, but it also wasn’t a flame war. I just feel people should be able to post their opinions as long as it doesn’t get personal.
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@danny closed the thread I think you are referring to because it was an “are we there yet?” thread, not one discussing the merits of placing an album cover on the Now Playing display - which I understand that Roon Labs has already accepted as a request worth considering.
Sure I know. And I was lukewarm at best about the content of that thread. I just don’t think they need to be closed. I mean, if Roon is paying by the post for the forum, then I get it. But if there’s no marginal cost to the thread and there isn’t a flame war going on, then I just don’t get why it cannot stay open. It has the feel of a judge smacking a gavel. “We hath spoken and this is our final word.”
I get that the Roon forum is “better organized” than many fora. Audiogon is a circus. There are long strains of meaningless posts at times. Computer Audiophile has terrible flame wars and it can almost be scary to post at either. That said, I would like to think we can maintain civility without the control of censorship.
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I thought Danny was being practical, civil and humorous with his reference to the constant “are we there yet?” refrain in closing the thread. I certainly didn’t see it as censorship…
I had no issues with Danny’s response and it was funny. I’ve said that to my kids many times.
(I don’t have the talent my father had. He could reach down in the car, take off a shoe, flip it over his shoulder, and hit the offending child without taking his eyes off the road!).
I just don’t think it needed to close the thread. We can agree to disagree on this point, but I’ll keep making it because I think closing a thread is a weightier decision than some people may at first realize, and I would like to be sure it’s a well considered decision, understanding the meaning of the action, which is to take someone’s voice away.
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We’ve been round the whole closing an annoying thread Vs censorship thing before James…
Yes but it’s still happening.There is no vs. Closing an annoying thread = censorship. I am as annoyable as anyone, but my response is not to take away someone’s voice.
Yes because it’s their forum as stated before. It’s not a freedom of speech problem it’s people being moderated in a private space.
This is where we can agree to disagree. I don’t really see the distinction between the private and the public here.
Plus I actually think it costs Roon credibility when the appearance is shutting down threads that are critical of Roon. I know that there are plenty of Roon critical comments that have not been shut down, but I do not see the need to close anything if anyone is interested in posting in it, UNLESS it becomes a personal flame war, because that is detrimental to others feeling they can speak their mind, bullying as a form of censorship.
This is a difficult balance. I just feel someone needs to point this out so that the decision is not taken lightly. I am not usually the crusader type, but when you close a thread, there is a message there - it is not simply an administrative act for organizational purposes. That’s just inherent.
Interesting as this is to discuss. I have got to shut myself off today, or I won’t bill any hours 
I closed it so I don’t keep getting pulled into it!
No, seriously… I actually closed it because sometimes the community can pile on. It’s basic mob mentality and while it’s flattering how these members want to defend us, it’s not beneficial for the community to feel inviting.
We can’t catch it all, but when we do catch it, I like to kill it quick. That topic was starting to become a “pile on” topic.
Unfortunately, governance comes in all flavors, and as politics has taught us, everyone feels differently about how heavy that touch should be.
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Thank you Danny for your response. I hadn’t considered it was the converse issue I was thinking.
My goal here is not to keep any specific thread open, rather to encourage all of those with the power to lock a thread to truly consider the act before it’s taken.
Enough said for now. I’ll just chirp when it happens again.
Allow me to offer a different point of view: Roon benefits heavily from this forum, if only because of the enormous amount of real world user feedback. If they were to gather user feedback by other channels, it would cost them a small fortune.
Now they get a small fortune’s worth of useful information that is freely volunteered. Conclusion: it’s probably more than worth the irritation of “are we there yet?” posts.
Secondary conclusion: we are all fools to just hand them this information without being paid 
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James and I have been round this bush a few times.
I deleted my post in which I defended the practices of management and the moderators with regards to closing threads or moving threads. I won’t again defend the management and moderators in that regard, as what they are doing constitutes, to say the least, very heavy handed editing of views that they disapprove of. I’ll cover that in the thread that they just moved, and you can find that here: