This is tongue in cheek, right? I hope? I’ll take plain fluff over religion and politics all day every day. But there again, I’m a fundamentalist atheist, and don’t have a right to vote anywhere, so I don’t have any skin in either of those games.
But then, I live on the left coast of Canada where, if one is very canny about it, one can avoid both of those topics.
It seems to me that the problem is what might be called “thread vacuums”. What do I mean by this? Somebody posts a complaint/query which they post in a reasonable, if somewhat exasperated, way. What they are posting is essentially a customer service issue. Roon, like many other companies, encourage the posting of these type of issue as forum members might be able to help. The other alternative is a closed customer service route, i.e. the issue is sent directly to a customer service rep who forwards it on to the relevant team etc. I fully understand Roon’s decision to use the forum method and it makes sense.
The problem is that it often takes several days for a member of the team to respond (I understand the reasons why it takes this time). However this creates a “thread vacuum” and vacuums get filled! During this time we can see the “thread pile-on” that you’ve mentioned elsewhere. We see the “yes… Roon’s c**p” or “no… Roon’s great” divisions that you refer to as toxicity. Alongside this we see the op struggling to deal with the original issue.
People are not being “less nice” because they’ve turned “less nice”, instead I would suggest that it’s because of frustration. Roon offer a unique product (which I love, by the way), which means that consumer frustration cannot be satisfied by simply walking away. UK example: if I get fed up with Tesco I can shop at Sainsbury’s (if there’s one near by). However, if I get fed up with Roon, where do I go? Lots of alternatives, but none of them come close to matching Roon (imo).
I say all of this not as criticism but as illustration. What is happening at the moment on the forum is a result of various factors and events coming together and the manifestation of an underlying frustration. How you deal with that up to you. But I do think that tighter moderation alone will not deal with the underlying issues, and may actually lead to increased, rather than decreased, frustration.
I didn’t take @Bill_Janssen’s words to mean religion and politics per se, but the subjects of belief and conviction in general. The things that are really worth discussing are things that we believe and are a passionate about, rather than minor issues of technical know-how.
When you rolled out 1.8, it had many flaws. I had to wonder just who you had as beta testers because many of the flaws where plain to see. After lots of complaints from folks here, the team has addressed most of the major problems with updates. Now, 1.8 is pretty darn good. Maybe you guys just didn’t listen to the beta testers and didn’t believe what they were telling you.
Either way, out of the gate, 1.8 was not great…
This is a good question, but many answers are about the fact that there should not be umbrage, or that the umbrage is toxic, etc. Other answers point to the fact that it is possible to express umbrage on a forum, so just the fact that it is possible would fuel the umbrage itself. These answers have a grain of truth, however they don’t answer the question: why the umbrage? The only answer to this question I have read here is that some people do not like change. I am not satisfied by this brushing off.
Here is my answer: Roon is expensive, as in “a lot of money adding up every month of your life”. For the anecdote, Roon is the only subscription software plan in my life and I do not easily approve of such a vast amount of money being poured in only one software. However, I value music very much and Roon is part of the musical experience I value in my life. So here is an explanation: I have expectations about Roon and I feel entitled about them, considering my monthly payment.
Some people will deviate the discussion by replying that I could opt out if I find it too expensive, or that the price of Roon is small compared to hifi audio, but I find these replies not helpful at all. The fact is that Roon is an expensive piece of software (relatively expensive, say to the median income). That is in my mind quite a good reason why people take umbrage when the software takes a bumpy road in a questionable direction.
All releases are like this. The umbrage was pretty bad before 1.8.
Yah, it surely didn’t help, but the umbrage has been steadily growing since before 1.6. there is a lot more to it than “changing Roon”. Also, it’s been happening with people who liked 1.8 and it’s been happening in non-Roon topics.
Again, I think your idea of the thread vacuum is good, but it focuses too hard on support. This toxicity is much larger than support. It exists in the audio topics, it exists in gear topics, it exists in music topics! It also exists in topics where people need help, but not with Roon.
5 years ago people would have said “I don’t watch Darko” or even a harsher “I can’t stand Darko”. Just a few days ago people are referring to him as shill paid to deceive them. An opinion vs an attack. The vitriol has grown. It’s one thing to say Roon sucks, it’s another thing to attack our support staff, who are paid to do this. One of our staff was harassed recently, a Roon user has been signing up with our staff member’s full name/email to various mailing lists and causing havoc via trolling. This would have been unfathomable a few years ago. Even our moderators are suggesting we just flat out ban certain topics as there has become too much work when those threads appear. Completely reasonable people are using inflammatory language and clcikbait titles with ever increasing frequency. I just removed a post of someone saying “why did you even open your mouth? Was it just to tell us about your expensive system?”. Come on… We’ve always had these people that like to brag. We were always so open to verbally attacking them. We used to think “it’s not worth hating, the guy is just proud”, and now we think “this person needs to hear it”.
It was posited that with covid-19 quarantining, thing are getting antsy. While things have gotten much worse in the last year, the umbrage has been growing from before covid.
My guess is the forums are getting big and Roon isn’t so new anymore. When we were tiny and unknown, we were treated better because we were the little guys trying to change things. Our users treated each other better since they were familiar and they were in the same club of “people who discovered Roon”. Now, everyone needs a reason to be heard, and they need the language to be loud enough to be heard. The crime in a big city is bigger than the crime in a small village, and it’s not just linearly proprotional to the population size.
I suppose that it comes down to what defines toxicity. Obviously there will be extreme cases that we can all agree on, but I suspect that there will be a huge “grey-area” between toxicity and robust debate. Take the very (very, very) long thread on power cables. Some people have felt belittled on that thread. But does that mean mods should have stepped in? I don’t think so, but see below.
Arguably this could work. I know it goes against what I’ve said, but it’s better to not discuss something rather than to discuss something that requires excessive moderation. On the contentious audio issues (DAC sound signatures, power cables, cables in general, science vs experience etc.) people seem to divide into “other-site factions” (ASR, SBAF, Head-Fi etc.). This isn’t a criticism, but an observation. I know I do exactly the same (ASR, by the way!!!). Do we really need to “discuss” our thoughts about cables when there’s plenty of opportunities to do this on other sites?
Roon Community could be scaled back to include only support issues and broadly positive threads: what are we listening to, show us your set up etc. People could be (re)reminded to contribute advice/thoughts in a positive and constructive manner whilst still being given leeway to vent (a little).
I edited my post while you were typing, realizing I should provide some non-support examples and my own theory if why umbrage has grown.
I know, it was hard to reply when you kept adding things in. 
That’s partly why I somewhat changed tack half way through my reply!
Sorry about the slow rollout of that post… the wife and kids are out of town this morning and I’m still in bed waking up 
Ok, time to actually get up!
Nope, completely serious. Really, I just want to listen to my music when I want to, and Roon gives me a great way to do that. Fluff about cars, whiskey, fancy audio rigs, etc. leave me flat. Ditto baseball statistics, etc.
I’d love to see more music criticism, actually. People post these album images, without saying enough about them. There are a couple of members who go further, but not many.
Have you tried changing your DNS to google or enabling IGMP on your router?
Whilst I happen to agree on the listed subjects, I do think that these type of threads are actually positive. If people want to chat about whiskey or cars, I think that’s a good thing and useful for building links and connections between Roon users.
I often post things that I’m listening to. I do try and include a line or two, but I’m always conscious that I might come across as a wanabee music critic. I shall endeavour to expand further. 
First of all that is shocking what happened to the member of Roon staff and in reality it’s a criminal issue. It’s as bad as being followed home from work. I appreciate you must do everything to protect your staff from this (and any) abuse.
I suppose it’s all perspective and a better choice of word from me would have been acknowledge or recognise rather than admit which has guilt connotations.
Can you not see how pejorative it is to those of us pointing out issues if we are classed “vocal people who love to rant and grind our axes”?
I’m hoping (actually I’m presuming) I’m not included in this cohort but how can I be sure?
I think the reply of someone who recognises issues would be more like
“Yes, I agree that for some the experience was less than stellar but we have tried to a swiftly as possible to alleviate the main issues.I agree not everything was perfect but there are many people very happy also as evidenced below. Going forward we will learn form this and strive to have many more in the happy camp for 1.9”.
Having said that I wouldn’t want the forum becoming too anodyne either, I do appreciate Roon being opinionated and willing to share those opinions with both barrels . So it’s a delicate balancing act but I feel you should put down that gun a little bit more often.
.sjb
You should start a thread similar to the: What are you listening to thread, but title it: Critique your music selection.
Seems like work to me, but some people might be interested in what you’re suggesting and offering album critiques. It could create a little disagreement however. Most of the professional music critiques I’ve seen are worthless in my view.
On the Naim forum this thread is called what are you listening to and why would anyone be interested. It does get a bit more editorial than the Roon similar thread.
I did post a favourite albums thread here to try and bridge this gap a bit. It’s a bit of a Lazarus thread but there is some good stuff posted in there.
.sjb
Oh, sure, leave the threads for those who like them. Just not the bar I tend to hang out at.
Yeah, it taste by proxy isn’t it? A good rummage around in Roon/the streaming service of your choice, followed by some listening is a far better bet…
For the Google DNS do you mean on the core or remote(iPhone/ Ipad?)
Sure I’ll do it on them all and see if I notice a difference.
I’m not sure about the IGMP but first rule is to only change one thing at a time.
Thanks
.sjb
Seems many of my favorite albums of the past get 2 or 3 star reviews. The reviews I’ve seen posted are cursory, and really boil down to whether or not the reviewer likes the artist or album. I look at reviewers in light that if they were so talented, they’d be making music instead of offering critiques. Same theory as “sports analysts,” many of which have never been an athlete in any way shape or form.
Those who can, perform, …those who can’t, teach…
