Korg Forums

jazlover wrote:While we are seriously demanding transparency, I would also like to log this complaint.

Sharp have no sons. His house is full of females. He allows Pepperpotty (another female) to moderates this forum. As a male member of this forum, this is a blaring conflict of interest (despite the evidence).

There is no time like wasted time..............I mean the present....

Perhaps we are all female. Perhaps Sharp is female too. Has anyone ever met him? Maybe this is just part of a bigger plan for women to take over the world. Mwah ha ha!

sigiriuk wrote:To Sharp
... And whether you like it or not, the act of Korg paying for the hosting (and I acknowledge that it is very generous of them) remains a conflict of interest for the group, regardless of their level of interference, or lack thereof.

Sorry, but I can't follow.
"remains a conflict of interest" based on what???
This looks just like a petition of principle, not surviving a critical review, to me.

Both Korg's interest and user interests are no secret:
1. Korg knows that a well working user exchange site is perceived as positive support for their instruments. They profit from that. So what?
2. Users want such a support site and profit a lot(!) from it. They know well that Korg pays the server for exactly the reason named in 1.), and that Korg does so without trying to get any kind of content control. So what?
3. Both interests are obvious and crystal clear. And both interests are in no conflict whatsoever, but a classical win-win situation, as long as Korg does not try to manipulate content.

Critical questions are only valid when they lead to substantial results. Insinuating just for the sake of insinuating is no result at all. And apart from that, it is just unfair.

OK, here's my take

I've been on this forum for about a year and its totally obvious to me over my time here that it is totally independent from Korg. I was here when it was on it's old server.

I don't doubt at all that Sharp is running it totally independently it's been obvious from some of the threads that Korg have no say about what's talked about.

However

I can fully understand people coming to this forum not believing it's totally independent that and thinking that if it is, there is a conflict of interest. That doesn't make them right of course, but it's a very very understandable assumption from someone fairly new.

Think about it, if you brought or were interested in a product made by Royarg, you go to Royarg's official web page. On the official web page it says "Royarg Forums is a great place to keep up to date with all things Royarg"

You visit the Royarg forum and see it says it's independent but happens to be hosted on Royarg's server. I am the forum owner, I assure you it is independent. You then see one of my products on sale on the official Royarg website.

Honestly, if that was your first or first few visits to my forum, would you honesty believe it's totally independent? It doesn't matter that it really really is, and that long term members assure you this is the case, would most of you really believe it without being members for a good few months and realising for yourselves?

As for conflicts of interest, I might run my site totally independently for the last 20 years, I might intend to do so for the next 20 years. But imagine the following scenario.

My product sold really well on Royarg's website and I have also produced a few more. I'm making a nice bit of money from them. Meanwhile Royarg does something that hasn't gone down too well with its users and there's lots of negative threads appearing on my forum.

Some top bods at Royarg's head office in Japan aren't impressed with the negativity on my site. They ask me politely to try and stop all the negativity.

They are selling my products, they are providing free hosting for my forum, can I honesty say in that situation I wouldn't be tempted to moderate a bit heavier than I would have a year or so ago when it was on non Royarg servers and they weren't selling my products?

What if I politely refused pointing out I run an independent forum and they got onto Royarg in the USA and said to them that unless I stop the negative posts they must stop hosting us and remove my products from their store?

What then, the temptation for anyone is to keep it as independent as possible while still trying to keep Royarg happy.

Again I want to stress I don't think for one second that this has happened and I don't suppose it will happen either, but for people to ridicule the notion that a conflict of interest exists, I understand you sticking up for this forum, but in reality, there is one as I've outlined above.

But again, I have faith in the way this forum is run and hopefully will be run in the future. I have no concerns at present at all but I couldn't honestly say a conflict doesn't exist.

I might employ my wife/brother/son into a position where I'm their boss, I might treat them exactly the same as any other employee, I might be fully prepared to sack them if they do things wrong etc,, I might have a proven track record where I sacked my daughter when she didn't pull her weight etc hence there isn't any conflict of interest and anyone working with me over the years would fully know and understand that, but anyone looking from the outside, it looks glaringly like there is one and I think that's what some people are simply trying to say about this site.

Don't forget a conflict of interest doesn't only exist if it's been taken advantage of, it might be there for 50 years and never cause a problem, but just because it never causes a problem doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

To Jim Knopf
Thank you for reading my post, and your helpful comments. To re-iterate, transparency is important to me, and accepted by the wider community as a good standard to aspire to, but more important is all the hard work that Sharp and the others do in maintaining this forum.

Sharp wrote:I've used many hosts in the last decade.

That alone says it all.

sigiriuk wrote:And whether you like it or not, the act of Korg paying for the hosting (and I acknowledge that it is very generous of them) remains a conflict of interest for the group, regardless of their level of interference, or lack thereof.

imho it's not a conflict of interest. Korg hosting the site has not interfere with the main objectives of the forum. If anything, it's has helped achieving them.

At best it's an appearance of a conflict of interest. And only for whom has not been here long enough to witness the dedications and what (and mostly who) has made this forum possible.

I see why some new members could get thrown off on the issue thought.

Pepperpotty wrote:Perhaps we are all female. Perhaps Sharp is female too. Has anyone ever met him? Maybe this is just part of a bigger plan for women to take over the world. Mwah ha ha!

Taking the world... one combi at a time.

Anyway, still waiting for the editor 2.0.... I would laugh about it maybe if it would not be so sad...

Please dont assume that becuase someone doesnt post often, they are new members.
One of the joys of forums, is you can never tell someones age, experience, musicality, intelligence, or ability to interact- either in discussions or in a band settings- it leads to all sorts of misunderstandings. And then there are trolls......

Some of us in this group were using Korg equipment (with real patchcords) back in the late 1970s, had a Prophet, wondered at the CMI Fairlight, saw MIDI arrive, had a DX7, used Creator (which became Logic) and Ataris, saw the M1 as the holy grail, and were there at the beginning of hard disk recording for the masses with Cakewalk.

Also when 16 MB of sampling RAM in samplers was considered top of the line!