good🍏

Great work, Jason!

Way to go, Jason!

Um, this is kind of awkward. It's the day after Jason angrily left the site and vowed never to return... and he has the top track on the charts. Man, fate is really funny thing! Well, funny and tragic at the same time.

Jason Stanley was harassed until he left this site. Maybe don't make your web app social if you can't be bothered to moderate the comments just a little bit?

@Matthew Cohen: I wasn't making fun of Jason. I was there and saw the whole thing. Jason was harassed mercilessly by a troll, but only after he provoked the troll by sending about 7 or 8 unreplied messages in a row and started a flame war.
Jason was a great guy who was always positive and helpful to other Soundgym members, but on this occasion he let his anger overcome him and did it all wrong. He let his anger get out of control with *Scott 'Em* (a garden-variety idiot troll, incredibly annoying but basically harmless until he started the rape threats...) but then Jason redirected that strong anger towards the site admins when they were only a small part of the overall problem. Changing his profile picture to say 'SoundGym isn't worth paying for' just because the site admins wouldn't fix a problem that he started? Not good. All he needed to do was ignore the troll...
The venom that Jason displayed towards Soundgym was over-the-top and so it looks like his account has been removed pretty quickly.
It's a shame because I'll miss his positive attitude and love for music and this community.
And it is tragic and funny that he now has the top song on the charts. That's how we should remember him.

That wasn't directed at you, Dylan. Definitely didn't think you were making fun of him. I agree with you that Jason probably could have handled the troll better. But I also think he was correct that it was the admin's responsibility to take care of things more swiftly. I'm not generally in favor of heavy handed comment moderation, but that is definitely not what Jason was asking for. 'Don't let users threaten each other with rape over and over again' seems like a pretty low bar to clear.

There is nothing about Soundgym (or most web apps) that requires a social component. We're all just learning to hear frequencies and dynamics better. If you are going to introduce a social component to your website, then you need to do some very minimal moderation. If you can't be bothered to do that, you shouldn't enable comments.

Well, this didn’t age well. Very unfortunate situation indeed.

Thanks for posting that, @Romano G.

I think that this screenshot is perfect, for the following reasons:

1. It's the perfect ''obituary'' for Jason's involvement with SG. It shows just how much he loved the community and saw the value of everything here.

2. It teaches us the lesson that overly strong emotions and taking problems too seriously can be fatal to something you love. It hammers home the fact that sometimes letting things go is much smarter than trying to protect/save the world but destroying what you love in the process. That is the perfect lesson for the entire world, especially in the 2020s.

3. It teaches us to remember about balance and perspective. This community is excellent 99.9% of the time. Why let 0.1% ruin your opinion of something when it's an unavoidable part of the system (as much as I hate to admit it, there will always be trolls on social websites and moderation is a minefield of an answer) and it's such a tiny, insignificant part of the whole system anyway?

Sending best wishes to you all. And I hope no-one screenshots this message, particularly not SoundGym... ha!

@Dylan Neal Well stated.

@Dylan Neal Hm. Respectfully disagree. I think the primary lesson is that if you claim to care about the community you've created on your website -- so much that you make posts about it on social media -- you should probably, at minimum, make sure that members of your community aren't sending each other multiple rape threats. That the literal poster boy for Soundgym's community was on the receiving end of those rape threats is just the ironic icing on the cake, here.

@Matthew Cohen: not quite, good sir. If that's the primary lesson then it completely ignores all that happened before the rape threats started.

Jason didn't deserve to be threatened like that. No-one does. He also didn't deserve to have his profile photos used in insulting posts or anything else. It was brutal and unnecessary in response to what was essentially just a dumb c*ck-joust on a web forum.

But, and this hurts to admit because I really liked the guy... Jason totally and unquestionably incited the troll. He sent 6 or 7 provocative and insulting messages to the troll **before the troll even replied for the first time**. He then continued to escalate under the false assumption that he could make the troll stop (anyone who has dealt with a troll knows that it's a game you can't win because there's no logic to it, it's just pure emotion and trash-talk). Then, when it got too heated, he got angry at Soundgym for not cleaning up a mess which he had created.

Moderation is not the golden goose that some people like to think it is. It requires one side to act in a rational manner before it is applied. People have to take responsibility for their own actions. In serious cases like doxxing, moderation is perfect because it is stopping real-world harm. But if it's two people who've let their emotions overcome them and lost all sense of decency and perspective?
The defence rests, your honour.

The troll was annoying in his initial thread to everyone, but that's what trolls do: remove the intelligence from any debate and turn it into a farce because they have nothing of any value to say. They are empty souls who are annoying but mostly harmless. The smartest course with a troll is always just to let it go.

I'm proud that I could do that this time when the troll sent me one of the dumbest replies that I've ever received. Jason couldn't let it go, instead he poured gasoline on it.
I'm still on SG, Jason is not. A lesson well-learned from history on my part, so it's a lesson worth sharing.