Up until now the only Dillinger Escape Plan forum in existence is the one over at SMN News. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a very basic, single page forum that only gets the attention it does because it’s officially endorsed. But it’s not to the only one over at SMN that’s oficially endorsed, it’s actually one of many.

Don’t get me wrong, what SMN News offers to bands is on one level pretty good. How they operate as I see it is that if a band wants a forum, they ask SMN News for it and, if they’re as well known as a band like The Dillinger Escape Plan, it’s probably only a short wait for them until they’ve got something launched. For the band’s part it’s an easy solution and one that doesn’t cost them a dime, and for SMN News it offers them a shit load of traffic. Put up a couple of ads and that also means more revenue for their site. Sounds like a good deal, don’t you think?

This is where I disagree. While I think it works for the band and SMN News, I don’t think it works for the fans. Just compare it to some of the best efforts out there, including Echoing the Sound, a community driven forum for Nine Inch Nails. It totally shits on what Dillinger Escape Plan has at the moment, and to some extent I’d argue it even shits on the official Nine Inch Nails forum.

To me, the forum has a hell of a lot of flaws. For starters, it’s only got a single page. It doesn’t separate discussion about Dillinger Escape Plan from normal discussion. And it doesn’t have categories to break down discussion into more focused conversations about single topics. For example, what does that forum really have on music? A “What Have You Been Listening to Lately?” discussion page? Is it really just me who feels that that’s extremely lacking?

None of what I’m talking about is any different from hundreds of forums in existence, which is why I’m surprised that people seem content with what’s on offer at the moment.

As it stands I’d like to ask you all three questions:

1) Are people happy with the SMN News forum at the moment? Be honest. Why or why not?

2) How would you feel about a new forum?

3) What kind of things would you like in a new forum?

If I get a strong impression that people are looking for something new, I propose that I host a forum on SLW that is seperate from the main news feed. It can run side-by-side with SMN News, meaning that it serves as an alternative for people who don’t like how SMN News forums are run. The new forum on SLW will be completely community driven and ad-free. Being community driven by established members of the DEP community means that it will be well under control, something that the SMN News forum is definitely not.

If people could reply to this either in comment form or by emailing me I’d really appreciate it as it’d help me decide on what to do at this point.