[pianotech] New Format

[david at piano.plus.com]

>I rather liked being able to
>open my email, quickly scan the new stuff, delete or read at will and move
>on. What looks like progress is not always progress.

Yes, absolutely agree.

There is, i think, the aspect of the "paradigm" or "model" of our
discussion, too.

The email mailing list is always CURRENT. It is the conversation going on
in the room at any one time.  In a real room full of people, we can come
in, and join in the discussion of any little group of persons that sounds
interesting to us. For a time, we might leave the room, closing the door
behind us. But then we an come back in and rejoin,  with a quick listen to
everything that's going on, before homing in our our preferred
conversation.

This list is like a little community with conversation always going on. We
might leave the room by  not contributing or reading, for a while, because
of holidays or family circumstances or whatever, but we can come back into
the room and quickly see what current conversation is going on.

It feels current, and lively, and like a community.  What goes around
comes around, and discussions and topics do get re-visited, and questions
that were answered four years ago, asked again.  But that's probably OK,
in the main.

A website Forum is a different kind of beast.  It is more like an archive
from the outset.  It can have its uses. In a technical Forum, we might
have a specific question about Widget Planishing, and we might find that
there is a Forum thread on that exact topic, with everything everyone has
ever said on that matter readily available for us to read. That could be
very handy.  But in the Forum type of provision, there is less of a
feeling of CURRENCY or of COMMUNITY, in my view.  Half of the thread on
Widget Planishing, for example, may have been written six years ago by two
people long since unsubscribed.

The Forum  type of provision, in my view, is less immediate, and less
lively.  And, in the case of this particular new PTG provision, I am
afraid, much less readily accessible and easy.

I'd have thought and hoped that there would have been extensive discussion
and polling in HERE before making any changes.

The work of all those who operate the PTG website and this list is of
course very much appreciated.