[pianotech] List changes - it's a lot bigger than just the lists...

[John Formsma]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:36 PM, Israel Stein <custos3 at comcast.net> wrote:

There is one thing for which I will fault the PTG administration with regard
> to this rollout. Much greater efforts should have been made to prepare the
> membership for it in terms of explaining exactly what is happening and why
> and offering tutorials in how to operate in this new environment. I suspect
> that had this been done, the change would not be so traumatic. Change is
> difficult, and people need to be prepared for it. It is not too late - an
> internal PR campaign needs to be launched explaining all these changes andn
> offering members help in adapting to them.



Thanks, Israel, for the explanation of why a new forum was a must. That
makes sense, and is good to know. And I agree, change was essential.

Before tutorials are offered, or we spend more time to learn how to use this
new forum, can we back up and rethink just the discussion part of the new
site?

Is what is in place now the best type of discussion forum? I took the
suggestion from someone to look around at other forums. Most of the ones I
saw use vBulletin, which is the one with which I'm familiar (a cycling forum
to which I subscribe). Was that looked at? It would certainly work better
for discussion. I don't know how it would work from an integrated "Social
Media" standpoint. (Something I'm not opposed to, but something I'm not
primarily needing/looking for either.)

However, there are probably integration issues with which we are unfamiliar.

Why was this particular type of forum chosen? What does it offer that other
web forum software doesn't? E.g., what Pianoworld uses? (Not my favorite,
but it's better than this ... again, for discussion.)

I am all for change, but it needs to be good change. Not being able to
easily find new discussions really turns me off immediately, as does the
lack of automatic threading and the bolding of thread titles with unread
messages/replies (sorry I sound like a broken record already, but they are
standard features in any other forum software). And I've noticed there just
isn't much discussion going on in Pianotech, so others must find it
unsuitable.

Perhaps what we have now can be tweaked in ways that haven't yet been
discovered. If so, I'm willing to wait and see. I know that more than just a
few of us are frustrated; there are probably quite a few of the leadership
who are frustrated that they also don't know the answers yet.

-- 
JF
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20110309/56bdfec5/attachment.htm>