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

[Israel Stein]

John,

I don't know all the ins-and-outs of why 
this was chosen over other packages. All 
I know is that my wife who works with 
this sort of stuff and has been in high 
tech her entire career took a look at it 
and said that it is pretty routine, is 
used widely and that most of the 
problems people are complaining about 
are just bugs that should be 
straightened out. She also said that she 
probably could have suggested various 
alternatives - she has been in this 
field (as a programmer and in marketing) 
since the Internet began and her 
business is to know or be able to find 
out about all available technologies. So 
I guess that was a missed opportunity - 
she had made her expertise available to 
the PTG before...

Be it as it may, this is what we have, 
lots of money and effort has been 
invested in it (wisely or not - I don't 
know)  and I sincerely hope that the 
bugs can be dealt with in due time. The 
alternatives would be very, very 
expensive - both in terms of money and 
time.

Israel stein

On 11:59 AM, John Formsma wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:36 PM, Israel 
> Stein <custos3 at comcast.net 
> <mailto: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

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