What is wrong with Piano Society?

Ah, good to see, that you are still there with your old account. I also have to admit, I don´t know Pianoworld, but I will have a look into it. May be we could take over some good ideas. The sense of this thread is to get new inspirations and ideas to improve this site to get more people involved...
The other question is, if there exist so much more amateur pianists, who are interested in a detailed and to musical quality endeavoured dialogue as in this forum here. May be we are only a small group and this would be also o.k. in my humble opinion. Everyone who wants to participate seriously is free to do that.

 

I just could imagine, that there are two possibilities parallel to each other: an anonymous voting system AND the personal and traditional way of commenting to each other as we are used to. I don´t think, we should post our recordings here anonymously. That wouldn´t make any sense to me. (I also suppose I would recognize the typical features of the sound f.ex. of Monicas piano or the Baldwin of David and many more, that´s to say of the members I know a longer time here and I have listened to very often. :lol: :wink: )

 

I have visited Piano World and also Piano Street. To me, there are too many wasteful posts. It takes too long to read through everything, and really all it's done is waste my time. I like the intimacy we have here on our site. But at the same time, I do wish for more activity on the forum. Like Andreas said, we can just continue like we are doing, but of course welcome any new person who drops in. As far as who wants to be the admin goes, I can stay on if you like, but if you'd all rather someone else take over, then that's fine with me too. I know that change is sometimes necessary to help keep things alive. Or...if Richard works out a new system, we'd all be admins. The core members, that is. Like all of us here in this conversation. I think that's what we started out talking about, right? If Richard makes things more automated, then any one of us can process recordings as they come in. That sounds like a great idea to me!

 

Considering both Pianostreet and Piano World have considerably more active members than here, I don't think the amount of comments recordings attract in their respective audition rooms is particularly remarkable; in fact I would say that it is often quite poor, and frequently a large number of responses indicates that there has been a considerable amount of irrelevant posts, or that the recording has been controversial, usually in a bad way.

The sad truth is that it is time-consuming to both listen to a recording (whichever forum one inhabits), then scrutinise it with a view to giving semi-professional or professional feedback, even if the user feels qualified to do so. Usually an experienced listener knows within 30 (10?) seconds if the recording is likely to be decent or not, but providing any sort of detailed review is more than many people have time for. For example, I listened to one of the recent recordings by Francois this morning, and it sounds fine, but to do more than provide a rather empty general statement like that, not being familiar with the work, I would need to locate the score, listen to it with score a few times, and note down criticisms and positives as I go through it - and there are only so many hours in a day.

Again, however, this problem would not be so significant if the active membership tally was greater.

I think Richard (W) raises a good point regarding an administrator not being a site pianist, incidentally. We have seen perceived conflict of interests raising its head in the past (iirc the Bacos Chopin etudes being a case in point - or was it the midi Alkan?)

 

I only can underline that, Monica! Audition room was always and still is unique. It´s a kind of - let´s say - "elite" in the piano amateur world, but I mean that in the best and modests sense of the word. People, who take part here, should take time also to listen to as many posts of other members, too, and - yes, Andrew - take the time to look for the score, to listen with score and to give a detailed critical comment, like I usually do, when I listen to other members recordings here! That for me always has been and still is the sense of this forum here. That is, what is making it valuable for us all, to get a more or less detailed feedback, so that we have something to think about, to work on and to improve, that is to say to make a pianistic progress and to develop in interpreting piano music!
I also like the intimacy here and the personal contact to you guys, who all are friends of interests, the interest and the effort to produce good piano music.
Generally I think also like you, Monica, that we should go on here as it always has been (you are speaking from my heart with this, so to say!), may be creating an aditional anonymous voting system parallel to the usual forum activity to get more people involved.

First the most important: it never was my intention to offer my help as administrator in competition to you! Of course not!
I appreciate you very much as an admin (as all here do very much for sure!), as a musician and as person, and I would like to help you in addition respective in cooperation with you. So, let´s refresh our old friendship and collaboration here, which fell a bit "asleep" the last two years, I have to admit, but this was for reasons, which have nothing to do with you. Especially in the year 2014 I couldn´t be much active here on PS for private reasons. I personally regret that, because I always have loved it to be active here, as you all know.
But these private reasons are over now and I have a more steady base again to help here as an admin, if you would like this.

I see two possibilities, which I would like to discuss with you, but also with all core members here:
1) We continue principally like usual, with Richard, you and me as main site administrators. Richard does the technical issues and improvements (because we both are not able to do that, I think), and you and me we will split the work of listening to new submissions, commenting and uploading them like you always have done with Chris. In this model I would take over the place of Chris, so to say, just with one difference: when there will be a hard working period in my job (as it is usually two times in the year shortly before our school concerts), I would like to retire a bit and let you take main work during that period, if you agree to that. And mostly one time in year I go on vacancies for two or three weeks, mostly in summer and between I do some shorter bicycle tours of two to four days sometimes.
2) The second model is, what you have mentioned: all core members become admins with equal rights and duties. On the one side this would be a great relief to us both and from this I would appreciate that very much. On the other side there could raise a problem: who decides in the case of a conflict? F. ex. if one of us would decline to upload the recording of a certain submission and the other not or similar cases. I think, leading a site like this one is hardly to imagine without two or three main administrators, who have the authority and responsibility of important decisions, of course always cosidering the democratic majority.

I would appreciate to hear your opinion to these two models, Monica, and also of the other members here, please!

 

Of course, it is absolutely necessary to take that time! (Just make the day 36 hours long! :lol Please read, what I have written to that matter above to Monica!

I have good idea to solve that problem: let´s create the following rule: who wants to make a submission in Audition Room, has the duty to comment at least 5 submissions of other members and to listen with score to them to give more or less detailed comment! Otherwise his recording will be declined and not being put up to the main-site. From my view this would be adequate, because like this we save a certain contribution to the PS community.

 

Andreas, I'm on my way to the airport so I can't reply in very much detail. I'll be away from home for a few days. I'll write more as soon as I can.

 

O.k. Monica, have a good flight and nice vavancies!
I wish you a happy New Year!

 

Ok. I am back from my cruise. Hope everyone's holidays went well. Happy new year!
Expect a dramatic software update sometime later this month. There will be growing pains.

 

Thanks for the warning....

 

I mieswell get on with the software update. I am going to start the process today. See everyone on the other side.

 

Hi Riley, thanks for that, and nice to see you again here!

@rjordan:
Thank you very much for the new software upload! Great, that there is the possibility to upload an avatar now and that one can "like" a post respective message! Seems to be absolutely an improvement!

 

Thanks Andreas!

Update is ongoing. I need help moving over the artist and composer information if anyone is interested in being trained on becoming an admin.