I would guess that, for a significant number of people, forum participation is partly a social thing, and there are far more competing outlets than 15 years ago. Not just Twitter but FB groups, YT, etc. At the end of the day perhaps people have far less time to spend on becoming part of a forum?
Many younger people (and even people my age) have generally almost stopped using e-mail and old-style discussion forums and instead spend their time on Facebook, whatsup and whatever...
.... I've been focusing on raw physical things lately...
My opinion, which I am sure few will agree with: -A number of new members, particularly less experienced pianists, have been accused of being frauds, trolls and PW plants. Why in the world would you stay in that kind of environment that was allowed to continue over and over again. Forum moderators did not stop it.
Imo opinion the best feature of this place is the freedom of speech ie lack of moderation.
I reckon the Karma points system could be used in good effect to encourage good responses and replies. Perhaps allow members to gather up enough points to unlock certain features or something in the forum. Maybe decorate an avatar character or be able to buy particular avator images with karma points and have it on display in your posts lol, or allow people to see how many points of influence you have, make a game out of it all and encourage interaction.
Brand new students come in, asking for advice, and are immediately shut down by the same individual, being accused of things. Those students disappear, and never ask for help again. Intimidation is not freedom of speech. Personal attacks on people is not freedom of speech. One discusses IDEAS, not the persons expressing those ideas.
Do that, and I'm gone.
You are entitled to your opinion, but generally I cannot agree with you. There is already a place where discussions are cut off and censored due to some people's intolerance of any sort of conflict. We do not need another one.
Yeah why do we need "safe spaces" for delicate petals to interact ahah.
I don't understand your fear about karma points at all, there are many creative ways it could be used.
No one has answered the question: do new members need to pay for a subscription? If yes, that will affect membership since there are free options ... one in particular is the lack of interest in the audition room...
Silver membership is free here, it only costs to get access to all the sheet music.I do feel bad about not commenting more on the audition room. But most pianists who post here are such high quality that I can offer little constructive critisism when I have not studied the pieces myself. It feels inadequate to just post something like "that's great".
If you log out and then click on ‘sign up’, it looks as if the paid gold membership is the only option for new members. Maybe I have missed something....
The delicate petals I'm talking about are those who hurl offtopic insults at you and then cry when you call them up on it.
This is about the third time you have attributed "fear" to people. I don't "fear" them. I hate that kind of thing, and that is when I leave.
You were responding to a post which was in response to my post.
I have not seen the "delicate petals" by your description on either site. However, I have seen a lot of people turned off and pulling out of certain threads out of disgust. I was one of them.
Is anyone familiar with Talk Classical? https://www.talkclassical.com They have an Area 51 where members can share their various views on how the forum is run, suggest ideas, actually complain about how it is moderated, or gripe about other members being rude and argumentative. Most of the time debates only descend into further arguments and falling out with members. Nothing is ever really gets solved.
I am also not too keen on Piano World. If Piano Street disappears then I shan't bother with any more forums.
No one has answered the question: do new members need to pay for a subscription? If yes, that will affect membership since there are free options
Gosh is that true? I just went through the sign up page and could only find gold membership as an option. hmmmm thats weird! Yes certainly need to have free silver membership option available, I wonder if Nils knows about this?
Pianostreet Forum dying, how can we help?
The free Silver membership has deliberately been closed for new registrations for more than a year and most new members are signing up to get access to the paid resources such as sheet music library, recordings, AST, piano news and other features of Piano Street. That is obviously the main reason for a declining forum activity the past year.The reason we are keeping it closed is that we are migrating and upgrading all our backend systems, a complicated process taking long time, and during periods some parts of the member account management must be done manually. We do not always have resources to manually handle around 50 new accounts per day (including all forum spammers and trolls) and have decided to keep it closed until the backend migration is fully completed.The free Silver membership with forum access will be back later this year in a new version. But we will investigate the possibility to temporarily re-open the legacy version soon or turning some other knobs in order to increase the activity in the short term.For example, posting a few comments about recordings in the Audition Room on a regular basis, even asking the performer questions about the piece/performance etc. is probably one of the most relevant and appreciated ways to immediately increase the forum activity.
You pulled out of that thread because I wouldn't agree with you ...
I don't mind you having difficulty understanding what people write when that happens. It happens to the best of us, in fact all of us.
But please do not attribute thoughts to me or others that we do not have. It's not why I pulled out.
Lmao I’m top 10 on topic starters
Yet you have beel really lazy lately
This year we are under 2k posts and we are near the halway point, where last year it was at 6k posts in the year though all of this is a shadow of what pianostreet used to be with 100k+ posts back in 2005.
Either there are less argumentative people left or we have discussed controversial topics to death...
I had noticed this myself, particularly over the last few months. A number of very talented people, regular contributors, have left this forum over the last few years, some formally and overtly, but others seemed to suddenly vanish altogether from the internet and email. I had attributed the decline to this but there might be other factors involved.
My opinion, which I am sure few will agree with: -A number of new members, particularly less experienced pianists, have been accused of being frauds, trolls and PW plants. Why in the world would you stay in that kind of environment that was allowed to continue over and over again. Forum moderators did not stop it. -Audition room: it is visible but few professional/semi professionals will take the time to offer suggestions. The same post on PW receives views and comments.
The free Silver membership has deliberately been closed for new registrations for more than a year and most new members are signing up to get access to the paid resources such as sheet music library, recordings, AST, piano news and other features of Piano Street. That is obviously the main reason for a declining forum activity the past year.
For example, posting a few comments about recordings in the Audition Room on a regular basis, even asking the performer questions about the piece/performance etc. is probably one of the most relevant and appreciated ways to immediately increase the forum activity.
I know what we could do, let's invite Susan back ! Good idea Thal ? I reckon she’d fancy you with your new body.