The recent bans on PianoWorld

David B That seems condescending and spiteful.

That was exactly my reaction.

I think the bans are discussed amongst all the mods and the owner. But I think this condescending tone is coming specifically from Ken Knapp. He's one of the mods, and also (apparently) the site nanny.

As for not being able to read the rules when banned ... I think you cannot. But it's too late now for me to try. I've deleted the cookies so I can only go there in public mode (not logged in).

But that brings to mind a funny situation from work in the late 1990s. The email system went down, which creates quite a hubbub in the corporate world. Anyway ... the support team create a notification about the outage, and sent it to everyone ... VIA EMAIL ! 🙂

@ dear PC members
Although I am not a native speaker, I had the same impression when reading. Something very arrogant and not with appreciation. It may be that this is the standard text or the standard page, which one holds at the temporary ban.

@Deleted
But the best is yet to come. I want to devote myself to self-study of PW's forum rules again in the next few weeks to become a better person. Unfortunately, the link on this page doesn't work for me and frankly I'm too convenient to search for the rules elsewhere. Well, it's not easy in life.....

MacMacMac
I will continue to honor PW in the future only as a reading member. (The experts are almost all here anyway 🙂 )

When I saw CG's post on PW, I pulled out today immediately.

This morning, I sensed (what I feel is) support for the mods action - which was to ban members stating off-topic as a reason.

The reason is lame. A public post, on the same thread, from the mods would have been enough - I have seen that approach in some other forums I am part of. Just a post warning members or gently reminding them, would have sufficed. I will admit that I don't know if the banned members were warned (via PMs) or not.

No warning. Just ... shazzam ... that ban-screen appeared.

I've never been a fan of the "woke" culture. The mods want PW to be a safe space. That drives me crazy. Tell that to your Drill Sargent in the MC. He'll show you a safe space - stuffed in a foot locker.

And why do you bring "woke" culture to this discussion of a stupid enforcement of a doubtful rule… Can we just for one minute leave aside our prejudices? Did you also not ban PW by coming here? Does that awaken you? Do all stupid decisions in the world belong to "woke" people? I certainly consider myself closer to the "woke" than to the whatever-the-name (non-woke? Sleepy?).

Why do we have to label every decision maker into being home team or adversary? It was a stupid arrogant decision… End of story, move on, the guy had a bad day, and is too stubborn to walk back on his decision.

That's what woke culture is. They made someone feel unsafe.

TomLC: PW mods are seemingly paranoid with posts unrelated to the question. Read the last post the MOD on the thread that motivated the ban: "Fair warning: first post that isn't relevant to the discussion is going to get the poster some serious, perhaps permanent time off."

Why do you keep bringing up "safe", "unsafe", "woke" and other nonsense? This was not about locker-room jokes or something like that (is this what you mean by "safe"?). It is about Mods not liking the constant drift of attention, like teachers, coaches, parents and sargeants prefer that people "keep their head in the task ahead". Does that make teachers, coaches, parents and sargeants "woke"? That is a very black and white way to go around in the world. Some people feel safe on black and white sets of rules; I feel safe in all environments.

In my judgement, the moderators are not "woke" at all; the impression I have of them (maybe particularly the one in the digital forum) is of hotheads not given to deeper contemplation of anything. Essentially, people who act before they think, and who like to blame everyone else for their own shortcomings. But, admittedly, I have limited data to build this on.

My impression is an pandemic-caused influx of new users, who like to hit the report button on anything uncomfortable they read. That didn't lead to a ban for me yet, but I could read people admitting, that they reported me for various reasons from opinions on folded actions made by Casio, over an upsetting ES520 hands-on review, up to the fact that I teach piano.

Things will relax when the sudden-indoor-activities-hype is finally over and all these accounts become dormant.

Deleted My impression is an pandemic-caused influx of new users, who like to hit the report button on anything uncomfortable they read.

I don't know that it's coming from new users. But I do think we're become a society where over-sensitive and thin-skinned people are catered to.

MacMacMac - thanks Mac. I had removed that PW tab that I used to always have open in my browser so I missed this one.

acdp nails it, sums it up and presents the issues about the PW platform really well.

Overall, and this IMO, I feel there is generally too much of hate going on around the world - it may be hate, dissatisfaction, disappointment and similar negative feelings. We don't have to bring these out or exacerbate them on forums. I am not saying the mods did that or the "offenders" did that - I'm simply saying let's make PianoClack a success by not letting such happen.

Okay I just had to join over here. Thanks Cybergene.

Now I do hope Pete14 finds his way to this forum. I was one of the folks that got a little annoyed at his prose at first. But I quickly looked forward to his great writing style. I have to agree that the punishment was harsh. Anyway I do hope this site grows and grows. Pianoworld as much as I like what Frank has done really never updated the froum software. I hated to use it at times.

Cakewalk by Bandlab kept Sonar alive, renaming it Cakewalk and opening up a new forum almost 3 years ago. The new forum software is miles ahead of the old software.

Peace

MBiG This is how it looks. Banned....😞😞😞

@

"MBiG"#p251

That's quite a bully language they use. Wow

CyberGene In all fairness, I believe this is a template because my ban for off topic from a year ago had the same wording if I remember correctly.

That says a lot about someone who created that template though 😏

David B

Hi David! You are bringing an important point to the discussion. The fact is the the PW moderators do not contribute at all to the organization and optimization of the forum's contents. They also do not engage in discussions. The mods are mostly silent except except when they lock threads and ban users. I remember asking a mod a while ago to merge two threads together and got a rude reply saying that if the threads are not organized is because the users do not follow the rules. The worse is that the PW owners want to make a profit out of the forum. Maybe one day they will understand that PW is what it is not because of the mods but because of its community - including the OT posts.

arc I remember asking a mod a while ago to merge two threads together and got a rude reply saying that if the threads are not organized is because the users do not follow the rules. The worse is that the PW owners want to make a profit out of the forum.

Well, he can shove the rules up his #$&. We are not robots, perfectly going through the motions, we are human beings. If they are so lazy, then they can just shut the forum down.

The owner of PW is lying that it costs him 10000$ per year to run the forum. Even professional e-shops do not cost so much. He is just playing victim, begging for donations. If it really costed him that much, he would have shut it down long ago.

Pianissimo Yes, but in a forum attached to a newspaper or other media outlet, the user community is not generating the content but commenting on it.

But in a forum like PW everything is generated by the user community. Removing "off topic" posts and banning users that are engaged in a civil discussion makes no sense.

Maybe the PW owners want not only to monetize PW but also to transform it into something like the stackexchange forums where there is a distinction between posts which are strictly enforced to be on topic, and informal discussions. But I guess that if PW moves in that direction the forum would die in months.

arc Its already dead for me.