The recent bans on PianoWorld

I see online forums like online newspapers, it's very hard to find a good one. The same things happen when you post a comment on an online newspaper, they often remove your comments for no reason at all.

MBiG Does anyone know if the private messages in PW are still delivered when permanently banned? I fear that this may not be the case.

It didn't work for me. CG said he sent me a message. I didn't get one.

Well, the thing is, if you have enabled the feature to receive an email for private messages, then PW will send you the email and in that email one can see the content of the message. It used to work for me when I was banned.

That explains it.

Oh dear! Pete14 is my favorite member and it's a little upsetting that he is permanently banned.

Come on over @Pete14 we'll have your jersey and number reserved for you 😀

Is it possible to know the number of new messages posted daily at PW?. Just curious about the influence of some regular posters leaving it. Because the 300.000 registered users is a big joke when you see how many of them are dormant for decades…

MacMacMac did pull out some statistics on member posting some time ago. It's something like 5% of members creating 95% of posts … (or even more extreme than that).

Oooh. You've pulled my chain! OK …

The last time I ran the stats was last November. The proportions seem to change little over time so things today likely differ only a bit.

There were 97,483 members. 50% of those members had never posted. 87% had posted no more than 10 times.

From that same data set I recently took a different slice. The site records a member's "last seen" date. From that I get that:

1,854 members visited in the preceding 30 days, while the other 95,000 had not. Similarly, 4,992 members visited as some point in the preceding 6 months, while the other 92,000 had not. (Note: A "visit" likely refers to a page read. It does not refer to creating a post. Also, it does not account for members who lurk whilst not logged in.)

Also, there were 2,909,618 total posts in the Digital Piano forum. The current top-50 members account for just under 20% of those posts. The top 300 members account for 47% of the posts.

MBiG If Pete14 uses the secret / incognito mode, as I do, he can of course continue to read PW.

Note that you don't need incognito mode. You just need to log out. If the PW site won't let you log out, then just delete all pianoworld.com cookies. Voila.

Some historical PW stats:

DATE         # USERS   # POSTS IN DIG
07/31/2010    52,436    1,449,208
01/11/2013    66,636    1,936,915
03/30/2014    72,512    2,172,141
03/25/2015    77,200    2,298,602
07/24/2016    82,850    2,440,760
01/11/2017    84,591    2,484,109
06/11/2017    85,844    2,527,258
05/21/2018    87,899    2,615,839
07/23/2018    88,992    2,634,313
02/08/2019    90,706    2,782,951
01/04/2020    93,811    2,797,250
03/04/2020    91,847    2,773,553
10/05/2020    97,061    2,896,271
11/16/2020    97,483    2,909,618

MacMacMac

Ah,...OK, got it. (and I was wondering about this already....)

Merci 👍

While this is for anyone to answer I want to ask the multi-offender PW ex-cons if they know or at least have a good feel for - why all the cloak & dagger drama with how banning goes down …. the secrecy as though its a high matter of state intrigue followed by anonymous sources claiming facts / gossip not in evidence as though they are plugged into and reporting the frantic lives of the moderators followed by “ we deleted the offending posts” as though the intention is to ensure nobody is allowed to know/see the facts…… and do you really think or feel your alleged crimes there warrant being raised to the status “ achievement unlocked” …. i remember the days no too far in the past when achievement was still generally something to strive for….. and i do intend to continue posting there 😉

I have no ill will towards PW community and the owner, it really is a microcosm of the real world, i am thankful for the public platform he provides FoC which i intend to continue using but …… what up with alla that banning melodrama?

MacMacMac MBiG If Pete14 uses the secret / incognito mode, as I do, he can of course continue to read PW.

Note that you don't need incognito mode. You just need to log out. If the PW site won't let you log out, then just delete all pianoworld.com cookies. Voila.

Would you please spell it out a bit more …. are you saying the banned are not allowed to even read at PW? This suggests they are monitoring IPAddrs, cookies or other embedded finger prints , which might be called for if we were Snowden wannabes, but we’re talking a garden variety web forum here, not the Pentagon ….. ? what, exactly, is incognito mode?

Drew-r My guess is that it is because making the whole banning process public would invoke all sorts of discussion and comments from other members, as is evident from both the thread on PW as the forum here. This I suppose is unwanted and takes endless time from the mods, so some form of autocracy is to be expected when moderating.

Monoch

I think this is correct.

I remember that when I was banned, the forum would only show a blank page because I was banned but logged in. The solution is to log out after which the forum is readable because it's also public 🙂 I don't remember whether you can actually log out when banned but in that case just delete the cookie for PW in the browser and reload the forum. Or open a private tab.

Drew-r Would you please spell it out a bit more …. are you saying the banned are not allowed to even read at PW? This suggests they are monitoring IPAddrs, cookies or other embedded finger prints , which might be called for if we were Snowden wannabes, but we’re talking a garden variety web forum here, not the Pentagon ….. ? what, exactly, is incognito mode?

Your login at just about any web site is recorded by your browser in a cookie ... in the form of an encrypted code. The browser records it when asked to by the web site. So, whenever you visit a site, any prior cookies left by that site are sent to the site. That includes your I-am-logged-in-here cookie.

So if I was logged into PW (I was) and then banned (I was), then on my next visit the web site knows who I am and responds accordingly. Since I'm banned it replies with a "you are banned".

Whenever I log out (any web site) the I-am-logged-in-here cookie is deleted. In my case I manually deleted the PW cookies. So on my next visit I was able to view normally ... but not logged in. So I have no preference settings, and I have no identity there.

Incognito mode is available in some (most?) browsers. In this mode the use of cookies is restricted ... so you remain relatively anonymous. There are more details that I omit ... but being retired I just don't much care for techie stuff anymore. I was something like a CyberGene in my younger days. Now I'm more like grandpa in a rocking chair. 🙂

Drew-r While this is for anyone to answer I want to ask the multi-offender PW ex-cons if they know or at least have a good feel for - why all the cloak & dagger drama with how banning goes down ….

I have no problem with the moderators not writing a report for all to read, about why this or that member was banned.

What bothers me, is when the banned one gets no explanation, no prior warning, and no chance to contact the moderators, as to why he was banned, as CyberGene explained was the case with him, two times.

You can read about it in the Heads-up thread at Piano World.

Like CyberGene, I, too, am two-time banned.

I've been reading that heads-up thread on PW. Opinions are split on this affair. But I get a sense that many there are unhappy about the situation.

Regardless ... I prefer to forget about it. I'm enjoying this forum more than PW. So I'm here to stay, and there no more.