Spaces: Request For Comments

navindra · 22 Jan

PianoTell is open to everyone subject to the One Rule. PianoTell welcomes a whole diversity of folks from different cultures and different temperaments. That's the world we live in and embrace. Unfortunately, the One Rule isn't to everyone's pleasing and sometimes folks just don't get along. We've had some folks say the rule is too restrictive and others say the rule isn't nearly restrictive enough. It's a balancing act.

In Spaces, as topic starter, you will be able to optionally specify your own rules of engagement, additional moderation policies, and desired audience. Consequently, moderation will be enforced no-questions-asked with no-hard-feelings for all involved in that topic. If this idea works in Spaces, we might even expand it to the whole forum. This would be optional and left up to the topic starter.

Over time, we have also had content that doesn't quite fit into the existing forums. Some examples of this include practice and singing journals, recordings of works that are still in progress, creative writing/stories, and other musings on keyboard design and music notation.

Spaces will be the home for such content!

Here's a taste of what I'm thinking this will look like:

Spaces is your home for personal journals, writings, blogs, stories, and other musings. You can specify your audience, rules of engagement, and moderation preferences. All musical subjects (e.g. singing) are considered on-topic, but healthy off-topic is also allowed. Spaces is intended to be a safe area for members!

This is not set in stone... looking for comments and suggestions before going live!

Update: This idea has been shelved.

Animisha · 22 Jan

It is a nice idea to create Spaces for content that doesn't quite fit into the existing forums!

However, (I'm sorry, just nitpicking)

navindra recordings of works that are still in progress,

these I think fit quite well into the Learners Lounge.

Now, more important points.

"You can specify your audience" - if I understand you correctly, I can say that these 115 of our members can see the thread and the other 176 cannot see it?
Honestly, I don't think that this will do the forum any good. In threads, it happens more often than not that people start talking about something that is not quite on topic, and when you start excluding members from some conversations, the risk is that they feel something is going on but they have no idea what. Not a nice feeling.

As an alternative to this, I would very much appreciate the possibility to have threads in Spaces to be open for members only. So the message is not all over the internet, but restricted to our members.

About moderation preferences: does this mean that the OP can say, "No moderation at all in my thread"? That would not be a good idea, because moderation might be needed between some other members in that thread.

BBartK · 22 Jan

Animisha
I don't think these settings would be automatically enforced by the forum software. @navindra please correct me if I'm wrong but I think these are only flags that you set on any new topic to tell everyone how you wish to interact.

For example, "please no suggestions for improvements", or "I don't want X to comment on this thread".

Animisha · 22 Jan

BartK Aha!

BartK "I don't want X to comment on this thread".

I am not at all sure this is a good idea. In a public forum, all members can respond. It is part of the deal.
I know, for my part, if an OP would say: "I don't want Animisha to comment on this thread" I would be sad and upset.
So I don't think it is a good idea to create this possibility.

Animisha · 22 Jan

BartK "please no suggestions for improvements"

PS. We can already say this, at any times, anywhere in the forum, and I haven't seen anybody not honouring this request. There is no need for a specific forum for this.

bSharp · 22 Jan

You can't force a user to not comment. If you don't want to see their comments, then just ignore them.

Josephine · 22 Jan

Animisha I am not at all sure this is a good idea. In a public forum, all members can respond. It is part of the deal.
I know, for my part, if an OP would say: "I don't want Animisha to comment on this thread" I would be sad and upset.
So I don't think it is a good idea to create this possibility.

I agree with this.

navindra · 22 Jan

Regarding the audience question specifically, currently we have an Internal secondary tag that the topic starter can apply to their threads. What this does is restrict the topic to signed-in members only. It's possible to have custom tags that would scope further e.g. to Gold members (and we probably need to evolve that concept anyway), but those aren't implemented and based on the comments we may not do that at all. We do have functionality for private discussions anyway.

Great feedback! Will go through the comments more in depth later tonight.

Animisha · 22 Jan

navindra currently we have an Internal secondary tag that the topic starter can apply to their threads.

I had no idea, but I found it. When you click on "Choose tags" and scroll down, there it is.

twocats · 22 Jan

navindra I thought that Journals would get their own space and I'm personally not loving the idea of them going into a "catch all" space. I think Journals are a great way for a single person to chronicle their learning journey (or to create a single thread to post their works in progress). An additional benefit is that if it's a single thread, it would be easy to "ignore" for anyone who's not interested, without ignoring that user entirely.

I look at PT on my phone and it's easiest to click on the "Discussions" tab which contains all threads across all topics, so with this use case the "forum bucket" doesn't matter so much. But if you have an official concept of Journals where they're tied to the journey of a particular user, I think it would encourage more people to start them and it would be something unique to PT! It's interesting to see people's progress and as their playing develops over time, plus as a bonus it could keep the forum a little tidier

Also, regarding "healthy off-topic": ultimately it's up to you how much off-topic you'd like to allow, but I think allowing all topics would degrade PT. If it were possible on the mobile website to only view a group of sub-forums of interest using settings, then I could just filter out an "off-topic" forum (I remember you sending me a search mechanism, but it didn't show unread posts in bold), but the forum software doesn't work that way. I am interested in piano and some general music-related subjects but I think there's plenty of other online space for all the other topics that could be discussed and I personally have no interest in seeing that here.

I like the idea of moderation preferences, especially in the context of journals. As we'd discussed before (maybe privately?), I got the concept of Journals from another forum that I'm a part of. A Journal "belongs" to that user and is a safe space for them, and they can choose what kind of discussion (content and tone) they want from other participants.

navindra Unfortunately, the One Rule isn't to everyone's pleasing and sometimes folks just don't get along. We've had some folks say the rule is too restrictive and others say the rule isn't nearly restrictive enough. It's a balancing act.

Wow, I'm pretty shocked that "be nice" can be considered too restrictive? For anyone who feels this way, there are plenty of other places to talk about piano.

Navin, thank you for being so thoughtful about how to organize PT and to all the mods for keeping it a great place. Looking forward to seeing how it grows!

twocats · 22 Jan

Animisha I know, for my part, if an OP would say: "I don't want Animisha to comment on this thread" I would be sad and upset.
So I don't think it is a good idea to create this possibility.

I don't think this should be something a person posts upfront (calling someone out in the initial post, which IMO violates The One Rule), but I can see a situation where someone's comments are making the original poster's experience worse and then the OP says something like "I don't like the direction this conversation is going, I ask that you don't comment on this thread anymore". Then I think this should be respected and mod enforced.

HeartKeys · 22 Jan

As far as intent goes, kudos @navindra on the work and ideation put into this.

I think that, because of the variety of viewpoints; communication styles; motive/intent; etc., that the more "products" that are created, for the intent of building a sense of civility within a forum, can inadvertently backfire.

For me, I lean more towards simplicity of forum layout, and being content that for certain individuals, it's just not for them, and they eventually are (worst case) banned. Or others eventually don't find PT appealing. Self-selection.

I could see creation of more of the well-intended spaces can create a rabbit hole.

That said, I'm on board regardless of outcome.

SStub · 22 Jan

HeartKeys I think that, because of the variety of viewpoints; communication styles; motive/intent; etc., that the more "products" that are created, for the intent of building a sense of civility within a forum, can inadvertently backfire.

For me, I lean more towards simplicity of forum layout, and being content that for certain individuals, it's just not for them, and they eventually are (worst case) banned. Or others eventually don't find PT appealing. Self-selection.

This reflects my take on things as well. If you build out, creating more subforums and/or rules for responding, etc, it gets much too complicated and ultimately frustrating for users. Keep it simple.

rsl12 · 23 Jan

For reference, here's two conversations from the past that are relevant:

Allowing OP to set commenting guidelines (2024/05)

Should Pianotell have a journal forum? (2024/07)

SSgisela · 23 Jan

navindra if it makes sense to have a new sub forum for the kind of blogging/journaling content you’re indicating, then I think it’s worth splitting this out into its own place. And I think that for things like blogs/journals etc it makes a good amount of sense for the primary person to be able to indicate the kind of participation/feedback that they want. That said, this is a public forum and I don’t think people should expect the kind of control they’d have as compared with writing in your old fashioned journal that has a little lock on it. However, I don’t think people expect that, either.

I guess my question is about moderation more generally. Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but my perception from the OP is that there was unhappiness about moderation and this new sub-forum is supposed to respond to that by being a place where people can dictate their moderation preferences and these will be respected.

My opinion is that this isn’t going to work well. Moderation is really tricky, and I think it’s not a good idea to have the primary poster in a thread be the de facto moderator for their thread. When things get difficult, you need someone outside of the situation to make the tough calls.

This said, I do understand that there has been at least one instance recently when more than one person felt like threads had gotten to a point of toxicity, and that the moderators’ response was insufficient to make them comfortable with ongoing participation.I think this was quite unfortunate, and I miss their voices here. I also recognize that decisions about moderation are fraught, that you will never please everyone, and that as a space grows, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain an environment where all participants feel welcomed and encouraged to participate fully. If you want to have a re-think about the moderation policies, though, I think this needs to be a very serious re-think. I don’t think that it will work to have lots of threads with different moderation policies, determined by as many participants as threads.

Sophia · 23 Jan

I just now saw this thread, and I have to say I'm not too keen on this Spaces idea. I think that we (collective we) should not fall into the trap of making a classic mistake: trying to find a mechanical solution for every social interaction scenario. You can't please everybody, it is simply impossible.

Personally I think this forum is run just right. The moderators are balanced, the people are nice, and the very rare topic explosion dies eventually without even the need to lock them for long. If someone has a gigantic issue with how things are run, they have the freedom to find another forum, or start their own the way they want to run it.

I also am not too keen on "allowing any topic", because right now there is some controversy in the world nothing to do with piano, and I think that should stay out of this forum no matter what.

Let's not make things complicated just to satisfy a small minority... that would be my preference. Just my 2ct here

Edit: and on top of that, there is a possibility to start a PM thread with as many participants as you would like to invite. For the ones who really feel the need to discuss things privately with a select group, even if it is large, there is that option for them.

navindra · 23 Jan

Wow! I'm so glad I requested comments and you all obliged with deeply insightful comments!

I'm convinced — I'll put the Spaces idea on hold and focus more exclusively on the Journals concept.

I think you all made really good points. I was trying to make things better for all, but I do agree there's value to simplicity as well. It is indeed very hard to please everyone, and almost every single time there are metaphorical casualties on all sides.

twocats Wow, I'm pretty shocked that "be nice" can be considered too restrictive? For anyone who feels this way, there are plenty of other places to talk about piano.

Historically, I believe Piano World was a little more lax in terms of moderation policy on the Tuner / Tech forum in particular. I was not proposing to relax the One Rule, however, as I deeply value the friendly and helpful community here.

Let me come back with ideas for the Journals section and see what you all think!

Animisha · 23 Jan

My heart goes out to you Josephine, you have gone through a very tough time.
For what it is worth, I never experienced you as easily getting angry or annoyed. You may have felt it more inside of you than you have shown this to us.

Josephine I do like the idea of creating some sort of banner in the opening post with a description with the sort of comments you would like (and wouldn't like) to see in your topic.

I don't see the need for such a banner for most topics. If one feels like specifying the sort of comments they would like, which happens, I think it is better to just explain them in the first post. "This thread is created for.... " and "if you would like to talk about such and so, please start your own thread."

Also, "template for writing helpful critique", I would prefer some room for spontaneity. Because everybody is subject to the One Rule, most of the time it will be fine.

rsl12 · 23 Jan

Animisha I don't see the need for such a banner for most topics. If one feels like specifying the sort of comments they would like, which happens, I think it is better to just explain them in the first post. "This thread is created for.... " and "if you would like to talk about such and so, please start your own thread."

The rule suggestion I made in May was targeted towards people sharing their performances, and not all posts. I agree with you that people can (and have) specified at the front what kind of criticism they want, and now I believe no additional rule needs to be made regarding it. Not being considerate of OP's wants would fall foul of the One Rule. (I do, however, like the idea of having a warning pop up in the "Reply" message box that a certain type of criticism has been specified by the OP.)

On a similar note, thread-splitting is easily applied, and I don't think users need to necessarily request at the start that everyone stay to a particular topic. If a thread drifts too much, any user can ask the mods for a thread split. Thread-splitting has solved a few problems here, and I think earlier use of it might have prevented most of the blowups. It would be nice if, when early signs of drama appear, users let mods know that thread-splitting might be a good idea.

Josephine · 23 Jan

Animisha

Thanks

Yes, I agree, and I can always ask specifically for replies about what is good about my playing and what needs to be improved. And then the topic can change into how to improve those things, maybe with advice about exercises or certain pieces you can learn from.