Put it like that, you are right. But in many cases it's *only* the moderators that provide detailed feedback. Even then, I can't imagine that no-one feels like they can add something of their own, or provide a contrary view, or simply say they enjoyed it - or not. I do not pretend that we are always complete or even right in our assessments.


We've thought about that. But we fear that this might drive people away more than anything else. Maybe the best feature of PS is that it's free for both artists and listeners, and we are loath to change that.

I placed a recording of Grieg's Arietta online some months back, which is appalling. You are welcome to delete that one. I will be making a new one anon, child, wife, canary and workmen permitting.

It would be strange if I did mind, since I say so myself all the time.

Hello!

I'm glad I read this, because It made me realize I haven't been around much the last months... mainly due to work and also my father's illness, which has greatly worsened.

However, in life we can adapt to anything and my love for music has not diminished.

So, I will make a sincere effort to post and participate more... And also prepare new recordings, which isn't the case at the moment.

Kind regards,

Marcelo

Hi Marcelo - nice to see you back here. I am sorry about your father.
And you don't have to worry - I'd never delete you!

Monica and Site administrators,

To do with forum participation. Since I'm new to the site, forgive me if I'm not understanding how this works, but looking at some of the recent submission posts in the Audition Room, it appears that some contain links to YouTube, others to some unspecified location where clicking on the link brings up an in-browser mp3 player (on my Mac, I think it's using Quicktime) and others have attachments from the submitter which have to be downloaded to my computer to be able to hear them. I assume these files exist on some ftp somewhere, and not on your server. This last is really impractical since after downloading it in order to hear it, I then have to go find and delete the file from my hard drive as well as delete the link to it that's automatically generated by iTunes. I don't have enough memory left on the hard drive to endlessly download files. If others have this same experience, it's not surprising that members don't take the time to comment on new submissions.

Once a submission has been accepted, it goes into your database, is officially posted on the site and a link appears on the "New Recordings" page so we site visitors can easily bring it up. That's great, but there is then no easy way to comment on it without manually navigating to the Audition Forum and hunting around for the initial submission posting so you can add a comment. Even then, it's hard to identify where the correct submission posting and string is for a particular "New Recording" because the artists real name is listed in the table, but their original submission was probably made under their "handle" which is what shows in the list of topics in the forum. Because the administrators can see what handle belongs to what member, it isn't an issue for them, but the rest of us don't have that access. Or am I missing something? I realize this is a site design issue, but it does go to the problem of why people aren't participating more in the forum. Again, maybe I'm not understanding how it's supposed to work.

One suggestion would be to add a column of links to the "New Recording's" table that would take the listener directly to the relevant forum string where he/she can more easily post a comment. This same link could also exist in the tables in the Composers category. That doesn't solve the problem of commenting on submissions not yet accepted, but maybe there could be a separate page or table for "submissions under review" with links to the initial entry in the forum, again to make commenting easy. That would unfortunately require that new submission files actually already exist in your database - maybe too problematic because you don't want the files on the main server before they have been scanned and reviewed - but it would save each forum participant from having to download the file to their computer.

Having built a few database driven websites myself, I realize that adding this kind of functionality isn't easy and would require a lot of additional coding and design changes. But, whatever the solution, it seems the process could be made a lot easier to encourage members to participate.

Another suggestion for the site administrator/designer - maybe for the next update - would be to make the links in the list of recordings on an artist's profile page go directly to that member's recording rather than just to the general page of all the works in a group. For some collections that include a lot of recordings by a lot of people (like the Chopin Preludes or Etudes), it's sort of frustrating to have to read through a long list to find a particular recording by a particular artist. But again, that may be impractical and require too many major changes to the code.

In any case, I'll continue to participate in the forums as much as time allows. Eventually, I'll be submitting some of my recordings - after I make them, or course...

Dave

Some good suggestions, Dave! To clue you in on things here, we just don't have the manpower (or womanpower ) to make these sort of changes on the site. But who knows...things can always change and so I thank you for chiming in here.

As far as the links go - if you are clicking on a submission that is on the forum as an attachment, then that is when it has not yet been either accepted or processed and so you are having to save it onto your computer in order to listen to it. All the other links (besides Youtube links) are what is playing via Quicktime on your computer.

Regarding participation - We're not asking that regular visitors to the main site need to participate on our forum. It's really meant for pianists who have recordings on the main site. We want everybody to participate on the forum, and not just come here every now and then (like some members) only to submit their own recordings and then disappear again. I'm done listening and commenting on members like that.

Thanks Monica. You guys and girls are doing a great job there and overall I think the site is exemplary. Since I was a GUI designer in another life, I couldn't help analyzing how the site works and thinking of ways that might make it even better. Maybe as time and womanpower permits, you might be able to use some of my suggestions. In the meantime, good show...

Dave

Hi Dave,

These are very valid suggestions, and we have been contemplating some similar things in the past. I realize that there are a lot of things that could be changed to make the site more accessible, more feature-packed and more user-friendly. The problem is that PS is really two websites, the Forum (using PhpBB) and the 'main site' with the recordings (using Exponent CMS). There is no correlation at all between the sites, neither in terms of technology nor in terms of data. There is also no correlation between forum members (using nicknames) and site pianists (using real names) except that we admins mostly know who is who.

The other problem is that we have no web whizkids in our ranks. We can get by but lack the time and specialized skills to make fundamental changes. Personally I much prefer making music to tweaking the site (though I do so now and then). Until we get some enthusiastic person on board who knows their way with Linux, MySQL, PhpBB, Exponent, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Shell and C programming (just to name some of the areas involved), I don't see anything structurally be changed in the near future.

As for Audition Room submissions, people are supposed to upload mp3's only, not links to youtube or other sites. We should start enforcing this rule.

Cheers,

Chris

There was some discussion of this in the forums a while back. Personally I like it that the two are separate--the main site presents the polished "final version" of our work, and the rest stays behind the scenes--and I think I'm not alone in feeling this way.


I agree that direct links would be nice, if anyone has spare time to implement them But I don't see it as being terribly urgent.

Hello everyone,

I'm a new visitor as well so it is always possible that I am missing some of the history that gave rise to this change.

I do want to say that I would find it valuable to listen to high-quality recordings by professionals who want to donate them to this site, but don't necessarily have the time to hang around posting on the forum. Something like a version of imslp.org for sound recordings--wouldn't that be sweet? (Although I suppose imslp is trying to do that now with their performances category, but it doesn't have nearly the volume of material as they have for scores.)

cheers,
hreichgott

Hello hreichgott,
Sorry, I didn't see your post until now...
Yes, we are happy to have recordings by professionals on our site; we just want them to participate more often on our site. But we have so many extremely good recordings by members who are not 'professionals' so there is plenty here to offer a listener. Also, IMSLP is a great site! And they have many PS recordings there too.