[pianotech] Really, really irritated with the New forum system

[John Delacour]

At 10:17 -0700 29/06/2011, David Andersen wrote:

>Dealing with email, for us, is like fish dealing with the 
>ocean---it's become native; we swim in it; we breathe it. This ease 
>is one of the huge reasons that busy, fulfilled, engaged, committed 
>humans like me have spent time and energy and love posting and 
>giving to this community---it feels natural, and righteous, and 
>organic. It's easy AND productive.

If it were possible under the new régime to post messages by email, 
whether in plain text (please God!) or html with or without 
attachments, and similarly to receive others' postings, it might not 
matter so much what a mess they are making of the new so-called 
forums.  But this is not possible.

I get postings to the new forums by email, sure, but I don't get what 
people actually wrote because the messages are massacred by the 
software and all the basic rules of email are broken.  Try replying 
to an email received from the forums and including say the degree 
sign ° or curly quotes “” or any other non-US-ASCII character, 
and see how it comes back or how it is published at the myptg site.

Then there is the problem with the subject line.  The original 
Pianotech list behaves properly, like all normal lists.  I post a 
message with the subject line

   Subject: "No hope"

and subscribers receive the message with the subject line

   Subject: [pianotech] No hope"

People who reply in the thread will have the subject line

   Subject: Re: [pianotech] No hope"

These messages will all be easily groupable by subject in any decent 
mail client such as Thunderbird, Eudora, Outlook Express etc.

The new system breaks all the rules.  So for one list you might have

   Subject: Hammers: RE:Hammer suggestions for Yamaha C5

on another

   Subject: [PTG CAUT]: RE:CAUT Microsite

and goodness knows what other illegal combinations.  The result is 
that when you  try to group messages by topic in the mailer's summary 
you fail.  Worse than that, if you are crazy enough to try and reply 
to one of these messages by email, the system starts a new topic.

At 05:58 -0300 29/06/2011, John Ross wrote:
I think I heard someplace, that there are some people, who can never 
admit that they made a mistake, so just continue on, even although it 
is killing what was a great resource.

This was clear at the outset, when the first rumblings of discontent 
were heard about the new site, when people realised the users of the 
list had not even been consulted -- they even lied that they had!

This fiasco is going to cost me nothing but a little frustration but 
it must already have cost the PTG, and hence its members, many 
thousands of dollars for a really appalling piece of incompetence, 
and will continue to cost money while more work by this incompetent 
team is paid for in the vain hope that they will actually be able to 
get things right.  It's a pretty good rule that software developers 
who screw up on the betas will never write usable software.  It's an 
even surer rule that if a developer releases pre-alpha software for 
general use and this is hopelessly broken, that developer is 
incompetent and will never succeed in doing the job properly. 
History is littered with such cases, and the cost is astronomical.

JD