I've been a member for only a few days, but I'm not unfamiliar with forums in general.

My experience here so for has led me to the belief that there is a need for a way to ask for help on how to use Piano World's forums.

Here are some of the questions I wish there had been a place to ask. There wasn't, and I've had to find the answer by observation and experimentation.

1) What are private messages?

2) What are graemlins? (as in this questions in preferences, "Do you wish to be presented with a full list of the graemlins for new Posts?") I should add that I still don't know the answer to this one. I've just left "Yes" selected in my prefs.

3) What are the many ways that Watch Lists can be configured and sorted?

4) What are "Buddies"?

5) What is the maximum number for "Total topics to show per page"? (99?)

6) What is the maximum number for "Total posts to show on one page when viewing a post in flat mode"? (99?)

7) What is "flat mode"? And what other ways are there to view a post?

8) Here's a question to which I have yet to discover the answer: If I send a PM to a member who is accepting PMs, how can I know if he will or will not receive email notification of my PM? (I suspect that I can't know.)

Did you try the FAQ?

I looked at the FAQ again just now, and didn't see that any of the questions I listed were answered. I easily could have missed some, of course. Did I?

If a member can't find the answer to his question in the FAQ, where should he go, who should he ask? I'm suggesting creating a place to do exactly that.

It might be better to ask in the Piano Forum, lots more traffic there.

Wouldn't that be OT?

Instead, I've PM-ed my proposal to 5 Moderators.

Thanks,

Dick

Dick, there are some differences in this forum and others that I frequent. A lot of it depends on what forum software is being used. As far as your questions, I can answer some of them, but I too am confused by graemlins - I don't think I've ever encountered that word in some 30 years of working with computers, much of that on the internet. According to a google search I just did it may mean "smilies"

1) What are private messages?

These are essentially emails to other forum members that are stored within the forum.

2) What are graemlins? see above

3) What are the many ways that Watch Lists can be configured and sorted?

I'm still learning this myself (I've been here a few weeks) - apparently you can subscribe to topics or forums (which is what most forums allow) but I haven't quite worked out all the details. When you subscribe to a topic or forum you can receive an email notice when someone replies or posts to the topic/forum.


4) What are "Buddies"?
These are other members you have selected which you can be notified of their postings or simply have a friends - a clique or gang or whatever.

5) What is the maximum number for "Total topics to show per page"? (99?)
This is the number of topics to display (how far you have to scroll up or down on a single page - or how often you have to "page"

6) What is the maximum number for "Total posts to show on one page when viewing a post in flat mode"? (99?)
see above
7) What is "flat mode"? And what other ways are there to view a post?
Generally there is flat mode -- which is just a list and there is "tree" mode which displays forums, subforums, topics as a heading, subheading, and item generally indented to group them together.

8) Here's a question to which I have yet to discover the answer: If I send a PM to a member who is accepting PMs, how can I know if he will or will not receive email notification of my PM? (I suspect that I can't know.)

I don't know that you can, most forums you don't know, just like email.


Hope that helps.

Hope that helps.

Well, Kenny, it should help others. I guess it wasn't clear that except for questions 2 and 8, I had figured out the answers for myself. The "99?"s I added to 5 and 6 were my slightly uncertain answers to 5 and 6. Testing showed 99 for both, but..

The point of my post was to suggest that there be a place to ask these questions. I found the learning curve here a bit steep; and if I did, I felt certain that some others would as well.

So again, I propose the creation of a "Piano World Help Forum".

Dick

There were plenty of questions of that nature when the new forums software was debuted last month.

Oops. I totally misunderstood your intention here....