Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum How Can We Make the Advice Given on Piano World Better?

Your thread title reads: How can we make the advice on Piano World better? The "we" would seem to imply a collective effort to focus more closely on the advice asked for and not go beyond that by getting into subjective preferences and biases.

Your suggestion does not make the advice given here "better". It simply makes some of the advice given here appear to be 'better' than the rest.

Those who feel their advice should be given primacy over others' due to their credentials can get into those credentials in their tags by stating present and past affiliations, as well as years of experience in the piano biz. Introducing an arbitrary standard of certification just opens another can of worms.

Do those with many brand affiliations over the years post objectively to their total experience or feel a prevailing loyalty to their current suppliers (the hand that feeds)? In your case, I would bet on objectivity overruling current affiliations, but I would not bet on that in general, and I would only bet on that in your case due to reading many of your posts oover the last few years, not due to your many years of experience in the biz and your many affiliations. In other words, the actual post validates the résumé, not the other way around.

People forget that pianos and music making in general are a subject that never will or *can* be agreed upon.

Sound including the 'perception of sound', have never been a matter of 'agreement' but personal 'feel'

'Feel' again, is based on many other personal aspects including what one is personally familiar with or sometimes "not".

A Saab may be a better car than a Honda, but when not familiar with them both, the discussion becomes quickly meaningless.

By same token without having the chance to personally experience different pianos either as player or discerning listener, the whole subject remains ...er..talk.

Claiming to be an expert when not familiar with many of the various makes/models being discussed here or not being a player oneself, doesn't exactly do the trick either.

Agreeing can be beautiful - disagreeing sometimes better.

Norbert

If I missed someone already saying this, I apologize.

Opinions should be expresses as such, not as fact. Far to many opinions are expressed as facts. No amount of existential cleverness or wordy math topics changes the simple fact that, unless you have personally done the significant testing and/or research, it is in fact, just an opinion.

If you are repeating something you read or heard, then present the proper citations, remove yourself as the "expert" and defer to the source you speak from.

We have people here expressing their "facts"on such things as sound boards who have never installed one.

Others present hearsay on manufacturers they heard from an "industry" friend, as fact, rather than the hearsay it is.

Separate fact from opinion and identify sources.

One thing we can all strive to do better is try and stay on topic. I've sometimes wondered what thread would get the award for longest "on -topic" responses.

Piano. Sound. It is just that simple.

Making an argument about the quality of recording ignores that most listeners here can cut through and excuse recording quality and attempt to understand what is heard due to how it sounds through misplaced mics and lacking speakers.

Insecurity on the part of the critic above would have a logical conclusion that there shouldn't ever be musical recordings because they don't match the experience in the moment of performance. All recordings are inherently inferior, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't attempt to display what is being described.

Imagine being on an illustration forum where they only write about how awesome the pictures are.

I doubt even a recording engineer could do that. I'm sure most average PW reader can't.

How Can We Make the Advice Given on Piano World Better?

How 'bout requiring posters to use their own name and a real e-mail address?

That would be a social network -- a fundamentally different beast from a forum like this. On the other hand, the identities of quite a few of the experts here are no secret.

I've found when there's accountability there's less nonsense.

Eliminate the "infomercials" and free advertising

Limit infomercials(anything that says something positive about the pianos they sell/their dealership etc. as opposed to just giving factual information)to a certain number each year. Once that number has been reached a dealer cannot say anything about the makes they sell or their great prep or anything else in that category. Ten or fifty would be an appropriate number IMO. But some dealers have more like 1000 infomercials for each year they've posted. Unfortunately, achieving something like this would require a huge amount of moderator time.

Unworkable. Who is to decide what an infomercial is and what is not. One person's infomercial could be another’s valuable information or guidance.

An infomercial is anything that's not purely factual, e.g. "this model is assembled in Japan", or is designed to advertize the pianos a dealers sells or their dealership in general. Does the dealer regularly answer questions that are in no way related to their specific pianos and services or do the huge majority of their posts talk about things that are clearly in their own best interests?

No one asked for a description. The question is
who determines what is an infomercial and what is not?

Who knows most about a certain piano, an owner or a dealer?

Yes, true. The problem is that often, anonymity is a convenient shield to hide behind for those folks who seem to make a bit of a sport of sniping at industry affiliates (who display their identity). I sometimes wonder if they would be posting in the same way if their identity was revealed.... I kinda doubt it.

Dealers are not just just dealers.

There's different commitments involved, in fact VERY different as I have learned in almost 30 years myself.

The agendas are very different so are the goals and ambitions of many owners. Same with 'salesmen' - many are very honororable believing in their products, others jump from store to store to sell "whatever" comes along.

The relationship to one's product is IMHO very important considering that some owners are active musicians or at least appreciating music lovers, others couldn't care less looking only at bottom line.

In judging to what someone has to say the products he happens to carry himself, one needs to understand perhaps a bit better where that person is actually coming from.

Interestingly enough,dealers who are actively involved in music themselves have always had much higher respect and understanding for each other other - even when competing head on.

Only when there is absolutely no interest in what one is selling [many..] and being only in business to maximize profit at all cost, gets things skewed.

Trusting that intelligent readers will notice or at least "sense" the difference.

Norbert

Here's the problem as I see it. People come here not when they're beginning to shop for a piano but rather when they've gone out there and come to several realizations, pianos are much more expensive than they thought and the information given by dealers usually is contradictory. So they use the internet to find resources for information and they end up here. If they're smart they'll try to read 2 years worth of posts in a week, but who has time for that. This is the situation that the initial post in another thread alluded to. If someone has the time they can read a few years worth of posts and come to some conclusions about who knows what and who's a blowhard (but still potentially knowledgeable) and who offers opinion masquerading as fact and who is just an irascible curmudgeon.

Regarding opinion masquerading as fact, you'd think differentiating one from the other would be easy. Facts usually regard features, the Kawai RX series has the Millennium III action which uses carbon composite materials. That's a fact, but then equating that to mean more responsive and expressive is an opinion. It may be an educated opinion, but it's still an opinion. Comparative judgments, such as Estonia is a better value than Steinway is certainly an opinion, but is subject to the relative abilities of the person making the judgment and the particular pianos in question. It feels good to say it if that's what you truly believe, but is it really helpful to anyone else.

Is there a way to improve this situation? The only thing I can think of would be a disclaimer that states that the opinions offered are those of their author and not the site. Individuals inquiring here for information will receive many opinions, some masquerading as fact. There will often be conflicting opinions. Individuals should carefully evaluate all information on this site before using it to make a purchase decision. This site is not responsible for buyer's remorse, but for piano aficionados can be very entertaining to read. Regular readers will over time become more knowledgeable and will be in a better position to shop for a piano. Expect this educational process to take at least 6 months. Enjoy your reading and we welcome you to this wild and crazy community.

Steve:

I agree with much of what you have said but discussing musical intruments such as pianos only based on "facts" about their hardware data, leaves out the IMHO the most important equation: its 'sound'

It's like discussing a city's restaurants by recepies used - not how their food actually tastes.

Sound, as we all know, is highly subjective/personal and cannot always be explained in terms of what goes into a piano.

The problem is that we all can agree or disagree on sound, but many here partaking in the various discussions have no first hand experience regarding the makes and models under discussion.

To at least offer an educated guess, let alone 'opinion'

Instead they condemn anything going beyong molucelar data and "facts" as if this in itself amounts to an understanding of things.

It reminds me on famous German author Karl May who wrote hundres of volumes about America.

Except he had never even set foot on the continent - nor was he a travelor during his lifetime...

Norbert

I cannot recall even one post at PW where any poster discussed their personal opinion about the sound of a piano but the poster had no experience with the piano. In fact, to give one's opinion without having heard the piano is logically impossible unless one thinks the writer is just making things up.

Of course, giving one's opinion about a piano's tone utterly different from saying that a dealer is giving an infomercial. One only has to read a dealer's post to be able to have an opinion about that. The specific piano mentioned or it's tone is completely irrelevant to that topic.