I was reading this thread about the small Steinbuhler keyboard and found it fascinating.

http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/1/22437.html

I remember some incredible threads recounting piano searches, some incredible discussions on topics of interest only to pianophiles and thought perhaps that we should have a 'pinned forum' of memorable threads, available to all readers to simply read for their pleasure and information. .. a best of the best commemorative forum. I don't know if it would logistically work, but maybe it could.

We would somehow vote or nominate these threads.

Currently we have the FAQ forums that are not frequented often..

Maybe each forum could have a subset of the best threads of that forum. Any thread with some number of requests, 10, maybe, would get put into the "best Of" subset. Frank, could this be done?

Maybe a little OT but perhaps not too far since it was this thread that made me think of it. Are there any museums in the U.S. devoted to the piano? Or is that a silly and ignorant question and you can't believe I went (number suppressed) years in this life without knowing about them....

There's the Liberace museum in Las Vegas (NV, not NM ) And the - Frederick's (?) historical piano museum back east, which someone will give the correct reference to.

Cathy

Thanks, Cathy

Ah, Liberace! Yes, I doubt Las Vegas, NM would be a very favorable location for that given the local demographics . The historical piano museum sounds more like what I'm seeking....


Charlotte

I have wondered the same thing. I think PW had some social meeting there before at Frederick. It is near Boston. We Should have a concert meeting there again. Also I found the National Music Museum of the University of S. Dakota. National Music M

Moe Howard,

Ah hah! And how far is Ashburnam from Cambridge? I do occasionally have to visit MIT for research collaborations so might be able to sneak in a side trip if it isn't halfway across the state....

Thanks,
Charlotte

Moe...Certainly nice to know that my tag line has been noticed!!

Charlotte (aka SF_Player.. Frederick Historical collection is approximately 1 hr drive north of Boston. Directions and schedule are up on their website.

You can also call Patricia Frederick or email her with any questions. She truly appreciates knowing in advance if someone is planning to visit even if it's within a few hours of finding out.

Phone or Fax (978) 827-6232
E-Mail:

Thanks, Terrytunes. If my next trip that way includes a rental car, I will try to check them out.

-c

Back to the topic :

This was the response I posted on Pianist Corner :

Given the number of current forums available on Piano World, I wonder if adding yet another in the form of "Archives, Best of ..." of previous threads would be worth the effort to maintain and if it would generate sufficient interest.

If a thread's election to "Archives, Best of..." would be based on a minimal number of votes, who is going to be asked to vote and how? Who would monitor the voting? It seems to me that that would be a task that would have to be diligently and constantly supervised - a time-consuming task.

The current star-rating system for threads, not unlike a vote for "Best of..." has had such abuse that it is mutually agreed - by those who have chosen to discuss it - that it is useless. How would the voting system electing a thread to the "Archives...Best of" be any more useful than the star rating system?

I could see that those interested in a particular thread might vote heavily for it while others might not vote at all, showing only a limited and selected interest in the thread. Are "Archives, Best of ..." threads to have general or specific interests to qualify as "best"?

I think that those interested in a particular topic currently use the "Search" to find threads, although I realize that the "hits" in response to searches do not in any way qualify the content of the threads found.

It seems to me that selectively archiving certain threads based on their "quality" would involve a great deal of work for one individual: more work than it might be worth.

Many users with questions will often be directed to previous threads by those responding to those questions and recalling the particular threads in which the questions were addressed and answered. It seems to me that that is less labour-intensive than demanding that someone be responsible for archiving previous threads and for constantly up-dating the archives.

Regards,

I would guess that people could vote for a thread to go into the "Best Of" section. We could have some type of poll set up to do the voting. Later we could use something like the "Whissel Report Post" to vote for a current thread. I guess there is enough room on the bottom to add that icon.

We also could use something like the "Adult Beginner Forum" has for the list of Best Threads.

Not as a FAQ, but other forums that I've visited have had links to 'my threads' and 'my replies'. This makes it easy to follow threads that you've created and posted on. I believe the link just uses the search function to create the page, but it may even be embedded as an option in the ubb software somewhere.

from BruceD
One of the problems is that a thread (unless locked) is always evolving. I once started a thread named "Pianos from China: actual user experience". Although the title seemed self-explanatory, and it was just conceived as a place where owners could comment on their ongoing experience good or bad, it was not long before a controversial sales professional began to post on it. Predictably, the floodgates opened, it got a one-star rating, and content quickly degenerated. I thought of starting it again and using the quote mechanism to pull all the actual user comments into the new thread while leaving the political in-fighting behind, but that would have been a tedious effort and undoubtedly the new thread would meet the same fate.

Usually when people rate a thread they are rating a specific post, a specific exchange of posts, or the presence of a member they like or don't like. Thread content is never uniformly good.

Maybe the forum moderator could get an assistant that would do some of the work. And some editing of the best threads could also be done to take out useless and off base comments so that people could spend time checking out and reading great information. And when new people come here asking the same old beginner questions we could refer them to a great thread that will help them out. Plus the best threads could serve as a model for us all to improve Piano World.