Yeah, fair enough. It’s probably no bad thing. It means I only persevere when I genuinely want to make a point. Maybe I should see if there’s an app to impose that limitation on me elsewhere. 😆

You're at 93 posts--Stick it out and see what happens at 100.

You could start a thread on the ABF and write how you spent each 5 minute interval since your last post.

I don’t post as much as I used to because while most people on this forum are nice and helpful sometimes comments can be belittling. If one piano teacher insults another or a piano parent- the receiver can either “fight” back which can be time consuming or move on to something else.

Personally, I appreciate hearing from non-teachers on these subjects, as long as they are clear they are non-teachers (those of you who do post regularly will often mention this for the benefit of newbies who don't know this already), and also that teachers don't get attacked for using this as not only a place to arrive at solutions, but also to vent a little steam.

Private music teaching is a very lonely sort of business where collaboration between colleagues is often hampered by having to remain competitive. So having a forum like this has been very valuable to me, although in the past couple of years we've lost some contributors and frankly, I'm not sure there are many people going into the field these days. Or if they are, they're not into an archaic form like a forum and will use Youtube, or social media instead.

I, too, have given what I felt were very informative answers that barely got any acknowledgment. That certainly makes me not want to give those kinds of responses, and just cut things down to bare minimum.

You are one of the most helpful people here. But I think, to be honest, that you are also hurt by not being able to track when people have answered you. It's really a huge problem here. There is also the problem that when we carefully answer another post there is no link or arrow pointing to that post. I see people quote another post, only partial, and I have no idea if it is from today or from months ago.

Is there an "ignore" option on these forums? I'm not seeing one? That could be beneficial, lol.

There certainly is! Go to the user list up the top of the page, find the name, press the ignore button. Too easy. I've done it in the past for posters who really annoy me. But it doesn't make the ignoree's post actually disappear. It just goes blank, and the temptation to find out what they said sometimes makes you toggle back and forth between ignore/don't ignore. Or is that just me...

I've never used an ignore button on any forum. I just don't bother with people who make no sense.

Much better idea.

I can see how some sort of efficient notification system would really help things along, but I suspect the forum set-up we have wouldn't be able to do that, and that a whole new forum software would be needed. Whether Frank is in any sort of position to be able to do that I have no idea. I have my own little low-tech ways of keeping up with any threads I'm involved in, but for anyone who is involved with other Internet forums it's pretty obvious this one is clunky. (The only other one I follow which is clunkier has just died and gone to Facebook)

That feature exists, but it doesn't help if you don't like emails since you won't like it. See my response to chasingrainbows above. I suggest you turn it on and try it for a few days though before turning it off again, just to see if it really is a fail for you.


This too somewhat exists. At the top of every post is a URL link to the particular post for which that user had clicked the "Reply" or "Quote" button underneath. So for example, not to pick on either ebonykawai or Tech-key, but only to use their pair of messages as an example of this, if you look at ebonykawai's message:


and you click the link at the top which I circled, you automatically are taken to:


Now I said "somewhat" above because this isn't perfect. If a forum member responses to multiple messages in one post as I often do, or if they just type directly into the default "Quick Reply" field that always automatically appears at the end of any page of the thread of messages, then the linkage is lost. But this occurs with other forums to. For example, in Reddit, even though replies to comments are immediately under and indented compared to the message being commented to, people still often will hit reply to one comment and actually be addressing another one, which is often even more confusing when they do that since there is an implied connection by the location and indentation, but the poster had actually meant something else.


Not to pick on venerable member dk who was last seen on PW forum before 9/11, but if you go a forum members profile, you'll see a row of buttons under their profile:

Thanks, Tyrone! I just did that. However, it looks like I only get notified re: private messages to me, and not of any replies to threads I start. Is that correct?

I did this almost 10 months ago and I only receive notifications for private messages-not for replies to threads.

What a useful thread!

Morodiene, I always appreciate your posts! They are consistently the among most insightful of the entire forum.

Ebony, don't ignore me!!! lol I haven't ignored anyone, although there are some who I just cognitively ignore, but I still sometimes like to read what they've written. Agree w Gary D here.

Tyrone, you sleuth, you saved the day yet again!

No it's a tv station - haven't you heard of Mick at Night?

Do the "Follow Lists" provide any notifications that some are wanting?

your user name from the upper right> Preferences > Follow lists

Another forum that I belong to (but haven't haunted in a bit) is the VI-forum, and their software does allow for getting emails when someone replies to your post, or
even if a comment is added to a thread you're following. I do believe it also has a mobile version.

Of course, I understand a change like that is not easily done.

cb13 Thank you! That's really just the nature of forums, sometimes things get lost, or particular tangents take over. But I appreciate the encouraging words.

Since I can't edit my typo anymore.. *cmb13

Correct is checking the 3rd row below and not the 2nd row (2nd row can be checked too, but as chasingrainbows and NobleHouse say, it only applies to private messages):


What happens when you check the "Yes" in the 3rd row is that anything added to the items in your "followed lists" (i.e., forums, threads, and users) is emailed to you. What that means differs for each of these three categories, but let me just talk about threads. As you may be aware, when you post a message, at the bottom of the "New Reply" window is a checkbox to the right of "Add this thread to my Followed Threads" which is checked by default. Every time you leave this checkbox checked when you post a message, the thread you post it to is added to your growing list of "followed threads" which is the 2nd tab under the "Followed Lists" option under your forum name in the upper right of the webpage. Then when a post is made to one of the threads in your "followed threads list," that message is sent to your email. You can prune away some of the threads in your followed threads list by going to the "Followed Threads" tab and clicking on the "Edit Followed Threads" link.

Now, if in general, you don't want email notifications about messages posted to threads you might have posted on, but you want to do instead get notifications for messages posted only to a very few choice threads dear to your heart (so a very small set of threads only), you can do it another way. Make sure to check "No" in the 3rd row (see picture above), and instead do this:

• The thread of special interest will either already be in your "followed threads" list (perhaps because you already posted to that thread in the past) or it won't be. If it isn't already in your "followed threads" list by going into the thread in question by clicking on the thread title, and then in the top left corner of the thread is a pull-down menu entitled "Thread Options." Select the option in the 4-element list named "Follow Thread."
• Once a thread is on your "followed threads" list, you can now get email notification for it by doing the following. Go to the "Followed Lists" under your forum name in the upper right of the webpage (dropdown triangle to the right of your handle), and go to the "Followed Threads" tab and click on "Edit Followed Threads" in the upper right of the window. Now look for the thread title of interest and to the right, select "Instant" for email notification. Now go to the bottom of that window and click on the "Update Followed Threads" button. Now you will receive an email notification whenever that particular thread receives a message.

An important thing to note when you look at the "Edit Followed Threads" window is that even if you did check the checkbox for the 3rd row, it only applies to new threads you are following. Before checking the checkbox, you could have posted to 1000 different threads already. When you check the checkbox, all of those thousand might receive new posts and you will not be emailed. Only the threads you newly post to (and are therefore newly added to your "Followed Threads" list, or threads which you manually go into "Edit Followed Threads" and mark as "Instant," will generate email messages to you.


Don't thank me! The knowledge you shared earlier with me about a forum feature got me investigating! You broke the ground! It was all icy before that

As a young novice piano teacher like myself, I should post more often to see what you seasoned teachers think. I'm often hesitant of posting too many new topics, actually... but then again, what should I afraid of? Expect a new post soon!

OK, I’m back for a live test of post 100. Can I make 101 immediately? <drum roll>