I have been watching this thread now as it goes into it's second week
and might qualify as one of the largest in user participation in a
while.

I couldn't agree more with Pete Knobloch and Steve Jelovac of February
12th MMD about the 'style' of forum that MMD is using.  I took a look
at the Organ Forum that Pete mentioned and this is the style of forum
I am most familiar with.  I am also a member of a film photography user
group called APUG.org which uses this exact style of forum.  It must be
a canned forum software package, as it closely resembles the organ
forum.

The APUG photography forum I mentioned is fully searchable and threads
from years ago are easily called up.  It is divided into sub-groups so
that you can focus on what really interests you.  New posts or new
threads are identified and easily opened.  I have posted to the forum
and received replies within 10 minutes.  Some extremely lively
discussions ensue in a matter of hours.

I don't have to be logged on to see it like one does on Facebook;
I can log on three days later and catch up.  Each time a post is made,
it bubbles back to the top of the days topic.  Moderators can even
make them "sticky" so they stay at the top of the list.  If you are the
originator of the post, you can receive notifications (email) that
someone has replied to your post.

This format has private mailing if you want to bring the discussion
off-line.  Since it is all text, I can't imagine it being bandwidth
intensive like Facebook.  There are galleries and a store, just like
the Organ Forum.

Steve Jelovac is right -- MMD format is a 1990s format that takes
a lot of effort by Jody and Robbie (much appreciated) and probably can
only work as well as it does because they only have to manage five to
fifteen posts a day.  There is no way that a site like the photography
site could work if someone had to edit every post.  And I think, but
I'm not sure, that the MMD Archive is only as good as the keywords that
Jody or Robbie associate with the post.

Facebook is a terrible way to host a forum, for many reasons, but
I use Facebook regularly to spy on my grown kids so I am on it a lot.
So I am glad I was turned on to the Facebook player piano talk page.
I've already jumped into many conversations, and plan to stick some
pictures up there to try to identify and sell some items.  It's also
a great way to meet fellow rebuilders and get to know them a little
better.  That's what 'social media' is supposed to do.

I have been a subscriber to MMDigest for years, and will continue to
contribute to keep it running, not because of its format, but because
of its community of members and their collective knowledge.  I always
know that I can go to it to research some obscure piano mechanism or
technique that was discovered and written about back when bulletin
board services like this were still in fashion.  But believe me, if
someone came up with a forum in the format of the Organ Forum, I'd be
there in a New York minute.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox now.

Eric Bergstrom - Bergytone Products