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Pat,

I think you are missing my point.{/quote]

fact is there are at least two different points here, and which one a person embraces depends on which result he wants to obtain

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People should feel free to make comments that are, or appear to be critical of BIAB without feeling obligated to “balance” it out with another comment praising it, thereby pegging the SUCK-UP-O-METER you referenced out at 100%.




Are you suggesting it would be appropriate, if invited to someone's home for an evening of enjoyment and a free meal, to spend the evening talking junk about the host's cooking, or decorating or way of dressing or amount of ugly? in the name of helping him improve?? Even if everything you said was true?

I use that metaphor because PGMusic provides this forum for a specific purpose, and that purpose is not our entertainment. It is an advertising medium for their product. If you paid for TV advertising time for your bluegrass band, and the camera man kept interjecting audible statements like "But a lot of people don't like this band" I doubt that you'd be OK with that.

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Over the years, if people hadn’t given honest comments that are sometimes critical, I don’t think PG would have made as many advances as it has. Customer feedback isn’t always supposed to be good.



agreed. But here's where discretion applies. If you're at a party and you have a piece of food visibly stuck on your chin, you'd obviously want to correct the problem. But would you rather that somebody shouts out at the party "HEY BOB! THERE"S A CHONK O' MEATBALL ON YOUR CHIN! HAHAHA " or would you rather have someone take you aside quietly and advise you of the matter so you can correct it and maintain your dignity at the same time?

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If I hadn’t pointed out the shortcomings of BIAB in handling bluegrass in a lengthy thread that was joined by a lot of folks, including Peter Gannon, it’s possible the changes in BIAB 2011 wouldn’t have been made. (FYI: BIAB used to treat virtually all bluegrass as 16th notes, even though it’s written and played as 8th’s. It was a huge problem. I believe that was fixed in 2011, but since I’m stuck on 2009 for financial reasons, I’m not sure.)



I've noticed that Peter tends to get involved when topics require damage control. The corollary to the SUCK-UP-O-METER is the INDISCRETE-O-METER, and if Peter is gettting involved in your thread, it's probably an indication that the topic would have been better handled in a less visible way.

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My criticism wasn’t done for the purpose of slamming the program, but to get someone to pay attention or at least acknowledge the problem. Posts on the wish list didn’t do the trick. The thread did. Peter participated extensively, as did Mac and several other PG “gurus”. One or two folks who didn’t really participate in the discussion, at the end of it they said they followed it and learned a lot about note values and timing, and how that relates to styles and finding what works and what doesn’t.



I've noticed that at work hourly employees often take the same tactic of open confrontation in meetings with management when they feel that issues are not being addressed fast enough. And it is true that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. But its also true that its often presented as an employee who is smarter than management telling them how dumb they are.. when in fact, management is generally far more aware of the issues than the employee. Such confrontation often forces management to divert resources that should really be used elsewhere just to appease the squeaky wheel and prevent insurrection. (ie damage control)


Furthermore, in this case nothing that was said could possibly lead to a product improvement. In a nutshell the comments were entirely subjective, along the lines of why some people choose not to use the product. How can a company fix people's choices? You seemed to be validating the idea that its not a suitable tool for professional musicians, when in fact many other people have commented that lots of pros DO use the product.

Such statements made in an open forum intended to favorably advertise the product are at best misleading and at worst, just plain inaccurate. A professional musician reading the forum, who might have seen MAc's comment and wanted top try it, might have seen the subsequent comments and changed his mind.

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I hope that clarifies my comment.



ditto

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ey71h8ep047758h/AAC12jNM0Hz9Q8zsh5iDeqNHa?dl=0