Monday 19 March 2018

Yamaha Keyboard Community



What a strange couple of weeks I've just had.

I was in a forum for quite a few years (https://yamaha-keyboard-community.com), I'm not one of those who has a lot of spare time so I would go on sometimes a bit more than others.

As time went on I built up some great friendships and even got involved helping people with computer problems and such, it was a good place to have a chill out here and there.

Over the last six months I've been training to take over the roles of a colleague who was retiring, then I've taken this role over on top of my other tasks. This reduced my spare time and my keyboard playing/forum/Xbox time.

It was quite a surprise when I went onto the forum recently and found messages telling me I wasn't authorized to view content (such as the image below)




To cut a long story short (after sending a couple of mails to the admins) I'm told the founder of the forum Kxxxx had decided to "leave the forum and have nothing more to do with it", He did this before then had a change of mind and spent ages putting all his deleted posts back.

In the same mail I'm given a reason/excuse why my account has been demoted to make it non functional - one of the quotes is below.

Kxxxx dropped you down to "Guest". Why? It had been noticed that you had been rather selective on which other members posts / songs you would respond to with some receiving no response from you at all. I and Kxxxx stopped responding to your music to give you the hint that you couldn't expect people to respond to you if you didn't reciprocate. An occasional "Sounds good" just didn't cut it. When you responded to one of mine and a couple of others I reciprocated - again to show that joining in has its rewards.


Surely the purpose of a forum like this is to come and go as I please, I agree I might not listen to every song but I have a work life and simply not much time outside of it.

But, If I choose to comment or not then surely that's my choice, If I choose to comment what should I put or not put?
Clearly there are some unwritten rules here that I'm not aware of, when I ran a forum in the past I let people come and go as they pleased and write whatever they wanted as long as it's not offensive or similar.

Anyway, my account was reinstated but I felt I wanted to take some time out as I'm pretty pissed that someone who's thrown their toys out the pram (for the umpteenth time and abandoned his forum) has decided to vent his childish and immature attitude on me, I make no mention of what's going on on in the forum posts, someone actually posted a comment asking where I was and another member, I responded that I'm taking some time out and nothing more.

I'm in a couple of other forums so I joined another to see what's happening on that, I complete my profile and post a song into a challenge section.

I then found my account demoted again.

I then get this amazing response (this is part of the email but it's perhaps the best bit)

I am really sorry that things have turned out this way. As you know I wasn’t best pleased that most of my posts seemed to be ignored but I have a different way of looking at things and (maybe childishly) ignored yours for a while to see if you would get the message. Perhaps I should have just asked you why you were ignoring my posts but that wouldn’t have been right either. I know that Kxxxx was miffed as you had not responded to any of his songs for a while and maybe he thought that you didn’t think our music was up to your standard.

When you said you were taking time out I said to Kieth that he should leave yours and Mxx’s accounts open to see what happened. Mxx on joining YKF said that he thought that YKC had ground to a standstill and it was a pity as Kxxxx and Bxxxxx had done so much hard work. – A bit annoying that as Mxx poured his back catalogue and later songs on to the forum and rarely responded to anyone else’s work so it was no wonder that not only Kxxxx and I stopped responding to him. When you made your big intro on YKF it looked as if you had made up your mind and Kxxxx saw it as such.

Kxxxx has started to get back into the forum and is replacing all the posts he deleted.

So - the forum admin who left (deleted all his posts,all his YouTube content, all his Google+ content and everything else) is back on the forum and posting all his deleted material back on.

I would be cautious if you join this forum, it says it's the friendliest forum on the web yet I find myself barred from participating because I might have missed one or two songs posted by the two administrators (or not commented at the correct/unknown level), I'm not sure what the comment means that I might feel other peoples playing is not up to my standard? Everyone is different, who am I to judge others and say they shouldn't be playing or other negative comments - I wouldn't be pretentious enough to consider myself above others, anyone who plays an instrument is unique to others, much as an artist or sports person is, it's the unique quality that makes us who we are.

I invite you to make your own mind up if you join this forum, I can't advise you on how often you should post, what songs you should and shouldn't post, what you should/shouldn't put in any comments or how you should interact.
From my perspective I assumed everything was going along swimmingly but clearly not - it's like a marriage to someone who won't tell you what's wrong but insists you fix the problems immediately.

I'm sure If the admins want to sue me for posting this or log a complaint then I'll produce the emails to prove that everything above is exactly as it happened - there can't be a complaint if I'm not rude and am producing the facts?

If however they want to apologise then I'm sure we'll all like to hear it, I'm big enough to apologise if I offend someone or screw up so I expect others to as well.

At the moment I'm so gobsmacked at the petty and childish actions that I don't actually know what to say other than some very choice swear words, you think you have made some great friends and are enjoying interaction but I suppose you don't know people as much as you think.

I almost feel that I'm back at school, my friend is no longer my friend because I spoke to someone else or didn't do something they wanted, their feet are stamping and their arms are folded tightly to their chest while they look at the ground.

It's hard to think they are grown men and have the nerve to tell others how, why and when I should interact with others - it's a disgrace and HOW DARE YOU!

Since writing this the Admin had yet another tantrum and put an amazing message on the site "due to a boycott by most members the forum is now closed".

As before, he's blaming others for his own shortcomings but at least others won't experience his childish actions.

Kev