Excerpts from a current thread on the NPU discussion forum:
Cormac Ó Briain wrote
A Chairde,
Does anyone use this forum, it is a pretty sad forum really.As the main pipers organisation why is the forum and site not maintained?I remember an article in an píobaire suggesting that we all receive an on-line version, thankfully that never happened as it just wouldn’t have ever been kept up to date.It is very sad that I have to go other forums for information regarding piping but i have to say thank goodness some people bother or care. May i also suggest if anybody ever reads this message that is we open the forum up to non members, maybe that way we can fulfil one of the aims that NPU was founded, to promote piping. Discussion is informative, interesting and keeps piping fresh, really NPU what is the craic?
Richard Power replied (!)
I am English and I don’t speak Gaelic, and I do not agree, to take you up on an earlier posting, that in order to enjoy listening to or to play a slow air, you have to be able either to speak Gaelic or to be acquainted with the song from which a tune may have originated. It seems to me that, musically, the derivation of a tune is irrelevant, although it may be interesting for other reasons. Sean nós and piping may have had coincidental evolution, but they are not joined at the hip.
Mikie Smyth’s CD is available on this website. In fact I think he may have two CDs out. I have one, but can’t recall the name. It has “O’Sullivan the Great” on it, one of my favourite tunes.
If I had a problem with regulator springs or pins, I would phone the guy who made my pipes.
How’s that? A bit of contentious stuff - probably heresy in certain traditional circles; and a bit of info.
I wrote
I agree 110%, Cormac.
There are two problems.
the fact that the forum is limited to members of NPU: I don’t think that this is necessary or even useful. Moreover, even as a member, I don’t have the time to go rummaging around for my username and password. I only hit the forum this time because I had to log on to renew my membership.
the software used: the mere fact that the other message on this thread actually relates to a totally different message from you says it all. The contributor was replying to a post by you on a different thread! In my work, I also have occasion to use a discussion forum which uses software similar to that used here and it’s virtually derelict.
Any of us used to using C&F know how infinitely more user-friendly phpBB is. Even the software used on Mudcat is vastly more straightforward for users. phpBB is open-source, which as far as I know means that it can be downloaded and used free.
If this forum were as user-friendly as C&F I’d hit it much more often, as presumably would many established members of NPU. Our regular presence on the forum should guard against any abuse, so the forum would not even require regular monitoring by NPU committee or staff who have other things to be doing.
I appreciate the effort (presumably largely if not entirely voluntary) put in by those who developed this site, and the anxiety about having a totally open forum, but I think that the drawbacks of the present system greatly outweigh the advantages.
I am not an NPU member so cannot comment on their message board, but this one is the de facto UP board now. If the NPU chooses to open up and improve their board, is that likely to change the habits of the posters here?, and will it improve on the service this one supplies- I doubt it.
Survival of the fittest, that’s all… the other forum could not survive, this one did. Might just as well leave well enough alone and have NPU just link to this.
I joined NPU and my subscription is up. I don’t think I’ll renew because I didn’t get anything out of it. Maybe I just didn’t look hard enough.
This forum has been extremely valuable to me. I have asked questions and they were answered. Some people sent me cane; another actually sent me cane and reeds and slips in various degrees of shaping for a sort of hands-on step-by-step for me reed making; several gave me valuable feedback on recordings of my playing I had posted. I could go on. Point is, I didn’t get any opf that from NPU.
Just a wild guess, but I suspect NPU’s web site is set up and administered on more of a business-software basis. This may explain why it is slower (encryption and filtering) as well as why they don’t offer stuff like phpBB.
Let’s not forget that NPU is still largely a volunteer organization. People keep coming up with these expectations like it is a business run by professionals, or a government agency with a big bloated budget. It ain’t. NPU is still a good source of info (see their archives) and they make a lot of stuff available (books, CDs) that aren’t necessarily available elsewhere, and publishing great books (Tuohey, Clancy, Ennis, Donnelly). Your membership helps support these kinds of activities by NPU. Perhaps it takes a bit more time and experience to appreciate how important a role NPU plays in the support of the UP community.
I belive NPU website is using “Lasso Pro” which is a quite good and fast alternative if you have a lot of information stored in data bases. So I think the speed of the NPU site has more to do with bandwidth or hardware issues at their web host.
I also areee with djm about the importance of NPU.
Even if you don’t feel you have any direct use of the information they provide, I can assure you that a lot less would be known about the instrument, playing techniques, tradition, old time makers and player would have been lost if it wasn’t for NPU.
Sweden had a good piping tradition once but all thats left today is a hand full of written tunes and nobody actually knows how they once were played
All very true, I have been a member of NPU for almost 10yrs now, but I have to say that the Website is not great, I suppose the mechanics of it are alright, it’s a bit slow, but as far as content I think a lot could be done to improve it. There is maybe one new item every month or so, there are no uptodate photos of Tionail, Summer Schools, Recitals at NPU all of which would be of interest to members of the Club and those who are not. So I would hope for improvements, it’s not as if creating a goodwebsite is a mystery anymore, anyone could do it. Maybe they should talk to the desinger of Uilleannpipesobsession, a quality site!
FWIW I think the NPU site has gotten a lot better in the past year or so. Let’s hope the momentum continues.
I also think that getting more of the archive online is the most exciting and valuable resource that they can potentially extend, so I’d like to see the efforts go in that direction.
As for discussion forums (“fora?”) I think the focus and need may be different. This forum is very chatty and off the cuff, and typically topics have a very short “half life”, whereas it makes sense to me that the NPU forum would be lower traffic, with more considered responsed and more, eh, “grooming”.
i to paid a subscription for membership of the NPU & have had nothing but problems 90% of the time you cant even get in to the site so i stick to what works, this forum, i appreciate that the NPU site is run by volunteers, but with all due respect dont volunteer for something, take peoples money for membership & dont provide them with a service.
The NPU site can be troublesome, last year my access was cancelled because I renewed my membership late (and NPU subsequently taking two months to process payment didn’t help either). I e-mailed Thierry Moylan about this and he promptly put it right. Unfortunately the next time I tried accessing the member’s areas I was shut out again. It’s highly annoying, especially as the website and archive resources it has is at the moment the only benefit I seem to get from being a member of NPU, The Piobaire as it stands has too many tionol articles of the ‘we played pipes and then we got drunk’ type. I keep telling myself the books and CDs produced make up for it (they do) but there are sides to the organisation that should function better.
Anyway, minor frustrations I suppose.
NPU is, and always has been, an organisation OF pipers FOR pipers.
As it stands at the moment the “OFs” seem to greatly outnumber the “FORs”.
I look forward to some reversal of this situation in the future. Untill then we might consider the differences between what we are prepaired to give freely and what we expect to receive. The sort of dribble that defines much of the content of this and ANY ITM on-line forum disappears fruitlessly up its own vacuum at the end of the day… is it merely a ‘development’ of enjoying listening to ‘the sound of our own voices’?
People seem so prepaired to come on to this and other forums to vent, yet for some reason there are very few calls to the NPU staff about these things… why is that? I have always found them willing enough to chat.
Below is the general email address for NPU. The commitee member overseeing the development of the new website is Gerry Lyons (if you would like to label the mail). Please feel free to drop NPU a line if you are having problems or, more importantly, if you can help improve services for your fellow pipers.
Oh, before I forget, if you live in or around Dublin, or if you travel through the place or are willing to travel to it, you can leave your name and contact for the list of people willing to volunteer help in some of the things coming up.
We will be clearing out a lot of junk that has gathered up (old sets off pipes, wax cylinders etc… kidding). Help appreciated.
