oavs wrote:Ouch that hurt.
My apologies for all my wrong doings
I think you have been little too harsh on your new member.
Let me explain.
No real need to.
Apology accepted, by the way; thank you.
I only placed the post on that thread as I find it would be most appropriate place since most members were talking about Gold Coast and looking for places or groups etc.
Yes, I realise this.
However, if you look closely, you might notice that this thread is already within a section of the forum that is dedicated to Brisbane and the God coast and other nearby areas. A separate, brand new post, within this section, would have been far more appropriate, IMHO. That would already have met your stated objective of targeting the region, but without hijcaking a thread that is essentially unrelated to the activity you're suggesting.
Meetup is free for members and users. Only Organizers pay annual hosting fees.
In which case they have significantly changed their Ts&Cs, and for the better. That is good, but my original point remains: why bother, when, in reality, there are far better ways (IMHO) of achieving a "meetup" without their assistance.
My other experiences with them, in a professional related discipline, was actually very disappointing, and this is from a person who has been actively involved with user-based communities for in excess of thirty years.
Please do not take this the wrong way but If you think that replying a old post was inappropriate then locking the 'old' thread/s would stop your members posting. Many forums including our Meetup does have that feature.
Your comments are noted, and yes, we have that facility here as well. However, it is felt that it is not appropriate to lock most threads, as it has been established that action of that type often stifles discussion. Similarly, there are often good reasons why an older thread may be revisited; I saw one such example just a a day or two ago, when somebody sought a follow-up on a particular point that had been made in an older thread several months ago.
As a guide, it is perfectly acceptable to post to an older thread when the context and content are directly related to that original thread. By way of contrast, if a new topic or item is being established, which is what I believe to be the case in your post, a new thread is much more appropriate.
House keeping: I have now placed my location, but I advise strongly to improve some of your 'required ' fields during registrations. You also have "{ COUNTRY }:" with a drop down which can not be selected.
Thank you. I have not made that observation, and with over 4000 members here, nobody else seems to have made it either.
With an earlier version of the software, we did in fact have the location field as compulsory, but (a) the newer version didn't support that facility at the time of the upgrade, and (b) the extensive notes that needed to accompany the compulsory field as well as the underlying code to support it within the terms of the
FAQ made it quite an onerous task to implement.
Basically, as soon as you go down that path, you then need to code for rejecting input that is not valid. Otherwise, you are no further progressed than not having the compulsory field at all, because the input gathered will, too often, be invalid.
Bottom line is that if we're gong to have ask people to fix their broken input, then we may as well just ask them to put it in (hopefully correctly) and not be bothered with the compulsory field.
Please forgive me and may be it's my dumbness but I can not locate your "forum rules" on your forum website.
I would never accuse any person of "dumbness", or of anything like that. Seriously, I know how easy it is to not see things.
However, if you cast your eyes to the top of this very page ... the section in pink, where it says, in bold print, "
Forum Rules" .... Please note that this suggests that you refer to the
FAQ ....
Then, if you check the board index page, you might notice that the forum is divided into sections, one of which is described
Board Index wrote:Information
Forum rules and nettiquette, along with other items of general interest.
Looking at that section, the second post, a sticky, has the subject line
"Forum Rules". I've even linked the post for you.
Why should any member read your 'FAQ's ' to find out which fields in your registration forms are required or not required.
Why should they not read them? We are a vigorous and active community, and many questions regarding the forum and our community are discussed there. Certainly, I think that almost every point that you have fallen foul of, and pretty well every issue that you have raised is covered there. That strongly suggests to me that the points raised are in fact questions that have been asked here before. Frequently, in fact.
Hence they appropriately appear in the
FAQ, where every member is encouraged to review them.
That is ridiculous. We are in 2010. Learn to code and fix your forum website or learn to configure it well.
Many of us have lives. We work, we also like to take photographs. I would respectfully commend that to you as a worthwhile activity.
And finally next time you are going to pound on a new member,
With respect, I am not going to wander into your house and piss all over the carpet. When I visit new sites - which I do on a daily basis - I always take a few moments to review the rules and
FAQ. Something that you have clearly failed to do, despite the facilities being plainly and clearly obvious to all concerned.
In point of fact, I have been very gentle with you, and I would, again with respect, strongly suggest that you take your ego and park it outside of this forum. Yes, that too is covered in the
FAQ.
There certainly were a number of ways that I could have dealt with this issue, but the manner that I chose hopefully brings an awareness and a gentle reminder to all members of when to resurrect an older thread. Given that your post had already attracted a number of complaints from other members, I felt that a gentle reminder was more appropriate. You are welcome to your divergent view, and you are free to exercise that view in any forums that you own and manage.
After all you don't want to make them sound like an idiot
No, I would certainly not try to make anyone sound like an idiot.
I think it is 'just plain wrong.
As I said, you are welcome to your opinion, and you are free to express it, within the boundaries of this community's rules.