Well,
hey-ell! I had considered the length of my draft reply, and the fact that
I am completely
lacking authority in
CathInfo, plus your status as a
newbie, and the sensible reply by ‘JayneK’. So I started to draft a brief intro for sending this message to you via
C.I.'s
private-message feature, instead of posting it in any
C.I. subforum. Then as I was about to send it, you replied with this rationalization:
The reason is because COVID-19 and the lockdown is a TIME-SENSITIVE issue that if not taken care of REALLY soon, will be a disaster of no-return for the nation. [....] We have a chance now, but we need to group better and have some plans. That cannot be effectively done mixing it with all those other issues.
Sez the
newbie? Uh,
huh. So in replying to that also, my posting grew to even
greater length. More importantly for you, your latest reply could be interpreted as willful rejection of rules recently restated by Matthew about how he insists that
C.I. members use his Web site [†] [‡]. Calling them "terms of service" might not be too much of a stretch. "
Mixing it" is a
fundamental characteristic of nearly any Internet forum, and before that, nearly any dial-up
bulletin boards.
So I've
redecided to post my draft reply here, where
none of
this discussion belongs.
I didn't see any button to open a new post [...]
That's completely correct: There isn't one. It's absent because so many
CathInfo members were cluttering the "
General Discussion" subforum with
topics that, to a
logically thinking person like
Matthew,
obviously didn't belong there. But they were an adequate fit to at least 1 of the subforums he's created over the years. So it seems that he finally hit the limit of his congenial tolerance.
I'm completely sympathetic to that, because
I was increasingly & repeatedly wasting lots of time trying to find postings I'd read long enough ago to forget where they were posted, because they were posted in what was
obviously a wrong subforum. Matthew specifically mentioned member "
laziness" in the title of his
topic. The result was very similar to what we'd likely see if members just created their new
topics in whatever subforum they read last in their previous browsing session. I thought that Matthew was being quite charitable in writing "it's not rocket science", because I'd begun to doubt whether certain frequently offending members were suffering, um, persistent mental difficulties. Be that as it may, Matthew shut off creation of new
topics in the "General Discussion".
You needn't take
my word for it: Not only because
I am completely
lacking authority in
CathInfo, but also because Matthew posted his own explanation less than 2 months ago, and it still appears on the
1st page of
topics listed under "General Discussion". I guess he thought that its newsworthiness to
C.I. members could
not have been any more
obvious: "
General Discussion closed to new
topics, due to
laziness and
abuse" [†]. In it, he mentioned "COVID" twice. As he also did in a closely related
topic: "PLEASE
RESPECT the
sub-forums! Not everything goes in General!", esp. his addendum less than a day later [‡]. Yes, I am
strongly recommending that you read them both
real soon, where
now would not be too soon.
[...] so I am posting here.
Can we have a new sub-forum created dedicated to COVID-19? Looks like this is going to be a major topic for quite some time.
Ah! So you didn't rummage around for an appropriate
COVID-19
topic in some other subforum, and instead indulged yourself in the same kind of
laziness for which Matthew had already hit his limit. What a
clever way for a newbie with fewer than 30 posts to get the attention of the
CathInfo owner-operator-moderator himself! In particular, "Introduce yourself" is quite
obviously not a place for replies whose sole purpose is to request
organizational changes to
CathInfo's software, e.g., that Matthew create a new subforum. I have no special knowledge of Matthew's browsing habits, but it seems to me that posting it in that long-stretched
topic is an excellent way to post it where he's unlikely to ever see it. What you should do
instead in such circuмstances is send a
private-message to him. Perhaps you don't realize that you can
still do that, even after this newbie
faux pas. Or if that's too confusing, then at least post your request in whichever CoVID-19-titled
topic has sprawled over the most pages, which is also where many other members will see it, and likely discuss it. Because
CathInfo is a service implemented as computer software physically hosted by Matthew, he might have considered the "Computers and Technology" subforum not to be an intolerably bad choice.
-------
Note †:
April 02, 2020, 19:49:09: <
https://www.cathinfo.com/general-discussion/general-discussion-closed-to-new-topics-due-to-laziness-and-abuse/>.
Note ‡:
April 03, 2020, 15:05:18: <
https://www.cathinfo.com/general-discussion/please-respect-the-sub-forums!-not-everything-goes-in-general!/msg693657/#msg693657>.
Topic: Introduce yourself! (Read 342874 times)