Actually, it works really well in the Box. But it's too good to languish with that crowd of miscreants. I hope it dances over to the lounge.

Sorry you had to search for it, but with the current system it shouldn't happen again. Maybe yours was one of the recent posts that got caught in the mass move of topics from the now cleaned out and defunct General forum, or the Lounge? It was a recent post, just last night, and we just finished up the mass move last night. I haven't heard of any more getting moved, but nobody tells me anything anyway.

Just PM one of the Mods.

Good to see you posting here again. Glad all is well.

I could be totally off base but my take, since you asked, kind of, is I don't think anyone's riding herd, and no one is censoring or making decisions based on content, it's about the topic not the content. It's a matter of keeping the topics in their proper slot for future reference. There will hopefully be an influx of users here when the forums go live and things need to be categorized. If you're searching for iPod info you don't want to have to search all forums when you can just search the iPod forum. I believe they're looking down the road and not at the current level of traffic.

I say:

Let those of us who already know the lay of the land steer those who are off course to the proper place. It's almost always better coming from a peer than from a de facto "authority figure." (Read: any one of us "normal" visitors, or John Rougeux acting as a pal, and not necessarily wearing his "Mod Hat.")

But it must be done with friendly diplomacy, and not "HEY JACKASS! You posted in the wrong forum, you idiot!"

Unless, of course, somebody insists on playing the jackass game after being given the gentle nudges about how things work.

THAT'S when the mods and/or admins should step in.

I firmly believe that the tenor and personality of any forum develops as the regular visitors direct it to. I also know that it's the nature of threads to veer off topic. I also know that people get lost. I also know that some folks like to cause trouble, or think any sort of rules are beneath them. The regulars here will ultimately decide how the place plays...this I guarantee you. If rules are too rigid, folks will bail at an alarming rate.

Of course, it's not my forum. I simply pop in here 15-20 times a day.

And I think most people will, eventually. But setting up the forums at the start with categories requires us to move the threads into the proper forum to begin with.

Once the forums go live for all MacTech readers, I'm sure the need to move threads will be little to none.

Has that happened? No. Will it happen? No. Why do you assume we will be so rude? I'm supposed to be just a worker bee, not a judge of character.


Yes that happens, and those posts should stay is my opinion. Like in meatspace when conversations veer off, it happens, let it ride.


Again you're accusing us of possibly doing something in the future we haven't done yet, why? Give it a chance. If you actually see that rigidity happening, then say something, it's your right, but please stop making up problems that haven't happened and that there is no history of here.

I'll repeat. It is my understanding, what I was told to do, is to move posts according to topic, not judge them according to content. No one has any intention of censoring. Like you said the regulars here keep it in line pretty much. When things get too rude someone will speak up. History shows the mods won't have to, except in the case of someone like our old friend Satan/Habs24 or something.

The intent is to keep things organized, not sterilized.

Peace to ya' man. See ya' out in our (yours mine and everybody's) forum.

The problematic quote which tells me you've perhaps gotten the wrong impression:Hooo-ooold on a minute. What's this "You vs. Us" stuff!?

I haven't meant anywhere in this thread to sound like I'm taking an adversarial position. Quite to the contrary, I sincerely intended to—as a fairly long-time family member—to offer a review of precautionary "Things To Consider" to ensure these forums get started off on the right foot.What "making up"? I got the idea to bring this up precisely because a thread I was participating in...which was friendly, interesting and informative and not hurting a damned thing continuing where it originated—got moved to a different forum. That's not a procedure I've seen often, in any number of forums I've been a member of over the last decade. Until I dug in and found out where it had been moved to, I started worrying that it might have been unapologetically deleted because I offered instructions on how to grab media that some folks think is not meant to be grabbed and "owned" by users on their own hard drives. It wasn't life-changing or anything, but it was a little distressing, because I had no way of knowing why it was moved until this dialogue progressed from my original starter post in this thread.

Just because the family moves to a new house doesn't mean the dynamic will change. Sure, we'll try to reiterate to the kids the importance of taking off their muddy boots in the mud room, or that there will be no more eating in the living room, but you and I both know how families behave after a while. They create and rise to their own surface level as comfortable agreements are reached by everybody. Me, and you, included. To find a reasonable sweet-spot where everyone can be more-or-less comfortable about the way things work, they have to be spread out on the kitchen table and discussed. And even after all the discussion is done, it's human nature to push and pull on the agreements at will.

Phos,
I can see where Reboot is coming from. You may not intend it, but your wording comes off as a "you vs us" but I know you didn't mean it that way.

As a member who has been here since almost the very beginning, I'm wondering why you would create such a thread.

Look, here's what has happened since we moved to this server:
New forums were created. We, we being Neil, Reboot, Gizmo, and myself, moved threads from a forum that was going to be deleted. We moved those to the new one.

Now we are going to (slowly) go through Stan's Forum and weed out the ones that don't belong there (hardware, software, etc) and put them in their rightful forum.

Presently and in the future, if any new thread gets started in the wrong forum, one of us should move it to the rightful forum.

Reason? So that if anyone (new or old) came to the forums and wanted to find an answer, they shouldn't have to look (and get results) from several different forums. Got an iPod question? Look in the iPod section!

As far as your thread that got moved goes, I don't know which one that was, but I can honestly say that it was probably a mistake that a marker wasn't left in it's place. We are going to do our best to make sure that happens.

And hey, if we forget to leave one, send us a message asking "hey, what happened to my thread?" and we'll help you find it. There is no malicious intent on moving threads. We have been here for a long time, I don't think that all of the sudden we are going to get all hell bent on rules. Give us that, won't ya?