Comment

Comment by Julene Haack on April 11, 2011 at 1:00pm

Hi all,

Yes, I am rather excited about the change in web address!!  It's been a bit of a saga with some obstacles and delays - not the least of which was our virtual computer illiteracy! 

 

I actually had a computer-guru contact of mine here yesterday to do the final step because I was rather bamboozled - it was easy for him, of course!  Then we were told it could take 48 hours to update, so I'm really chuffed to see the new web address up today.

 

You should be automatically redirected from the old web address, so I hope that's working for everybody?

cheers,

Julene

Comment by Julene Haack on April 10, 2011 at 2:24pm

Hi Carol and Denise,

Yes, some of the writing is quite large.  On the other hand, replies to discussions are still quite small - but hopefully readable?  I did a lot of trialling yesterday with different font styles and sizes - I'm trying to find a combination that is not too small for - ahem - older eyes....  Can you (and others) live with it as is?

cheers,

Julene

Comment by Carol Petith on April 10, 2011 at 11:22am

Hi Everyone

What has happened to the set up.  My screen now is in very large print.  How do I downsize it please.

Carol

Comment by John Leal on April 9, 2011 at 8:52am

Dale, with the changes to the main page I've found forums that I didn't know existed, so good stuff there. Mind you, I'm not much of a trawler. Then again, my wife says I go around with my eyes closed anyway...

Comment by Laurel Ender on April 8, 2011 at 10:24pm

What have you done to main page comment format?

bloody horrible!

listing as topics, even as trying for most recent it came up in topic listform.

so a very out of date one, will come up if was the most recent in that genre.

not a good look and categorising recent items wont get folks seeing all new, too much hassle to scroll to subjects and limits some who will get subject specific.

my 30c (10c carbon on a 20 cent, metric inflated 2 bobs worth.)

Laurel

Comment by Patrick Kelly on March 2, 2011 at 7:45pm

homosapiens is not a word. The work around is to use the underscore_ But why should we have to. See the remarks on the relevent thread.

Comment by John Leal on March 2, 2011 at 8:01am

Patrick, try the word homosapiens without a gap between homo and sapiens. Another way is to put an asterisk in front, as in *homo sapiens. Let's try, Baa baa black sheep...

Comment by Patrick Kelly on March 2, 2011 at 4:23am

I recently had the term homo sapiens edited down to h*** sapiens. Now I can understand that some one has determined that the word homo might possibly be put on an unacceptable list. And I'm assuming that the process is automated. However as this example demonstrates it is not appropriate to have a one size fits all rule of thumb.  H*** Sapiens is ridiculous.

Comment by Malcolm Fenton on January 12, 2011 at 9:04pm

Hi Team - would it be possible to rejig some HTML so as to free up some space on the main site e.g. here at Truthers it would be great to be able to post extra content (images) to the 2 areas outlined here in yellow -

 

Cheers and thanks.

Comment by Julene Haack on December 17, 2010 at 1:39pm

Hi Cate,

I really appreciate your thoughts.

 

It's been a learning process for us in "the team".  When we took over management (which actually happened in mid-October, as it took a few weeks for Ning to make the change), we had a whole bunch of ideas of how we wanted to proceed.  A large part of that was looking at how things had been managed in the past, and we wanted to keep the good and change anything else.

 

Anyway, we set out with the approach of tightening up moderation, and ended up micro-managing in a way that was time-consuming (and rather exhausting).  About a month later (mid-November), we decided to try a more hands-off approach - which is where we are at right now. 

 

It seems to be going ok, in my opinion - knock on wood! - except for the AGW discussions, which continue to be troublesome!

 

I think there are two factors involved in the success (or not) of minimalist moderation and they are:

1.  We have a bunch of lovely people, such as yourself, Eb and my Ma, who often step in at critical moments with something calming or funny or distracting - which takes the heat out of whatever brouhaha is brouing!  These moments don't go un-noticed by the team and we are extremely grateful to our unofficial "moderators".

2.  The other factor is the extent to which members participate in "self-moderating" - that is, not letting your passions take you too far, knowing when to take your hands off the keyboard and walk away for a bit, and so on.  It's about ownership - because, in my opinion, this site is ultimately "owned" by the members. 

 

I like to think that the managing team are hands on the reins (hopefully, gentle) to guide in a particular direction, but that the thoroughbred underneath consists of the membership body entire.

 

Whether the site falls apart or keeps on going does not depend on the team so much, as it depends on everybody who contributes.  I think that most members know that intuitively, but I wanted to put it in words.  

 

I shall get off my soap box now!  But want to say thanks to all our regular contributors who have kept us chugging along.  Hats off to you all!!!

 

Julene

Comment by John Leal on November 19, 2010 at 4:47pm

Can everyone cease emailing comments around the time of 5.40pm in the evening as that's when I leave my computer for a shower and beer, but every time I attempt to click off another comment appears. Thank you.

Comment by Liz Innes on November 17, 2010 at 8:20pm

I would like to suggest that we find a way to share our storys, not too personal for obvious reasons and not everyone would like to do so but I think that it would be great to get to know everyone better through their storys. Another thing that I would like to see is a picture of something other than the just grounds logo how could we encourage more of us to do a picture ?

Comment by John Leal on November 3, 2010 at 10:27am

Having your birthday displayed is a pain, or it was in another forum where I was a member. About 300 people wished me 'happy birthday' and it was customary to reply individually to each one. What a pain in the arse butt that was!

Comment by Julene Haack on October 31, 2010 at 2:30pm

Hi Neil and Bev, Check out Announcements and then the "Changes" discussion, if you haven't already.
Cheers,
Julene

Comment by Neil Forscutt on October 31, 2010 at 10:41am

I cannot reply to any posts can someone tell me why?

Comment by Julene Haack on October 27, 2010 at 2:52pm

Actually, Al, one of the next steps is to change the URL, as the former owner does not wish us to continue with it, either. Rob has sent off a request to Ning regarding this.

But, yes, in theory the URL doesn't have to match the name.

Thanks,
Julene

Comment by Julene Haack on October 27, 2010 at 12:08pm

Suggestion from Alan Mikkelsen:
As a 'sort of' compromise, could we bring back some of the old 'enthusiasm' into the name, by adding a bracketed byline? At present it's "Formerly Agmates Community" for understood reasons, and I guess that will have to stand for some time. But could something like "- Bringing Country and City Folk Together" follow that? Or "A Coalition of Country and City" ...... That's just off the top of my head, and maybe too wordy / corny, but you will get my drift.

Comment by Julene Haack on October 26, 2010 at 6:15pm

Hi John,

I've had a little poke around in the "toolbox" and there is a way of changing the comment structure. At the moment, it is set to "Threaded" - which means people can reply to a specific comment directly underneath at any time.

The alternative is "Flat" which means that comments appear in purely chronological order. This seems to be the most common pattern on other blogs. (You often see people replying with "@ so-and-so, ...." or similar.)

I personally like the threaded pattern but I agree it is a problem when people reply later to something in the middle of a long sequence of comments. Perhaps we need to follow your example.

We could trial the Flat option if people were keen?? (Will discuss with the other Mods.)

There's been some discussion about like/dislike buttons - I can't find anything along those lines in the toolbox. Possibly it could be customised into the site - but that's a question to ask our computer guru contact (we are fortunate to have someone related to the management team who isn't sick of silly questions - yet!)

As I and others poke around the mechanics of the site, we are coming up with ideas to streamline the topics but, ultimately, there's going to be some trial and error, I think. Watch this space ....

Eb, gullible with a capital G, I'm afraid.

Cheers,
Julene

Comment by Julene Haack on October 25, 2010 at 6:16pm

Hi Dixie,
Thanks for asking. At this stage, we haven't set anything up for donations and are still discussing this. As you might see from part 5 of the Mission Statement, we are running this as a non-profit volunteer organisation but we do have thoughts of some sort of "fighting fund" for worthy causes. The costs of running the site are not as extensive as we had been led to believe.

Al, no need to repost here but hopefully future suggestion topics will go here!

Cheers,
Julene

Comment by Dixie Nott on October 25, 2010 at 3:12pm

Julene and team,

Maybe you have covered this before and I missed it, but for those of us who were monthly contributors to AGMATES..... is the new team looking for similar help to run the site, and if so have you got the Pay Pal facility? I have cancelled my sub to Agmates via Pay Pal.

Regards and thanks for your big effort.

Dixie

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