i have got an idea about how to avoid the same thing happening again in future

[Flihgtattendant]

I mentioned it on one of the threads but it got kind of rolled over without comment.

It was based on something one of the moldies mentioned actually as an attempt at justification of their group.

She said that other fora have a section for older members, who can only join once they have been around for a certain length of time. It doesn't cause any problems apparently.

Like a senior members lounge.

Now I recognise this is totally different to Moldies as it is actually universally accessible - if you care to stick around long enough, you will get your green card. Simple and transparent. I don't think anyone could argue with that - well I hope not - and it might be somewhere appreciated by those who have been here a really long time.

i am thinking maybe a two year thing, or poss even more...mind you I have been here almost 2 years so heck, where did that figure spring from

Everyone here for that long would get access (I'm not sure tbh why I'd use it, or if i would, but obv some people do seem to feel the need for something similar.)

What does everyone think? Would it solve the problem? I think a lot of moldies could just come back and join that and it would sort them out. it could be un googlable and private like moldies.

It wouldn't help those needing privacy in an acute sense if they were newbies but there are few newbies in Moldies anyway...

The main difference in case anyone is confused, is that it wouldn't be a seeming meritocracy, it would be based on membership length alone, so everyone would get a place eventually, and would not be secret in its very existence, and so on and so forth.

Moldies is a cherry picked sample from our ranks, not a fair system, and people are upset by that.

I thenk you.

Urmmmm.... internet forum or school playground. Surely this all being taken a little seriously/ >

Hi i'm a noobie (3 months loyal service or there abouts lol)

how about something along the lines of facebook ..... where you click on a persons name and it brings up an msn type window so you can just post a private message like a chat icon next to the little CAT envelope. within that you could have member search so if you know who you want to chat to then you could just search?

i dont have the cat facility and i'm not sure if its the same as i mentioned above but its instant messaging essentially & private and would negate the need for a seperate members area.

i may be talking rubbish?

Thing with that though SNS is that it is a way for one-ton-one communication, not discussion within a group of people which I do NOT think should be limited to friendship groups.
Length of membership plus regular name on any oldies threads would be there purely to ensure that the thread was not read by non-members or people who had just joined to read your post/troll as they wouldn't be able to get into the thread, that's all.

Obviously newer posters wouldn't have this same facility but the allowance of every member to post something private (like the namechange announcement to friends or older posters) would allow them the same privacy via the namechange facility.

I think that I like your idea VS though it seems a bit complicated for my little head . (In fairness I'm pretty exhausted from trawling through the massive threads of recent days).

Some big bit of me thinks that this whole Moldies debacle has been much more about a group of people not wanting to have to interact with the rest of us at all, yes I know that some posted on both sites but quite a lot vanished from MN in recent months. So I'm not sure if your idea would prevent this or tbh if we should really be trying to.
I suppose I'm trying to say that whilst I can see that privacy would be nice in some areas/ways I'm not sure if even had those accommodations been made this particular group of individuals would have chosen to stay/not flounce because that wasn't the real reason for Moldies, it was, like it or not, to be away from the masses.

I agree LaDiDa, I don't think that Moldies was completely about privacy etc, but I can see why to some it may have been fulfilling something they couldn't get from MN.

Whatever is done, if anything, it shouldn't be about the other forum anyway, IMO, it should be about the posters on MN feeling able to post without being stalked/harassed/outed etc(there have been so many weirdos on this site!!) and to allow as much privacy as possible on an open forum without creating an oldies/newbies divide.

tinytim said: "Whatever is done, if anything, it shouldn't be about the other forum anyway, IMO, it should be about the posters on MN feeling able to post without being stalked/harassed/outed etc(there have been so many weirdos on this site!!) and to allow as much privacy as possible on an open forum without creating an oldies/newbies divide."

i'm not sure anything can be done to fix it - i think tbh most people get burned at some point online, and once that's happened they're more wary about how and what they post.

"private" forums engender a false sense of security imho.

Oh I agree, it should be about what is best for MN as it is now. Moldies has happened but really, lets all get over it and move on imo.

Ooh and I quite like a good funny troll now and again, I wouldn't want to get rid of the ossibility of them entirely, it adds a bit of spice to things imo though difficult to know how to allow that without encouraging the more awful trolling that's gone on.

What happens if you leave, then come back with a name change?

Some of us (me ) would be classed as a newbie when actually I've been here for 4 years, just needed a new ID?

i feel much safer posting on an open site like mn than i would on a passworded forum tbh - i never say anything i'm not prepared to leave "out there" in perpetuity, i watch my back, i namechange if i feel necessary.

Astarte, if you wanted people to know you could post on the section where only certain people could read it, you could choose who read it, but by not having any replies on that section there wouldn't be private chats/threads going on.

Hmm, my head is hurting a bit from all this, but there are some things worth looking at I reckon. I don't think the separate old farts lounge would work really, it's a bit divisive IMO, but Flight is onto a good thing by trying to come up with a fresh way of looking at things and preventing moldiegates in the future. I think VS is onto something with a friends list that lets you tell people you choose that you have namechanged. It gives an extra layer of privacy, and would be much quicker than CAT. Maybe it could be a facility which purely contained a namechange notification too, so nobody would be using it to be gossipy or chat off-board? It might be worth trialling something like this for a month to see how it goes and if we can keep the open spirit of MN while still having more privacy features like this?

I don't know how easy this stuff is techie-wise, maybe we are asking for a moon made of cheese? It's good to chuck some ideas around though.

Ridiculous.

Oh I want a moon made of cheese. On a stick with a bow please.

Ouch, was that to me? Or just a general feeling of it ain't broke so don't fix it?

Have googled and found an idea that makes older posters feel among friends here, if this helps?

BoF i don't think it was to you, prob me, i can take it as I know I mean well

VS - an interesting take, and probably your ideas are better than mine. I don't pretend fully to understand a lot of how it works, am the type who often misses the big picture I think, so will let you lot ponder it from now - and will be pleased to see what if anything transpires.

It does feel good to have a more positive thread though i have to admit.

Thankyou for discussing it everyone. Got to be worth looking at a couple of changes in the light of the weekend. Even if nought comes of it.

Justine mentioned on one of the 1001 (I do like a bit of hyperbole at christmas ) threads that they wanted to look into doing something so who knows, maybe something will come out of this discussion, maybe it won't.

Did I catch anyone with that by the way?

Yes, BoF. I no longer have my little hover over the link thing as I am using a new browser.

That's cheered me up then! Merry Christmas everyone - best be orf for some organising (have done almost nowt - sometimes you can be too laid back) All the best! x

Oh when your link was purple I kind of knew...

New browser, no purple links

My "ridiculous" was to the idea, not to any poster in particular