Actually, it cost about $135 a month for the service provider to host this forum.


Anyway, sure, one of the purpose of this forum is for FIRST participants to meet each other. Well, you've already meet each other. Its time to make those conversations private. The rest of us don't need to and aren't interested in seeing your conversation threads stay on top of the forum.

Again, there is NOTHING wrong with chatting with friends you meet through this forum, just don't clog up the forum because of it. If you want to keep an open thread for people to join in your conversation when they see your picture, go edit your picture description, add a link in it, and lead others to different place to post messages and chat with you.

If your thread does not come up to the first line in the forum every time you make a reply (which will be quite frequently since its a "chat), then by all means have your chat. But since that's not the case, and if everyone start doing this, then the chit chat forum will be packed with these "chat" threads, and people will have no way of seeing which threads are active and aren't. Imagine the first 50 threads are "chat" threads where people talk to others just about anything, and they kept being updated every day 7 days a week, 4 week a month. No one will ever be able to keep track of the forum except the ones participating in those chat threads.

So, please be considerate of others. We are not saying you should not chat with each other. Just do it some other place. Take my suggestion of adding a link in your profile or who-am-I picture. It will work just the same.

Thanks!

Why can't more people ignor what they don't care about?

As for hiding it from the portal, sounds good.

Ok...I did not make my post just to upset you 4 people. You are taking offense to something other people just thought needed to be addressed. Was it really needed that each one of you had a thread for you pictures when the same people were talking in each?
Yes I know there are other "flirting" type threads...but those dont just center around the same few people talking. And I wasn't attacking any of you. Harrison and I used to talk a lot, he should know I wouldn't personally attack his character. But there should be an unspoken limit about how much is too much...and I along with others thought that was crossed coming online to threads upon threads with stuff like that.

When your post get updated every day, and take up the first row of the chit chat forum all the time, it is hard to just ignor it. When enough of these are built up, the first page will be filled with "chatting" threads... Then the 2nd page, then the 3rd, and so on.

If you want, you can request the Webmaster to setup a forum just for your chit chatting, one that isn't visible on the forum page, with a link at the corner. Also, if you feel so strongly about this, why not setup your own forum where you can do whatever you want? No one is stopping you from that.

The suggestion has already been made to put the image discuss threads in a separate section.

And there are plenty of other boards that we "could" use. But, CD is here for the FIRST community to use...it is the place to be...so, should we not be welcome?

This is not a chat room.
AIM/IRC is for chatting.

Jim and I set this precident, and it resulted in a rule change.
"You also agree not to post the same message in multiple forums, or use the forums as a real-time chat, continuing a 2-3 person conversation on for numerious posts in a short period of time."

Say hi. Meet. Then move the backstory to another medium.

Wetzel
~~~~~~~~
AIM/IRC work very well

At the risk of making this a "live chat", I still want to post this reply in here because I want everyone to read this and think about it.

Anyway, I don't think this is an issue of whether you are "welcomed" or not. Of course you are always welcome to make use of this forum. No need to ask.

I think a better way to approach this problem, isn't to get ride of it completely by stopping people from posting "chat threads", but to look at it from the webmaster's stand point. When you think like Brandon, you would think things like "how can we make sure the forum doesn't get clogged up by these threads that only few people are interested in?".

The easiest thing to do is to tell the thread starters "no you can't do this anymore. please do it some where else.", and a lot of us agree that that isn't the best solution. So, the next thing to do is to come up with ideas to make this work, instead of just saying "why aren't we welcomed?", which is what some of you did when you suggest to put image discussions in a seperate section.

For those of you who feel strongly about this, please understand that we have our frustration as well. We are not intentionally posting this to make you mad. We are only saying these to express our frustration, and looking for solutions that will make both side happy.

So, let's move on from the comments like "its not fair that we are being attacked for it" and start the problem solving phrase. Come on, aren't you experts in solvling problems? ;) *hint* robot *hint*.


And, if the owners of the Chief Delphi Forum feel that the threads aren't appropiate... Then, oh well, you should respect their wishes and continue them else where.

Hey Ken L you've posted into this one forum at least 4 times in an hour. Talk about chatting geez...


(someone please kill this thread)

But... so have lots of other people. There's nothing wrong w/ a "hot" topic, only when there are like 2-3 people posting back and forth a lot.

..Sorry, me shutting up now... really doesn't care ;)

and there is a very good reason he has done it!

.....that was a silly post :P

And honestly, I think this thread might becoming somewhat productive with some of the later posts.

I agree with you Ken that stopping it is not the best solution, and I will also say that leaving things as they were is not the road to take either.

So, this stuff is a "chit-chat" type thing....Why not move the "Who Am I Image Discuss" into being a sub-forum of the Chit-Chat forum? (like the Segway had its own little area)

That way people that want to talk about whatever in the pics can do it, but the people that don't want to have anything to do with it can easily avoid it by not going into that forum.

Does that work for the Masters of this Web?

I didnt mean to offend or turn anybody away by shutting down the Who-Am-I picture discussion. The problem was that there were 4 active threads, comprised of the same 4-5 people, all dealing with the same thing... stuff thats already been discussed in the Chit-Chat forum. (or could be with a click of the 'new thread' button)

People do browse the forums by other methods besides the portal. I don't use the portal. Besides the times I've had to fix/modify it, I can count the number of times on one hand that I've actually used it to see new/active threads. I'm sure I'm not the only one. So, its hard to just 'ignore' the threads, when the same ones keep popping up every 2 minutes.

Some things that started to make me look at these threads negatively.. "I just added this picture, so start posting on it", "I thought it would be fun to start a thread about you and have people say stuff about you", etc. Starting a thread, just for the sake of starting a thread is a waste of resources, space, time, etc. If someone has something to say, they will. They don't need an invitation, or anything.

Someone mentioned not being able to talk about other non-first stuff here, like college, high school, etc. Thats what the chit-chat forum is for, and there are already topics on alot of those threads. I know if I saw a topic titled 'Image Discuss: username (team#)' and a topic named 'what college are you going to', i'd have some idea on what the latter thread was about, and know that it probably was going to be about that topic only. The who-am-i topics changed subjects so many times I had no clue what was going on during 1/2 of them.

Anyway. Let me sleep on this, think about it, read the countless replies to this hasty late-night reply, and we'll see what happens in the next day or two. They may come back; they may not. Either way, remember that we are here to talk about robotics. Yes, a good chunk of FIRST is meeting people & such, but if you look -- 3 of the 5 recent "Who-Am-I" threads were about & contained discussion from people on the same team. Yes, we're here to meet peple & talk about random things, and there is a Chit-Chat forum, profile pages (to get contact info), and private messaging for just that.

Thank you, and good night.

[merely a suggestion, dont hurt me]

I believe a while ago there was an effort to get a kind of meeting/dating/flirting forum or community thing going... anyone remember that?

Seems like there are many interested in meeting others in FIRST (judging by the size of chit-chat), so perhaps someone or a group should implement the idea.

Yes, it would be seperate from CD, but if it were advertised well enough, maybe with some special links between CD and "datingFIRST" (as i think it was called)... it could be a viable option to chit-chat.

so thats my 0.02 dolla'

Nik

Just read the quote...It's about the PEOPLE

I think it would be a good idea to hide it from the portal but i als othink it sounds like there are an awful lot of really antisocial ppl here on cd. what's wrong with commenting on people's pics.