We try to err on the safe side when it comes to language - again, because we have members as young as 13, and parents have different beliefs around child-appropriate language - and hope our members will understand and use other words to express their feelings.
I teach ballroom dance in the evenings, and years ago I had an older gentleman student who worked at a high school for boys. He was incredibly self-critical and prone to explosive frustration, and when it came on I could see him struggling to control himself. He'd get very red, shake his fist at the ceiling and exclaim "GEE WHIZZ!!!!" It was a valiant effort. Perhaps we all need a little more "gee whizz" in our vocabularies :)
Hi Emily. You said that "the groups feature will be different on the new site". I am concerned about the content of the POETRY GROUP! being lost. There can be new contests for poetry, but the poems in existence now cannot be duplicated. The immediate emotion and thought captured in any particular poem is precious, and as I said, can't be duplicated. The No-Sugar Added pages are here as a "member"; perhaps the Poetry Group could also become a "member" until the new site is functioning and decisions are made concerning groups. There has been some mention of a TuD ebook containing our poetry--another reason to be sure that our poetry is preserved.
There are no doubt other group contents that some of our members would hate to lose; for instance, the content of Pets and People. Anyway--I'd love to have the POETRY GROUP! as a friend!
Yes, practically some content will not transition. Some of it just may have no corresponding feature in the new platform. I don't know if the new platform supports "likes." And we have over 400 groups with the majority having but a couple members and no activity for a very long time. I will be working very hard with DHF to make sure that content that is valued by our members is ported and I hope very much to enlist the entire community in that process. But in truth we do have some housecleaning to do.
Trudy--I'm wondering if you and I, and anyone else who has posted to Poetry, should start capturing the poems to our computers, just in case. Then we could re-post them after the transition. While the group does go inactive at times, one can't help but wish to preserve such a part of our TuD history--TuD's first poetry book was rooted in that group and Sohair's efforts.
Hi Judith. I put my poems and my blogs on Word so that I would have them for sure. Ha! Maybe some day I'll publish a book! My husband, Hardy, said I should have started with Word in the first place. But yes, I would save your poems, etc., somewhere on your computer, just in case. The big problem is, of course, that I--we--don't have everyone else's work recorded in Word. Big problem--these poems and blogs are part of TuD's history, and we folks who like to read about our history, and enjoy good writing, would hate to lose this content.
Hi Brian. You give me hope that good content will be saved, ported. Thank you. As I just wrote, the poetry, etc., are valuable history. I know this view is shared by many others. Changing platforms is a big job, for sure--if I can help, let me know.
That makes sense, Brian. I belong to some groups that I never visit. On the other hand, I belong to one group that has been very busy in the past, is not busy now, but I enjoy posting to it from time to time. Oh well, we'll all just have to roll with it!
Could some groups be combined so the history of some need not be lost? I must mention that for the new people, they still gain from reading what went on before in terms of people's comments. How about letting us know which groups will be discontinued so we can look at them fast before they disappear!!! The sooner you do that, the more time we have to look at them all. I agree that 400 groups is too much and most people don't get to them, that is why grouping groups into topics like Emily did a while back is helpful. A new member is overwhelmed with what to explore sooner rather than miss out on.
Are we going to lose our own history of correspondence with members in the past? Such details need to be explained so we can make copies of what we will be losing the ability to check in future.
