This Forum

[Oldmanofgf]

Can someone explain the way this forum works, like groups, your ranking, color of names and arrows , size of images that can be sent, sending messages to other members and any other thing a person needs to know to use this forum.
It appears that thing are about how many post you have .
Glenn

[Adrian]

As far as I understand it everyone who first joins is added to the New/Trial users group which displays the user name in a magenta type colour. This group cannot send private messages due to historic issues with spam private messaging. To get moved to the Registered Users group which enables the sending of private messages (user name in black) I believe you have to request that from support these days.

As an aside I am not a fan of private messages being enabled on forums like this. It encourages new users to message more experienced users for help rather than posting where the whole group can benefit from the answers. Also I see on many other forums people asking questions and someone replies with "I'd had that issue too, PM sent". That causes the same issues as it means the threads aren't complete and people can't get the answers they need.

Image/file size limit is 3mb. Use Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive etc for anything bigger.

"Rankings" (Wizard, Archmage etc) depend on the number of post and have no bearing on anything else. It's just a bit of fun.

Blue arrows indicate unread posts since your last visit.

[Oldmanofgf]

Thanks Adrain I agree with you on the privite messageing. A I read the forum daily and find most of my answers I m not a big poster.

[FixitMike]

Adrian, I would like to respectfully disagree with you about PMs. I use them for personal interaction that I feel others would not be particularly interested in on a CNC forum. Such as health issues among friends that I have made here. This is not intended to be a criticism of anyone who posts health information.

[Ms Wolffie]

I agree with Mike.
The PM allows us to exchange more personal information between old friends.
On the other hand, I agree that it is annoying not knowing whether an issue has been solved and how.
However, that also goes for members who cannot be bothered to come back with, at least a "Thank you, problem solved".
Too many times I have seen a question being asked, members go to the trouble of helping out only to never hear from the OP again.
I also dislike the 'question also asked on other forums'!
Cheers

[Adrian]

I would say if the people are friends that you know then there are more conventional ways to communicate with them but I do understand the reasoning.

I would think that communication like that is a minority use on a forum like this though with the majority being the q&a type stuff. I know that when Vectric stopped giving PM rights to new users the number of PM's I received dropped dramatically. Problem then was that people tracked me down to Facebook by my forum picture so I had to change that as well to stop being bombarded.

I enjoy helping people but, for some reason, the people who tracked me down on Facebook tended to be extremely rude and aggressive as though it was my fault they couldn't grasp the software in ten minutes.

[Jozua]

the people who tracked me down on Facebook tended to be extremely rude and aggressive as though it was my fault they couldn't grasp the software in ten minutes.

+10

[TReischl]

I am not a huge fan of PM's either. Sometimes for a one time quick discussion they are useful.

Much prefer using regular email because then I only have to look in one place for any messages. A person could PM me here and start thinking I am pretty darn rude when they did not see a response for a week or so. I used to stop in here pretty much everyday, but lately it is more like once a week.

The only "gripe" I have is people who do not check back a few pages or do not attempt a search to get an answer. I never will understand that because when I want information, I want it NOW. There are so many questions that have been answered over and over. It wastes everyone's time after a while.