Jon Matcho

What does everyong think about adding a Chat Room to the forum? Would you use it?

You are out of line. Read Marc's original post again. It is hardly anything but polite. http://www.canardzone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=682 As a member of the Cozy mail list, I do NOT consider the posts to be immediately in the public domain. The Cozy list is based on a trusted membership, with a "closed circuit" nature to the information exchanged. I have been VERY happy with the care in which Marc has handled my personal information. Marc's responsibility is to ensure that the members of the Cozy list are able to exchange information freely -- among themselves. That is the nature of the list, his service, and what its members assume is happening by virtue of the sign-up process. Unbelievable. You quietly benefit from a service provided to you for FREE, and then put on a mask and heckle namelessly from the shadows at the person who provides that same service. Please refrain from posting further tirades. On a related topic, the forum's outbound e-mail system has been logging errors when sending to your configured e-mail address, reporting that your address is invalid. Given your post of questionable intent here, I can only assume this has been intentionally configured on your part. Regardless, you have effectively reverted your account to the role used for new users as part of this forum's sign-up process -- 'Users Awaiting E-mail Confirmation'. This role allows you to read all forum posts as well as access the User Control Panel. Until you configure a valid e-mail address in your User Control Panel, you will not be able post messages. I would have preferred to send this to you privately, but I have no other way to get it to you at this point. You can send a mail to support@canardzone.com once you're properly setup, and I will see that your user role is set back to 'Registered' immediately.

>Did I ramble? I think you have contracted a case of Chatroomitis. A chat room is now on the list of todos.

<Administrator Mode OFF> Speak for yourself -- I wouldn't be arguing this point if I agreed with this statement. It seems you are saying that by simply going online you somehow become exposed. This is like saying that your privacy is at stake when leaving the house to go to the park and someone sees you. My definition of privacy allows me to come out from under my bed and leave my house. No, only presenting my opinion that there are well enough options to maintain online privacy, even with your name, address, email, and phone number out there. Right, and the government is trying to control my mind with radio waves. I wasn't not talking about spoofing IP addresses -- every Web page/server has the opportunity to capture your IP and show the world. Finding out an IP address is like finding out someone's hotel room number. Since it is possible to secure that hotel room COMPLETELY, it is possible to maintain privacy. On one end of the social spectrum we have celebrities and such, where their privacy can actually be considered at stake with a walk in the park. In the middle of the social spectrum, we have "regular" people, who tend not to worry about their walks in the park. On the other end of the spectrum, we have certain types who feel that it is necessary to be invisible when walking in the park. Since it is not possible to be invisible in the real world, I find the quest for invisibility in the virtual world to be mostly a waste of energy that could have otherwise been spent towards good purposes. In other words, a waste of time, just like this post. Security is really the topic of concern. How private is the President, yet how secure are his dealings? A breach in security can indeed cause a loss of privacy, but that is why we keep our cash and papers in a vault rather than carrying them with us to the park. I assume you're not running around naked on the Internet (or in the park pulling your wallet by a 50' rope).

Yes, but I now believe we should be able to rate Coffee House threads without Moderation on. Look for 'Rate This Thread' at the bottom of the page, OR at the bottom of the message composer/editor when writing or replying to threads. Can someone confirm this is active and available? <Administrator Mode OFF> Sorry Large, but this is just FUD nonsense. Privacy is absolutely possible online, as much if not more so than when going to the mall in the "real world". There's nothing special about a Web page/thing telling you what your IP address is, or what browser/OS you're running for that matter. That can be turned off, but it just doesn't matter -- that's how the Internet and Web work. Large, cruising around the Information Superhighway on your Windows 95 machine is no different than when I see you driving up and down Main Street in your Gremlin. Big deal, we can see you. If anyone is interested, Large's scary signature is available for your use here: www.danasoft.com <Administrator Mode ON> Thank you for choosing the Canard Zone!

Given the predominantly male audience, how about NO pictures for starters?

I have increased the time required between posts from 30 seconds to the default and recommended value for vBulletin (1 minute). This ensures that forum load is properly balanced. If you would like to communicate with other users more rapidly, I suggest using one of the following: http://messenger.msn.com/ http://www.aim.com/ http://messenger.yahoo.com/ or ICQ

Ha! Just so that everyone knows, the forum is configured NOT to display certain four letter words, specifically **** and ****. We can expand the configuration to include first tier 4-letter words, but for now I think censorship of third tier cus words is good enough. The masses can sort it out.

Tim, Check this thread for a prior discussion on the topic: http://www.canardzone.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=546&highlight=rv10 The topic degrades into a discussion of spare tires, but that should get you started.

Once having access to the asses, who in charge will assess the situation? <Posted in Administrator OFF mode>

Chris, yes. We can have it done right, or we can have it right now, but we cannot have it done right, right now. The Thread Rating feature is hooked up with the Moderation features, which I'm trying to separate so we can have all members vote. I would rather wait to do this until the same time we implement the revised forum hierarchy. To me that makes best sense.

Fine w/me, so who the heck are you? I doubt however that the membership would be happy with giving everyone access control to view the contents of other member's private message mailboxes.

On my posts to Dust in the Private Messaging system here, I was sharing constructive criticism to Dust directly. By nature of the name 'Private Messaging System', I believe it is understood by all that messages there are to be kept private. John, at NO TIME was I put on notice that my e-mails would be made public. Now that that this sh*t-storm is blowing, I have restored Dust's original message. In the future, I suggest the policy be that any post of private messages result in an immediate deletion of the entire thread with no exceptions.

John Slade, Marc Zeitlin, Nick Ugolini, and yours truly are all the administrators here. I have not and will continue not to do anything without first gathering consensus. Administration is not a popularity contest, otherwise I would not be the admin. My posts mainly deal with the following, in this order: 1) Administration and tech stuff 2) Setting up shop 3) Buying plans I readily admit that this is the extent of my Cozy experience -- as my posts show. I am also a new builder, and so have had legitimate questions and feedback -- like everyone. The physical server hosting the Canard Zone forums is setup in a temperature controlled datacenter at my office, where it is monitored and cared for regularly. When Mike/Dust began spamming the forums with 'dustspick', I noticed we had an unusually high list of online members. Why? Because their inboxes were filled with "Someone replied to your message at the Canard Zone". John Slade, co-admin, shared my opinion that Mike/Dust should stop this activity. I took the liberty to remove the single-word posts from the end of 20 threads that contained only 'dustspick'. As John said, Mike/Dust's sentiments were appreciated, but the manner in which he was trying to effect Thread Rating had far more problems than good. Not I nor anyone else is disagreeing whether thread #283 should be called out -- I am sure Mike/Dust is right on for thread rating. However, knowing this software intimately, I can tell you the approach and means for tagging threads needs further review and analysis. I'm sorry you do not care for the Web site, but it is optional viewing. Regardless, I have heard the voices and am working towards improving it.

You did not tell me you would do that, and at no time did I even consider you would do such a thing. Everyone, the private messaging system is for private messages. Unless you get explicit permission from the other end of your discussion, private messages (an emails) generally should not be made public without the other's permission. This is just courtesy. Seems like we need to add this to the guidelines (my apologies to those that do not use IE 6.0). Mike, neither I nor anyone else is asking you to fade away. Just take a moment for a breather. I'd say more, but I don't want to incite riots and looting and so I will only hope the forum is still here when I wake up.

You just quoted a personal and private e-mail discussion that was between you and I. If anyone did this to anyone else, I would do the same by deleting the post. Yes, this is moderation, but the practice of quoting private and offline discussion is unacceptable. Any disagreements we may have that are kept offline must remain offline. I assumed this was/is understood.

I just deleted a dozen+ posts consisting of only one-word 'dustpicks'. Mike, in the future, please acquire some level of consensus on this sort of thing first. I would like to be part of the consensus. With issues relating to archiving, moderation, and thread rating, I need to be part of the consensus as this ultimately will require a weekend and a fair amount of work on my part. There are options to have 'Sticky' threads -- those that stay at the top of a section. We can figure this out in 2004, but rest assured nothing is lost -- it can be found using the search function.

There is absolutely a better way. Mike, please stop the one-word 'dustspick' posts. As part of the conversion to the new hierarchy, I will look for how to use the built-in rating system for this purpose. The only problem with the rating system is that it appears tied to the 'feature' of assigning moderators / turning moderation on. The consensus is that most are against moderation, and I agree with this -- it's not only a lot of work, but the wrong moderator can go berzerk and wreak havoc on the membership. The solution would become worse than the problem. I do see how to potentially turn Thread Rating on without moderation, but need some time to test it out offline on my test setup.

Marc Zeitlin made his center post non-structural when he built his house. I was considering retrofitting this feature into my own garage, but costs compared to the costs to build a detached, so that's what I'm doing now. Here's a link to Marc's page.

I stand corrected. Looking at Who's Online here @ 8:45 on 25-01-2004: There are 10 members and 13 guest online right now. Further inspection of the guests shows them to be all from AOL. Unless I am twice mistaken (I would find it hard to believe that 10 of 13 guests are from AOL), AOL search spiders are currently picking through the posts to index for future searches at AOL. I am actually all for individual posts being searched and indexed for the search engines, but only if it doesn't slow performance down. As far as I can see, forum performance is quite fine.

Only the forum administrator (me) can change your user name. This is exactly what the admin here did for me when I joined as 'jon'. I now suggest one of 2 options: #1 - have me change your user name to your real name #2 - keep your user name as-is, and just add your real name to your signature Send a mail to support@canardzone.com if you want your user name changed. Everyone, it's time to come out of the shadows of anonymity. While there are no active plans for moderation or censorship, there are considerations to setup to allow only authenticated users the ability to post into sections beyond the Coffee House. This is just a thought right now. Aside from improving the forum hierarchy, nothing else is underway to change the current forum setup. I will definitely solicit feedback before such a change would occur.

I did not suggest anything to be true or false with regard to taking your dog up to 25,000 feet in a Cozy, nor did I suggest planes cannot fly that high. Well, maybe I did that. I am not experienced to properly address this question. My humble opinion is that when confronted with the Perfect Storm, and without the avionics required to definitively determine the ceiling of the storm, and without a jet engine in the back, my reaction will likely be to turn around, change course, or land immediately. Remember, this is the Coffee House. Enjoy the coffee.

My bad -- too much copying and pasting. BTW, does anyone see a 'Rate this Thread' choice at the bottom-right corner when reading threads? I could look into make that becoming useful.

If the top poster can talk about freezing pilot and dog at 25,000 feet unpressurized, you are hereby authorized to post your opinions (not that you needed my permission anyway). From frequent and firsthand personal experience, I know that those that are able to write e-mails to others under any layer of anonymity tend to do so with a more aggressive edge. Do a search on 'hate mail' or 'flame mail' and you'll find out what I'm talking about. This forum is not about advertising or mining any sort of information out of its members. It's about the exchange of real world ideas, knowledge, and opinions. On the other side of this coin is the membership, which, in my opinion, has no reason at all to be any sort of anonymous. Understand that we're not talking about privacy -- this forum respects that and allows members to keep your e-mail address private along with not giving information out to anyone. A chat room is an excellent idea. A realtime chat room would be ideal, but minimally I will add 'Chat Room' to the new forum hierarchy (or is this what the current 'Coffee House' already is?). My objective for this forum is to keep things informative, useful, and fun for my own build this coming year. A little banter should be okay -- it gives this forum its personality. Maybe we can have an understood Banter Tolerance Factor for forum sections. Coffee House would be high while others should be down to business. Hooligans, the lot of you!

These forums are viewable using just about any browser. The main www.canardzone.com site is not. However, I have met with the development team and that too will eventually support all browsers. Speaking as someone looking for valuable information among the less-than-valuable, "ditto". All? No. Some suggested to setup a proper shop first. Those that did share the thought to begin building now did so in an informative and useful manner. Maybe. A thought I have for the new forum hierarchy is to move all threads in the current 'Coffee House' to a 'Coffee House 2003' forum, close it, and start a new 'Coffee House'. Then again, this may prove to be a waste of time. Junk in any forum outside of the Coffee House should just not be, and I hope this all can be self-policing. If it's not, we'll have to moderate. Moderation is a royal PITA and ideally not the answer. I am leaning towards removing the anonymous factor to the membership. You can see that some of the "fights" and noise here is directly related to anonymous members. In order to access all forum areas in the future, you may need to provide your real name. On the lighter side... Ah ha! You do have a name! CnC, I'm not picking on you (I am picking on the anti-Microsoft and Bill Gates haters), but unless you got into your car and drove to the nearest "Netscape store", you can thank Microsoft IE 6.0 for saving you time by allowing you to browse to Netscape and download yet-another-browser onto your Microsoft-enabled computer. Have a day.