On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:33:17 +0000, Sandra Tingle
wrote:

pruned

I have stayed out of this thread until now but I think it's worth
Sandra making a cup of coffee and thinking quietly a bit. It's also
worth us all bearing in mind that the "sticky" post about this group
at the top of the GardenBanter(GB) listing dates from 2003. The
revised "welcome" message that the group spent some time on writing
earlier this year is (at the moment) two thirds of the way down the
list on page 3 and will probably be ignored as by the time the average
GB user has got that far they dismiss the title as something
unintelligible.

Sandra's original post received four direct replies (but please bear
in mind that GB does not necessarily display things in the way a
newsreader does - Sandra, you really need to swot up on this as, I
guess, you've got the wrong end of the stick as a result of the messy
way GB works).

Echinosum replied with some suggestions. Sandra said thanks and then
Dave H suggested a rose, which led to a sub-thread that wasn't
directly relevant to Sandra but that's the way newsgroups work (again,
Sandra, you need to swot up on this).

Sacha replied with a question about where Sandra is (whatever is in
the GB profile doesn't show in the group as has been said) and Spider
responded equally positively. Sandra - your answer to Sacha's question
appears in a different sub-thread when viewed in a newsreader. This
confuses us, though is more GB's fault than yours.

But Baz (who has been going through things of late and has announced
that he's leaving the group) got a bit uppity. OK, that's life. If
Sandra had been using a newsreader to access the group, she would have
seen the result of Baz's initial response developing as another
sub-thread which explored the issues we have with GB as a commercial
operation, emphatically NOT GB users, and being quite positive towards
her. If Mike from the IOW input into that sub-thread I don't know as I
happily see neither his posts nor any replies to them - that's what a
kill file (KF) is all about. Mike is another story!

But the simple fact is that GB presents replies in simple
chronological order and thus Sandra will have found it difficult to
work out who was going on about Baz and who was getting at her.

Tempers have got a bit frayed but this, I think, is down to GB.
Sandra, you would seriously benefit from a bit of research into Usenet
which has its own etiquette and is not dying as you suggest. Indeed,
if Usenet and its newsgroups were dying and not worth bothering about
why do sites like Garden Banter draw on them as much as they do? The
answer is that the enthusiasts use Usenet and without Usenet there
would be no Garden Banter. Full Stop!

And finally, Sandra, you would really benefit from getting a
newsreader facility to access this group rather than using a rather
simple, and incapable, web forum front end like GB.That would open a
whole new world for you (and I'm not exaggerating!). Search the GB
archive for lots of suggestions for ways to access Usenet.

Cheers, Jake
================================================== =====
URGling from the less wet end of Swansea Bay in between
sweeping up leaves by the cubic metre!

www.rivendell.org.uk