I've sent the following email, as I said I would, to the ww team.

If anyone has anything to add then please do so here.







To David and the ww team.

CC: everyone on ww.

Hi David I’m mailing you ref this thread : http://www.writewords.org.uk/forum/51_159105.asp?spage=1

Which I think has raised two important points. The first is the confusion over what posts and forums can be seen publically – something that some ww members feel is a concern. I know that wwmail, group forums and threads in the Lounge are for ww members’ eyes only but none of the others, but it seems that many members aren’t aware of this. Would there be any way that you could put a warning or suchlike on forums that can be seen by anyone on the web?

The second point is one which has caused some debate. Some ww members feel as though not deleting posts and having what has been posted kept in an archive is a bad thing, for a number of reasons (all contained within the tread). They would like, in some shape or form, the opportunity to have these posts deleted either:

• After a set period of time
• By them when they choose (again after a period of time).
• By you (choosing which threads and comments you believe are not of interest and which are).

Of course others (including me) disagree and feel that the archive contains information which is useful to all – including members who’ve yet to join – and so should not be deleted.

Another suggestion, one which appears to be supported by those who’ve been discussing these points, would be to leave the Lounge and all other forums as they are and introduce a separate ‘CHAT’ forum, in which ww members can chat about everything that isn’t to do with writing; with those posts being deleted after a very short period time.

I, as I’m sure the rest of ww is, look forward to your thoughts on this. I hope I’ve represented the attitudes of everyone fairly, despite my own views.

And thank you for the fantastic job you’ve all done so far.

Best,

Nik.

<Added>

ADDED 20:40: Just to confirm that if there is anything you've posted that you would rather have removed then you can still, as you've always been able to, ask David to remove it.

Sums it up well Nik. Tell my wife I'm out of the office all afternoon, and oh, get me a coffee, black, no sugar, there's a princess.

No, seriously, it's precise and balanced. I think deleting after a period of time is the best option, and think the Lounge is already adequate for chat, but that's just me. I'll go with the flow.

Best

JB

Thanks for doing that, Nik

Hmm, i'd like to make the point, again, that over recent months the lounge has become particularly chummy and a lot of threads are creeping in - which are more relevant elsewhere eg technique - because members know the lounge is busy and active and they'll get a response.

I think if we had a chat forum, for unwriterly chat only, people would begin to post eg technical/getting published threads, in their right place again, and those forums, viewable by non-members, would look properly active again.

I don't search back 4 years looking for information and if i did, i doubt much of it would be relevant.

Also, i don't think this is a few members trying to speak for the many - any member can view this thread and the one in the lounge and if they felt strongly about this issue would surely contribute and comment.


Casey

Well done, Nik.

My view is, leave the lounge threads as they are.

No to self-editing of posts

Yes to the chat room.

Dee

As I understand it, the argument against self-editing of posts is that it would make threads unreadable.

My view is that if you weren't allowed to self-edit posts until after a certain time had elapsed, say six months, then:

(a) the whole thing about people self-editing posts to make other people look bad in an argument would disappear, since nobody is going to worry about winning an argument after six months. (Extreme cases like trolls and cyber-stalkers should be dealt with by bringing them to the attention of system administrators much sooner than that.)

(b) the argument about "losing important content" isn't really going to apply. Nobody is going to go back and delete their constructive input about cover letters. We just want to delete stupid things we said in the heat of the moment and probably didn't mean. So the only threads which would be made less readable will be the flame-war arguments, which aren't really worth keeping for posterity in the same way that useful discussions about writing are.

I understand EmmaD and Nik's point about "if you don't mean it, don't type it". But I have typed things I wish I hadn't, and so has everyone else, and if it brings us peace of mind going back and deleting the worst of it, what harm is it doing anyone else ? OK, so as writers, our public words will come back to haunt us in newspaper interviews and so on, we have to live with that - but why inflict it on ourselves here as well, in an environment that we can potentially choose to have some control over ?

If you are really going go opt for the hard-line "anything you type will be held against you FOREVER" approach, I'll probably just duck out of any controversial discussions from now on.
If everyone does that, how much fun will WW be ?

<Added>

So to summarise:

Yes to nuking our own old posts (after a fixed time has elapsed).

Yes to the new non-permanent chat room.

as writers, our public words will come back to haunt us in newspaper interviews and so on

And if the argument is that we should choose our words as carefully when chatting on WW as we should when being grilled by Jeremy Paxman, then maybe WW isn't the place for me.

<Added>

Sorry - meant to update my post, not reply to myself. I'm not quite barking mad yet.

I always assumed the Lounge is already a Chat Room, but maybe David could be more on the ball about moving non-chat threads out into the Technique, etc. forums, then maybe people would learn not to post them in there.
I have no wish to delete posts, but I would like an edit facility to correct annoying typos, but I cszn lif wivout tit

- NaomiM

And if the argument is that we should choose our words as carefully when chatting on WW as we should when being grilled by Jeremy Paxman, then maybe WW isn't the place for me.

LOL!

I think the lounge is already a chat forum (that's kind of what it says on the door) and should be automatically nuked every now and again in a period of time every knows about so that if they want to keep stuff they can print it out.

Or failing that a chat-forum. But, to be honest, I don't think two chat forums - one nuked and one not will work because - let's face it - it's quite a small core group who chat anyway and most of the forums are dead most of the time. It is us lot, basically. So I don't think it is that odd to thrash about ideas because not that many people get involved that much in the chatting side.

I think also the general getting rid every now and again is good because otherwise there is this whole passive-aggressive thing that can go on. I know that is the way some people like to do things in real life, but actually I'm quite uncomfortable with that. I don't think the wall of silence or double-meaninged comments are necessarily always the best or nicest way of doing things. Sometimes people are being unreasonable or someone is being bullied and you have to say. Or sometimes people just really care about things and get upset about them, or misunderstand and get heated or just disagree about something they feel passionately about.

But the trouble with engaging is you risk losing your temper. I lost my temper with Davy once and told him to F**** off and got a warning from David Which is quite funny in hindsight. As it was I asked for my expletives to be removed. Now there is some raging accusations of Naziism and a deleted post and some pomposity from me. Which isn't much better really. Anyone joining the site would a) think Davy and I were arseholes and be scared of us or b) think we hated each other. Neither of which is the case at all. I don't think.

I know I should be more laid-back but people have different personalities. I lose my temper that is my downfall. But I tend to regain it again quite quickly and try to say sorry. Others maybe are a little indiscreet and regret telling people private things - but then you can't take that back. And some people might just be drunk or emotional or upset about something when they post something they might regret.

If it were all very uptight all the time it would be no fun and not very informative either.

Snowbell, I think we've all lost our temper with Davy. It has become something akin to a right of passage in the WW Lounge. Maybe Davy is really a computer programme devised by David to toughen us up before submitting our mss to the agents

D.A.V.Y. v.2.0 = Dynamic Asynchronous Verbose Youth


At some point I'm probably going to regret posting this.

But not yet

- NaomiM




<Added>

NB. I would just like it on record that I do not want Davy ever to be bannished from WW.

My opinion is that the Lounge is already a place to chat and should stay that way but posts should disappear after 6 months or so.

We should pose technical questions in the technique forum's e.t.c. rather than the Lounge and we should all make a concerted effort to check if there are any questions needing answered there.

It has certainly dawned on me lately that everything I say here can and will be held against me in perpetuity and I have stopped myself from posting things that are personal but interesting, knowing they will live on after I'm 6 feet under.

I would like to be able to vent my spleen on occasion with people I consider as friends without it coming back to haunt me in 10 years for the very reasonable cost it would take to search out all my posts.

<Added>

LOL Naomi - brilliant :)

I would like to be able to vent my spleen on occasion with people I consider as friends without it coming back to haunt me in 10 years for the very reasonable cost it would take to search out all my posts.

Exactly.

For anyone who hasn't found it yet, there is a very easy way of checking recent posts on all the forums, just click on 'Recent posts' on the Welcome to Write Words front page - which can be found by clicking on the Writers' Forum 'button', top right, above .

Technical stuff does get talked about in the Lounge a great deal, though, and it would be a shame to lose it. I know that the hope is that people will use the main forum more, but will they? Plus I'm willing to be more up-front about my own writing processes and worries, and what I think of the book trade, in private than I am in the publically-accessible parts of WW, and I don't suppose I'm the only one. Without wanting to sound sefl-aggrandising, if you google me, you get among others things WriteWords, and I've had journalists do it, I know because they've picked up on things I haven't said elsewhere. That's okay, because I'm pretty careful these days about what I say on the public side, but there are times when it's my writing/technical self which I want to keep private.

Emma

We should pose technical questions in the technique forum's e.t.c. rather than the Lounge

Yes, we should, technically, but that doesn’t mean we need to change the lounge. And it doesn’t really matter which forum a topic is posted in. We can search all forums for key words in one sweep. In fact, having writing-related topics in the lounge can make full membership more attractive to people on a free trial.

quite a small core group who chat anyway

Exactly. So why change it when the majority of members are happy with the way it is.

most of the forums are dead most of the time

No, actually, they're not. Because of their nature, they're not as fast moving as the lounge, but there is steady activity – and a huge pool of information – on them.

Sorry, Snowbell, not meaning to pick on you – you just seem to have distilled all the reasons I think the lounge should be left as it is.

I'm all in favour of a chatroom, though.

Dee

So why change it when the majority of members are happy with the way it is.

Why are you assuming that because the majority of members don't post in the Lounge, that means they are happy with the way it is ?

Maybe they don't post there because it's permanent - and they'd be more likely to get involved in discussions if it wasn't ? I mean, I might be wrong too, but there's no evidence either way.


<Added>

Or, more likely, the people who don't use the Lounge have no opinion either way.