Your Input Wanted on New CR4 Feature Coming Soon

Great idea. Specific groupings Should work fine.

Suggestion: Increased participation could be anticipated if a professional attitude could be the enhanced feature in order to discourage repeated/intentional/habitual misbehavior by posting off-topic, demeaning, personal attacks, etc. The group's desire and groups influence could be accessed if each individual in the group had the ability to secretely or publically "vote" to ban any member of the groups' choice. A single vote should not be decisive but a predetermined number or per cent of votes should be final. Obviously the perputrator could easily and readily rejoin with a revised ID, however, that perpetrator would either behave or be speedily identified and re-banned.

Eventually individual contributors will migrate to the groups of desire and comfort. Each groups would develop a level of tolerance/non-tolerance which would be attractive/distractive to individual participants/non-participants of choice.

Other concepts would function equally well to attract responsible intelligent contributors as opposed to mischevious drifters that greatly distract from the subject matter. In theory, some of the most beneficial contributor comments are left silently on the table rather than risk cheap shots across the bow.

Forums would likewise develop attractive to the great irritators that propagate cheap shots below the belt. For those in the mood, join in the mud fight and sling at will without hitting the uninhibited audience or those that choose to remain clean.

Hi

There already is a "secret voting system"... it's the "Report!" button that appears next to every post. We (the admins of CR4) reserve the right to act on those reports as we see fit, but it helps a lot of people report things they don't like. (You get to include a comment with your report, so you can explain what you didn't like or you can say that you aren't sure if it is really bad or not, but you wanted us to see it.)

Getting back to the user groups feature, I was thinking of creating a "user group" for "awards", to give to people who go out of there way to "play nicely", and also a user group for "demerits", to stick on people who need a wake-up call. (A "scarlet letter", if you will.)

Can we have an electronic howler? That'd be cool!

In conjunction with specific groupings, the described voting system with oversight, merits, and demerits sounds great! There are some groups that prefer jaw-bone for the art of it. Other groups are more timely and precisely to the point. Keep up the good work!

Would I be able to join 2 groups? Like one country group and a pecial interest group? You have a limit in mind for this?

Yes, you can join more than group. There might be a practical limit on the number of "badges" that will appear under your avatar, but that would not restrict the number that you could actually join.

Hmmm thinking of the ebay groups I run......... would they become open to all sorts of nonsense or could we restrict them to engineering subjects?

And if so how??? John.

Only CR4 admins can create groups (but anyone can request one), so you'll have to rely on our collective judgement. That said, I personally am hoping for some "recreational" themes. You can almost think of them as "bumper stickers" that people put on their cars... it lets you says something about yourself to the world, and it doesn't give "the world" a way to reply.

I don't know about ebay groups, but for now there will not be dedicated forums for user groups, so I think the existence of "off topic" groups will have less of an impact on the discussions that take place here.

So, any ideas on what you'd like to see? (What "badges" would you want to wear?)

<we are thinking of is a user group for each country that CR4 members come from. So, there would be lots of user groups and the "badge" for each user group might be the flag of that country>

Dear Mark,

I suggest you cut the COUNTRY -FLAG things out. Make it Global!

The country groups are totally voluntary, just like "location" field in the user profile. I was hoping that people from a given country could suggest different "badges" (images) to add to their country's user group, something that they feel represents themselves, or maybe their region with the country.

Imagine if many users from India joined the India user group and added membership types (and associated badges) for different engineering associations present in India. You could potentially find people near you with similar interests or common background. (The "membership message" field would let you talk about places you've been, etc, if you felt like it.) Or you could have "badges" that represent some of the rich culture or natural beauty of the area, so the badge is like a piece of art.

I suppose I feel that being global should allow for (and encourage?) some expression and acknowledgement of people's differences.

Thanks for your comments.

Allow me to make the first user group request-VTOL(Vertical Take-Off and Landing), your preferred mode of transport for the present and the future!

I thought this was recreation?

& just because Masu, Moose & Seaplaneguy [examples, don't get testy about it], seem to be in a protracted pissing contest, is no reason to banish them! They are Educated, [mis]informed & entertaining. The posters w/limited english, spelling or communication skills are part of the charm/challenge of CR4. The hammering they[I] get for posting Vague ?'s is part of the educational proceess!

I would like some better display options for the display of threads, nesting w/just the titles & username

& when the e-alerts come to my mail box I get all preamble & 2 letters of subject?

more on screen info on posters would be cool

The posters w/limited english, spelling or communication skills are part of the charm/challenge of CR4. The hammering they[I] get for posting Vague ?'s is part of the educational proceess!

That was Charitable!

Nobody comes to CR4 to get recognition,profits(these never come,anyway), honour.

They all come to see what is going on.

They should feel free to ask.

And display their E-mail ID's with their personal data at left.

And there should be discreet personal warning to one and all from regulators to:

• Be Brief
• Be Precise- spell out Problem-spell out solution
• Cut gab out
• Never derate -not even imperfect Q,A,English
• Never berate a country-a group-a race-a language-others' intellectual poverty

I would suggest user groups organized by industry/profession. The ability to have a discussion within a industry group would be of great value (IMHO).

Bill Morrow

Hi

The User Group feature is out now, and you can see what we have right now by going to the User Group Index. We are adding new groups all of the time and we're about to reorganize the "fields of engineering" section around a bit.

FYI, there are no forums in our User Groups yet, so it acts more like an "affinity" label (plus you get to have a little "badge" icon next to your name).

Thanks
- Mark