another reason why i check the box, is because half the dang time i forget where the heck i left a message, so when i started posting and then i found that precious little box, OMGoodness!! that was so awesome!! Hee Hee!! i was glad, because i used to go all over the place just to see how big this place is, and well its just huge, then i'd forget where iwas. and of course where i posted something, or i'd see something that would catch my attention. i still do that and forget. LOL but ya know. LOL ~Medo p.s. who is that familiar face up there????? **big grinn**

I also just want to call out a thanks to the hard work WC8 has put into this - I think sweetcicely put it really nicely. Cj - that's a really good point. I really do try, but I sometimes forget to append "I think that..." or "From my limited experience..." to the beginnings of my post, which I think is important in ensuring that the reader knows that any advice being given is a guess or at least from limited experience. Even if it's neither these two things, anyone not growing in my conditions should take any information I give with a grain of salt, and so that little "I'm not sure, but this is what I think" really serves as a nice reminder to the reader. Sometimes I see it as a liability waiver! Re the nature of people visiting the forum - with the invention of the internet, people tend to 'ask' more than research. It's gone from going to the library to checking out a book, to going to google and searching for a key word, to just posting questions on forums and waiting for answers. I think the welcome draft is fantastically detailed and has so much great advice and information, but as others have said, may not be efficient, keeping in mind the mentality of the people who come here asking for questions. Is it possible to have a single line at the top of the page in a very prominent place saying: "Thanks for visiting the forum! If you have some time before posting your question, please READ THIS" and link to the page you've drafted? That way people who do click on the link will expect to be presented with something they need to read - if they do read all of it, they'll be that much wiser and if they don't, then there's no hurt feelings since it's not the first thing that jumps into their face when they visit the site, so it's less....foreboding.

I use Facebook purely because some coworkers and extended family find that the only thing they seem to be able to use. But I don't find it "safe". I've already had my account hacked once. I don't post anything on there that I wouldn't want the entire world to know. I never post anything personal or emotional, etc. I don't really have time to read everyone's posts on there, either, so I don't really add people. I don't care to see what Facebook game someone won a cow in. I don't care to see all the replies to some thing someone tagged me in... (I only want a reply to what I replied to that one person...! but facebook doesn't work this way...) I don't want to hear about friends' political rants. I use Twitter also, but just for random silly things and announcements. My twitter mirrors to my facebook. I use my blog: aimeemajor.com and aimeesroses.wordpress.com for more lengthy subjects. I enjoy this format a lot more than facebook and twitter which are extremely limited in number of characters and images and format. I suppose if I alot of rose people wanted to use FB more, I might use FB more, but I don't like mixing my family, work and gardening all in one spot. If I had to add a bunch of gardening folks... how would I keep track of all the posts about what they ate that day, when all I really want to talk to them about is gardening. Sure you make some lasting REAL friends out of hobbies like gardening, but the firehosing of content and information that would come from friending everyone I'm an aquaintance with in every hobby would just be overkill for me. and I have a LOT OF HOBBIES. Also, I don't think all of those hobby-friends want to read about every single thing I do, either. I suppose I could make "filters" so that only the rose stuff was on one reading part? I don't know. I've never gotten that far into facebook. I suppose I need to learn more about different groups/filters. A ton of distant old friends (who haven't even emailed me in YEARS) and fans of my professional work try to add me... but I'm just overwhelmed by it all. Since I have my own webserver and I know how to use EMAIL (gasp) I can't see the need for posting a million stupid photos of myself on facebook where it will be taken by the whole internet and put wherever for all time. Instead, I take a photo. I email it to the person I want... or I take some photos and put them on my website, and then share the link. (knowing that they are then "out there" I also don't appreciate my facebook "friends" posting unflattering photos of me and then tagging me for the world to see. And then they get offended if I ask them to take the photo down. I really don't understand how people can "NO LONGER DO EMAIL". But I've had instances where the only way I could get someone to respond was FB. WHY???

Sorry FlamingO but that doesn't work. They'll just answer "Yes No Maybe How? Where? When I'm allergic to it" As far as the original question, your friend is out to lunch. My GF has bellyached about me having my computer set to quote emails. She too does the send a comment without saying what it's about and that annoys me. Plus she's one of these who puts the email in the subject and/or starts a sentence in the subject then puts the rest of the sentence in the body. ARGH! When she does some of these things I refuse to waste my time looking up sent emails and I just reply (with quote of course) and say I have no idea what you're talking about. If something is a totally different subject, I'll often clear the body and change the subject. I still hit Reply rather than go through the headache of opening up a new mail and inserting the addressee. Come to think of it, back in the snail mail days, a vendor of mine had a unique procedure. When they received something they included a note that said something like Your message is being responded to in this informal way since we feel a prompt response is more important than a formal written letter. Please include this note and any attachments (or copies thereof) in your response when replying. And if you didn't include it, they didn't know what the history was. Saves them a lot of filing and I thought it was brilliant. I used a similar method quite a bit in my correspondence, though I usually would make copies.