Dwight You have a valid point that I am no longer a total new user - valid up to a point. However unlike those who have been here for many years, the experience is extremely fresh in mind, believe me.
In truth I bear the fresh wounds in my flesh from a vicious attack from the existing inhabitants, which was caused by my charging into a what appeared at the time (compared to other forums for software with many millions of users) to be half asleep forum but which turned out to be full of highly intelligent/ thoughtful old-timers who objected to: - my whirlwind of naive questions without reading the entire manual first (even though yes I did do text searches for all relevant options that I failed to understand!), - my honest emotions including huge frustrations - my carefully considered suggestions as to how MLO might improve the user experience... whilst it *was* fresh in mind at the time. OK so when I was a new user I got grief for giving a load of new user feedback (no matter how much I tied to ensure that it was constructive), and now my new user feedback is no longer valid! In retrospect part of my mistake was to move my whole life onto MLO too quickly. But in my defence nobody warned me - nobody said "Don't move in to MLO too quickly". I did this because I had a window for spare time to do so. However approach this added huge amounts of stress because suddenly the control of my entire life was... out of control! In fact perhaps like many other new users I was engaged in a time-limited project to find a new productivity tool and I had already burnt up a fair bit of time researching and evaluating *other* tools. This added yet more time-pressure! * * * What I am suggesting is that a new users' forum is the place where new users are encouraged to ask their necessarily naive questions. But that not ALL experts will be expected to follow that thread, certainly not all the time that is. They may not want emails rattling into their inboxes from new users... BUT when they have a little time on their hands, yes they may like to dip in and see what's going on with the new users. Of course SOME expert users may like to subscribe to the new users dialogues. But others may not. And by creating a physically separate forum for new users, only then does it become possible for expert users to get an email from every other expert but NOT get any from every new user. i.e. They can follow new users using different email settings for each group. And even if an expert user has subscribed to BOTH it saves a lot of time for the reader to know up front whether one is dealing with a novice or a seasoned user. Yes, obviously any user can discuss MLO anywhere that they choose... and they could in fact start their own Google Group too(!). I have not done so because although I also feel that this would antagonise this community. Moreover as you point out unless it was officially sanctioned by MLO website it may not get very much traffic. Although yes it would be some traffic from anyone searching Google for "MLO forum" or "MLO community" etc If you or MLO are worried about people "commiserating about how badly it sucks" you have two choices. A) Step in and help show the way B) Listen to them! What is it that is not being explained correctly? How are the user's expectations being mis-managed. What do new users really need to hear so that their expectations are in line with reality. In my case I needed to hear messages like: "- This is not a application it's a much more of platform. - This is the system productivity tool that users go to after they have become frustrated by the limitations of all the other systems out there. - You will not get far just by using the software. It's extremely important that you need to take time to read the manual, yes even if you are somewhat dyslexic it's still worth it. - MLO has been around since 2004 and is extremely robust and bug-free. - MLO is extremely powerful and extremely flexible, but the cost is that you have to invent your own setup, which is extremely time-consuming and confusing particularly if you dont read the manual in depth. - Sorry nope, there are no videos for Windows MLO, so dont bother looking for them. - Sorry the manual is missing some of the hotkeys, and doing a text search quoting the option you are looking for may not get any results. Nonetheless, incomplete as is it, it is extremely important that you take time out to read the darned thing in some depth early on." ... something like that. J On 10 December 2014 at 04:49, Dwight Arthur <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, John. > I'd like to acknowledge that you are free to discuss MLO with anyone you > want, anywhere you want, whenever you want. If you want to create an MLO > Newbies discussion on Reddit, nobody can stop you. If you want to exchange > your screenshots on Tumblr, good luck to you. The question is, will it > create more help than harm. > > When I was a newbie two long years ago, when I couldn't figure something > out, I wanted to talk with somebody who knew the answer. It sounds to me as > though the newbie group would exclude those people by design. So the newbie > who can't figure something out would have access to, what? People who would > commiserate about how badly it sucks not to know the answer? Or maybe a > cohort of indignant people who could compete to see who can be the most > vitriolic? > > I'm sorry if I sound disrespectful; I really do respect newbies and the > issues that confront them. I just don't understand the value of isolating > the discussion from the people most likely to offer help. > > I also understand that as a senior citizen in this realm, I may lack > insight into the unique needs of the brand new user. But, John, I would > argue that you do too. You have begun to use concepts from the user manual, > which right away disqualifies you from any further claims to be a newbie. > You have also created at least one reasonable and well-justified > enhancement request, this also distances you from the true > lamb-in-the-woods newbies. The more time goes by, the more you will find > yourself wanting to say to the actual newbies, "hey shut up and let me > explain it to you." And then two years will have gone by and you will be a > senior citizen like me. Will you then throw yourself out of the newbies > group? > > Last question: People come to this forum because the developer recommends > that they do so. Unless the developer makes a similar recommendation for > your newbies group, how will the newbies find you? The top 5% most > self-sufficient might find you on Google or Yahoo, these are the people who > don't really need a newbies group. The rest will follow the (small) crowd > to this forum which will either offer them the help they need, or not. Will > they find what they need? If you and your cohort stay here, the answer is > more likely to be "yes"/ > -Dwight > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mylifeorganized/NZ6rbv_wv1s/unsubscribe. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/03a786b5-4afc-44d8-b6e9-aa0f669f87e2%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/03a786b5-4afc-44d8-b6e9-aa0f669f87e2%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. 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