No replies to this topic

[Richard Bassett]

A bit of semi-serious comment because I don't want to see a valuable forum deteriorate!

We have Rob to thank for this site and if he or anyone else wants to let off a little steam occasionally I don't think we should worry too much. He's not doing so anonymously after all and I expect frustration was part of his motivation to set up the site in the first place! I expect Rob realises that if he, as site administrator, is perceived to be consistently negative on Pro-IV it won't help the site in the end. Sites that reflect reality (whilst remaining civil) are more interesting and useful than sites which are sanitised.

(Note to the folks at Pro-IV: I am NOT attempting to implicitly suggest your site is censored !!)

I think it's healthy that there is a Pro-IV special interest site independent of the Pro-IV corporate organisation. Judging by the welcome participation of Peter Davies and probably others from Pro-IV there is opportunity for the balance to be redressed when necessary.

I think if someone doesn't want to be identified or to receive Email as a result of posting in the forum then using a pseudonym is acceptable provided the input to the forum is concrete information or question (be it positive or negative) and not just rants or flames.

I have to say I find anonymous/pseudonymous postings containing personal comments like those that arose from the harmless subject of Dr. PROIV's identity a bit irritating. If you feel personal comment is warranted, have the decency to use your real identity. Too much of this stuff will lead a casual visitor to the conclusion that the site is more noise than content - which would be unfortunate and inaccurate. I would be happy to see Rob (even handedly) edit content 'of no lasting value' out of the forum, perhaps after a short interval. What do other people think?

Some discussion forums (for example Sybase Support) allow public read access but only allow registered participants to make postings. Personally I think this could be a good idea. Rob could obviously consider this as he has already provided for a simple database of individuals and organizations. Pseudonymous participants could be perfectly well be registered. Any participant could be unregistered if their input was merely destructive (I would hope we don't need to worry about this too much).

Speaking of the database, if you haven't registered at least a minimum of information why not do so? It might at least reduce some of the speculation over who people are (Rob is in there of course :-)
I received a couple of unsolicited resumes as a result of registering but they were specifically Pro-IV so I think that's acceptable.

One idea for the future might be to make the database content available only to those registered. That would provide a benefit to those who register and a degree of (admittedly limited) privacy.

I think that's quite enough well-intentioned rambling for one posting.