Welcome back to Thorn Tree
Replies: 1,407 - Last Post: Mar 22, 2013 7:37 AM Last Post By: Zabba
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751
Zabba, I sent emails to the Contact Us email address asking for a mere 2 long-running FAQ-style threads to be restored, and never even received a reply.As for having them restored - the opposite happened.
A fraction of those threads (only their more recent posts) was still accessible using their old URLs after the relaunch of TT, yet since then even those poor relics have become inaccessible, with the URLs leading to Error messages.
755
Zabba- thanks for attempting to answer a number of questions.Can you please answer the one thats been asked dozens of times without a response: why do posts that appear innocuous in their content, i.e. without bad language or being off topic, frequently get censored?. Why does there appear to be no consistency in moderating posts?
756
Zabba, I've just sent it again to community@lonelyplanet.com.au .Please let me know if you get it.
Of course the content meets the guidelines.
These were not YC chat threads or adverts but long-running travel-related threads on topics inadequately covered elsewhere, containing hundreds of updates/contributions by members collected over the years.
I personally made sure that any ad posted on them was promptly reported and removed by mods.
757
So in sum Zabba, you have an ETA on the activities branches but you don't want to tell us in case it takes longer than expected and we complain that you're late, no-one's decided whether PMs will be back and if so in what form, and yes, you know there are all sorts of other issues but you're too busy getting content back to worry about them now. All fair points.I am, however, still waiting for the 'thank you for you patience, please bear with us, you're important to us' message. It might seem to be bunch of comms and marketing twaddle - but it's actually important to say those sorts of things.
760
Is Thorntree now endeavouring to rubbish itself? I have had most of my posts removed, including one about cookery classes in Iran. I went to Iran, and I didn't find the cooking offensive at all. It was lovely in fact. You need to sort out these forums in the immediate sense. A search for 'India' turned up nothing.Can anyone recommend another travel forum?
David
761
I could weep for the loss of online friendsMe too. I had friends all over the world that I spoke to almost every day, and many of whom I got to meet over the last few years. Some of us have managed to find other places to talk, but others are lost in cyberspace, or find that the alternatives don't work for them. It's heartbreaking.
Whoever made this decision clearly had no idea at all of how good on-line communities work.
762
Thanks for the updates, Zabba. I'll plan to drop by TT next month to see whether "Get Stuffed" and "Speaking in Tongues" qualified as restorable Activities branches and the Search function is re-established.I hope the site owners realize that the drop in ad revenues won't recover quickly. Because it's taking more than a month, all of us will have fully-established new viewing/posting habits by the time TT is functional again.
763
RE # THURSTON HOWELL-quote "if TT aint all back before I leave'? And you call yourselves hardy travellers?!! Oh dear."
Thurston do you also find it funny that a previously fully functioning TT has been partly disabled and now has difficult to solve technical problems . All the many hours of paid and unpaid work staff did to keep the previous TT relatively reliable has been undone just because the powers that be want a witch hunt to find some 'inappropriate themes' hidden in the archive that most readers would neither know or care about.
RE# MICKYFINN
quote - "who go abroad and spend all day on their laptops and apple toys. "
Almost as sissy as some posters who are so afraid of some bad language , quarrelling and trolls they want Thorn Tree replaced with a Bonsai tree. Micky, how would you feel if you were one of the staff who had been told to to take the site to pieces and put it back together again ?.
764
Just my twopence worth but I was also really disappointed that they took TT off just when we were in Borneo and the Philippines and all the valuable information which I had researched on this site for months was inaccessible.Just one thing - there has been a problem on this site with abuse for a long time but surely the mods know who those people are and something should have been done about them long ago instead of tarring us all with the same brush and in a way, punishing us (which really was how I felt when I couldn't find my information).
I personally have lost over 1000 posts and I don't believe that I used any coarse language (but then again who decides what's coarse or not?), have never abused anyone (I actually stick up for those who are being abused) and yes, I did occasionally go off topic but hey surely that's part of the banter and friendship being built up. In return, I got great advice and I believe I gave good advice too - but those posts have gone. Are they coming back????
