VirginiaTam, in your comment of 04 Jan 09 - 04:25 AM you wrote that
"It might be useful to have a link to moderators for the newbies in the FAQ area. We don't know who they are. Maybe it is there already. My plan for today is to go through the FAQ area more thoroughly."

I'd like to make a friendly ammendment to your suggestion, but prior to doing so, my compliments to you on your wonderfully descriptive statement that "It is so easy to jump into this forum with both feet, not realising you may be landing on someone's gouty toe".

I've written on previous threads that I think Mudcat's Frequently Asked Questions section is terribly difficult to read and decipher. I won't go there again {Ah! Now there's a pun if I ever saw one. I meant that I won't repeat what I said before. But another meaning is probably also correct}

Instead of having a link to the Mudcat moderators in the FAQ {where it might get lost in the sauce}, my friendly ammendment is to reactivate the Mudcat "Help" feature, to provide a private message link to Joe Offer and a private message link to Big Mick {my understanding is that these two moderators have the same status/responsibility but I might be wrong about this}, and to provide a private message link to "All Other Moderators" {some of whom have identified themselves on public threads, and some of whom have not}. The reason why I'm suggesting three separate links is that sometimes, for personal reasons, members and guests might perfer to speak to one or another of these chief moderators or may perfer not to address their concerns to either of the chief moderators {that said, I would suppose that the other moderators would share any important concern with the chief moderators and or Max, the owner of this site}.

Putting the link in the Help section as a separate part of the private message feature means that it would be easily accessible, and also available to members and guests {though other parts of the private message system would remain unavailable to guests}. Furthermore, because these messages are private, unlike the old Help feature, no one else can read those messages, which means that there wouldn't be the flames or spam that showed up in the old Help feature. It's an idea. But if Max perfers not to re-open the Help feature or chooses not to add links to Moderators, I can live with that.

**

VirginiaTam, you wrote that ""In future, if I feel put upon, I will try to remember to check out the person's other posts, learn who they are in context to others before I react. I will offer the same advice to others who contact me with anxieties."

I think that there are times online as well as off-line when a person "feels put upon" that she or she has to act quickly and therefore can not research what makes another person tick.

Also, the quantity of posts that many Mudcatters have written would make reading all of their archived posts or even skimming through their archived posts almost impossible to do. I mean we're talking about thousands of post for just one person.

Furthermore, a public post provides just a snapshot in time of the person who wrote it. People change their moods, and also people do change {and hopefully evolve} overtime, especially when we're talking over years. That said, I've found it interesting to surf through old threads and even some particular Mudcatters archived threads to learn more about them. Another way of learning about some Mudcatters is to read their bios in the "Membership" feature. When I joined Mudcat in Sept 2004, I thought that members were supposed to write a bio. However, I've since learned that few members have written bios. I wish members would voluntarily do so, but wouldn't want it to be a requirement.

One of the reasons why bios would be helpful is because most Internet screen names don't provide demographical information such as gender and also may provide erroneous information regarding the person's geographical location. For instance, because most people on Mudcat are unfamiliar with my actual name "Azizi", I'm often mistaken for a male. And I wouldn't be surprised if people think that I'm Muslim because the Swahili name female "Azizi" is so close to the Arabic female name "Aziza" and the Arabic male name "Aziz".

As another example, Virginia Tam, because of the "Virginia" in your name, I keep forgetting that you are in the UK. This may lead to some cultural misunderstandings {though you might be an American living in the UK}, but all in all, I think we {you and me} understand each other pretty well.

Well, that's enough comments from me. Have a good day, and Best wishes to you and all others,

Azizi