"I was really asking for help and did post a pm to another member prior to posting as a guest. " I can confirm that, since I was the member - and I suggested that the person in question might start a thread about it since I'm not too up on the issue. And I pointed out that, if they wanted to avoid embarrassment for the family member, they could always do it with a GUEST pseudonym.

And that was why I was so taken aback by some of the unhelpful replies that came up from normally helpful people. I've always protested about people saying that we are unfriendly towards GUESTs, seing thta as a distortion of what happens, since normally it's only the ones who refuse to use any kind of pseudonym who stir up adverse reactions. This is the first time I've seen this kind of reaction to a GUEST with a pseudonym.

Maybe the exception to that rule of thumb is when the pseudonym is "guest", so the poster comes in as "GUEST,guest", rather than say "GUEST,puzzled."