First Invitation! Welcome!

greenspun.com : LUSENET : The Beal Family Forum : One Thread

Dear Family;

Merry ChristmAs!

THIS IS A COPY OF YOUR E-MAILED POST - to "continue", per the original instructions, skip down to the "Answers" section. You can add your own thoughts and comments there.

What you are reading now is an e-mail invitation, inviting you to visit two places.

The first one is a web page I've set up a Beal Family web page called the Beality Page. It has some interactive features, like an add-a-link for your e-mail addresses and personal web pages, and an add-a-link for our Beal Mobile research and homework, described in the Forum that's mentioned below.

The second is a discussion forum called The Beal Family Forum You can get to it through the Beality Page. It takes a password, and the password has been mailed to you separately. If you need the pw, just ask.

The Forum is a threaded and categorized discussion board, one of the best and simplest I've found. Check out Greenspun's Page under LUSENET for more details if you're interested.

What this means is that we can talk about topics here, as if we were in a Usenet group, and post answers, and not have everything buried in the lattice of e-mail in-boxes and sub-folders. It's convenient for conferences, and really, isn't a family just a very long, never ending familial industry trade show?

I've set up an introduction category for technical questions, where this original invitation is already posted. There are also a few points about syntax, and other administrivia, that belong, or will be added, there.

Any questions you have about this Forum should actually be written *there*, in the Forum, rather than responding now, directly, with e-mail. (This is a Beality Test - can you follow instructions? I know I can't. -- Stubborn, stubBorn, stubboRN...)

If you have questions, go to the Forum and read the rest of this there...

Go Now.

Now -(mom, this means you)



-- Anonymous, December 24, 2001

Answers

If you are now in the Forum, as you should be, you will notice that you can ask questions directly under this Invitation, in the field marked "Contribute an Answer." Yes, this was designed with you, a Beal, in mind. (If one wants to answer, one questions. If one wishes to question, one answers. It doesn't get any simpler than this, unfortunately)

What will be most convenient for all of us is if you confine all technical questions to this particular invitation thread at first, so that anyone new coming in later can read all the technicalia under this one Item (they can grow quite long - lots of storage room).

Notice that the "Ask A Question" feature is really a surreptitious form of pontification, again created with a Beal's special needs in mind (where *did* we get this trait that I seem to have in great measure, with David following a close second?) Under the pretense of "Asking a Question" you can make bizarre or bellicose statements, after which your fellow family members will proceed to wonder out loud at you, under the guise of "Answering". Sounds like pure science to me. Or the Beal Family, at any rate.

Each time you select "Ask A Question" you begin a new thread. I've started several threads that I'm very interested in, the chief ones being the Beal Mobile thread and the Family Reunion thread. Again, this does not need to be a question, and if you disguise it as one, you get no extra points (as in Jeopardy) . Mom, the fried rice recipe question is for you.

If you wish to start a new thread, please categorize it suggesting a category in the first line. I'll edit later, adding the category, and we'll build the threads over time. The categories can be things like "Beal Mobile", or "Family Reunion", or "Cynthia's Love Life" (very boring, unfortunately)...you get the idea...

I've used these forums in the past, and so I'm going to paste a few instructions in here that will help with some of the posting esoterica.

I suggest you use the "alerts" features fully at first. You should sign up on the opening page by clicking on "add an alert". This notifies you of new questions. When you read a new question, there will be an opportunity to add an alert for responses to the questions. If you click on that, too, you will be e-mailed every time something new is in the Forum.

Try hard to resist answering from e-mail.

This can be confusing, but it's an important consideration. Go to the Family Forum to answer. E-mail answers don't circulate to family members, and they don't stay in the Forum for others to read when they get around to holding your feet over the fire at a later date.

You can schedule alerts to be sent to you immediately, on Mon and Thurs, or weekly. I get them daily.

Finally, and *This is very, very important*. There's a glitch in the software that drops off ending lines when you type your responses into Word and then cut and paste them into the Question or Answer box. I recommend creating an additional tag to your signature file that consists of at least 15 letter "p"s, each encased in HTML brackets < > (I can't demonstrate them perfectly here because they disappear). This foils the little software bugger that chops off the end of your submission about 15 lines too early..

love,

cynthia


-- Anonymous, December 24, 2001


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