I’m intrigued by people whose first post on Survive France is confrontational and who plunge themselves into some crazy political or social discussion right from the beginning. Are they lurkers I wonder who get to the point where they just can’t stay silent anymore?
For me. forums have always been about getting help, so my first posts have always been because I needed some information or advice.
I remember one of my earliest posts to Total France - it may have been my first - when I was desperate for an English speaking vet. We’d only been in France about 5 minutes, 16 years ago, one Sunday afternoon and one of our gorgeous Airedales was going frantic - couldn’t settle anywhere - and I was feeling so guilty, thinking it was my fault for bringing him here. Within a matter of hours I had the contact details of a vet who arrived with her two small boys whom we threw in the pool, she injected our dog (fox mange), calmed me down and departed with two happy sons. I’ve been a fan of forums ever since. (But only the good ones - like others have said, I’ve seen some become shadows of their former selves.)
I’m constantly surprised and disappointed that quite a number of first (and only!) time posters seeking advice, get given good advice by several experienced people on the site and then either argue with them (!) or take the advice and run, with no acknowledgement, thanks or feedback on what happened.
I know I shouldn’t, but I sometimes feel reluctant to reply on areas I know a bit about, since you often get so little thanks for spending your time in researching a difficult point, finding and attaching where relevant files, photos and then drafting a response. It seems that some first time posters (and there are fortunately some splendid exceptions) lack basic courtesy and manners in forgetting that people are giving freely of their time to try and help.
I can’t remember my first post but i do remember I got confused (and still do sometimes) with the PM system here. Thus things i thought were private appeared in the thread, and those I thought were public were in fact for just one person. As a result I got a rap over the knuckles for a lack of understanding.
I still don’t like PM systems anywhere, much preferring emails, but the one here is the worst I have encountered.
I tend to agree that I prefer email over all the messaging apps as a general point of view. Probably because I go back before spam was such a huge problem - but it happened and basically destroyed SMTP email and mobile phones and SMS got people accustomed to an alternative channel - remembering that in the early days of SMS it would be unusual to have email access on your phone. Fast forward 25-30 years and we have a plethora of closed platform, incompatible messaging systems. I’m not sure I’d call that progress, especially as the reason the phones are so successful is precisely because of interoperability and global reach.
The message system in Discourse is bolted on to the main forum and feels a bit like it was done as an afterthought. “Private” messages are just forum threads to which only a small number of people have access, commonly only two.
Very true, there is always someone propping up the bar who knows better, cheaper, quicker, easier or has Googled, YouTubed, looked at Wikipedia or a Facebook guru and comes back with their perfect answer which if challenged gives them a buzz but hey ho, thats how some people get their kicks.
It doesn’t take long to get the measure of such people and equally it is easy to pick out those who do have knowledge and experience of the subject under discussion and benefit from their superior knowledge and timely advice.
It takes time to learn the character and background informed knowledge of any forum member and if you are prepared to take time to do so the reward is worth waiting for.
Personally I only participate on this forum and benefit from doing so as I hope others do from me however I do read other forums as a source of amusement.
Absolutely. Some just don’t get the idea that there’s other people in the conversation, just like those who think it’s ok to be rude to lesser mortals.
I so agree. Not least, knowing people’s back stories gleaned from stuff shared over the years is great for getting a measure of their mood and when they are having a tough day and not over-reacting. And also knowing when someone is just being themselves and thinking “I won’t respond to that, it’s not how I see the world” but in other aspects finding their contribution really helpful.
There are some very special, highly knowledgeable people on here, for which I am very grateful.
That’s a lovely first post, because you’re giving us background and helping us to understand what’s going on in your life. Is it interesting for you, going back and reading what you were going through at the time and how you’ve come through it and are out the other side?
I remember sitting in our kitchen gazing out at the grapevine on the terrace with a cup of tea in my hand, here on the anniversary of our moving to France and saying to the “me” of the previous year who was going through all the panic of weeks of packing, and all the admin in pages of French, and not understanding why there were delays to the move : “It’s going to be alright, You are going to be fine”. And it has been.
My first actual post (after lurking for a month and just absorbing information) was (not surprisingly) being rude about Boris Johnson in a reply to a thread on “who is the most stupid person in the Cabinet?”
…and my contributions have been downhill from there…
Yes, it’s funny to read back now what I said 4 years ago. A lot has happened since then - including some very stressful things related to the house sale that happened immediately after posting that message (and ended up with us moving into an AirBnB and living out of a suitcase for a couple of months due to Covid).
Like you, I can look back on it with a smile now though, and although it was stressful at the time I’m glad we went through with it… No regrets on our side.
I think my first post was about the French Sénat debate on the Brexit bill, giving the government emergency powers to pass laws quickly by decree to, hopefully, mitigate the consequences of a hard Brexit for British in France and French in UK. It showed a great deal of preparation by the French government for the possibility of a hard Brexit.
My second post looks to have been a charming but insistent kitten at a gîte we had stayed in.
Go to your Profile, click on Preferences, scroll down to the bottom and you will see an option called “Export your data”.
It creates a CSV file (comma separated values) which you can open in a spreadsheet program such as Excel - your posts are then listed as a table, with HTML links to each one.
Instead of doing it manually, there’s an option to download a list of all your activity. It’s hidden away under the Account Preferences page. To get to it, click your profile picture → then the icon of a person:
Lastly, scroll down until you see the Export Your Data option:
This will then allow you to download a spreadsheet showing all your activity, including what posts you made, what posts you’ve liked, etc… They include a timestamp, so I just searched for the oldest one and copied the link.
ETA: oops, just seen I was beaten to it… must type quicker
ETA2: If you don’t have Excel installed on your PC, then you can also upload the .csv file into Google Docs.
