@h50
Stop trying to ignore what I say and show off how much smarter you are with your science than the rest of us. Why are you continuing to push this idea of yours when I clearly said to keep it simple? Your method sounds like rocket science, which will not fly with the membership.
How do I know this? Because I moderate posts. We are discussing making a rule - or at least a guideline - for the members to follow. Have you not seen that the members can't follow the basic rules we have in place? Do you have any idea the number of posts we decline daily from newbies that can't comprehend the simple rule that newbies should not be asking for help or posing questions while they are under moderation? Have you not seen members asking others to PM them when this is clearly against the rules? And I'm not talking just newbies in that regard either. We just saw an instance where a veteran of almost 20 years made this suggestion during the past week.
And so now you are proposing to make a guideline for members to follow that is overly complicated. I guarantee you that even the simplest of guidelines will not be followed correctly by everyone, but I am trying to have the members agree on something that has a chance. Your substitution example has zero.
The first thing you haven't even considered is how you are going to impart this guideline to the members. If the members can't be bothered to read the basic rules to know about newbie posts or read enough on the site to know that PMs are not permitted, how are they supposed to know about your guideline? Have you thought about that? I have. That's why I want to keep it simple. Because the only way for this message to get across will be to post it in the thread itself.
Where would you do that so that it will be seen by everybody? Do you post it once and hope that the members will see it? I don't think so. In order for the message to get across, it will have to be posted multiple times. Possibly even on each page. At least for a while. And who is going to do that - you? No, the task will fall on me because I am the one pushing for a universal guideline so that the incessant back-and-forth about this finally ceases. Do you think I then want the added discussions when a member hasn't got a clue what you are talking about with your system and starts posting questions for clarification.
How about this? You post EXACTLY your directions for your guideline. Keep in mind that I will have to repeatedly post these to get the message across. Keep your directions clear and concise so as to be understandable to everyone besides just your fellow scientists.
Use this screenname as the example:
I am MI$$_Kitty
(I don't know exactly which special characters are permitted by SA but let's assume that a dollar sign is one of them, since there should be at least one special character permitted.)
Now post the exact guideline along with the altered name that you would post on the board when discussing this provider.
Stop trying to ignore what I say and show off how much smarter you are with your science than the rest of us. Why are you continuing to push this idea of yours when I clearly said to keep it simple? Your method sounds like rocket science, which will not fly with the membership.
How do I know this? Because I moderate posts. We are discussing making a rule - or at least a guideline - for the members to follow. Have you not seen that the members can't follow the basic rules we have in place? Do you have any idea the number of posts we decline daily from newbies that can't comprehend the simple rule that newbies should not be asking for help or posing questions while they are under moderation? Have you not seen members asking others to PM them when this is clearly against the rules? And I'm not talking just newbies in that regard either. We just saw an instance where a veteran of almost 20 years made this suggestion during the past week.
And so now you are proposing to make a guideline for members to follow that is overly complicated. I guarantee you that even the simplest of guidelines will not be followed correctly by everyone, but I am trying to have the members agree on something that has a chance. Your substitution example has zero.
The first thing you haven't even considered is how you are going to impart this guideline to the members. If the members can't be bothered to read the basic rules to know about newbie posts or read enough on the site to know that PMs are not permitted, how are they supposed to know about your guideline? Have you thought about that? I have. That's why I want to keep it simple. Because the only way for this message to get across will be to post it in the thread itself.
Where would you do that so that it will be seen by everybody? Do you post it once and hope that the members will see it? I don't think so. In order for the message to get across, it will have to be posted multiple times. Possibly even on each page. At least for a while. And who is going to do that - you? No, the task will fall on me because I am the one pushing for a universal guideline so that the incessant back-and-forth about this finally ceases. Do you think I then want the added discussions when a member hasn't got a clue what you are talking about with your system and starts posting questions for clarification.
How about this? You post EXACTLY your directions for your guideline. Keep in mind that I will have to repeatedly post these to get the message across. Keep your directions clear and concise so as to be understandable to everyone besides just your fellow scientists.
Use this screenname as the example:
I am MI$$_Kitty
(I don't know exactly which special characters are permitted by SA but let's assume that a dollar sign is one of them, since there should be at least one special character permitted.)
Now post the exact guideline along with the altered name that you would post on the board when discussing this provider.
If you or anybody doesn't like my idea, suggestion or has a better one, go for it, just simply say you don't like it without trying to insult me for things I didn't do or even think of doing. I get that you're annoyed about this situation, but you're making accusations and conclusions about me that are totally just way way way out there.
So let's do a take 2 and keep to the facts instead of personal interjections. If the facts are no good or incomplete or something then squash it.
One goal is that we wanted to "block" the name from search engines without creating a pattern that itself could be used to search for it.
The only problem with the SA names that I'm aware of is that they can contain spaces. So replace the spaces with a *. That is one way to solve that. If there are others, then like you I'm all ears.
We're then left with the rest of the name. Simply sprinkle as many spaces as you want upon that to break up the name and do so so normal words are disjoint.
So together the rule would be:
CHANGE SPACES TO * AND ADD IN SPACES IN RANDOM PLACES.
This has the benefit of: retaining the original goal, not introducing new search problems, and it's simple the understand, simple to use, and simple to read.
Using your example that would mean, MI$$_Kitty even if $ is allowed it would be perhaps:
MI $$_ Ki tty
But under this rule it could also be:
MI$ $_K it ty
MI$$ _Kit ty
and I don't see any concern that it could be multiple things and in fact that randomness is exactly what you want it to be since getting back to the original goal it wouldn't be creating a pattern that itself could be used to search for it.
Similar it if were MI$$ Kitty with a space it would become MI$$*Kitty and the same coded spellings could be used:
MI $$* Ki tty
But under this rule it could also be:
MI$ $*K it ty
MI$$ *Kit ty
And to be clear, to decode:
GET RID OF ALL SPACES AND REPLACE ALL * WITH SPACE
As with encoding, it's simple the understand, simple to use, and simple to read.
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