First off, let me apologize to the vast majority of conscientious people who are about to read what I have to say. This post is not directed at you.
However, Midnite and I have noticed an alarming trend lately that definitely needs to be addressed publicly on the forum - and that is the penchant for being less than forthcoming with all pertinent facts when you contact us to report a problem that you seem to be having.
I won't accuse people of misrepresenting their situations. And I certainly won't accuse them of outright lying. Both of those accusations would be extremely rude of me. Normally I like to think people are trying to give me as much information as they can possibly think of to make it as easy as possible for me to help them. The vast majority of people here are conscientious enough to do just that at the outset, or they're more than willing to provide more info if/when I request it. However, there are other ways that we can learn what was going on when a problem has occurred, and that leads me to let you all in on a little secret:
From the second you first access the forum until the second you leave it, every single thing that you do here is entered into two separate logs - one that the forum's system compiles, and one that our host compiles. Do Midnite and I run every day to check up on what you've been up to? Hardly!! The logs contain thousands of entries, three quarters of which are made anonymously by guests (and you don't have to worry that the content of what you might do on the forum privately (like IMs) is logged because it isn't - only that you've accessed that area). But the main reason these logs are compiled is so that in the event of a problem, or in the event that someone tries to cause trouble, we can learn what they were doing when the problem occurred, or, in the case of troublemakers, we can trace whatever they might have done right back to them.
Now, the reason I make this revelation now is, as I said, because of the alarming penchant only a very few people seem to have of, shall we say, "misrepresenting" their problems to us. Whether they realize it or not, time spent trying to sort out a problem that was either not there to begin with, or which was directly caused by something they had in fact done themselves, but conveniently forgot to mention, takes time away that should be spent trying to correct other people's real problems. Frankly, I can't actually say publicly what I'd like to say to these people because the forum certainly wouldn't allow me to. But know that today I've wasted a good deal of my time trying to sort out a problem which doesn't exist - and I'm not at all happy! And I apologize to those people who are experiencing real problems for the fact that I've haven't gotten the opportunity to correct those issues for you yet.
So, in closing I'd like to say that these people know who they are. Now they know I know who they are. And let's leave it at that...
