Where did my posts on here go????

FYI, here is where you were mentioned on the forum’s mailing list.

Interesting. I was actually going through all the posts and saying that sometimes the problem appeared to go away (when you clear your cache)… and I was wondering if the problem had resurfaced for those people who had believed they had “fixed” the problem.

I know from experience that sometimes if I say I “fix” something, it’s embarrassing to come back later and admit that the fix didn’t take. So, I was trying to ask every person who claimed to have found a fix if the fix had been permanent or temporary.

There were a lot of posts about this particular bug, and I was trying to be thorough.

I’m sorry if people interpreted my questions as spam or a waste of time. I’m also sorry that the moderators on here were so quick to judge my intentions negatively.

This experience has given me a very poor impression of the WordPress community. Hopefully not everyone on here is as cynical as “Dr. Mike”.

Hello tripecac!
I can see why you’re sorry and a bit offended by your experience. Being new to the forum, you’d expect to be treated fairly.
Congratulations for keeping your tone so low key and for formulating your experience so well.
However Dr Mike and others here are normally kind people without the intention on crashing down on others.

Voluntaries who have been here for a long time and especially moderators, have experience with spammers, and have the gruesome task of keeping the forums clean and useful.

Inevitably they have to use patterns to find spammers and other animals ??
This time, being eager to both help and get answers, you unintentionally happened to fit one of the patterns.

Hopefully you’ll stay on and be a useful citizen and get much better experiences and impressions.

I guess I should weigh in here. I had first though you were an automated bot making those posts. Once I saw that the content of your posts were different each time, I knew you weren’t but I did note that 1) you were saying the same things that had been already suggested in the threads you were posting in, 2) you were dragging up old threads, 3) you seemed lost but without actually asking a question within your posts, there wasn’t anything to go on and 4) you really weren’t adding anything to the conversations within those threads. I then thought you were either a programmer on the TinyMCE project, (especially since you seemed lost ?? a spammer or someone truly lost. That’s why I raised my concerns on the wp-forums mailing list.

Didn’t mean to offend if I did. (Probably should have used a different work than ‘spammer’ in my post but I couldn’t think of anyting else at the time)

I do hope you’re willing to help out. I know when I started out on the wp.com forums, it seemed like I was the only one answering questions over there. (I still feel that way when I’m over on the WPMu forums to be honest)

Regards,
-drmike

Thanks, guys. I think I know what went wrong.

When I wrote my posts, I was trying to communicate with each of the people who had the problem that I was experiencing (missing visual buttons). I was empathizing with those posters, thinking of how I would feel if someone asked me a follow-up question days, weeks, or months later. Personally, I’m flattered whenever someone “digs up” one of my own posts and asks me a follow-up question. It makes me feel like my efforts to post were worth it (especially if something in one of my posts helps someone else).

However, I was *not* empathizing with the “regulars”, the people who routinely check recent posts and try to help other people with all sorts of problems (e.g., Dr. Mike). To them, my numerous followups (“bumps”) were probably annoying, because there were a lot of them and there wasn’t much variety. Plus, I was effectively re-opening old topics, undoing the work it took to close those topics. So my posts were bound to rub them the wrong way.

I’m sorry for irritating Dr. Mike and the other “regulars” with my “shotgun followup” strategy. I certainly didn’t mean to annoy anyone. My empathy was just somewhere else at the moment (with all the people who had the same problem as me).

I guess this is one of those cases of “can’t please all the people all the time”. At least, not unless you’re brilliant and/or naturally tactful, and I’m definitely neither!

Travis