If you have not yet encountered Kai, I strongly suggest you just leave well enough alone.
I just assumed Kai was now a universal experience here.
LOL, I just saw it, before I read the explanation above.
@alh expressed so eloquently what I’ve been feeling. I’ve been on CC for a lot of years and I miss the old active CC. With each revamp it lost long time posters. I love travel and over the years I found CC was the best spot for travel advice from people I trusted. Like Alh I loved that CC was multinational. I had a great trip to New Zealand with advise from a CC member who was from Australia.
I don’t spend as much time on CC anymore as the content is pretty lean. I used to read CC when I was on the bike or elliptical at the gym. Now I can catch up on new posts in just a couple of minutes.
I love Dressing Young, cooking and bread baking threads, travel threads. Back when I went to the actual library I would pull up the best book thread. I found wedding venues to suggest to my son when he wanted a wedding in a special area. My S ended up getting married at a spot I heard about from a CC poster. I hope CC is around when we can begin to travel again.
I enjoyed the Covid and political threads. I am pretty good at realizing we all have different opinions and while I don’t always agree with some I still can find common ground in other areas. It saddens me that longtime posters have been banned or choose to no longer post.
As @mom60 does, I really, really like every single word of this post. I couldn’t imagine expressing it any better.
I still do have hope that cc remains the place where I can get advice and help on the things that I’m having issues resolving on my own. I hope there still is the brain trust here that can help when I need it.
I think it needs it own thread. we will have questions and some people may have family history with it. I wonder how you landed on this area of study/research? It’s a great subject!
As a poster, I am very late to the party, as I am looking at information for a younger student who is a few years away from college applications. Aside from missing the wisdom of now-gone posters, it feels as though my student is going through a very different school environment than I did. And whether it’s better for my student or not is something that I think a great deal about.
I tried to start a “random thoughts” thread similar to “Random Questions”. I think I called it “Let’s Twitter” but it didn’t catch on. It seems the only place just to post random thoughts/observations etc that you don’t see morphing into a thread is in the “Say it here…” thread. Recently there was a “discuss over the garden gate” or similar thread and it, too, didn’t catch on. Shame really.
Would we like a “what are you doing today” thread?
My favorite subjects are:
books
TV/movie recommendations
travel
cooking
life experiences
Ahh, I have the little blue box in the right corner but it’s just there - isn’t bothering my experience at all.
Same here.
Totally forgot to mention that I love the “bag a week” thread, but haven’t been on there lately.
@romanigypsyeyes I’m another who is interested in your research! Maybe you can add an appendix about how ordinary people view your themes?
Also, kudos for doing a dissertation with baby during a pandemic!
@alh Totally agree about the Socratic threads. But I think we’ve declined into random “any” questions. (This is imo, folks, just me admitting.) And questions that can easily and accurately answered via a minute on google.
With the seeming dwindling of posts overall, I get that some just want the chat contact. With covid limiting us all, we need an outlet. But…
So @gouf78, I do like cooking threads. Not just a diversion, but a big part of my life interests. Don’t celebrate the Jewish holidays, but I look forward to those recipes and comments, the traditions and the affection that comes across. I see these as a different sort of sharing and/or connection. Even via keyboard and screen.
I don’t mind advice requests (what do I wear to…?) But the open ended surveys can drive me nuts.
The wedding thread carried/is carrying me through our own planning. Again, connecting a bit more with others.
And so on.
BTW, some will know what a “Socrates Cafe” is. It hinges on a skilled mod keeping participants from criticizing others’ views, primarily listening, absorbing. I don’t think CC can do this with politics. SC is about 90 minutes, come in peace, leave in peace.
And, I don’t worry about Mean Girls. Sometimes, “nice” does hit the spot, is supportive. Other times, I do feel a direct, to the point response resolves more. As in real life.
Here’s the thread that introduces and attempts to explain why Kai is here:
On my lap top Kai is bottom right and is still incredibly distracting.
When I go to college confidential, there’s a huge box in the middle of the page introducing kai. I click the “skip for now” option…
Then there’s a box that only obscures a fourth of the page, introducing kai again, and offering a skip forever option. Clicking that eliminates the Kai box and finally I’m able to sign in…
Then the little blue help box appears in the bottom right corner… Forever
It’s a testament to just how committed I am to CC, I’m willing to do this multiple times a day.
Yes. You can’t get rid of Kai. I say “go away” to the question of “How “can we help”, and it never goes away. It is a huge irritant, as it takes up about 1/10th of my iPhone screen. Go away. At least allow people to block it. I’ll bet if they did a survey, over 90% of people would vote for Kai to disappear.
Like you, @gouf78, I miss the politics thread. You could speak freely there, and most people were fine, albeit opinionated. I really appreciated the free flow of discussion there and definitely changed some of my views through the conversations. People who didn’t like to talk politics could just avoid it. I appreciated talking to people with other viewpoints, and I don’t feel like I can talk so freely in my personal life. Other forums, people can be just abusive, and who knows if you’re talking to someone paid just to stir up trouble?
I’m a relative newbie, and just dropped my only child off at college for the first time. I started coming here for suggestions and to bounce ideas off people with more knowledge and experience. I loved the personal, thoughtful replies. I hope to pay some of that forward to others but one of the changes that I noticed is, when I find a thread that speaks to me, I read the post and think about a reply but within the first 3 replies is a moderator referring the poster to an article that was written. I appreciate the plug for written articles but find the reply to, in essence, shut the discussion down. What do I have to offer after a “professional” posts an article?
^^^That is important commentary @helpingmom40 . Do you find that on a certain forum here (probably something on a page other than the cafe??)??