I had vowed not to post on this thread, but I must admit I’m shocked enough by the high-handed tone of the recent post by the “powers that be” to chime in.
First of all, while I think there may be good reasons to have moved all these threads to a new forum, I disagree that one of them is making such threads easier to find and think that’s a smokescreen (for what, I’m not sure). Those of us who are familiar with these threads know where to look, if we’ve paid attention on a more or less daily basis, or will know how to search for them and find them. But I don’t think a new parent entering the forum for the first time is going to recognize “Class of 20xx Community” as a forum where they might find just what they seek. The forum title is “code” that only those familiar with what’s there can identify; it does not “showcase” them.
That said, changing the titles of the threads themselves just seems wrong to me, and antithetical to the type of community I thought CC sought to be. Threads generally keep the names assigned to them unless they are truly misleading. And perhaps most important, the “ambiguity” associated with “and beyond” is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. It is intended to recognize, as others have said, that lives aren’t linear, and to be welcoming to those who don’t fit the “straight through in four years” model.
Finally, I have the sense the the moderators chose something that they thought made sense, and having heard that it didn’t make as much sense to others as they thought it might, have decided to “dig in”. Chastising the forum members by stating that change is hard and is frequently met with resistance is a childish response to legitimate concerns by long term members.