# Can't find old posts



## wster

I can't find a post of mine.  Google search doesn't yield it either.  It is about expletive ne in French.  How can I get a complete list of my posts rather than just the most recent ones?


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## Paulfromitaly

You've registered less than 6 months ago and  posted only 30 messages, so there's really no problem finding them all..
You can check your profile page:

http://forum.wordreference.com/member.php?u=503137


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## wster

Notice how that only returns 20 items but my post count is 30.  I know the mods didn't like the format of some of my general questions.  Is it possible they made them disappear forever?


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## jann

Well I can tell you that I personally removed one of the first few threads you posted on the French-English forums back in March of this year.  It has indeed been removed from view permanently, as I explained to you via private message at the time. 

Jann
(French forums moderator)


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## wster

OK, that is what I figured.  I like these forums.  The one weird thing is that there seems to be a place to discuss general principles of French grammar, but not a place to discuss general principles of Italian grammar.  So, one could say: "FR: superaltive adjectives" but not "IT: superlative adjectives".  Can you comment on that jann.  Thanks.


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## jann

Well actually, if you opened a generic thread about superlative adjectives on the French-English Grammar forum, chances are we would remove it and send you a PM unless there was something very specific and particular about your question -- in which case, we would find a more appropriate title for your thread than _FR: superlative adjectives_. 

On the French forums, we really try to keep all our threads focused on something quite specific, hopefully including a single example sentence showing the usage or structure in question.  If someone just wants general info about superlative adjectives in French, we will refer him to one of the many sites that have general grammar lessons.

I neither participate nor moderate on the Italian forums, so I'm afraid I can't provide any insight about how things work there.


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## wster

Haha.  Busted!  "FR: superaltive adjectives" is almost the example you give in the sticky on guidelines:  

- If the question is a general grammar question, describe the problem concisely. For example: _*FR: Superlative adverbs*._

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=556492&

So I think my confusion about what is allowed is quite understandable.


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## jann

Yes, I am aware that we still have that example in the guidelines sticky -- which was originally posted in 2007 and may perhaps need to be dusted off and updated eventually.   However, I should congratulate you on having read the sticky.  I have a sneaking supicion that it's under-consulted. 

Surely you would agree that the words "superlative adjectives" could describe hundreds upon hundreds of questions.  If we allowed every question related to superlative adjectives to be titled that way, you would be unable to distinguish between those threads by looking at the titles. If and when you ever tried to search the forums for help on superlative adjectives, you would get a long list of search results that all looked the same, and it would be difficult for you to assess which of those threads were likely to be the most relevant and useful to your particular doubt.

To resolve this problem, we generally have very specific titles... which also helps to focus threads on specific questions.

The WordReference forums exist to supplement the dictionaries.  They are organized as a dictionary: each thread is an entry, indexed under the keyword in the thread title, and in which we discuss that expression or phrase.  The site-wide rules clearly lay out a "one question per thread" policy, and they state that you must provide context (i.e., an example sentence) when you ask a question.  Nowhere do they imply that WordReference can serve as a tutoring service, teaching a foreign language or providing lessons on various language topics.  The interactive, linear format of our threads is not well-suited for these purposes; it is not an efficient way to convey such information.  There are many sites out there on the web that provide summaries and explanations of general grammar topics, or suites of lessons to help would-be French speakers learn the language step by step.  WordReference is not one of those sites and makes no claims to be. 

Instead, we prefer to focus our resources on what we do well:  focused, organized, archivable, single-topic discussions about specific points of translation, vocabulary, usage, terminology equivalency, etc.

At this point, I think we've strayed rather far from (and perhaps answered?) your original question about how you were unable to find some of your old posts.  If you are confused about the scope of the WordReference forums, or about the policies in place on a specific WR language forum, I invite you to contact the moderators of that forum by private message to ask for clarification.  We are here to help. The WR forums are quite unique in how they function; it is indeed perfectly understandable that it might take a while to get used to the way we do things here.


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## wster

Probably a good thing more people don't read the sticky, you might get a flood of very general titles!

Grammar is by nature general.  It is not that easy to make a grammar question "specific".  Indeed, from a philosophical point of view it is arguably impossible.  So while I understood the site-wide policy, I never understood how the grammar section fit in.

Yet you have a grammar section!  And it is different from your vocabulary section.  And a quick perusal of today's items finds many closed and moved threads.  Obviously I am not alone in falling short of the forum's expectations.

We have not really strayed far from my original question because if I had framed my topics better they might not have been vanished!  

Thanks jann.  I am really not trying to argue.  I have a much more important things to do than to abuse a kind moderator.  But still, I don't know whether I can put certain questions on this forum.  For example, what if I just want resources for older French conjugations.  Is that topic forbidden here??  If in your last response you had just provided ten examples of good grammar titles that, would have been most edifying.  But as I said above, I am very very confused as to what is allowed.  Can you point me to some good titles?  

Lastly, I don't see why you shouldn't allow all manner of questions.   They would still show up on search.  But you could select only the best to show up on your dictionary look up.  It is a great forum, with great contributors, who enjoy general as well as specific questions.  No reason I can see to hamper people.  I understand the original idea of forum as dictionary, but you can still have that with a more open forum.  And it makes more business sense.  The present policy drives people away.  If I stumble on really good French forum, I may not return!  

Thanks.


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## Alxmrphi

> Lastly, I don't see why you shouldn't allow all manner of questions.    They would still show up on search.  But you could select only the best  to show up on your dictionary look up.  It is a great forum, with great  contributors, who enjoy general as well as specific questions.  No  reason I can see to hamper people.  I understand the original idea of  forum as dictionary, but you can still have that with a more open forum.   And it makes more business sense.  The present policy drives people  away.  If I stumble on really good French forum, I may not return!



Hear hear!
I've been saying the same thing for years, back in 2008 and before it was a completely different place.
Can fully fully 1000% identify with your confusion about why some things are the way they are.

I mentioned the French general grammar issue to a moderator recently, and also compared it with Italian's lack of a place for it, then was told the general posts like that are deleted. Then when asking about why couldn't we just add one, I was diverted to the "How new forum's are created" link, which I know inside out anyway, and that was meant to be some sort of answer to my question! All general posts like general grammar about Italian are deleted, but a new forum can be created if a significant number of posts warrants it. Completely contradictory.


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## jann

wster said:


> Yet you have a grammar section!  [...] And a quick perusal of today's items finds many closed and moved threads.


99% of which are from the same extremely active and newly-registered member.   Visit regularly, and you'll discover that today's high percentage of moved and closed threads was extremely unusual. (I would say to click back to page 2 or 3 to see activity from a few days ago, but the archives aren't quite representative either because "moved" notices expire automatically after 24hrs, and we eventually remove closed threads from view.)


> If in your last response you had just provided ten examples of good grammar titles that, would have been most edifying.


All of the threads on the Grammar forum are reviewed daily by at least one if not two moderators... not necessarily instantaneously, but we get around to it eventually.  We change/improve all Grammar forum titles that don't meet our standards or that don't seem to be a good way of representing the topic of the thread.  We are quite consistent.  So if you want an idea of "good" or at least "acceptable" titles, skip over the most recent ones that we may not have had a chance to review yet, and take a few minutes to poke back through the Grammar forum archives.  After you've spent a bit of time on the forum, I suspect you'll start to get the feel of how our titling logic works, especially if you make a conscious effort to compare the titles with the content of the threads. 



> For example, what if I just want resources for older French conjugations.  Is that topic forbidden here??


The WR forums do not provide a research service.  We cannot allow people to post here asking for recommendations, not even on linguistic topics.  So that means questions such as "what's the best dictionary for...?" or "can anyone recommend a good way to improve my pronunciation/vocabulary/etc.?" or even "I'm looking for resources about older French conjugations" do not fall within the scope of our forums.  These are things you would need to research for yourself.   I believe I explained this to you by private message shortly after you registered.  (I should add that I refer to current policy on the French forums: you will likely find such threads in the archives dating back to an era when the forums were much younger, less  active, and consequently less structured.  Some of the smaller/quieter WR language forums may still allow such requests.)

Although we do not now allow questions about resources, over the years we have none-the-less collected a list of links on common topics and assembled them thematically in our French-English Resources subforum. Of course we welcome link suggestions, but we cannot respond to requests for creation of a new Resources thread on a particular topic.  Developing a new Resources thread is quite time consuming, and we simply don't have the resources (no pun intended) to respond to such requests.   Sometimes kindly members submit a set of links on a topic that interests them, or links that they have collected in the course of their own research on a subject.  We are happy to review these and integrate them into the Resources so that everyone may benefit.  We do not have a set of links for old/archaic conjugations, but I'd love to add some eventually.  It would make a nice pairing with the information we already have about dictionaries for Old French vocabulary.   I do remember that you were interested in old conjugations.  You posted about the topic. In the end, we left your thread visible in the hopes that it might be useful to others... but I also sent you some links by private message.



> Lastly, I don't see why you shouldn't allow all manner of questions.   They would still show up on search.  But you could select only the best to show up on your dictionary look up.  It is a great forum, with great contributors, who enjoy general as well as specific questions.  No reason I can see to hamper people.  I understand the original idea of forum as dictionary, but you can still have that with a more open forum.  And it makes more business sense.  The present policy drives people away.  If I stumble on really good French forum, I may not return!


Thread titles are added to the dictionaries by an automatic script within about 5 minutes of thread creation.  Changed titles are updated in the dictionary on the same time frame.  Manual review to select the "best" threads for the dictionary would be overwhelming!  Do you realize that there are more than 2 million threads in our forums!?  

If you wish, you may take up the matter of the types of questions allowed with our site administrator, Mike Kellogg.  This is his site, and he's the one who set its course.  He is always receptive to any ideas that might improve WordReference, but as you might suspect, he has heard -- and carefully considered, or even tested -- many of them already.  You may wish to read this or this first, or spend a little longer just soaking up the atmosphere here.  WordReference can't be everything to all people, so inevitably the forums will fail to meet some members' needs, and our structure/policies/etc. will drive others away... but I don't think anyone can argue with the fact that WR is one of the most successful language and translation resources out there on the web, so Mike must be doing something right! 

I don't think I have much more to say on the matter, and certainly there are other things that require my attention at this point.  If you have a question that you'd like to ask on the French-English forum, but you suspect it will be too general, feel free to contact me by private message.  With a little practice, many such seemingly "general" questions can be reformulated so that you get the information you need by focusing on a specific example sentence.  The difference is that when you post a general question, you ask everyone else to do the legwork for you.  By reformulating into something more specific, you force yourself to dig to the very heart of the topic that is giving you trouble, and you often learn a lot in the process.


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## wster

jann said:


> All of the threads on the Grammar forum are reviewed daily by at least one if not two moderators...
> 
> Manual review to select the "best" threads for the dictionary would be overwhelming!





Sorry I couldn't resist one last round.  So are they manually reviewing them or aren't they?


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## xiaolijie

wster said:


> Sorry I couldn't resist one last round. So are they manually reviewing them or aren't they?


To look at threads with a view to improving the wording of the titles to reflect more accurately the content is quite a different thing from looking at threads to manually select "the best" out of to put somewhere. The former is achievable but the latter is not, given the number of threads we've got daily.


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## wster

xiaolijie said:


> To look at threads with a view to improving the wording of the titles to reflect more accurately the content is quite a different thing from looking at threads to manually select "the best" out of to put somewhere. The former is achievable but the latter is not, given the number of threads we've got daily.



But this discussion has really been about thread titles (=thread subjects) and when I said "the best" that could be taken to mean "those with titles appropriate for and/or on subjects appropriate for dictionary look up".  I wasn't necessarily imagining evaluating threads.  Only evaluating titles.  Like when the owner of a science fiction book store chooses the best books for his store.


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## Glasguensis

Currently only appropriate threads/titles are left on the forums and others are removed. The simplest way of allowing threads to be kept but not appear in search results would be to put them in a different forum (which would have to be new, since there isn't one at the moment). That's a decision for the forum owner. As mentioned above this has been suggested previously. You're welcome to look for those threads and add your view or start a new one.


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