Dear Sunfish Forum administrator/moderator,
I would send this as an email directly to you, but I have tried using the “contact us” and all I get is an automated response that says, “Thanks for attempting to contact the Sunfish Forum. The email you replied to was generated automatically from an unmonitored mailbox. To contact support visit us online at http://www.sunfishforum.com/sendmessage.php.” To say the least, this is frustrating, because #1) I did NOT reply to anything and #2) that hyperlink takes me right back to the same “contact us” box.
So, I am sending this as a Forum Post in hopes it will indirectly get to the Sunfish Forum administrator/moderator. I have spent two weeks trying to post a question to the Sunfish Forum. I spent the first week trying to “join” the Forum, ie: creating false names and passwords and trying to find the secret passage to post a question by going into every option I could find. (At one point I had a flash of inspiration and decided that the email address that was assigned to me by the Forum must be for posting. I tried that and latter realized that all I had accomplished was to send an email to myself, which was only accessible through the forum pages.) I gave up trying to find the secret passage.
So, during the second week, from the Officer’s site, I found an officer’s email address and sent an email. That person responded that she didn’t know how to post a question, but she gave me the email address of the Sunfish Class Office. (I had also told her that I would like to join the class, but there didn’t seem to be any information on the website about doing that.) So, I then sent an email to the Sunfish Class Office. They responded by sending an attachment with the form to join the class and related that if I joined the Class Listserve, that I could post forum questions there. Ah-ha, the secret passage has been revealed. Having already joined the Sunfish Forum, who would have thought that you also have to “join” a Class Listserve (whatever that is) separately. After I successfully joined the Class Listserve it appears that I am now able to post on the Forum – although at this point, I don’t see where I can specify which part of the Forum I’m trying to post to. Perhaps it is the job of the Forum administrator to decide which category to put posts into. Although, I did see a post where the person was chastised for posting under the wrong category. So, I’m still trying to figure out the system.
A day later, I got an email from what appears to be the publishers/owners/programmers of the software used by the Forum, telling me they had forwarded my email (Post) to the Forum moderator. There has been no further reply to my email (Post). I now have to believe that this is NOT the way to post a question to the Forum. So, I am again looking for the secret door. It appears this time that it may be related to the “New Thread” button when you go into one of the Forum categories. I was under the impression that the original “Post” was a “Post” and that any replies to that Post were “threads”, that is to say “new threads”. However, it appears that “New Thread” is the original Post and any replies are also threads. To be able to submit a “New Thread” I had to create some more false names and passwords, which I found surprising, since I had already done this to join the Forum and to join the Listserve, but I guess this all has something to do with world security problems. Today, two weeks from when I first tried to post a question to the Forum, I was able to do it!! Also, since it appears that using the Listserve to post a question to the Forum is not a correct use of the Listserve, I have to ask the question, “What is the purpose of the Listserve?”
The point of this story is to strongly suggest that a step-by-step procedure page be created that tells a newbie how to join the Forum (and the class) and how to create a post (New Thread). The Sunfish Forum is not “user friendly” in being able to do that. One would intuitively expect that once a person “joined” the Sunfish Forum AND once that person had “signed in”, there would be a POST button somewhere on the Forum Home Page that would allow you to post a question. Since that is not the case, there is a strong need for a procedure page that can be downloaded, printed, and followed step-by-step. I would gladly volunteer to create that procedure page, if I knew enough about the subject to do it. Obviously, I don’t know enough, yet. However, as a newbie, I am in a perfect position to proofread any proposed procedure page and make suggestions on how to improve it. In other words, if I can follow the instructions of the proposed procedure without getting lost, then the instructions are very good. And if I can’t follow them, then I can tell somebody where it needs to be improved.
I would send this as an email directly to you, but I have tried using the “contact us” and all I get is an automated response that says, “Thanks for attempting to contact the Sunfish Forum. The email you replied to was generated automatically from an unmonitored mailbox. To contact support visit us online at http://www.sunfishforum.com/sendmessage.php.” To say the least, this is frustrating, because #1) I did NOT reply to anything and #2) that hyperlink takes me right back to the same “contact us” box.
So, I am sending this as a Forum Post in hopes it will indirectly get to the Sunfish Forum administrator/moderator. I have spent two weeks trying to post a question to the Sunfish Forum. I spent the first week trying to “join” the Forum, ie: creating false names and passwords and trying to find the secret passage to post a question by going into every option I could find. (At one point I had a flash of inspiration and decided that the email address that was assigned to me by the Forum must be for posting. I tried that and latter realized that all I had accomplished was to send an email to myself, which was only accessible through the forum pages.) I gave up trying to find the secret passage.
So, during the second week, from the Officer’s site, I found an officer’s email address and sent an email. That person responded that she didn’t know how to post a question, but she gave me the email address of the Sunfish Class Office. (I had also told her that I would like to join the class, but there didn’t seem to be any information on the website about doing that.) So, I then sent an email to the Sunfish Class Office. They responded by sending an attachment with the form to join the class and related that if I joined the Class Listserve, that I could post forum questions there. Ah-ha, the secret passage has been revealed. Having already joined the Sunfish Forum, who would have thought that you also have to “join” a Class Listserve (whatever that is) separately. After I successfully joined the Class Listserve it appears that I am now able to post on the Forum – although at this point, I don’t see where I can specify which part of the Forum I’m trying to post to. Perhaps it is the job of the Forum administrator to decide which category to put posts into. Although, I did see a post where the person was chastised for posting under the wrong category. So, I’m still trying to figure out the system.
A day later, I got an email from what appears to be the publishers/owners/programmers of the software used by the Forum, telling me they had forwarded my email (Post) to the Forum moderator. There has been no further reply to my email (Post). I now have to believe that this is NOT the way to post a question to the Forum. So, I am again looking for the secret door. It appears this time that it may be related to the “New Thread” button when you go into one of the Forum categories. I was under the impression that the original “Post” was a “Post” and that any replies to that Post were “threads”, that is to say “new threads”. However, it appears that “New Thread” is the original Post and any replies are also threads. To be able to submit a “New Thread” I had to create some more false names and passwords, which I found surprising, since I had already done this to join the Forum and to join the Listserve, but I guess this all has something to do with world security problems. Today, two weeks from when I first tried to post a question to the Forum, I was able to do it!! Also, since it appears that using the Listserve to post a question to the Forum is not a correct use of the Listserve, I have to ask the question, “What is the purpose of the Listserve?”
The point of this story is to strongly suggest that a step-by-step procedure page be created that tells a newbie how to join the Forum (and the class) and how to create a post (New Thread). The Sunfish Forum is not “user friendly” in being able to do that. One would intuitively expect that once a person “joined” the Sunfish Forum AND once that person had “signed in”, there would be a POST button somewhere on the Forum Home Page that would allow you to post a question. Since that is not the case, there is a strong need for a procedure page that can be downloaded, printed, and followed step-by-step. I would gladly volunteer to create that procedure page, if I knew enough about the subject to do it. Obviously, I don’t know enough, yet. However, as a newbie, I am in a perfect position to proofread any proposed procedure page and make suggestions on how to improve it. In other words, if I can follow the instructions of the proposed procedure without getting lost, then the instructions are very good. And if I can’t follow them, then I can tell somebody where it needs to be improved.