Although forums can be useful at answering questions about books and other bodies of work, it has occurred to me that few authors participate in forums because they simply don’t have the time or patience to plow through thousands of posts to find something that particularly relates to them. So, I thought I’d try an experiment on our forum, as follows:
Authors and other recognized experts can sign up for a notification function. If someone has a question specific to an author, he can start a new thread with the author’s name in double square brackets at the start of the title. For example:
[[Revere]] Where can I get RAPC tables?
The software would look up the author’s e-mail and send him a notification including the title of the thread and a link to the thread. The poster would not see the e-mail address. The author can click to enter the site at that thread, and respond, or ignore it as he sees fit.
Some notes:
- Yes, I realize Revere is a poor example as he probably won't respond.
- Obviously there is some possibility of abuse. If authors are inundated with trivial e-mails, they will pull out. This function is for serious questions and to be used very sparingly. Not “are you still playing” or other chat type questions, nor nags about when the next release of something is coming.
- The author is under no obligation to respond and a lack of response should not be taken as a slight. This is just a convenient method of notifying authors that a post may be of interest. Keep in mind that many of these people travel heavily and have lives of their own.
- Abuse of this function will be taken seriously as the function directly contacts authors that may not be active members of the forum.
- To reduce SPAM, only members that have made ten posts can use this function.
- The fact that an author has been asked the question should not stop other members from answering.
- This function can ONLY be used when creating a new thread, not a post within a thread.
- It may take some time to get this feature running smoothly.
Following is a list of those that have signed up, along with the names that can be used. Use one of the names. Caps don’t matter and spaces and periods are ignored. But, the spelling must be exact.
Josh Axelrad [[Axelrad]] Kevin Blackwood [[Kevin]] [[Blackwood]] [[Kevin Blackwood]] Rick Blaine [[Rick]] [[Blaine]] [[Rick Blaine]] [Night Train]] George C [[George]] [[George C]] Bryce Carlson [[Bryce]] [[Carlson]] [[Bryce Carlson]] Colin [[Colin]] [[Holy Rollers]] T. Dane [[Dane]] [[T Dane]] Richard Munchkin [[RWM]] [[Munchkin]] Fred Renzey [[Renzey]] Don Schlesinger [[Don Schlesinger]] [[Schlesinger]] [[DSchles]] Ken Smith [[Ken Smith]] Nathaniel Tilton [[NT21]] [[Nathaniel]] [[Tilton]] [[Nathaniel Tilton]]
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