Birthday Section Discussion

[Little Fang]

Discuss.

[Grandma]

1) Thank you Little Fang for starting this section.  

 

2) Could we please not criticize and jump on each other?  That's one reason why the old one was painful to read.

 

3) Could we please stop wondering why people "need" to have their birthdays known because "IRL we have people to talk to about our birthdays so why do it here"?  I don't even understand why that is a question.   Some of us love to talk about our pets, others don't.  Some of us enjoy sharing the weather with each other, some of us don't.  We as a group post about jobs, family matters both happy and sad, funny things we saw on our morning walk, how we are doing with weight loss, housecleaning, gardening, and I think you get my point.

    No one has ever, as far as I know, asked why anyone would "need" to talk about a parent's illness or a new kitten because after all don't we have people IRL to tell that to?  Well maybe we do - I certainly hope so - and maybe we don't - how lonely and sad that must be.  But no one wonders.

   So can we please keep the discussion to whether there should or should not be a birthday thread section?  It's a different question than the not so subtle psychological delving into the "need" to talk about birthdays.  

 

4) gregory, you pointed out that I had made a comment that showed it did matter to me how many people responded to the birthday thread for me last week.  You're right, my post did read that way.  My bad.  I should have written it differently, and probably in PM.  I was curious as to why a few people who have always wished me happy birthday had not, but I was not hurt.  I'm friendly with them and wondered what was going on.  It did come across as needy though.  Thank you for letting me know.

 

5) I agree that the Birthday thread should go.  I won't miss having a thread for my own birthday, although I loved them each year.  What I will miss is making custom birthday cards for those celebrating!  

 

6) And as always, Love, Grandma

Edited March 14, 2021 by Grandma

[Rupicapra]

well said @Grandma

 

I got the feeling that a few people feel very strongly about this, but many don't really care. There have now been 46 replies to the poll, that is about 1.2% of all members. With 52% voting to let it go.

One worry is that people may feel left out if they don't get a thread, which I think is valid. Exclusion is not a nice feeling. However, it is not the mods' job to make these posts. Plus as somebody mentioned, this is not facebook. Yet, I do feel, this is a community of people coming together. People who don't want to be celebrated on the other hand don't need to publicise their birthday on here. 

I got the impression that most people who commented, reasoned why to get rid of it, not many made an argument why it should stay - please do correct me if I'm wrong, I might have missed the odd post.

 

I've suggested to do collective zodiac based celebratory threads each month, and I also volunteered to set them up if we decide to go ahead. That'll be generic threads, people are welcome to chime in, but it is an appreciation of those who do like to celebrate their bday.  Maybe even space for @Grandma to make her amazing cards. 

[katrinka]

32 minutes ago, Grandma said:

 

3) Could we please stop wondering why people "need" to have their birthdays known because "IRL we have people to talk to about our birthdays so why do it here"?  I don't even understand why that is a question.   Some of us love to talk about our pets, others don't.  Some of us enjoy sharing the weather with each other, some of us don't.  We as a group post about jobs, family matters both happy and sad, funny things we saw on our morning walk, how we are doing with weight loss, housecleaning, gardening, and I think you get my point.

    No one has ever, as far as I know, asked why anyone would "need" to talk about a parent's illness or a new kitten because after all don't we have people IRL to tell that to?  Well maybe we do - I certainly hope so - and maybe we don't - how lonely and sad that must be.  But no one wonders.

   So can we please keep the discussion to whether there should or should not be a birthday thread section?  It's a different question than the not so subtle psychological delving into the "need" to talk about birthdays.  

 

Yes, people talk about all those things. There's even a pet thread here someplace, and IIRC a thread for things people see around their neighborhoods. 
Those can all be interesting, and we can often learn things from them. Birthday threads, OTOH, are overwhelmingly "Happy birthday." "Happy birthday." "Thank you." They're just endless repetition.

 

19 minutes ago, Rupicapra said:

I got the feeling that a few people feel very strongly about this, but many don't really care. There have now been 46 replies to the poll, that is about 1.2% of all members. With 52% voting to let it go.

 

My takeaway is that 98.8% of the membership consists of people who haven't logged in recently, and lurkers. Forums are like that. I don't know how many active members saw the poll, or the percentage of those who voted.

 

30 minutes ago, Rupicapra said:

One worry is that people may feel left out if they don't get a thread, which I think is valid. Exclusion is not a nice feeling. However, it is not the mods' job to make these posts. Plus as somebody mentioned, this is not facebook. Yet, I do feel, this is a community of people coming together.

 

Agreed. 
It's a virtual community, though. "Oh hi, happy birthday. I can't take you out to dinner or hang out and drink with you or any of that because I'm on a different continent. But it's the thought that counts, right? Don't forget to thank me for typing 'happy birthday'."

Birthdays don't translate to cyberspace very well. 🤣

 

50 minutes ago, Rupicapra said:

I got the impression that most people who commented, reasoned why to get rid of it, not many made an argument why it should stay - please do correct me if I'm wrong, I might have missed the odd post.

 

I didn't see much defense of it either.
 

 

[fire cat pickles]

We didn't see defence of it because it's pointless. 

 

It serves only to bring attention to a select few at the exclusion of others.

 

Wishing someone a Happy Birthday privately would be more than adequate. 

[gregory]

 

58 minutes ago, Rupicapra said:

One worry is that people may feel left out if they don't get a thread, which I think is valid. Exclusion is not a nice feeling. However, it is not the mods' job to make these posts. Plus as somebody mentioned, this is not facebook. Yet, I do feel, this is a community of people coming together.

 And my view is that if there are no such threads, no-one can feel left out.

 

And also the sheer quantity of them feels to me quite extreme. There are people who seem to check the calendar and start them up for everyone they can find - which doesn't feel to me like someone caring about the people they are set up for.

 

@Grandma nothing personal ☮️

[Grandma]

53 minutes ago, katrinka said:

Yes, people talk about all those things. There's even a pet thread here someplace, and IIRC a thread for things people see around their neighborhoods. 
Those can all be interesting, and we can often learn things from them. Birthday threads, OTOH, are overwhelmingly "Happy birthday." "Happy birthday." "Thank you." They're just endless repetition.

 

45 minutes ago, fire cat pickles said:

We didn't see defence of it because it's pointless. 

Whether someone enjoys or sees the point of these threads is not the question.  I don't enjoy or see the point of many threads, so I ignore them.  Presumably others do the same.  If the threads somehow against odds survive, and I hope they don't, just ignore them.

 

The question is should the Birthday threads be eliminated for the good of the whole community, not the preferences of individuals.  I agree that they should be eliminated for the good of the community for reasons like this:

 

45 minutes ago, fire cat pickles said:

It serves only to bring attention to a select few at the exclusion of others.

 

 

45 minutes ago, gregory said:

And my view is that if there are no such threads, no-one can feel left out.

 

Also

45 minutes ago, gregory said:

There are people who seem to check the calendar and start them up for everyone they can find -

 

 

@gregory -I didn't think it was personal, but that's not what I do.  Birthdays are listed every day on the Home page.  I usually forget or don't bother to check, and I only set them up for people I know and like, which proves the point that they are exclusionary and should be eliminated.

Edited March 14, 2021 by Grandma

[gregory]

14 minutes ago, Grandma said:

@gregory -I didn't think it was personal, but that's not what I do.  Birthdays are listed every day on the Home page.  I usually forget or don't bother to check, and I only set them up for people I know and like, which proves the point that they are exclusionary and should be eliminated.

 

I wasn't referring to you. Honest !

[fire cat pickles]

17 minutes ago, Grandma said:

Whether someone enjoys or sees the point of these threads is not the question.  I don't enjoy or see the point of many threads, so I ignore them.  Presumably others do the same.  If the threads somehow against odds survive, and I hope they don't, just ignore them.

 

The question is should the Birthday threads be eliminated for the good of the whole community, not the preferences of individuals.  I agree that they should be eliminated for the good of the community for reasons like this:

 

I think we agreeing on all points and are misunderstanding one another somehow.

[gregory]

Ditto.

[Grandma]

Okay, very cool and good to know!  And nice to see you, fire cat pickles - it's been a while.

[fire cat pickles]

10 minutes ago, Grandma said:

Okay, very cool and good to know!  And nice to see you, fire cat pickles - it's been a while.

Same! 🙂 (Word limits OMG so ...)

[fire cat pickles]

1 hour ago, gregory said:

And also the sheer quantity of them feels to me quite extreme.

I only just now (well an hour or so ago) looked (again) at the Birthday Section... It's been a while since I've taken notice TBH.

 

Wow. Just, wow.

 

Yeah. It's time for that to go. Totally unnecessary. That can very easily be taken care of with twelve on-going threads if any are necessary at all. I still think it should just go away.

[Rupicapra]

4 minutes ago, fire cat pickles said:

I still think it should just go away.

👍

[Raggydoll]

If I counted correctly, then in 2020 a total of 19 people got birthday greetings. Some threads also have little or no replies, and some members haven’t even been here to see that they were given a thread. 

[gregory]

49 minutes ago, Raggydoll said:

If I counted correctly, then in 2020 a total of 19 people got birthday greetings. Some threads also have little or no replies, and some members haven’t even been here to see that they were given a thread. 

Kind of says it all about the NEED for it.

[katrinka]

3 hours ago, Grandma said:

The question is should the Birthday threads be eliminated for the good of the whole community, not the preferences of individuals.  I agree that they should be eliminated for the good of the community...

 

Yes, from an emotional perspective they do more harm than good. It all reminds me a bit of this:
 

 

Things like birthday and holiday greetings are social niceties. They don't mean much, and everybody knows that (except, apparently, Ralphie.)
My dogs get birthday cards from chewy.com:

 

Of course, they mean nothing to the dogs. And the real motive for sending them is to nudge me into visiting the website and buying things. There is food for thought there. 😁

But the endless repetition I was referring to isn't just about me "not liking them."  There's decks and books I don't like, but I don't advocate for getting rid of threads about them. Someone may find something of value there. But birthday threads take up space on the server unnecessarily. They make other activity sink down the list when they're active. And there's no content in them. When AT was archived, didn't they axe a lot of threads like that? 

 

2 hours ago, Raggydoll said:

If I counted correctly, then in 2020 a total of 19 people got birthday greetings. Some threads also have little or no replies, and some members haven’t even been here to see that they were given a thread. 

 

1 hour ago, gregory said:

Kind of says it all about the NEED for it.

 

Yep. THIS.

[Emilija]

I like it, but if the forum decided to axe it, I would understand. I can go either way.

[Anabiyeni]

I am all for getting rid of the birthday section for the reasons mentioned. I don't think I have ever looked at the calendar and I forget now if I made my birthday visible (probably not). 

 

I selected "other" because I don't know if there's a place on the forums for people to announce their own milestones (engagements, graduations, babies, etc.) and maybe that would be nice to have, though I doubt I would ever use it, since I don't even post those things on my social media accounts.

[ShadowMoon]

- It’s just a forum

- its birthday wishes from a bunch of strangers 

keep it / destroy it, it all feels rather petty and irrelevant. 
 

I voted destroy it... if a topic is worth such a lengthy (not to mention toxic) discussion, then I say good riddance. 

[gregory]

9 hours ago, katrinka said:

Things like birthday and holiday greetings are social niceties. They don't mean much, and everybody knows that (except, apparently, Ralphie.)
My dogs get birthday cards from chewy.com:

 

Now that you mention it, I once got a thank you card from "my cat" for taking him in for his vaccinations... (presumably to encourage me not to switch vets ?)

 

9 hours ago, katrinka said:

But the endless repetition I was referring to isn't just about me "not liking them."  There's decks and books I don't like, but I don't advocate for getting rid of threads about them. Someone may find something of value there. But birthday threads take up space on the server unnecessarily. They make other activity sink down the list when they're active. And there's no content in them. When AT was archived, didn't they axe a lot of threads like that? 

 

To be fair * they axed everything personal that could have done anything to identify anyone. Virtually all the subscriber only stuff. And yes - server space.

 

*not very private joke aimed at katrinka and raggy

 

[AJ-ish/Sharyn]

11 hours ago, Anabiyeni said:

 

I selected "other" because I don't know if there's a place on the forums for people to announce their own milestones (engagements, graduations, babies, etc.) and maybe that would be nice to have, though I doubt I would ever use it, since I don't even post those things on my social media accounts.

there are places for this kind of stuff in the Subscriber section. We pay for the bandwidth 🙂 and do a lot of gabbing over there. 

[DanielJUK]

I would feel a little sad if it went, I think it brings a sense of community and caring about it each other to the forum. But also it doesn't really work on this forum well. Back on the old AT, the birthdays was an essential and popular feature but it was different to here. The chat area and birthdays were for subscribers only (non tarot areas were not essential and so were an optional subscriber extra I think was the thinking). So only subscribers got birthday threads but there was a group of members would make sure that all birthdays (of subscribing members) were marked with threads, no one was left out. You could of course opt out of it by hiding your birthday from public view and there was no pressure in it if you never responded to the thread made for you. Every birthday thread had at least 3 responses on it. I sometimes posted the birthday threads when other people who posted were offline or away from the forum and we did a share of it.

 

It gave a more community feel there and I loved getting nice positive messages from people on the forum. But we made sure that no one was left out who shared their birthday and subscribed and everyone was acknowledged.

 

The first year of this forum it also worked well, people would post threads for everyone who shared their birthdays publicly. Some of the people from AT who did the birthday threads continued the tradition here but a lot of people don't have the energy or time anymore. Also the people who subscribed to AT tended to be people who are invested and active in the community, here the birthdays show everyone coming on on a day. It lists people you have never seen their username before and have never posted or maybe posted once, this creates an unfair situation where people who are known get a thread. It's not deliberately a popularity contest, it's just unfortunate with a different dynamic. I think in 2019 I posted some birthday threads for a while but it's hard to know who is an actively participating member and so that really is the core issue here. Friends will post birthday threads for people they know on the forum.

 

I am not sure what the solution is, maybe just to end the whole thing? But I do think it takes away a little bit of the community interaction by removing it.

[DownUnderNZer]

 

It doesn't really impact on me one way or another, but perhaps what needs to be considered is that some enjoy it as it is personal to them and obviously brings some light in to their lives.

 

Is there perhaps a way for it to be hidden from the view of those that don't want to see it so that those that it is intended for - do?  Also, when posts are made, is it possible to keep the posts to that section only rather than shown, for example, as a current post as well?

 

This way it doesn't impose on those that don't want to see it and those that like to do birthdays can still do just that without issue.

 

 

 

DND 🌞

 

[Raggydoll]

33 minutes ago, DownUnderNZer said:

 

It doesn't really impact on me one way or another, but perhaps what needs to be considered is that some enjoy it as it is personal to them and obviously brings some light in to their lives.

 

Is there perhaps a way for it to be hidden from the view of those that don't want to see it so that those that it is intended for - do?  Also, when posts are made, is it possible to keep the posts to that section only rather than shown, for example, as a current post as well?

 

This way it doesn't impose on those that don't want to see it and those that like to do birthdays can still do just that without issue.

 

 

 

DND 🌞

 

The thing that first started this discussion was that some members felt left out for not being given a thread and they felt that the whole premise of the birthday section was unfair, since only a few select members were celebrated. I also know that some feel it’s sad when there is a thread but only one or two replies, and then someone else has lots and lots of replies to their birthday thread. That’s the core of this. The discussion has somewhat been led to focus on other things.