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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2013 23:49:38 GMT
Writing a post (which may never appear) on the TT, I was faced with a 'refusal' notice when I clicked on 'post' due to "unacceptable" terms. It was amusing to replace the word "bastards" with "useless worms" and to find that such terminology had become acceptable for consideration.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2013 9:59:08 GMT
Kerouac, you have read the BBC-article today in Le Monde?
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Post by bjd on Mar 20, 2013 11:46:14 GMT
I have noticed that if you post a message with another poster's name in it, it doesn't appear. But we are told that "bantering" is allowed among posters.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2013 18:59:07 GMT
Kerouac, you have read the BBC-article today in Le Monde? Yes, I got around to reading it but it basically just reprises what has been said in the anglo press.
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Post by gabriele on Mar 22, 2013 6:05:28 GMT
Mobile destination apps: Lonely Planet’s cautionary story skift.com/2013/03/21/destination-apps-in-mobile-lonely-planets-cautionary-story/"Research from PhocusWright suggests that travelers overwhelmingly favor accessing websites rather than apps from their phones while traveling. A report on mobile usage among travelers from last January showed that 30% of travelers in the study mainly used websites with occasional app use, while only 9% reported doing it the other way around." and more. Sounds like the TT archive is more valuable that we thought...
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Post by nutraxfornerves on Mar 22, 2013 16:02:07 GMT
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Post by bjd on Mar 22, 2013 16:56:55 GMT
Houghton: I have a wife of 2 ½ years and we live in Franklin.
He has a child bride?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2013 16:36:52 GMT
Even though most of us here are more interested in the website, I would say that the main priority would be to modernise the guidebooks. They seemed really cutting edge 25 years ago but now they are mostly humdrum and boring.
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Post by bjd on Mar 23, 2013 19:13:59 GMT
I think the advantage of guide books is that they can give you general and historical background to a place, as well as the most known sights. You won't get this from a website, which seems more for asking specific questions.
It would help if posters on TT who say, "I'm going to Italy, what are the must-sees" looked at a guidebook before posting.
There is room for both books and websites. The problem with guidebook info on practical matters is the by the time they are researched and written and published, much of the information is out of date.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2013 19:26:56 GMT
I just read that the employees of Frommer's (which was bought by Google last year) were told to stop writing guidebooks, because publication is going to be stopped. edited: Oh and there's even official notification. Europe on $5 a Day was my first guidebook and I loved it -- it was extremely useful and down to earth.
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Post by bjd on Mar 23, 2013 20:08:33 GMT
Reading that link about Frommer's, I find it interesting that the Europe on $5 a Day came out in 1957 and will still being used in the early 1970s.
Reading further about how the new owners of LP are planning to "accelerate the brand's digital strategy" -- I wonder whether they are going to use all the information that has been contributed for free on TT over the past years? And which is now inaccessible to all those who contributed to it.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2013 21:16:33 GMT
1957 and the decade following was the "time of no inflation." Of course by the early 70's, $5 a day was clearly a fiction, so the title went to $10 and very quickly $20 and it kept going up until it was clear that the amount had become meaningless due to the variations across the continent.
I was reading an interesting article from 2009 that had investigated the prices and said that the 1957 edition decried the Ritz, the Crillon and the Plaza Athénée where one could not get a room for less than $30. According to the article, that corresponded to $231 at 2009 prices but at the time the normal rate for the Ritz had risen to $820 a night.
Oh, things have changed so much. If I were Arthur Frommer (still alive at age 84), I would certainly throw in the towel.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 23, 2013 23:33:15 GMT
I think Frommer threw his beach towel. On the beach in Sanibel. Florida, one of his current favorite destinations.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2013 13:04:52 GMT
I see that I just lost another 2000 or so posts on the TT. They should just turn off the post counter over there like we did here. It is useless. Or else maybe it would be interesting to make a post counter only for posts exceeding 20 or 50 words. One sees so many one worders and one liners that they shouldn't be counted as a real post.
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Post by htmb on Mar 25, 2013 15:46:16 GMT
There used to be a post counter here? I suppose you mean different from the counter next to each username in the "member" section, correct?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2013 17:25:11 GMT
Yes, it was visible on this page next to everybody's name -- that's how it appears on the Thorn Tree. It can be really intimidating for someone who has only made, say, 25 posts to challenge one of those freaks with more than 20,000 posts. And by the same token, people who post too much sometimes don't take people seriously who have just arrived on a board -- and that is wrong, too.
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Post by bjd on Mar 25, 2013 20:09:00 GMT
I just had a look on TT and I too have lost over 1,000 posts since they came back. First dropped from over 7,000 to 2,500 or so, now I'm down to 1260. I thought they were putting threads back?
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Post by gabriele on Mar 28, 2013 16:38:19 GMT
I'm down a thousand also, but I certainly didn't have as many as you bjd...I wonder what the criteria is? I'm sure at least a hundred of the missing are from writing a message on spam, then flagging for spam (I was suprised when they considered such posts in the total) so I'm not missing those. A previous computer had crashed and I lost all the links but hadn't worried about a lot of them since I thought I could find them on TT...oh well, they may all have disappeared anyway.
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Post by bjd on Mar 28, 2013 20:28:46 GMT
For the first years on TT, most of my posts were on Speaking in Tongues, and those have not been brought back. I would think that explains the post count loss.
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Post by nautiker on Mar 29, 2013 9:40:08 GMT
I notice they're still reinstalling threads, however a number of them heavily 'cleaned' (e.g. notable when posters refer to a post #18 in a thread that now sports 10 replies) - was there really so much indecent content that they literally search post by post? that would be madness!
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Post by bjd on Mar 29, 2013 10:36:52 GMT
I have stopped clicking on anything whose posting date is from 2012 or earlier, even though the last answer appears to be recent. It does look as though they have removed any answers other than something directly answering the question -- no comments of any kind. How stupid.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 29, 2013 14:34:46 GMT
They are erasing the "community" on their forum, which is what makes a forum appealing enough to make visitors return after their question has been answered....
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Post by Deleted on Mar 29, 2013 15:07:51 GMT
And this makes me wonder again about the competence of the mods. A bit of off topic chatter is a community building necessity (and yes, it can go too far from time to time), but they have sterilized the posts beyond all recognition. And even if they are just following orders that were given to them, do they not have the skill to explain to top management why they need to loosen up some?
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Post by nutraxfornerves on Mar 29, 2013 16:34:51 GMT
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Post by gabriele on Mar 30, 2013 10:48:57 GMT
Hi all, First of all, interesting new thread on Rg: www.roughguides.com/questions/introduce-yourself/Second, this isn't the place for it but I'm not ready to adventure out into the bigger world of posting on APS, so here it is... Why Paris is Special... Where else do you see horizonal rainbows? Perhaps you've already seen it yourself live kerouac.. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130327.htmlIf you've not seen the website before they post a great image every day...
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Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2013 11:45:31 GMT
Nope, I've never seen one of those. My own explanation would be that it must be due to all of the hydrocarbons in the air pollution, making a rainbow like gasoline in a lake.
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Post by gabriele on Apr 2, 2013 21:55:52 GMT
As I alluded to previously, I wrote to RG about the forums and received this answer (in part):
"Thanks for your email and your kind words. We're sorry to hear about the TT troubles - it was/is a great resource for travellers. We re-launched the Rough Guides website in January with a brand new forum area, and it's been growing rapidly ever since. There's now 1,000+ people posting questions and answers.
The main difference with ours, though, is that we have expert editors and writers on it every day to answer your questions. The Rough Guides team are online every working day and answering queries, so you're likely to find some expert advice within hours of posting a question (not to mention answers from the other users).
The Rough Guides community area is continuing to grow and we'd love to welcome new travellers.
I think if I personally comment on a competitor's forum it might be bad form, but feel free to pass this information on!
So, no home for us except as sort of second-best advisors...but I can see why they would choose to start with their own experts...I'll see what the experts come up with, though... I did post the quote about the expert editors and writers and 1000 members so far (starting in January)...in the Has Lonely Planet had its day thread. (and it hasn't been deleted...) either a new set of instructions for the mods or they're busy training new people or something...
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2013 1:55:54 GMT
As I know all too well, you have to "prime the pump" to get a forum started. Sounds like Rough Guide is doing the right thing.
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Post by gabriele on Apr 5, 2013 9:56:14 GMT
Just tried to post a reply to a query about Marseille in the WE forum and got an error..telling me the page didn't exit. Went to the home page, clicked on Thorn Tree...took me back to the same 'fail' site Nice picture of two meerkats and the text: "Sorry, we can't find the page you're looking for.
Could be there is a broken link, or maybe it's just a mistyped address. Want to head back to the homepage?"
Funny thing is after looking up a couple things (OP had asked about 4 days in Marseille) when I got to the home page there was a main article about a weekend in Marseille, City of Culture!
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Post by Don Cuevas on Apr 5, 2013 10:30:03 GMT
Gabrielle, I noticed that, too. What now?
8:12 AM: It's back on line. There appear to be some interface changes.
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