Dave

I just made two replies to the invavise plant thread. I have been reading and posting there. I made one post that went through fine. Then the second post brought up this "Red Flag" I was thanking a member for giving me a link because a group was coming to my tiny town. Now I can't get back to the thread. I read the "Sticky" note. I assume I broke a rule but I cannot figure out what is was. I certainly didn't mean to get political or anything. Could you explain what I did wrong so I don't repeat the mistake. I love the site and don't want to violate rules or get thrown off

Thanks you,
Mollie

Did the red flag pop up as you were previewing or sending your message? I think that one is just something that watches for certain words and/or phrases that could in some contexts be offensive/inappropriate to the forum. All you're supposed to do in that case is look at your post and make sure that you're not using the word/phrase in an inappropriate or potentially offensive context, and if you're not then you should go ahead and post. My guess is that's what happened, if it was the actual content of your post that was offensive or violated the rules you would have got an email from the admins instead. I remember someone having this problem once because they were posting Jesus's name on the prayer forum, but got the little warning every time they tried to post because sometimes people can use his name more in the context of a swear word, so it's one of the ones that the site flags.

Oh, well, I am not sure what i did wrong. I did close out and then log back in and my post was there. I don't know if they delete words or what but it said what I wanted to so I guess they either fixed it or it was an error or something. I belong to another message board that is very, very strict and I try to watch what I say. I am not into making waves anyway so that is why I couldn't understand it. I fully understand why they have the rules and agree with them. I don;t curse, swear, or try to start political arguments on the boards any way. That is NOT why I am here. I just wan'ted to make sure there was some rule that I didn;t know about but all the rules make perfect sense to me.

Thanks for the relply. Maybe I just panicked for no reason. Beleive me, I am big on following rules!

Thanks again!

Mollies

Where did you post? What was the name of the thread you think you posted in? Was it in this forum or was it a post about invasive plants in another forum? I can't see as of right now where you posted recently anywhere in Invasive Plants.

It was under Invasive Plants the thread was Wisteria. I was talking to you actually. Still can't figure out why the warning came up but they did post.

I think ecrane summed it up pretty well.

I don't ususally get that warning because lots of times I simply press send rather than preview before send but I think one of the words that brings up the filter has something to do with feral cats because once I previewed and that warning popped up and I almost had heart failure. Let me try to preview this and see if it happens. Bingo, it happened when I previewed the post. There's something with the word feral or the word cats or the combination of the two that brings up the big red "A reminder:" over in Garden Foes and in Invasive plants followed by what ever else was written after that about how they don't allow profanity or vulgarity.

The last post I see for you in the Wisteria thread was on December 23rd. Did you post after that? If you did, there may be a computer burp out there because I am not seeing anything posted for you recently. I've typed really good posts that I put a lot of thought into and they have disappeared into the black post hole before. I think this happens from time to time. I have no idea what I've done. Maybe if we type something then walk away for a few hours or something to do something else and come back we are timed out? Who knows, I'm not smart enough with computers to figure it out but it happens.

I'm going to guess that ecrane hit it on the head with these comments- "All you're supposed to do in that case is look at your post and make sure that you're not using the word/phrase in an inappropriate or potentially offensive context, and if you're not then you should go ahead and post. My guess is that's what happened". This site must have filters set up. Filters are great but they can't think. Does that make sense?

Don't worry, contact them direct and they will get back to you. There is a Contact Us link down at the bottom of every page.

Mollie, I once typed up a reply, then hit send. Then I got a dmail from Dave that my post had been edited. I had no clue, he even provided me a link the thread. I still didn't see what I typed wrong. I dmailed him back and I had, not even thinking, put in a curse word. It was an honest mistake and Dave understood that. My point is, is that I received a dmail telling me it was edited. They do have filters here with certain key words as stated above. I would think (?) that you would be notified if your post was edited.

Am I reading that you think you were, or are, blocked from the thread after posting? If so, then as Equil stated, use the contact us and inquire.

I looked at the wisteria thread and it may have been the "Holy" word.

Nope, wasn't the holy word. I just typed it in here then pressed preview to see if I would get that message and I didn't get the message.

Well, I have gone back and checked and my last post is there - including the one that brought up the Red flad. As far as I can tell, it has not been edited or changed in any way. I KNOW I did not use any profanity. There must be some other word there that was either changed or that they had to checked befoe they posted it. I just couldn't imagine what it is! Thanks for all the help and tips though. I will preview and be very, very careful from not on! On HGTV some plant names don't even make it because they don't meet the rules. It makes it hard to commuicate!

If admins edited your post they I think they would have let you know. I'm not sure why the red flag warning came up, possibly a bug in the system or something. You sound too worried about this though--the red flag warning is just an automated thing, it's up to you to decide whether what you said in your post was appropriate or not and if it is there's nothing wrong with ignoring the warning and posting, after all the automated program can't interpret context. And even if you post something that does fall outside the rules, the admins will let you know and it's only if you continue to ignore them when they warn you that you've done something inappropriate that you get in any sort of trouble. I've seen some threads before regarding people who got kicked off of DG, and it sounded like there were many warnings and attempts to get them to follow the rules before they were kicked out.

I agree with ecrane. I've also read where somebody types something innocent, but the program doesn't know the context it was written in. It just knows that a word is one of the key words to watch. I've read your posts though, and I see nothing wrong in anything you said. It was probably just a glitch in the program. I think it takes a lot of warnings and your refusal to comply that ultimately leads to being removed from this site. I have found the admins to be quite fair, so please don't worry about it Mollie.

Maybe a typo?

For example a spelling error in the sentance "Some species of carp are invasive in some regions." might have caused a red flag, and someone correcting the spelling might not have bothered mentioning it.

(guessing)

Corey

Here is good reason that DG was set up to be strict about language. A few years back, 2 people kept getting into arguments in the brug forum. Dave tried to calm everyone down but eventually considered taking down the whole forum. He didn't but he eventually did kick the 2 people off. Well, if I recall correctly, one of them begged his (or her) way back in and Dave allowed it. Well, it wasn't long before the argumens started back up again and poor Dave had to kick that person back off permenently.
I haven't seen any sign of those kinds of arguments since.