Just One Of Those Moods

I woke up all out of sorts this morning (I'm blaming DST) and have gotten grumpier as the morning has progressed. Ever have one of those days?

I was just visiting Ravelry. I have very mixed feelings about Ravelry. I like the notebook feature and being able to see what others have done out of particular yarns or how a pattern differs in looks when made with different yarns.

But oy! The forums are a god-awful mess. And make me a little nuts. There is seemingly little control over them. Anyone can start a thread on any subject, with any subject title. And apparently no one can ever delete a thread. So there are threads that started out asking for help for a particular row of a particular pattern...and the help is given within a comment or two and there the thread sits...forever. Sinking towards the bottom of the bottomless pit of threads. But never going away. And, I dunno, Casey and Jess may have a Cray supercomputer in their living room, but eventually I would think that sucker is going to clog up. I started a thread in the Black Sheep group and after a month there had been no replies. Rather than clutter up space, I tried to delete it...but couldn't. And apparently the moderator of the group couldn't either.

And the random duplication of threads makes me a little crazy. I think the moderators do try to smoosh threads together but man, how many pointless discussions of whether or not acrylic is the fiber of the devil or not do we really need? For a while, there were two threads on the subject in the list of top ten threads in the Yarn discussion area. Really? Do we need two threads to discuss something so ultimately non-worthy of discussion? We now have multiple threads going about what shoes are best to wear to show off hand-knitted socks.

And don't get me started on the way people title the threads they start...some actual titles currently are: "Rant" (Really? About what? Should I care?) "j,.-" (Apparently another thread inadvertently started by a small child or pet...up to 101 meaningless posts. There was another like this started a week or two ago. I say "was"....it's still there somewhere, sinking to the bottom. Talk about a thread that is crying out for deletion.) "How to make stuffed animals look different?" (Hmmm....three eyes? Run 'em over with a truck?) "does anyone know" (I know lots of things...I don't know if I know what you need to know because you haven't given me a frickin' clue as to what it is!) And those examples are only taken from the first page of threads in the Pattern discussion area.

In the Yarn area we have threads like: "which is which?" (The one on the left.) "Gauge?" (Yes.) "Branded???????" (Do you think this person has a question?) "That'll teach me" (But apparently won't teach you how to title a thread.)

Perhaps it's because the only other on-line forum I frequent, the one associated with the Readerville Journal, is so beautifully organized and easy to use. Karen, the proprietor, keeps fairly tight control over what threads can be started. Threads are more general and conversations come and go on all sorts of themes that fit under the thread (e.g., the Gardening thread may have a discussion of some books, question from a poster about his or her actual garden, and links to some neat garden-related website all going on at once). Now, granted, Karen went through a huge reorganization not too long ago, and the population of Readerville (certainly the regularly posting population) is much smaller. But still...the contrast between the two sites is awfully jarring to me.

And as grumpy as I feel today, I think I'll be sticking to Readerville. I don't need to be further unraveled.