Today, we made the difficult but necessary choice to prune our membership roll. We looked over the list of users and honestly, we had no idea who most of these people were. Therefore, we deleted members who had 0 posts and who have not been here recently. Some of you have been here recently but we don't know you. Others have such obscure usernames that again, we don't know you.
So now, if you wish to re-join or join our forum (whichever the case may be) you'll have to go through our revised membership procedures. You will receive a PM upon registration that requires you to answer our questionnaire and we will consider whether or not you will be accepted as a member of our community. It may take time to deliberate as it requires a majority of moderators to approve. So in the meantime, continue to read and learn about our community so you can hit the ground running if approved.
I apologize for the oversight on this subject to our members. We should have been more careful about who was joining our community. To remedy the situation, we felt it was very necessary to prune and start again. You'll see that we are down to around 400 members.
We are only interested in members who are actually doing ZC. If you are not ZC, you are only free to lurk and not join our forum. We need our members to experience ZC and we want them to journal their experience because it adds to our collective knowledge of ZC. We don't need members just to lurk. One can do that on their own without being a member. Keep that in mind when deciding whether to be a member or not.
EDIT: By the way, this does NOT apply to Support Team Members. You ALWAYS have a membership at ZIOH. And I am always available to help you with ZC.
I fully support this. I think a small, close and vibrant community with high standards for membership is best.
Normally, I don't support exclusion but I fully agree with this new procedure. ZC is not a fad or a diet and we have to treat our "revolutionary" regimen with the respect it deserves. It's a full-time commitment not a one-night stand. So, bravo to Charles and all of the moderators.
I'm glad I was grandfathered in but either way I probably wouldn't have had any problems following a few steps to join. It's your forum and you all have to do what's best for your current dedicated members.
It's like if this were a spanish language learning site, it wouldn't make much sense to have members on here that were learning french or don't even know if they want to learn spanish.
ok, enough sticking my nose where it doesn't belong lol.
Off to my journal.
I would have jumped through any hoops needed to get in here... it was that important to me, I knew that then and even more so now.
Heck, I had to do that to join a raw feeding group on yahoo...
Speaking of which, some of you members who are here that don't have journals, stand by because when we discover you, we will be sending you a questionnaire as well. Everyone needs to be journaling and letting us know who you are and why you want to be a member here. If you don't want to journal and just want to read, you don't need to be a member. Guests can lurk. Members must participate.
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Not only should you be getting help for your issues, but you should be helping others with theirs.
(10-30-2009 05:16 PM)Margot Wrote: [ -> ]I would have jumped through any hoops needed to get in here... it was that important to me, I knew that then and even more so now.
Heck, I had to do that to join a raw feeding group on yahoo...
Margot-The closest I ever got to the raw-food movement was buying Carol Alt's book and I only did that because I always thought that she was possibly the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.
LOL it was a raw DOG food group, nothing beautiful about it
I've recently made a point of usernames and even one of my moderators claims I'm obsessive about this. The thing is, I do use my real name and I understand that people have reasons not to use theirs, but let me give you something else to think about:
No one is asking anyone to divulge their address, phone number or social security number. I'm talking about your first name and where you live. There are always people who will be watching you. Whether it's the creepy guy in your cubicle or your nosy neighbor or the guy at the store who thinks you're hot when you come in there to do groceries. The fact is, life is full of little vulnerabilities and you can't live your life in fear. This is a health forum. Do you really think the bad guys are all coming here to look for you? Really?
I know, we're the hottest thing going in the LC world, but we're really just a small group. Have you looked at the membership lately? We went from 1400 members down to just under 500. Why? Because this is 98% of the members who actually make this forum go. Real people who allow themselves to be a bit vulnerable not only on behalf of themselves, but on behalf of others.
I get a little bothered by those who merely lurk yet they do ZC. Some of them are having great success doing ZC because they have read our examples and the stuff that we have shared. More power to them, but they are only takers. They take from the well but they do not replenish. What we want at ZIOH is for all of its members to share their experiences and not only that, turn around and help someone else who is not as far along as you are. With each day of ZC experience, you become more and more valuable to ZIOH.
Do you realize that there is no place else to go in the world with this fine collection of people eating an all-meat diet who are willing to talk about it and help others? It's an amazing thing when you think about it. So to paraphrase America's late president, Ask not what your forum can do for you but what you can do for your forum! You can help us by helping each other. The Support Team and moderators are really good at what they do but there is not enough of them. We need you as well.
If you're doing ZC, then we want to know about it. I apologize for bothering you with my wicked questionnaire, but it soothes my mind to look down at the bottom of the forum and when I see the "users online" I know every last one of you and that makes me smile!
Oh man, well said!
And BTW your last line makes me smile too!