Who is your favorite ACTRESS/ACTOR ?

[Mandolinrain]

Thought this may be fun, diversion for the newbies to take mind OFF of smoking  

My all time favorite Actress is hands down Katherine Hepburn.....I absolutely LOVED her and still do. I especially loved her independent ways and style in all directions. And then theres the most wonderful woman I feel God ever created ~Della Reese. WOW....I wished many a times I was her daughter. That woman knew how to show love more than any single human I have ever known. Of course I cannot forget to add our very own Giulia....who has made THE MOST respectable impression on me that continues to grow on me daily....  And shamefully, I forgot to add her to this blog when I first posted it , but not forgotten.....  I gotcha here now!

My favorite Actor is a foursome, lol. Robert Redford ~ Michael Landon and Tom Selleck ~ Denzel Washington~ These guys have heart. ALL with such heartfelt compassion that resonated in them on and off screen.

Okay~ Your turn

[Mandolinrain]

HAHAHAThanks. The " how about a game race " post also has nothing to do with smoking....but it is an Excellent diversion for people and craves. We gotta have a little fun right?

[CommunityAdmin]

pgroce‌ Thanks for sharing your point of view.  We do have Groups on the site that are more focused on Quitting and some that are purely for social connected purposes. For some, the EX Community is their first online community and may be the connection they get to the outside world. Especially if they are home-bound.  I agree that the community should be mostly about quitting and staying quit but it would be awfully boring if nothing else happened here. Off-topic discussion happen in all healthy online communities. We must always do our part to try to keep things organized and ensure that off-topic discussions are appropriately labeled and put in the right place so that it's obvious to everyone that something doesn't relate to the main purpose of the community. If you ever feel something is misplaced or an on-topic discussion veers off in an off-topic discussion please use the "report abuse" button(found in Actions) and I will curate it.

@all thanks for your many opinions as well. I like to know what everyone is thinking.

All the groups were created by members and when we moved to this new platform in January 2017 there was some consolidation of groups to remove duplicity. We had some 600+ groups and I reduced it down to ~230. We have places like Conversations‌ to talk mostly about quitting related topics. Mayo Clinic Blog‌ to get helpful information from the Mayo team, Community Help‌ to report things related to the community software or to get information on how to use it and lastly Celebrations & Events‌ is where member created traditions occur.

Personal Blogs are mostly about one's quit journey and sharing knowledge. That's your own container on storing whatever you're thinking about. On occasion it might be a topic that doesn't seem to relate to quitting first hand but there may actually be some tie back to smoking or simply writing whatever was on your mind at that moment got you away from a desire to smoke. They're largely informative but don't always require a response.  A journal of sorts.

Discussions and Questions are more open and hopefully trigger back and forth discussion.  Perhaps a bit of information sharing. They can exist all over the site.

Documents are more to record information that spans time and can be a tutorial for others. A way to document information that has a wide audience. It has versioning capabilities so you can keep updating it as you gather new information. If you make a mistake and accidentally delete something you can easily revert it back to a previous version to recover your work.

There are also Blogs that can be posted though these are seldom used unless they relate to a given location they are posted on the site.

Polls and Videos exist as well but they are used far less than Personal Blogs, Discussions and questions and are self explanatory.

Mark
EX Community Manager

[CommunityAdmin]

Giulia wrote:

Kristen I don't quite agree with you that it would get boring and monotonous if we only talked about smoking, or rather quitting.  It may be boring to the older "elder" members, but it certainly isn't to the newer ones.  They are hungry to talk about that subject.  In the beginning on this site we had a game room group. 

You mean Games‌?

Giulia wrote:

Personally I think all off-topic subjects should be relegated to a different portion of the site, or perhaps be placed in a particular group.  But given that this new platform has open groups and all blogs and conversation can be seen by anybody, that's not possible.  On the previous platform you had to join the group to participate in the material there.  And we could communicate about our personal "schtuff"  on people's pages.  The entire site wasn't privy to it in the same way it is now.  Now that's no longer possible.

Previous groups were either open or private. Some you had to join to participate and others you could just post to without joining.  You could post on all listed groups' walls weather you joined the group or not.

There are a few off-topic areas:

Uncensored‌

Venting Freely‌

Vent About Our Partners‌ (private)

The Confession Cabin‌

Laughter is the Best Medicine‌

Picture, Video & Quote Sharing‌ etc.

Some of these could be made private if there seems to be a need and regular participation.

Wall posts on the previous community site were public previously and could be accessed by anyone. Private conversations can be had via private messages. Walls simply don't exist on the current platforms though status updates do.  

Giulia wrote: 

If I spent as much time offering support to a new member as I did on schmooozing here....but, Kristen, I gotta agree that it's fun to schmooze.  And Missy, obviously it's a great topic of conversation - look at the number of responses and views.  But there is nothing about quitting here.  If I had just joined the site and were looking around and found the topics with the most responses to be not about quitting... I don't know that's I'd hang around.

Yes some people just aren't comfortable getting involved right away. If they get involved in a topic like this it might give them a sense of other personalities on the site and allow them to participate without the worry of judgement. Then at some point when they start feeling more comfortable and familiar they transition to working on their quit.

Mark
EX Community Manager

[Giulia]

Yes, the Games Group.

Wall posts on the previous community site were public previously and could be accessed by anyone.

Yes, but although they were public, you had to make a deliberate choice to go to someone's page.  Comments there, to my mind, weren't quite as accessible and obvious as is true with blogs and discussions here.  And because that venue was available, more personal kinds of communications occurred in that area rather than generally across the whole site.  As I recall anyway.

[CommunityAdmin]

Giulia wrote:

Wall posts on the previous community site were public previously and could be accessed by anyone.

Yes, but although they were public, you had to make a deliberate choice to go to someone's page.  Comments there, to my mind, weren't quite as accessible and obvious as is true with blogs and discussions here.  And because that venue was available, more personal kinds of communications occurred in that area rather than generally across the whole site.  As I recall anyway.

Yes, you had to be more deliberate in finding people's profiles to get to their wall and that effort lead to some interactions but they were also very disjointed as there wasn't any notification letting you know anyone had replied.

[JonesCarpeDiem]

I think remember a time when you could hide your wall from people you didn't get along with?

[JonesCarpeDiem]

I post much of my material in the groups you listed. They still show up on the home page no matter where you designate them so does it matter? Plus the groups were pretty much unused on the last site.

[CommunityAdmin]

jonescarp.aka.dale.Jan_2007 wrote:

I post much of my material in the groups you listed. They still show up on the home page no matter where you designate them so does it matter? Plus the groups were pretty much unused on the last site.

For the Vent About Our Partners‌ group. That content will only show on the home page to members of that group since it is a private group. It doesn't show for everyone else until you become member.  If you're a member you'll see it.

Other groups could be made private.

Mark
EX Community Manager

[elvan]

I did not realize that about private groups, that's interesting Mark  and JonesCarpeDiem‌

[JonesCarpeDiem]

I remember a time when you could block people from seeing the comments on your page by choosing who could see the comments on your page.