[Jerry McColgan]

One disadvantage of the new system is that it does not show the actual date when a member joined MLS.

At first this does not seem important - until you are considering buying something from a fellow member.

When you look up a member's join date and it shows that they have only been a member a short time it can make you wonder about the safety of buying or selling something from or to from that member.

Going to the archives does not help much in that you have to do a number of searches and make multiple guesses attempting to discover a post that the member may have made to give you a link to that member's real joining date. There may be a simpler method but if there is I have not discovered it yet.

Hopefully MLS will eventually be able to bring back the true join dates of our members.

Then again perhaps I am missing something obvious.

Jerry

 

[SteveC]

Jerry

While I can't say for certain that bringing the old join dates forward will NEVER happen, since only Shad can do that, but I'd bet money that the chances are next to none.

However, in finding the original join date of MLS members...[*]So long as they still use the same User Name.[*]When you access the archived MLS forum software and a Log-in as a first class member.[*]Use the Members menu > List Members menu item.[*]Then after the members list screen displays, in the For: field type in the User Name value and click the Search button.[/list]

 

[Jerry McColgan]

Hi Steve,

That is a perfectly good solution.

For some reason (and I've already forgotten how I got there) when I went to the archives the Members or other options were not visible.

Somehow I had gone there via a link in one of the forums and had forgotten I could go direct to the archives. When I did I followed your suggestion and it worked fine.

You or someone else is welcome to delete this topic as it is no longer a problem for me.

Sometimes the obvious solutions are not obvious when you need them.

Thanks,

Jerry

 

[Spule 4]

I would think little of join dates as far as buying anything, I have known a few crooks myself for 30+ years!

 

[Jerry McColgan]

That may be true but the last time (a long time ago) that I had a misrepresented (non-eBay) purchase the seller ignored my emails after he had received my money.

I then reminded him that thanks to the Internet it is now a very small world and that it would not be difficult for me to find other Garden Railroaders where he lived and let them know what he had done.

Not another email was received but I very quickly received a check for the disputed amount (no letter - just the check).

First of all I trust fellow MLSers but beyond that I would be a lot more willing to trust someone who has been a member for several years than I would be willing to trust a member who had only been here for a few months (as all our memberships now show). The same is true of eBay. I trust an eBay member with years on eBay and 100+ positive feedbacks a lot more than a new member with little or no feedback.

Generally I would say that Garden Railroaders are a trustworthy bunch. On the other hand I would not trust my best friend if he was trying to sell me a firearm.

Some hobbies seem to instill trust while others seem to thrive on who took who to the cleaners.

I once bought a loco for over $1200 from a German doctor who shipped it to me over a month before I could get the money to him because of the complex money transfers at the time yet my best friend at the time (the only person I've ever known who was cheaper than me) wanted to keep a gun I was buying for collateral until he got my check 3 days later (he just happened to carry a lot of cash). The dealer simply let me take the gun and mail him a check but I still got my revenge years later when the friend wanted to borrow my pickup and chain saw to get rid of a dead tree in front of his home. I told him he could borrow my pickup just as soon as his wife left her Cadillac for collateral. He thought I was joking but since his wife never brought her Cadillac he never got my pickup and chain saw. Turnabout can not only be fair - it can be very enjoyable.

Regards,

Jerry

Posted By Spule 4 on 04/26/2008 10:02 PM
I would think little of join dates as far as buying anything, I have known a few crooks myself for 30+ years!