Sorry GNHQ I don't like the Oldie Borum

As a relatively new member of gransnet, I don't like this at all and I shall be boycotting it completely. I don't understand why they can't set up their own forum instead of highjacking this one. I agree with Carol that all their threads have the appearance of a parasite or a very nasty virus!

And please CharlotteOldie, don't refer to me as a 'silver surfer;' I find it such a patronising term. I do wonder how old the current staff of The Oldie are - they seem to regard us as dinosaurs. I know it's a well established publication but it reminds me of the episode of The Apprentice where the contestants had to design a magazine and chose to produce one for pensioners and to name it 'Hip Replacement'

I mean GN

Thanks for that info about the non-exclusive copyright, GH, I've learned something new!

I have been unavoidably away from Gransnet fro a month and knowing nothing about the Oldie Borum when I came across it I found it deeply odd and unsettling.

We are Gransnet, they are something else entirely. It is not as if Gransnet does not have Gramps already on it.

Likewise I noticed the strong probing of what we remember from our youth in its threads on Gransnet. One query generated by a nostalgic thread from a Gransnetter is one thing but the Oldie Borum has been very persistent with these kinds of threads.

Lets remember journalists consult Gransnet regularly for our views on current topics, I found myself quoted in a newspaper a few months ago and nanapug was mentioned by name in one newspaper recently.

You girls at GNHQ have been very busy posting on here over the last two days ...if it was glass of last night ...reckon it could be a bottle of tonight

Golly, well first of all, I must apologise. I put lots of threads on our Oldie Borum site from the start because the page looked empty. I put them in question format in order to provoke discussion. I am the editorial assistant at the Oldie and have no editorial input or influence in the magazine. My role is to run the website, write the newsletter, organise Oldie lunches and functions. I am not a journalist per se and any copy I do generate - ie for the website or our newsletter - is derived exclusively from the magazine or from Oldie Towers.

We simply thought that Oldie readers would enjoy their own forum - and Gransnet offered to run it for us. If you go to the Oldie website, you will see that, viewed from that perspective, the page appears to be discrete. We had not appreciated that my suggested topics would cut across existing chat. The Borum is intended as another facility for Oldie readers and aficionados. We strongly believe that the internet is a huge asset for 'silver surfers' and that its importance to them in particular is only going to increase.

Were any of you to come to Oldie Towers, you would understand that we are a hundred miles from the phone-hacking sweatshops of News International. We are a tiny office, very hard-working, little or no time to surf ourselves and no journalists in house. Moreover the Oldie is a magazine that comes out monthly and is features-led.

Please feel free to chat away among yourselves - we are delighted to be part of the Gransnet universe. But prying and prurient, we are not. Not enough hours in the day!

Charlotte

What on earth does "non-exclusive copyright" mean? It doesn't sound very watertight!

Pamaga this is what is written at the top of the Forums page ...

Welcome to Gransnet. We've selected some topics below we think you might want to discuss but you're free to talk on any subject you like. You need to be a member of Gransnet to use the forum. Please be aware this is a public forum and your postings are open for all to see. Please note that Gransnet has non-exclusive copyright in all submissions to Gransnet, and reserves the right to edit and re-publish these in print form.

Although it was very nice when I was in a Mumsnet thread in the Times.

(I mean, nobody reads online stuff, do they?)

Oh yes. I did say 'in their mag', didn't I? Meant the online version.

I would be running for the hills if I thought my posts were going to be printed in a magazine appearing in WH Smith's!

I'm not surprised GNHQ didn't try to explain it in advance. Where would they have started?

No. Not the printed version! Just on their online website.

I thought we were supposed to be Grans? So Oldie staff can sign up if they choose. I know that you don't check up on GNetters, but surely the whole balance changes if our membership no longer has grandparenthood in common?

Gransnet owns the copyright but not exclusively. I think.

Where is copyright and data protection in all this? Once we post on a Gransnet thread, does the copyright transfer to Gransnet and does this mean GNHQ can use our posts in whatever manner they choose, even taking them out of context? It is a bit worrying and I think it will inhibit Gransnetters from being as open and honest as so many have been in the past.
I used to read the Oldie and enjoyed it - especially the crossword - but I find it a tad expensive these days and I felt quite alarmed when I read about the Oldie Borum.
I assumed I held the copyright to anything I posted on the forum and that my permission should be sought to quote me in another medium.

Thank you. I think i understand now.

Readers of the mag will, of course, be able to post on it and their comments will appear on here.

The borum is a new forum the Oldie mag has started up in their mag. (it will probably fail and fizzle out because the oldie mag is read by MOSTLY (Elegran note I said mostly) old farts technophobes. GN is hosting it for them and beaming it over (think Star Wars) (no don't). Only the threads headed with Oldie Borum will appear in their mag.

Agree they did rather flood the market with posts. One to try it out would have been enough, and they could have introduced themselves too, if they were linking up before GNHQ had prepared us.

Hi Josie - thanks for responding. I know you don't intend segregation - we all know GN well enough now. Unfortunately, giving it a 'stand-out' label like Oldie Borum does just that. It's like being at school and being told you are from from group and another group will be the elite group. Not intended, but people start wondering which preferred group they belong to. Inclusion isn't hard to do, just remove the labels that identify difference in a negative way.

I think one of the OB staff started those threads as a first push. Then anyone can post on them or start a new thread, as usual. The threads are not separate from Gransnet, just another topic, the same as AIBU or chat.

On the onllne version of The Oldie, there is a link to Gransnet, where anyone who subscribes online to the mag can read the GN pages exactly as ANYONE ELSE online with a browser can. Gransnet can be used from there exactly as usual. Reading posts is for anyone but to send a post they need to join Gransnet and have a username and password.

I think everyone is now thoroughly confused. Is OB posted by Oldie staff? Or members of their forum? Or what? And why?
Would perhaps have been good if they had made one post at a time rather than showered with a small flock.