I liked seeing the birthdays annouced in GCC cuz I am still a newbie and am getting to know everyone
I think birthday topics are OK in GCC, but I'm not sure. Let's try and see.
I would only ask that people don't create a bunch of topics for one person.
If you know that today is Jane's birthday, and you already see a "Happy birthday Jane" topic in GCC created by someone else, then don't create another topic. Instead join in the existing one.
Otherwise, we could end up with a GCC listing full of identical topics, and that wouldn't be good.
As for actually announcing your own birthday, I think it makes sense to do it in the PDA. And I'm pretty sure the congratulations from others will follow in the GCC almost immediately.
If we use the system of editable PDA titles that I outlined above, then Jane could update her PDA topic title with something like "Jane: Today is my birthday!"
And I'm sure plenty of people would congratulate her both in PDA and in GCC.
We have a very friendly group of people. So I think spreading the message won't be a problem once it appears in PDA.
Someone is bound to open up the PDA listing and see the title :) And it will go on from there.
but if it is buried in a diary I fear most of the board will miss it
AHA! That's what I just posted above. People seem to not like posting in the PDA section because they think fewer people read it.
But why should you be bothered by that? People close to you will read it. And those who are close to you but miss the announcement somehow, will probably get the news via PM or e-mail from others who've read it.
I know many have contributed lately to sending squares to make group quilts and I think that is a VERY positive thing from this board, but again if it is buried in a diary how do we as a large group reach out to help a person(s) ?
You see, I don't think that the fear of an important message getting lost in PDA has a solid ground. Yet, this seems to be the root of our discussion from the user's perspective.
It's about the quality of communications not the quantity. If the cause or the message is important to enough people, then it will spread around. And if it's not important, then shoving it down on everybody won't help. It would simply serve as an annoyance to everyone without any real benefit to the cause.