JCR article about this forum

I am writing an article for the JCR detailing the many online court reporter forums that are out there these days.  If someone here could post the following information for me, I’ll be sure and include this forum and relevant material:

Who started this forum and why?

Is this forum moderated?

What do you think makes this forum distinct from the others, if anything?

I welcome any other details you’d like to provide.

Thank you!

Jodi Harmon, President

American Realtime Court Reporters/Japan

http://www.americanrealtime.com

Sounds like a fun article to write, Jodi.

You may know that this particular forum is and has been undergoing some changes in the last year with more updates along the way.  Hopefully we can add more to your article if and when those all become complete.

The forum is moderated by the NCRA online forum commitee which consists of Cindi Hartman as the chair; Sarah Nageotte, Deanna Dean, Richard Wyble, Joe Armstrong, Tricia Lyons, and myself.  SueLynn Morgan is the NCRA board liaison.  Serge Obolensky is the Assistant Director, Electronic Communications and Marshall Jorpeland serves as Director of Communications.

There is a lot of behind the scenes "talk" among the committee members.  Our duties are to make sure that forum rules are followed.  An example would be that messages pertaining to certain subject matter are in their appropriately titled section.  We wouldn't want to have a post on the question of ethics posted under the vendor's section.  We also require full names be posted so that participants know who they're interacting with.  I think that is one of the distinctions with this forum.  I do believe we are the only forum that requires that.

I'll chime in later if I think of anything else.   It'll be interesting to read what others have to say!

Lillian Freiler, RMR
Online Forum Staff

This forum was started by Richard Sherman in 1991 or maybe 1990.  It was called the Court Reporters Forum (CRF) and was on Compuserve.  Most people used a software called Tapcis.  It was wildly successfully and busy and fun.   You had to join Compuserve and that was the only expense.  This was most people's first experience with a forum and most people's experience with email and home computers.  (It was my first home computer after 11 or 12 years of running back and forth to the CR office I was associated with at the time to use their computers to do my work.)  The amount of information sharing was staggering.  I learned how to use a computer on CRF.  Everyone used their full names.  Handles were possibly not allowed (I don't remember) but my recollection is tha no one had any desire to be known but anything but their full names.  I made many friends in CRF.  There were a few CRF gatherings in NJ wihch were the most fun, meeting all your online friends who you really truly felt like you knew.  Connie Perks was one of the sysops.  I still consider Connie to have been my Computer 101 instructor. 

A few years later, NCRA decided to have a forum of its own and they teamed up with Richard to bring the CRF over to NCRA.  They thought that everyone would follow, which they did, but they didn't anticipate that many people would stay with CRF, too.  The new forum, which cost $4.95/month for a few years until they made it free for members, was called Verbatim Reporters Forum (VRF).  This was the start of multiple forums.  I went to both forums and so did many people.  Nothing was as good as the original CRF though because now membership was a little diluted.  The more people, the better everything is.   And now CRF and VRF didn't have as much traffic as the original CRF used to have.  They still had a lot of traffic; it just wasn't as good as when there was only one game in town.  Everyone went by their full names on VRF, too.  It wasn't an issue.  No one had any interest in speaking to the world with a big paper grocery bag over their heads. 

I recall there being a rule in VRF that you couldn't mention the name of the other forum (CRF) in a post.  I'm 98% certain I'm clear on that recollection. 

Some people in CRF were very upset wtih Richard Sherman for doing this, establishing and what he thought would be moving CRF (now renamed VRF) over to NCRA.   I was not one of them.  Even though I knew that the days with only one forum were the best, I was and still am eternally grateful to him for creating the CRF.  He was then and is still a visionary.  He was doing what he felt was best for the court reporting community.  He understandably didn't count on people sticking to CRF when the VRF was there under the auspices of NCRA with Richard running it, being the chief poobah in the VRF just as he was in CRF.

CRF was then "bought" by someone else, I think Merzi and I forget her last name.  And then she sold it to Jim Barker who currently owns and runs the CRF.  CRF is alive and well today.  Using your full name is encouraged but not a requirement.

The other two forums are Depoman, which is owned and run by Mike (Depoman) Miller, a fabulous forum.   And the MSN forum run by someone named Hope whose last name I don't know, which is very busy and interesting.  Most people in the MSN forum you'll never meet at a convention because you wouldn't recognize their name on a name tag.   There's an MSN forum for CA only which is moderately busy but very good to check in on.  That is run by Marla, whose last name I don't know.   There's CSRnation which is the newest kid on the block, run by Monti Majthoub and Kelli Combs.   Most people use their full names.  It's busy and interesting as well.

The use of full names for me is very important.  I will read what an incognito "person" says, person in quotes because for all I know it could be a collaborative effort by multiple people, but I don't respond.  There's not enough hours in the day.  I only respond to people if I could say hello at a convention, and that only happens with full names.  I am suspicious of people who go by names like "5 hour dinner" or other cutsie little names.

That's a pretty good overview.  any questions, just ask!

Marge

Hi, Jodi.

This sounds like it's going to be a big undertaking!  There are a lot of forums out there.  Marge has already mentioned the big ones ... but there are smaller ones as well, thanks to the availability of the software, attached to state court reporting associations, like the one at the Washington Court Reporters Association's website (http://washingtoncourtreporters.org/forum/default.aspx), the more busy TCRA forum (http://pub15.bravenet.com/forum/1221352568), and a host of others.

As for public forums, one I frequent is the Steno Life forum: http://www.stenolife.com/board/index.php?f=0 ... and I occasionally stop by the MSN group, Court Reporting Assistance (http://groups.msn.com/Courtreporterassistance/messages.msnw ... you'll have to register to view the posts).  You can find other forums I frequent on my links page:

http://www.cheapandsleazy.net/links.html

Can't tell you about how these forums got started, though (sorry!).

Good luck ...! This looks like it's going to be quite the project.

--gdw

Lillian Freiler, RMR:

The forum is moderated . . .

In the normal meaning of the word moderated as it is commonly applied to online fora, this is an unmoderated forum.  In a moderated forum or mailing list, all posts are vetted by sysops before they are posted in public view.  So while forum staff does keep tabs on activity, the forum is unmoderated.

moderated

Pronunciation: 'Mä-d&-"rAt
Inflected Form(s): Mod·er·at·ed; mod·er·at·ing
transitive senses
1 : To lessen the intensity or extremeness of <the sun moderated the chill>
2 : To preside over or act as chairman of
intransitive senses
1 : To act as a moderator
2 : To become less violent, severe, or intense <the wind began to moderate>

Every industry, profession, or group of related activites has terms of art.  Moderated in the context of online newsgroups and fora is one of those terms.

I've written a response three times; the first two simply vanished, courtesy of the forum software; I'm not going to rewrite it.

Do a Google search for "moderated forum" and you'll come up with enough hits to define the term in the usual online sense.  But in a nutshell, in a moderated forum nothing appears in public until it has been read and approved by a moderator.  I can see that NCRA's forum could be regarded as semimoderated in that forum staff has the ability to squelch inappropriate content, even if seldom exercised, but it's after the fact.  The NCRA version is one of reaction rather than proactive moderation.

>>I've written a response three times; the first two simply vanished, courtesy of the forum software

Richard, I'm happy to read that because I thought it was just me. I have written replies to several posts only to see that they had disappeared when I returned to the forum from Google after checking facts before posting. It's too time-consuming to start over.

Jerry Kelley:

>>I've written a response three times; the first two simply vanished, courtesy of the forum software

Richard, I'm happy to read that because I thought it was just me. I have written replies to several posts only to see that they had disappeared when I returned to the forum from Google after checking facts before posting. It's too time-consuming to start over.

Maybe it'll show up six weeks from now like Shirley Houston's post!   Ha! 

Seriously, folks, please bear with us.  Changes, they are a comin'!

Lillian

Here's some changes I suggest, which were never an issue with the original VRF and are not an issue with ANY OTHER FORUM:

1.  the forum should recognize you when you click on an email notification link and no sign-in required

2.  the forum should not log you out after a certain period of time.  VRF is not a credit card or a bank website.  We don't need to be "protected" by being automatically signed out.  All that is doing is automatically annoying people and causing LOW TRAFFIC to this forum.

3.  this signing in 10 times a day has got to stop.  once you sign in, every time you go into the forum or click on a link, you should be recognized.

4.  inform everyone that using gmail is the only way to assure getting email notifications.

Marge Teilhaber, RDR:

Here's some changes I suggest, which were never an issue with the original VRF and are not an issue with ANY OTHER FORUM:

1.  the forum should recognize you when you click on an email notification link and no sign-in required             Agreed

2.  the forum should not log you out after a certain period of time.  this signing in 10 times a day has got to stop.  once you sign in, every time you go into the forum or click on a link, you should be recognized.       Agreed

4.  inform everyone that using gmail is the only way to assure getting email notifications.     Yahoo also sends notifications.

I responded above in the "quote," but as Lilian said, things are in the works, faster now than previously, and things are gonna be a'changin'.  

I don't think anyone should be required to have a gmail or a yahoo address to get notifications from this site. Rather, I think NCRA should get their IP addresses whitelisted. I think I've said before that I can provide the link to get whitelisted by the various ATT ISPs (pacbell, sbcglobal, etc.) but no one from NCRA has asked for it.

And are you sure Yahoo! addresses get notifications? The reason that I wonder about this is because ATT (and Verizon) use Yahoo! mail servers and it's Yahoo! doing the majority of IP address blacklisting.

Liz,

I have Yahoo and have gotten notifications from the beginning, and continue to receive them.  No problems at all.

Yahoo definitely cannot be trusted.  IMMEDIATELY after I switched my VRF address to gmail, I started getting VRF email notifications.  Gmail is known to be the must-use email when you don't want to ever have a problem with random disappearing-before-they-arrive-in-your-inbox emails.   I've used yahoo for many years, and this is the first issue I've ever had with not getting emails.   I'm using gmail much more now and have seen the error of my ways!

EDITED:  Yes, Sarah, you are correct that the email at issue for me was my road runner address!! D'OH!!!  I'm sorry for the confusion!!

The reason I'm not deleting this message is that yahoo does something odd.  It does mysteriously block emails and here's how to check it:

1. on the right-hand side, click "options."  (It's between "mobile" and "help")

2.  click "mail options" from the drop-down menu

3.  on the left, click "spam"

4.  look at all the addresses in the "Blocked Email Addresses" and you'll notice that there are tons in there, none of which you put in there because while there's an option to mark any email as "spam," there's no option to "block."   Also notice how many legitimate domains and email addresses are in there.  scary! 

A friend of mine on yahoo was mysteriously not receiving many emails and she learned about this from someone.  She found all the email addresses in there such as her son's, her sister's, oddball email addresses that somehow got blocked.  I wrote yahoo help about this and got gobblegook back from them and haven't pursued it. 

Marge,

It was my understanding that the issue with you not receiving e-mail was due to your Road Runner e-mail account, and that once you switched over to gmail, it began working.

I'm not sticking up for Yahoo in the least, I'm just saying that generalizing this e-mail service to this e-mail service will get nobody anywhere and leads to more speculation.