Name, age, gender and what you're looking for

   Dale here. Single male, 47, straight ----Vancouver Island ----- multitude of interest ----- I like girls who are.....

   I'm not actually posting a personal ad on here although I am single. I popped in to this section as a voyeur and  found that many of the posting titles don't tell the reader anything about what might be found within.

   To be effective any ad whether it be for a car or for love must at the very minimum describe the item available. I read some ads all the way through and was still confused as to whether the poster was male or female. This matters to most people

   Cryptic ads don't produce results.

      Does anyone else think this should be split up into various categories such as men seeking women, women seeking men, and all the other possible variations?

@Dale - Amen, brother!  I have only recently and briefly perused the threads in this forum, but I was struck by the same thing.  If I read a post looking to make social or even romantic contacts, and I don't come away knowing the most basic facts about the poster - and in addition to your "age," "gender," and "interested in" criteria I would add the very important "where" - then what good was it?  No wonder there is so little exchange in this forum.

Members should keep in mind how they configured their profile and privacy settings when they joined Permies.  Some of us have most of the useful basic info visible on our Permies member profile already, including even links to email or FaceBook, others do not.  I wonder if some of the authors of those hopelessly vague posts from the past had forgotten that they failed to make their profile info visible and erroneously assumed that other members would be able to click to that info?

As for breaking it up into multiple forums, obviously that is a suggestion for the administrators, not for me, but I hardly see the point until there grows a larger collection of threads to organize.

~ Matthew N., Southern transplant

I've noticed that many of the ads and responses are from those who have only participated in this portion of the forums. I imagine it would be handy to look at the last 50-500 postings of anyone you're interest in. This could be a great screening tool. You whould know something about the person before making contact. If I were seriously interested in a woman and she had written a book, I would read every word. -------- Just imagine, I could learn some of her interests, political outlook, future plans and whether not she has the ability to communicate effectively.

@Dale - Excellent point! I will have to remember that advice should the situation ever arise.

Dale Hodgins wrote:...whether not she has the ability to communicate effectively.

Then again, it's possible to have a great, though difficult, relationship with someone who doesn't communicate as effectively as you'd like. Depends what you're looking for - I personally no longer believe in checking off the boxes before pursuing a relationship. I may not know what I actually need, and I may miss out on something wonderful waiting for someone who never comes (or who comes, but has other ideas). Also, we grow through relationships, and the process is as important as the starting point.

I'm speaking from experience, here - remembering a somewhat volatile but very significant, often wonderful relationship, with someone who often didn't communicate well. But I found that by communicating my concerns without getting angry, communication did happen - a lot of the time, anyway. One thing I've learnt since then, though: the principles of "nonviolent communication" (NVC) are excellent and can help enormously with improving quality of communication. (There are books and websites about NVC, and I wrote a simple summary). So in hindsight, I can see how much the communication problem was a shared problem, and what I'm able to do in such situations, rather than just saying focusing on what the other person didn't do.

That was a bit of a digression - it just struck a chord . @Dale, I do like the idea of reading over someone's writings - on the one hand I'd be remembering that the online persona is just part of the person's personality, but it is a good window into the person's mind and passions.

thirty five redhead healthy what do you have in mind