I have been inviting friends to join iPeace, or also to read interesting discussions on this site. I have also invited Catalan friends who don't speak English to join the group I started here:
Catalans Per A La Pau (Catalans For Peace), and give them the URL
http://www.ipeace.me/group/catalansperalapau.
However, when they try to access that - or any other page on the site - they find that they have to sign up to iPeace in order to see it.
WHY???
We are SERIOUSLY limiting the amount of people joining this site if we don't allow them to surf around it and discover just how interesting it is BEFORE they have to sign up to join. And - in the case of the Catalans (or possible other non-English-speaking people), all the instructions for signing up are in English, so that UNLESS they see that there is an interesting group for them here IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE, why should they decide to join???
Let me make this point absolutely clear: Not a SINGLE ONE of my Catalan-speaking e-mail contacts has joined iPeace. I'm sure that SOME of them would have joined if they had been able to read that group description... And I'm sure that HUNDREDS of other people have tried to access other pages on iPeace, found out that they had to join in able to even READ the page, and just not bothered. Do we REALLY want to preach to the converted and not involve anybody else? I repeat: WHY ARE WE HIDING???
Another 2 rules that I don't like about iPeace that i want to comment about here:
a) You can't send a personal, private message to anybody who isn't already in your friends list.
b) We are now being restricted to 50 people maximum in our "friendship pending" list.
I am trying to organise and spread the word about iPeace and
The World March For Peace And Non-Violence particularly in Catalunya. This means that I have searched for all members who live in Catalunya, to get them to join the above-mentioned group. But I can only tell them about the group by sending them a message. And i can only send them a message if they have accepted me as a friend. Or I can send a VERY SHORT message in my invitation to them to BECOME my friend. But there are over 50 Catalan members of iPeace. And I now find that I can't invite ANYBODY to be my friend (for WHATEVER reason), because most of those Catalan members haven't (yet) accepted my friendship. Some probably are on holiday, others no longer look at their iPeace-related messages because they have become disillusioned... or have other things to do. So I am faced with a dilemma: Do I retract my offer of friendship after a few weeks, so that I can invite others to be my friends?
Or why not just change these restricting rules on iPeace?