Great. Thanks. Let me know when it rolls in.
No emergency on my part. I saw my doctor and he says I will live, at least, till the check I gave him clears.
Jeff Whitcomb
2100 Bowling Green
Denton, TX 76201
800-969-9368
cell-903-203-9463
āThe only good sense is one of humor, without it all the others are worthless.ā JCW
[email protected]
No!!! Do anything but rename the thread. Its dedicated to the memory of my class where six of eight people stuck their heads in the sand and I missed the honorarium. A couple of days before my classes I send an email to cancel early if you canāt make it. I also put a link to this thread to show the problems.
No worries. I was only making a funny at the thread drift and how similar it was to a chan siteās thread drift.
Yeah, I know. Being on Talk, I just have to overreact.
Of course text on a digital screen does not have the full reflection of oneās voice so I can see how humor sometimes fails online.
Though this reminds me of this meme I found:
Maybe redirect to /dev/null ?
Could.close.it ā¦
Spoilsport 
What percent of Talk should be redirected to /dev/null?
Hmmmā¦if you are just playing along, then my playing along answer would probably be something self-deprecating like ājust my posts should do itā.
If you were being more serious, then honestly I am not sure, but Iād say at least 10%, probably closer to 20%, and maybe as high as 30% of posts donāt add anything to the particular thread/topic in which they were posted. I.E. if they just suddenly disappeared at the moment of posting them the specific threads, or even the overall forums taken as a whole, would not be any worse off for it.
Not really serious.
The answer is probably that I should read less.
ā¦scan while simultaneously cranking up the noise filter.
I thought the filter was working until I tried to understand the honorarium issue yesterday. I may need the heavy duty filter.
After a couple years of respite, Iām back in DMS and teaching electronics classes. Its great to see that many of the old traditions are still in place. Unfortunately, the tradition of disrespect of teachers is still alive and well. Last night I had a class that had six registered plus two who I accepted after the class was full. Three of the registered folks plus the two that I accepted did not show - no early or late cancellations, no messages, no apologies.
Many teachers try to minimize this by various techniques well documented above. These work with varying degrees of effectiveness but all have one thing in common: they put additional load on the teacher. @jphelps has one of the most interesting. He keeps up with no-shows and registrations require his approval after he checks his list of previous no-shows. If I start that method, I now have five names at the top of my list.
On the other hand, the tradition of respect and appreciation of teachers by most people has never been better. We had five attendees and a lot of fun even as I slipped considerably on time management.
I believe one of the main reasons for the incredible success of DMS has been the teachers and the processes that keep classes rolling out.
If you have not taught a DMS class, please do not let the actions of a few discourage you. The rewards of teaching far exceed the possibility of receiving an honorarium.
Iām sure this has been proposed, discussed or argued before, but Iād be fine with a system that required a refundable deposit in advance. Perhaps $10-20. It could be something escrowed by DMS on a continuous basis and as long as you donāt no-show classes, you can register freely. If you no-show a class your deposit is forfeited to the instructor and you need to make another deposit in order to register for any new classes.
@mdredmond I was glad to give you your first ālikeā on this because I appreciate your throwing out a suggestion but Iām not a strong supporter of it. A strong advantage of the current system is that it is so easy to sign up and take a class. A strong disadvantage is documented in many of the 97 replies above. I did my post this morning, bumping an old string to the top, not as a grumble to remind people of the problem of no-shows and to show newer teachers of various techniques, also documented above, that other teachers use.
This is the reason I stopped teaching a while ago. In one case I bought lumber for the class, it was a one-board birdhouse class, and only one student showed.
Now I wonāt teach a class without a student having to pay $10 or more in the registration. So far the classes Iāve taught recently are full and almost everyone shows and when they didnāt the students notified me of their reasons for missing the class. (Family emergency or work related absences)
If the student doesnāt have any monetary investment in registering then not showing up somehow doesnāt have a cost to them. I know it is very disingenious but it is the world we live in today.
I think something like what I proposed wouldnāt make it any harder to sign up. That deposit I suggested would just be something on permanent deposit subject to forfeiture - not something you have to pay each time you sign up. Current sign-up mechanism wouldnāt be affected except that the system would check that you had a valid no-show deposit sitting in escrow.