Where is COSMO PLAVIX????

Cosmo got a warning that he was sending too many share letters out and Current had complaints. Apparently some maladjusted person without a delete on their computer complained. So he took his stuff and left. It is a loss for all of us because someone is a big fat jerk.

why did he desert the rest of us though.... :(

I think because he is hurt.

i understand that. Ive felt it sooo many times here... when they tell u stuff, and warn you bout gettin kicked out.. it kinda hurts in ur heart somewhere, but hey they don't owe any loyalties to us

n I stay because I like you guys, and I enjoy it,

not thinking if they want me here or not

I love this project, a pesar de todo.

maybe its just their job, u no...

But they didn't kick him out, did they? No warning or anything? That's silly, I always liked what he posted.

Yes, they have to respond to complaints. Anyone that would complain about too many share letters is more than petty..

No, they just embarrassed him. Cosmo is a good person and posted things he wanted to share with us. A bright light in a sometimes dreary world.

If it was his choice to leave then I hope he has a change of heart comes back.

I'm new to all this and haven't seen too much of the policing you guys are talking about. It's one of the things I like about this forum...it feels like it's mostly self-regulated. Could he really get admonished for sharing things? I got a lot of them, and always appreciated him going out of his way to send them to me. Who would complain about that? Seems the sensible thing would to just delete them or ask to be taken off his list.

But God knows there are people out there who are...um...less than sensible.

Well, if he sent you a share his email address is on it, look it up and send him some cheer. I'm sure he can use a little.

That is ridiculous - this is supposed to be a place where we can be free of stuff like this, where we should be comfortable to speak our mind..cosmo please come back....whoever complained should be ashamed.

Bravo, AngelinaH!

I just sent him an email telling him that he might not be Elvis but Current without his songs and guitar playing would be like the 60's and 70's without Peter Paul and Mary or the Kingston Trio.

Unfortunately, if people have the email notification turned on here at Current and they are connected with a lot of people, they can get 20 or 30 emails a day.

I told Cosmo there would ALWAYS be room in my inbox for anything he wanted to share.

I suggest that EACH of you let him know whether you want him to share things with you or not because you CAN go to the search bar and type in Cosmo and it will look up his posts and it will allow you to look at what he has added and sort it by newest items.

I can certainly understand the flip side of having a lot of "connections" and getting an inbox so full that you can't keep up. Then comes the problem of shutting off ALL email notifications. I think they have an ignore feature that would accomplish the same thing but since I haven't tried it, I don't know.

One other suggestion to those of you who have only one email account is to open a free one from Hotmail, Yahoo or another web-based email provider and use it just for Current.com connections.

Whichever you choose is up to you but in my book, a nicely-worded email or private message to Cosmo asking him to take you off his connections list would have been the proper way to approach the subject.

To the the single person or the small minority (and it would be VERY small) who used the LAZY and RUDE way to express that by FLAGGING Cosmo, please accept my most heartfelt RASPBERRY!

The rest of us who miss him should let him know personally by private message if you want to be in his "share with others" group so he doesn't have to worry about offending one or two curmudgeons. And by the way, if he does what 99.9% of us want him to do and decides to come back, you can still be a Cosmo fan and ask him not to send you a share notice if you do have a lot of other stuff in your inbox. Just let him know why.

There are MANY here who are delighted to see his contributions and want him back.

So, Cosmo, if you are checking in, there are many of us who miss YOU and what you add here at Current.

The people on this page are some of the best. I'm proud to call you friends.

First of all, let me say that all of us here at Current are very sad to see CosmoPlavix leave.

It's true that we've received flags about overuse of sharing. It may not be clear to many, but oversharing can be considered spam. This is clearly a gray area, and we are working on a better way to clarify this. Because it's such a tricky issue, we decided the best thing to do would be to send an email to our most active sharers giving them a heads up about the situation and advising that they take extra care when sharing with so many people so frequently.

Unfortunately, Cosmo decided to request that we remove his profile from the site. Although this wasn't our intent with the email, we respect his decision and we're sad to see him go.

Steph
Current.com Community Team

SGWhite, Why have the share option, if overuse is a problem? If I get a bunch that I'm not interested in, I delete them. I don't see the problem. Cosmo felt like he was a pest and was embarrassed. That shouldn't have happened.

I understand the sheer magnitude of issues that go with helping to moderate a message board but an email to the flagger(s) with instructions in LARGE BOLD PRINT on HOW TO USE THE IGNORE FEATURE just might have been a better way to handle this issue.

Now that I've had more time to study the forensics of this "issue" that Current felt compelled to pursue, I think they could have avoided it completely. I have now formed a more judgmental opinion. (Who would have thought I'd ever be judgmental?)

I'll continue. Based on looking at my "account page", I assume that any flagger(s) could have gone to their "account" page and put cosmo's name in the ignore box and the flagger(s) could have accomplished the same thing that Current did ONLY it would have been much more "SURGICALLY-PRECISE" in nature.

Can someone from Current please tell me why a macro or readily available cut and paste message like what I just suggested couldn't have been sent to the flagger(s) instead sending Cosmo a message that actually could have and DID infringe on my ability to know about the content he posted?

The bottom line is that we ALL know Cosmo's contributions to this board have been positive but we ALL don't know the history of the flagger(s).

If the flagger(s) was a garden variety troll(s) or someone with a bone to pick, then IMNotSoH opinion, the "issue" should have been handled in the manner I just suggested.

It certainly seems that there were two ways to handle this and that Current did not choose the proper way.

Please correct me if the matter could not have been handled in the way I suggested. It will give us all better insight into just how Current will choose to handle such issues in the future.

Thank you.

Excellent problem solving Inofuilwell.

sgwhites: you've always been fair. I'm suggesting instead of regretting Cosmo's decision that perhaps Current can regret how it was handled to Cosmo and extend an invitation from Current, and all of us, for him to return might be appropriate. We would love to have him back.

Cosmo was cool, had good things to say. I enjoyed getting his share letters.

Okay,. i got an email from him. phew! that was weird and scary! so, they didn't kick him off, he decided to leave. I understand. He'll still be floating around the internet and posting comments on my blog (if i have time to post anything myself!) www.screamingmessenger.blogspot.com. BTW, I've missed you guys and current so much! Business has been overwhelming, so I havent had any spare time..but i'll be back!

hey cosmo this is sickinjersey and ive been sick in jersey lately but i got all the threads on my cell phone just say yo sick in jersey!!!!!

@Chique: We encouraged Cosmo not to leave and let him know that we appreciate his contributions to the site. We hoped he would reconsider his decision. But since he still wished to remove his account, we respect that decision.

@Marilynn: Sharing is an important function on Current, but like anything on the internet, it can be misused. We want to make sure that we strike the right balance between allowing people to share information, and protecting them from an overwhelming amount of email. We don't think any of our most active sharers were acting maliciously, however, this did point out a need to improve our system and make people aware of the importance of responsible sharing. We realize that there are some issues with the ability to block someone from sharing with you, and we're working on those now.

@Inofuilwell -- thanks for your insights. Mediation often requires that we address both parties. CosmoPlavix had no idea that his sharing activity had become spammy to some in the community, and unfortunately those that flagged his shares were having trouble finding a way to opt out of receiving large amounts of spam in the form of well-intended shares. We felt it would be unfair to CosmoPlavix not to at least make him aware of the situation, but we had no idea that he would decide to leave because of our heads up.

It goes without saying that we contacted the flaggers as well, and guided them through their options on the site. And as Steph mentioned, this scenario pointed out the need for us to improve both the visibility and the functionality of our blocking system, so our team is setting to work on this ASAP.

I never figured out how to "share" something on Current (I never really tried, though) but got lots of items shared with me. Not everything was interesting to me and somethings even got my redlight, but many of the links were interesting to me. I admittedly delete some without following the link, depending on my mood. Inofuilwell's idea about setting up a dedicated Current.com email address is a good one, but I wouldn't recommend Hotmail to my worst enemy and yahoo is ok, but not on the same level as gmail (gmail allows 20mb attachments). I use my primary email address for Current and that works fine for me, although I guess I don't have that many connections.

Perry, if you're reading this, I hope you're well and maybe we'll see CosmoPlavix back on Current.com someday. May peace be with you, Cove

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks Steph.

Who is Cosmo Plavix? I'm relatively new to Current so I'm not familiar with him. He sounds legendary...

Cosmo, if you are out there, this is Tom. I wanted to tell you that we at the Current News Department have been using many of your clipped stories in pilots throughout the development of our new news pod. Contributions like yours and actually from many others in this thread have been paramount in our development. Thank you for uploading. Please continue.

Cosmo--I Googled you when I hadn't heard anything for a while....and you are every bit as interesting out there on your myspace...still luv your music, and your artwork is fascinating. Missyou much!!

You know, I was just talking to Cosmo tonight on the phone and I think he was more than a little hurt by Current's "warning". Jesus, Stephanie, can you be any more cruel? I know...I know...just doing you're job... blah, blah, blah! Okay, so he posts all this crap online. I get it too. Big f..... deal! The man has no life presently, so give him a f...... break fer Chrissakes! I've known Cosmo since 1969 (yes, he's that old! Deal with it!) and none of you are likely to find a more penetrating intellect or a more brutally honest person about himself or the world around him. I've learned more about myself and how to be a real person than any sage, shrink or scammer could ever convince me of. The man is a virtual god and I love him for it. I have to stop because I'm drunk and I have to piss. Viva Cosmo!

Welcome back Cosmo!

We love you Cosmo!

I can't belive I've just heard this!

I have been wondering! Not like he was just sending us useless stuff or anything! e told us about the US goverment and issues and other important matters!

Just to add cosmo, it's fine, I got told when I was flaged for hollering at some person who wasn't an enviromentlist!

So glad you're back Cosmo! Please, continue sharing your posts