Family Discussions that get Posted as Public Discussions; Off Topic and Spam messages

Here's my list of English phrases that I see turn up a lot in "public discussions" that usually indicate that the message should have been only sent to family members instead:

"...Happy Birthday..."
"...Happy Anniversary..."
"...birthday greeting..."
"...birthday card..."
"...party..."
"...graduation..."

"...Love,
senders_name"

...I can't wait to see you...

"...I hope your doing ok..."

"...Mom..."
"...Dad..."

Public Discussion Subject lines that contain the following phrases:

"...love..."

"...family reunion...'

"http://..."
"www."

"...RIP..." or "...R.I.P..."

Multiple exclamation points:
"...!!!!!..."

Hi

Randy,

I'm "following" this discussion to make sure it stays bumped up.

I wish we had a way to delete discussion threads that we have no interest in following, such as personal messages, languages we don't understand, and political views etc. It would make it easier to find discussions we want to follow.

Randy,
I would NOT want Geni to have a semi-AUTOMATIC tool to do this, but Noah seems to be partial to the idea of Discussion Moderators who would have such tools, as to change a Public Discussion to Family only (based on response from the person who started it). Delete discussions and such.

I think they are also planning to make all Family discussions the default, which would reduce much of this clutter.

Also we can try and "educate" people about these issues. I often post comments on such were relevant.

If I remember correctly they have also talked about having an extra discussion type parameter which you can change while create a new discussion topic where Family is the default choice.

This means they any new discussion topic by default will started as family group discussion and the more advanced users who knows what they are doing can start public discussions by changing this option.

Does anyone have any theories on why users start public discussions when they intend to start a family discussion?

The GUI for the boards aren't clear about who can see a public discussion vs. a family discussion. When you click "start a new discussion" for a public discussion it should tell you "this will be visible to all of your collaborators, google, etc"

@Noah,

Click on ANY profile, click on Discussions tab. There's your problem. The form to start a discussion there gives very little indication that it will start a Public discussion. On top of that the form there gives NO option to start a family discussion.

Ok here is an example of exactly what I'm talking about is the message at the end of this post. This is the text from a message posted today with the names removed.... the message below is obviously a private message but it got posted as a "Public Discussion". If you compare the text of the message with list of items in my 2nd post in this discussion thread you can see that it has all of the following items which I identified as typical signals that the post should be a private one for English speakers:
1) multiple exclamation points
2) The word "party"
3) A final salutation with the word "Love" in it.

There are many ways of reducing these posting to the wrong forum. My proposal was that to just parse the text of the message...If it looks like a private message then the software should help the user out by suggesting to them that they were about to post what appears to be a private message to all geni users. Geni wouldn't automatically force the user into a "family" vs "Public" discussion it would only point out with an extra dialogue box "Is this message only for your family group to view or do you want all user of geni.com to be able to view your message?"
Family Only All of Geni Cancel

--Randy

Here is the sample post that got posted as a public discussion today...

How cute is he?!!!!!! I hope all is well.
[JohnDoe]I hope you are doing okay. I know all too well the pain of a C-section, having has three myself. Just make sure you get your rest too!!! I can not wait to see all of you at the Christmas Party!

Love
[Jane Doe]

Randy,
is this specific case, I would add a THIRD option to your tool: Did you mean this to be a private MESSAGE?