The more I read these forums, the worse they get. There is no excuse to use bad grammar or poor spelling. It isn’t that difficult to string a coherent sentence together. Now, I’m not expert and I certainly don’t speak English that well, but when I post, I make an effort to include a purpose in my replies.
Many of you have read the Cyanide and Happiness cartoons from explosm.net, and I’d like to take their forum as an example of how to help solve this problem. http://forum.explosm.net/showthread.php?t=8644 is a link to the forum rules. Please read them before commenting.
This is just a suggestion, and I’d like to hear feedback on what other members of the community think about adopting some of these rules. I know that Gilby has made it a point for the community to moderate the forums, and I think that’s really great. However, I do think that it would greatly improve the quality of the forums if some of these rules were loosely enforced.
Ok, so I read the rules and think that they are somewhat benificial.
However, the free flow of opinions and information is what this Forum is all about. I personally gain knowledge and insight from almost every thread or post on this furom. Sure, the information or insight I get may just be “holy crap, is this person a moron” but if we all attack our lives with closed mines, where would we be.
I personally feel that one of the only rules we should adopt on this board, is posting things were they should be and seeing as you have posted a thread about Forum Rules in the one forum that asks us to be candid, “Just Coversation” and seeing as how this forum houses a thread that prides itself on DOUBLE POSTING, re. “MOST REPLIES”, I personally am not taking you seriously.
If this is about the rules on a unicycling forum board and it is serious, please post it in Sport. Rec. Unicycling.
I totally agree with this. Some members, especially some of the younger members (understandably) use “txt tlk” when writing out replies to threads. It really gets on my nerves when you are reading a thread and halfway through it there is a post made up entirely of gibberish. I know some people can’t speak english too well, but most non-english speakers make more of an effort than some of the others, that I know full well use english as their first language!
It would make reading the forums a more pleasent experience. Lately I’ve been put off of reading the forums because of the amount of “rubbish” threads springing up all over the place.
The forum rules set out by the explosm.net forum are solid. Sure, it’s a bit extreme to ban people, and that probably isn’t necessary, but the general concepts of trying to add to the discussion and write in a cohesive manner are good.
Another thing: Please try to spell things correctly when making new thread titles. It looks really sloppy when something is spelled wrong in the title.
I think you’re taking this the wrong way. I by no means want to put a stop to the Most Replies thread, or anything of the sort. I posted this in Just Conversation because it’s a topic that deserves a little bit of discussion, that’s not related to unicycling, but rather to the forums on which we discuss unicycling. If I posted this in RSU, you know as well as I do that there would be someone who would tell me that I posted this information in the wrong forum, as it has nothing to do with the sport of unicycling.
well problem with double posting in this forum, is that the edit button buggers off after a while.
As for proper english have you thought that not everyone is english? OK some kids speak weird, its not my fault if kids are badly educated these days.
As for spelling mistakes i make quite a few because i touch type and frankly i dont really want to re read what i just wrote when most of the time its to try to help someone.
I do see quite a few pointless threads like “unicycle thief” being spiderman or whatever, but really just dont read it if you dont care about it… thats what I do.
Personally i find these forums very nice and mature like. Much more so than other forums i have been active on recently.
I believe I mentioned this before, but my ideal setup would be for there to be no rules and have a system in place where each person can moderate a post or thread. Give it a + or -. Then using statistics and the user’s settings, the system would show the posts that the user would be most likely to want to read.
That is a way better solution than imposing rules. I’m not expecting people to type everything correctly or to stop making errors. It’s unrealistic. However, it would be nice to see at least a bit of capitalization and punctuation.
As far as content, I have no big problem reading the content of the poor comments, as long as I can physically read it without deciphering the text.
Perhaps eliminating the Submit Reply button, forcing a Preview Post before being allowed to reply? I know it’d be difficult to track down in the coding of the forum… ideas?
I half agree with you, I think you would do a good job at it…
It takes all of 15 seconds to skim over your post to check it for errors. There’s no way it needs to be rushed just to post it sooner. In fact, you’ll probably help someone more by writing more clearly.
Was someone volunteering to do the grunt-work of enforcing the proposed forum rules?
I believe part of why Gilby runs these forums the way he does is as an experiment in anarchy/responsibility. From that point of view, things work out pretty well most of the time. But I also believe Gilby leaves things relatively open because to do otherwise requires lots of constant, hands-on attention for no pay. Having volunteers to do this is great, but can they commit to the number of hours needed to make it work? For zero pay?
I am highly in favor of urging people to make an effort with their spelling and writing skills here, as well as keeping things on topic, posting in the proper forums, and not posting until after searching. My main idea, that I’ve proposed in the past, is to have a trial period for new members, during which they may read but not post, to get familiar with the “culture” around here.
The only rule I found helpful on the site sugarloafur linked us to is “Try to contribute to threads”. I put a post up some time back encouraging others to use the word “because” in their posts for the purpose of explaining their opinions. There are too many posts where people say “this sucks” or “that’s the best” without any explanation… enter Gilby’s suggestion.
This would help many unwary forum visitors from stumbling across posters who make “fluff” posts and do little more than confuse the issue at hand. Since there’s no real way to enforce any kind of forum rules (at least until there’s a way to stab people in the face through their web browser) this is the next best solution.
This rating system sounds kinda like what they have in place on Slashdot… I heartily endorse this plan.
In the past I’ve taken it upon myself to PM some of the exceptional cases on the fora, i.e. people who post no more than a “LOL” in response to an RSU thread, people who make outrageous claims with no evidence to back them up, etc. It was an exercise in futility. The recipients of my friendly PMs wouldn’t change their behavior for more than a week, if at all.
Impose all the rules you like, you are going to have one heck of a time changing the behavior of some of the mongoloids that frequent these fora.
Done and done. This is the best way to self-moderate given the existing tools on the fora, IMHO.
In my country, this is how we say HELLO! kisses blue on the left cheek kisses blue on the right cheek kisses blue on the left cheek
Ok, maybe you are in RSU. You will see, if you have read the entire RSU, that I am in it too. Almost 2 years ago to be exact and if you went back that far, you would see that double, triple, even quad. posting has taken place.
I find Sport, rec. to be where the meat of this whole board is and there is another Moderation forum in here as well. The title of this forum is “Just Conversation” Leads me to believe that’s what i’ll get, not rules and regulations. If I wanted to conform, I would sell all my unicycles, stop coaching figure skating professionally and get a real job like all the other respectable folk.
I’m interested in what everyone has to say. I don’t want to ignore certain people, all I would like to do is simply be able to understand what they’re trying to get across in their cryptic message. Is it really that difficult to look at what you’re writing for five seconds before hitting that ‘Submit Reply’ button? I’m not picking out one specific person here, just an observation.
