Forum etiquette

It has become evident that we have members that don't seem to understand forum etiquette and treat this forum as if they were posting on Facebook. It has also occurred to me that most members are too young to remember the days of newsgroups before the advent of the worldwide web and so are not familiar with how high the bar can be set in terms of behaviors within such discussion groups. I also couldn't find any guidelines on this site others than the terms and conditions which broadly state the inappropriate uses of this site. So, I thought a general discussion would be useful and perhaps we could come to a mutual understanding of proper etiquette.

The first item that I would suggest is to read the other posts to see what has been said about your topic before posting, To give you an idea, in the days of newsgroup, it was generally viewed appropriate to spend a year lurking in the discussions, getting familiar with the many discussions before posting anything. I'm not suggesting that here, but do take some time reading the various discussions before assuming that you are going to enlighten on the membership with your particular point of view.

When you do decide to post, recognize that there are two categories of discussion: General and Cuddle Requests. If you want to cry out to everyone how you haven't been successful in your corner of the world finding anyone to fulfill your need for a cuddle and how somebody cute and attractive can contact you today, please post it in the Cuddle Request forum with all the others.

Spend a little time learning how the search function works and how to contact individual members who have a profile that suggests that they would be interested. Show a little respect in your message and you might be surprised. Perhaps read other things that this members has posted and learn a little about them, there are some members on here of very high caliber and you are lucky to be able to chat with them.

Do not keep bumping your post so that everyone will read it again, especially if no one found it interesting enough for a response the first time. Using bold type is the equivalent of yelling in a forum, generally a good way to drive away potential friends.

This is getting lengthy and I will stop my rampage so that others can add the comments (or not).
«1345

Comments

  • Thanks, @docgatorb! And for the bit of nostalgia - I didn't get in on those earlier forums but I have fond lurking memories. :-P
  • [Deleted User]Bles (deleted user)

    History is always a useful reference that never gets outdated. What has changed?

  • You sure do have a thing for thread necromancy.

  • image
    Thank you @hogboblin for teaching me that word.
  • @hogboblin That is funny. Does it help to drive a digital stake through it?

  • [Deleted User]2dogmom (deleted user)

    Can we discuss the etiquette of being kind? I find there is a group of members who quite regularly feel it necessary to ridicule, berate, etc. others who post. I’ve been privately told by at least half a dozen members they avoid the forum for this reason. How is that behavior helpful to being inclusive and building an open community?

    And, yes, I’m looking at you @hogboblin and @FunCartel to start...

  • edited November 2019

    @2dogmom

    Uh. How was I being unkind? There’s ample evidence of @Bles dredging up posts from years ago. Thus: thread necromancy.

  • Besides, I’m pretty sure there’s something in the rules about not bumping threads to keep them near the top. I imagine this would apply to threads that haven’t seen activity in millennia. It’s also considered bad form to regularly vent, ramble, and so on.

  • edited November 2019

    I briefly considered the bumping rule when I saw this thread.

    But it seems to me that @Bles posted here for sincere discussion. The bumping rule is in the spirit of preventing spam (e.g. wanting your thread to keep getting attention) which is why it's referenced inside the spam heading.

  • edited November 2019

    @Mark

    What about the bit about venting? While none of Bles’s posts are aggressive, they seem more self-indulgent than anything. The first page of the general forum could be confused for a diary.

    “History is always a useful reference that never gets outdated. What has changed?”

    This, I believe, can be categorized as rubbish (as detailed in the Rules thread). Not only does the statement blatantly contradict the following question, but it runs wild with a small bit of the OP’s post... while completely ignoring the point of the post! It’s baffling, and not at all conducive to discussion.

    Edit: I mean, the statement doesn’t even make sense. And what is meant by “What has changed”? In regards to what, exactly?

    This shouldn’t be that hard to parse.

  • edited November 2019

    My comment was just based on looking at this thread.

    I've now looked at the posting history of @Bless and so I do understand where you're coming from.

  • edited November 2019

    @hogboblin Thank you for saving me from pointing out the same thing. Resurrecting long dead threads IS poor etiquette.

    And to further bolster @hogboblin’s argument, just google thread necromancy. I knew what the definition of necromancy meant as a stand alone word, but I just learned that thread necromancy is a very real term describing the situation above.

  • Also, see “necroposting”.

  • Our necroposter was busy in the middle of this night alone resurrecting 9 threads all at least three years old.

  • Hmm, interesting. I just found out about something cool (and relevant to me) only because a forum post had been revived from the dead (aka May 2015).

    I totally get why bumping isn't cool if it's just used to push your own posts back to the top.

    But what if you find something new and interesting while you're rooting around the archives?

    I guess an alternative to necroposting is starting a new thread, but that means more duplicate threads. (See threads on erections and non-responses ad infinitum...)

  • [Deleted User]Bles (deleted user)

    @hogboblin Thanks for the new vocabulary: necroposting. I wasn't even aware I was doing that. My interest in going back to the old threads is to educate myself on the posting patterns of members in the 8th+ year history of this website. I wanted to immerse myself in the tone and spirit of the forum discussions of a few years ago. I wanted to give myself a reference point for comparison to the spirit and tone of the discussions in 2019. I wanted to understand what may have changed in the subject matter of the topics, the motivations behind some of the posts and a bit about the interests of the members who posted in these forums a few years ago as compared to 2019. I've subscribed to similar sites as this one and the discussion topics are far more varied and diverse and vigorously debated here than on those sites. Yet the spirit here is more academic than on any other site of it's nature. So I was very curious. I'm also very disillusioned with this site in general. Hence my desire to look back and gain a better appreciation of how the site has evolved in it's 8 year history. The education background and intellectual Calibre of the members have remained the same , more or less. The academic probing and thoughtful parsing and nitpicking of posts have increased while still continuing the tradition of the site. For the record I'm not about necroposting. I've started a few discussion threads of my own too. But I certainly accept your point that bringing up past threads without framing my own context for a conversation around an old topic is not really productive. Anyway, the above is my explanation for bringing up old discussion threads: necroposting if you will. What I really want to do is to start thread on ways in which the site has changed for the better or worse since it's inception. I think I will address that to the seasoned members of the community.

  • Personally, I like the resurrection of old threads. Please continue doing it. I'd rather see an old thread revived than a new thread created on an identical topic. As long as they are still relevant, I say go ahead and revive them. Just please don't revive the 'add three words to continue the story' thread.

  • [Deleted User]2dogmom (deleted user)

    @hogboblin I didn’t mean this post... I meant in general.

  • [Deleted User]2dogmom (deleted user)
    edited November 2019

    Also sent to me after my comment this morning... so make it 7 people...

    It’s not an open group if the forums are being dominated by a few people and folks are being bullied away.

  • edited November 2019

    I appreciate the concerns of a few people dominating and it is important we try and keep things generally peaceful.

    That said, I do think it's worth mentioning that open forums are inherently not suitable for everyone. They naturally encourage debate and controversial opinions. Some opinions offend some people which is normal when interacting outside your social circles. There are those that enjoy these interactions and those that prefer to just keep to themselves because it's not worth the energy expenditure.

    In my experience on websites like these, it's quite normal for only a small percentage of active membership to participate in a website's forum.

  • I would like to add that sometimes I can't be bothered by the likes of me so I avoid myself

  • 😂🤣😂🤣😆 @pmvines good choice 😜😜 I heard you're a real menace

  • [Deleted User]2dogmom (deleted user)
    edited November 2019

    @Mark debate and controversial opinions are one thing. Ridicule/mockery/poking fun for sport is another. I’ve seen both here and I pretty sure myself and most others are smart enough to know the difference.

  • edited November 2019

    I see the value in not making new threads for the same ideas, clogging up the forum, Valid point. I can see the the academic exercise in looking at the evolution of ideas and opinions over time, a valid endeavor. However as an innocent consumer of the forums in the am it is irritating to invest my time reading a bunch of posts on a subject only to at some point find out they are from 2015, and deleted users. Darn, there is time spent I can never get back. And this is not just this site but other forums as well. I would humbly suggest a timestamp with the forum title so the reader knows off the bat its from 2015. In the digital age that is an eternity, didnt we have pagers back then? I know @UKGuy posted today at 12:13 pm. Why can we not have a born on date for the thread right next to the name of the thread that we click on. Then when I sit with my morning coffee I will Know straight away someone went on a walkabout through the decades and filled the front page with his exploits and with said knowledge, no one gets hurt. :)

  • edited November 2019

    @2dogmom Baiting is against the rules so feel free to flag any such posts. Moderators will view these reports.

    I just ask that you only flag when you're confident. There's naturally a spectrum between poking fun and baiting, we might take action when it's clearly the latter. I make this clarification because frustratingly for the mods, it's very common for members here to frivolously report posts. For example, simply because the opinion happened to offend them rather than it being a breach of rules.

  • edited November 2019

    @snuggleme123 the thread has a date and time stamp as well as subsequent posts

  • yes it does once you open it, and i must train myself to look first. Just wondering if it were possible to have it next to the thread name as it appears on the home page. If not, no biggie, I will learn to look. Peace

  • Ah gotcha I see what you mean now

  • @2dogmom I agree. Sometimes in the joyous expression of cleverness, the mob ridicules someone with an honest and vulnerable point right on out of Dodge. Other times triggered folk bully and discipline others as though the playground belongs only to themselves. Not so fine a line between hilarity/poking fun and using someone's heart as a chew toy. The forum isn't for everyone. It's for those who have a thick enough skin to withstand the nasty bits, and that's probably fewer people than would like to participate if it weren't so Lord of the Flies. Not sure if there's a solution and as pussies and mommies, we may not have a whole lot of sway here, but I did want to echo your sentiment. I run groups online where there are standards in place and the depth of sharing is amazing because people feel safe. <3

Sign In or Register to comment.