Follow the rules
Many fora or bulletin boards have rules or guidelines that they ask the people using them to follow.
It’s important to remember that although a forum may be open to public view and even open to anyone to join in, it’s public as in “public house”, not as in “public right of way”. So the forum owners are perfectly within their rights to impose whatever regime they like. The people who like what the owners are doing, stick around. Those who don’t, generally move on quickly (and if they don’t, they may be chucked off – very often to the relief of the community that’s developed around that particular forum).
The golden rule is: if you don’t like it, you’re free to go somewhere else. Don’t waste your time complaining – they’re not going to change their rules just to suit a newbie. All you’ll do is annoy that particular community and possibly get a reputation for being a troublemaker.
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March 26th, 2007 at 16:33 UTC
On the subject of forum Netiquette, here are some ideas for future blog posts:
People who don’t read what’s already there but demand individual attention for their questions.
People who have a tizzy fit and start urgently contacting Admins/Mods personally about something unusual rather than giving you five minutes to fix the problem.
People who don’t read the FAQs and then post on an irrelevant board about how they don’t understand simple things, which have already been explained.
People who moan about using a free service, if it’s not all run to suit them and only them.
March 26th, 2007 at 17:17 UTC
What’s so hard about understanding that you should start a new thread for a new topic, but if a thread for it already exists, then chances are it’s most appropriate to post in the existing thread?
March 27th, 2007 at 14:08 UTC
While we’re on the subject of following the rules, how about twits who do the wrong thing and then say things like:
“I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to read the rules.”
Right then, so you thought the rules are there for everyone else to follow but don’t apply to you?
March 27th, 2007 at 14:26 UTC
It’s hard to believe the arrogance of some people, isn’t it? What they’re saying, in effect, is: “My time is more important than that of the mere mortals who run this forum, or of the other readers. The fact that I’m deigning to post on your forum (which is there purely for my convenience) at all should be enough for you.”
Funny how many of these people are journalists who post only when they’re desperate to get a story down and never give anything back… except a link to your website, if you’re lucky. (And even then they often get the URL wrong.)
March 27th, 2007 at 14:29 UTC
Yes, journalists are often guilty of that but others do it too. I wouldn’t be too harsh on them about the wrong URLs, though. That’s probably the fault of the editor or someone else in the production process.