At the risk of breaching 2 and 7 almost immediately, I think this is a good set of guidelines to abide by here - thanks for posting them, Graham.

I know people flippantly dismiss Ron's moderation of the Forge as heavy handed, but it works to keep the site productive and focused. As people have said elsewhere, this is a working site, aimed at helping people design and publish games. A friendly, social atmosphere is fine whilst we do that, but we shouldn't lose sight of the true goal of the site.

These are all guidelines for good communication on an internet forum. They go beyond something like the Forge and extend into the realm of simple, decent, honest communication between individuals. However, we are not the Forge and while these guidelines are very valuable and positive, I think they should allow us to continue with our own 'style', whlst working in an an atmosphere that uses these guidelines.

A particular focus on avoiding 'internet debating' is certainly a positive thing. The line by line refutation of peoples posts is something we should work to discourage. Respond to someones post as a whole, see what the spirit of it is and read the words in a charitable fashion. What is the best, most positive interpretation you can make of that persons words? Take that interpretation.

A useful suggestion might also be limiting the use of the edit button as well. This would contribute to people taking more time over their posts and thinking more clearly before responding. Perhaps we could set the edit function to work for, say, an hour after posting, to allow the correction of spelling mistakes and so forth.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

If someone has a disagreement that is wrong, surely it should be allowable to point out (politely and calmly as provided for my other etiquette rules) in what ways they are wrong, how they may have got the wrong end of the stick and so on? Otherwise how can we truly discuss anything? Sure you don't want antagonism on a grand scale, but there has to be a point where you can say 'No, that's not what I mean' or 'No, I don't think that's the case at all and here is why.' Likewise you don't want people saying 'that's a load of crap' without backing it up with solid reasoning.

I also can't help liking line-by-line replies for one simple reason: it's a lot clearer to see what the poster is reacting to. That's why they are used in the first place after all. I don't think there's any harm in the practice, it's when people misinterpret the desire for clarity as a form of open hostility, which it isn't by nature. Maybe some people have occasionally used line-by-line in hostile posts, but that's just because it makes making multiple points at a time so much easier, not because it's an angry act in and of itself. For example, I often use line-by-line posts in order to easily and clearly combine replies to more than one person in a single posting. It's so much easier to read when you don't have to scroll back over five or six posts to find out what the post author is referring to.

I'd also personally like to ask for a little more moderation in the use of strong language. Swearing has its place within the language as an emphatic, but when it is overused it loses its meaning and can lead to people interpreting it as anger when it isn't necessarily. I used to know one kid who literally put the word 'Fucking' in every sentence he said regardless of content, sometimes as many as three or four times. It was an extremely tiring experience talking to him as a result. So by all means swear when it's in context or you really want to emphasise something, but I don't think it's necessary or useful to swear as a matter of course when there are perfectly good words in the language that serve the same purpose with less chance of antagonism. I think this ought to be covered by the 'Writing a Letter' clause myself.

Ash

Graham, if we have a problem with another person's response, rather than asking that they adhere to the rules that another forum demands of their posters, we should probably just assume that the format of their response isn't meant as an attack.

If my response in the other thread truly upset you, I'm genuinely sorry. I never imagined responding in that manner would cause upset of any sort.

Graham/Pooka,

So there was a minor contretemps over responses and styles in another thread. Fine. For the sake of harmony, let's all forget about it and not mention it again. No blame, no bad blood. Everyone moves on, it was a minor glitch in communication.

Thanks
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

read line by line replies charitably. ;)

+++
JoE
+++

Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....

I agree about the line by line replies, they are a lot more helpful than the letter style posts.

I'd also agree about the language, if it was up to me I'd have less swearing :)

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

To clarify, line by line refutation of someones post is like interrupting someone to pick over every nuance of what they are saying during a conversation. But, that is by the by.

As I previously mentioned, we are not the Forge and while these are good guidelines for communication, we should find our own way that increases the amount of effective communication and gives a comfortable environment. As we grow, it's useful to discuss and then archive somewhere, this kind of thing. And by archive, I mean "Put on a page where they can be referenced", rather than "Put them away and forget about them."

As for less swearing, f$£% that for a &*^@$£g game of soldiers!*

Cheers
Malcolm

* Meant in jest, obviously.

Contested Ground Studios

Having recently got sucked in by a Troll on another forum, I can do nothing but agree with the general theme and mood of Graham's proposals, without going through a line by line critique... ;)

I don't see an issue about being social, without socialising. As long as people Stay On Target. Something similar was mentioned in another thread (1118), and sorry Graham, but I have to quote your oxymoron to illustrate the point:

“Nicely put, Neil. We're here to work, not for idle social chat. By the way, it's your birthday, right? Happy birthday! Have a drink on me!”

Made me smile! It also shows that you have to have some level of social interaction – rather like everyone’s day job. I work in an office and if the entire day was work discussions without the human factor I’d be suicidal by now. You can remain focused, while still going about the task in a “social” manner.

You’re right Graham, I don’t have anything against your friend (and was blissfully unaware that you had any – ha ha), but the wording I used, being somewhat childish, I thought would illustrate my views on the product in question, without being too inflammatory. I feel this demonstrates that it doesn’t matter how magnanimous and beautifully couched an author thinks his post sounds, its up to everyone else (who reads it) to view it charitably and not get cross or become reactionary.

A couple of Mr Stokes posts made my eyes widen and then I thought about it for a second and realised that’s probably how I sound to other people most of the time…

Of course I’m not a “member” here (I’ve not got that loving feeling of inclusion or think I’ve earned any stripes yet, still early days). It does remind me of that infamous member thread though. I’m not sure if, I personally, am of the right temperament for this site, or if I’m adding any value. So everything I’ve said above might be hogwash. But “Share and Grow” is my motto. Feel free to let me know nicely if I should shut and go away.

In summary, sure, stay focused on the job at hand, but I’d personally retain a certain informal dress-down-day attitude, or everyone’s in danger of taking the fun out of it. No one’s making these games in order to retire on the profits are they?

Gaz

PS What's the correct tag for using a url link to another thread?

PPS I've just noted the title of the post that was automatically generated and thought I'd let it stand as it made me laugh... :)

OK, I'm generally digging this.

My own 2p worth for consideration is as follows (as ever, my 2p is not worth more or less than anyone else's. Except Gaz, everything that motherfucker says is bollocks! ;^P )

I think Graham's summary and guidelines are pretty much the way people ought to post here. I'd go so far as to suggest that they actually are to be adopted as the recommended way to communicate here. Possibly as rules: we've tried having an open, egalitarian approach to running this forum and while it worked very well when there were only a handful of people here, at the moment I'm not posting here because this place is in danger of becoming just another web forum with a poor signal/noise ratio.

Unless someone tells me not to in the next couple of hours, I'm going to re-edit that post to make a "This is how you post here" document. That should then be locked and stickied at the top of all the separate sections. It's all very well giving people a lost of guidelines and dos and don'ts when they sign up, but a lot of people either don't read them or are already members who've drifted in and out of active use. Plus, people expect to see any forum rules as a sticky at the top of a forum, so that's where they'll look for them and that's where they ought to be.

As for line-by-line responses... The reasons these are objectionable is that they are usually a tactic used to argue and "win" threads rather than to discuss valid points. When you respond to anything here, you need to consider whether your post actually adds anything to a debate or whether you're just posting to prove that you are right and that the other person is wrong. If it's the latter, DON'T FUCKING POST. It's OK to disagree, in fact it's encouraged, and it's fine to let someone know you disagree. But there's a fine line between a discussion and an argument. Learn to tell the difference and everything will be groovy. Also remember that 90% of what we discuss here is utterly subjective and therefore a matter of opinion. As such there are no right or wrong answers and no point arguing about it.

I still think that people should have to use their real names when they sign up for this site. Were it my decision I'd force that and hand moderate all sign ups so that people had no choice. I mean someone signing up as "Brian Jones" is fine, so is "Brian", B Jones" or "Brian J". But "Trollbutcher667" is right fucking out. Basically, as long as your user name at least contains what people actually call you in real life, then that's fine. This, hopefully, encourages people to realise that they are not just some faceless anonymous entity posting with other nameless, faceless anonymous entities. We're all real people, I can't see any valid reason to post under a pseudonym.

But that's a different debate, and not the one we're having right now.

...was that I've noticed a clash of communication styles recently.

Older members, such as Malcolm, Rich and myself post in a Forgey style: considered, occasional, businesslike, usually once or twice a thread. Neil Gow, Gaz and various new members use a similar style.

There's an influx of newer members (including David, Pooka and Ash, OK, Ash isn't new), who post in a more quickfire, fast-to-respond, argument-based Internet-bulletin-board style, sometimes many times in a thread.

There's nothing "wrong" with either style. But I think it is causing a clash.

To people who are used to the Forge style, the faster style looks argumentative and unbusinesslike, with, as Rich says, a high signal-to-noise ratio. I imagine that, to people used to the faster style, the Forge style is equally irritating.

So, anyway, that's why I posted: to suggest that there's two different styles of communication going on, which I think is leading to difficulties.

As a slight tangent: we occasionally have conversations about how to fit in to the forum and contribute usefully. If you're someone who wonders about that: I believe that a major factor in how helpful you're perceived as being is the style in which you post.

Graham

I think this is a purely psychological effect that some people who've experienced said tactics have developed due to the method's misuse by certain troll-like individuals. The method can and is used quite validly, but some people respond badly to it because they percieve it in itself as being an aggressive act when it can be a useful tactic if the intention behind it is a good one.

To put the other side of the argument, one of the recent contretemps on these forums was caused by a reply which was taken out of context due to unfortunate timing. A suitable quote/response could have actually alleviated the problem in this case.

I don't intend to belabour this point any further than this, but I'd urge people to hate the trolls, not the method. The method itself has valid and useful applications. If we're not going to allow this kind of response, we might as well disable the quote tag entirely.

Ash

Ash, fair point. Let me clarify.

What I mean by a line-by-line post is: you get the other person's post, and then you go through line-by-line, responding to every single point they made.

Judicious use of the quote tag, however? Absolutely fine (in my opinion). Pick out one or two quotes you want to respond to and respond. Fine.

Let me give a very bad example of line-by-line responding. Ash, I'll use your post, and bear in mind I don't mean what I say, below. So...

I think this is a purely psychological effect that some people who've experienced said tactics have developed due to the method's misuse by certain troll-like individuals.

It's not "purely" psychological. Trolls use these tactics because they work.

The method can and is used quite validly, but some people respond badly to it because they percieve it in itself as being an aggressive act when it can be a useful tactic if the intention behind it is a good one.

It can be used validly, but it often isn't, and has historically led to major wars.

To put the other side of the argument, one of the recent contretemps on these forums was caused by a reply which was taken out of context due to unfortunate timing. A suitable quote/response could have actually alleviated the problem in this case.

Sure, there's always an exception, but the majority of the time, that's not how it works.

I don't intend to belabour this point any further than this, but I'd urge people to hate the trolls, not the method. The method itself has valid and useful applications. If we're not going to allow this kind of response, we might as well disable the quote tag entirely.

The method might have useful applications, but the majority of the time, it leads to poisoning and death.

_____

Do you see what I mean? I'm adding nothing to the conversation, just knee-jerk responses. Nobody's done it, to that extent, on this forum, of course, although you'll see it on others. And we've verged on that style of knee-jerk, refuting responding

Quoting is fine. Line-by-line responses that add nothing: not fine.

Graham

Quite so, your example is full of kneejerk responses, but it's the kneejerk responses that are at fault, not the format. So to summate, why don't we just say 'no kneejerk responses' instead of 'no run-in posting'?

Ash

Yuck. Sounds like a bit of a slippery slope to me. Rehashing some lengthy rules about posting instead of expecting people to behave reasonably.

If we think we *do* need some guidelines, personally I'd like to see severing of the explicit Forge link, as that site/community is irrelevant to me, and being less explicitly encouraging toward swearing, which should be a strategically emloyed exception rather than a rule.

What we *should* have, and if it exists I've never seen it, is info people can find pretty easily about how this site is run and moderated. For instance, it came as a minor surprise to me that Rich was empowered to do the stuff he's talking about. That could easily go along with a brief bit about, "and we expect you to behave (which in broad terms means x, y and z) or else".

Tim Gray
Silver Branch Games
www.silverbranch.co.uk

I find this ironic, because you seem to have read 'line by line response' as equalling, 'some troll having a stupid argument' whereas I was thinking of the very useful feedback you gave me about Solipsist, using line by line replies to many points, not so long ago.

Lets keep it simple. If we have a rule about replies it should be "don't act like an ass and enter into a fight / flame with another user. If you want to do that take it to email". Having rules about the *style* in which we write our replies just seems like overkill to me.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Well, I'm hoping to get around to reading every post that's gone on while I've been in Ireland, but I did have a thought while I making my way to the con early on Sunday morning. I think it's an achievable goal for myself, and I hope everyone else will give it a go too.

Post less, Contribute more.

That's an interesting concept Gregor, but would you mind expanding on it a bit? Actually, I think it'd make a good new thread, rather than diversify this one too far.

Ash

One technique I've always found useful is that the person starting a thread can and should set rules for that thread. So, if they say "no line-by-line commentary", "no criticism of system X", or "these people please don't post on this topic", then it can concentrate the debate and be useful for the original poster.

If you can't post to such a thread without breaking the rules, don't comment. There's nothing to stop you posting a new thread which covers a substantial but tangential issue (as long as it's not a passive-aggressive response to the original restrictions!)

Simon Rogers
http://www.profantasy.com
Blog - http://sjrlj.notlong.com