Using forums

Rainbow · Post by **Rainbow** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 9:45 pm

Oooooh....Tiff, that's just plain cruel what that person did to you! I wouldn't want to kill you! Why? When they've just met you over the Internet?

I kind of singled you out because you post more on the forum and I also don't know how the other two mods feel about Mamoru.

Edit: You know, there was some old story/fable about a family where the kid never talked until he was 6 and said the oatmeal was too cold. The parents asked "Why didn't you talk before?" and the kid says "Because everything was fine before." Maybe people don't say anything about the normal posts because they're not bothered by them, but then they get angry and speak up when they're scolded for breaking a rule?

Akarui Kibuno · Post by **Akarui Kibuno** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 4:41 am

Well, what I feared happened a little ^^;; but it's been resolved (or so it seems) so "phew" I'm relieved.

n_n

I'll add something, just an example of something I don't like. You'll see how I would love to moderate here instead of the French board I mentioned o.O;;;;

Problem:

There's a con in July and some members are going. So we made a topic with pictures so that we can recognize each other.
One member says (in short) : useless crap, you're nuts, that's stupid

What happened:

One mod said it was rude to say that. One admin said it was rude, too. But they didn't say who they were (the members don't know who are the mods and admins. they don't care o.O) . I replied, saying "As an admin, I say this isn't appropriate and if you don't think a thread is useful, don't reply!" all in caps and and the "don't reply" in bold letters.

And what happens ? The same mod who had "scolded" me about being "mean" starts again, saying it should have been done via PM.

T_T Might be true, but then again, PM doesn't seem to work on our board ¬_¬

To the ones who contributed until now, thank you.

Just a note to Rainbow: I'm surprised of the reason why you chose to adress Tiff indirectly in the topic. I'm sure no mod here, but this particular issue should have been dealt with directly with her via PM. Simply because my initial post said "Say how Tiff's attitude made SMU what it is" and you come and mention a specific problem. Tiff is not the kind of person who won't like someone because the person's like/dislike are different than hers: she's the follow-the-rules type of person. I'm not attacking you, Rainbow, don't worry. I just felt I needed to say that and I shall add another pet peeve...

- When some people feel to act like mods and do that rather rudely (sp ?) .

- When some people feel the need to defend someone when the person having the "problem" doesn't speak about it.

Rainbow · Post by **Rainbow** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 4:46 am

Yeah, I probably should've, but I wasn't really thinking about that when I posted.

Sailorasteroid · Post by **Sailorasteroid** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 5:47 am

I never got around to talking about some of the individual issues on forums, and which ones irk me and which ones don't, so I'll do that now:

-Bump posting and double posting. There are times when it needs to be done, depending on the forum. If you ask something like, "Where can I find X?" and no one responds for a week or so, and you think there are people around who haven't read it, a bump might be warranted. It's more useful depending on how many people are actually on the forum. Also, if a discussion ends, and two weeks later you have something else to say, and you just happen to be the last poster, I think it should be a new post, which bumps the topic, rather than an edited add-on which doesn't.

-Images in signatures. These bother me. Not so much for the loading times as for the mess they make of a page when they make it twice as long as it might be, and add horizontal scrolling to boot. Plus most of the images aren't what you'd call nice to look at, and it stands to reason that most of them will clash with whatever the background of the site is. Also, animated images. Anything moving on the screen is distracting to the eye.

Non-sTaNdArD |=|/|6|_15|-|. Should be a capital offense. ^_^ Grammar, usage, spelling, and punctuation are not just arbitrary sciences. They exist for two reasons. The first is accuracy. There's a bestselling book out right now called "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves." The title comes from an old joke about a panda who has a meal, fires a gun, and then goes away, then comes back and cites an encyclopedia which describes the panda with that title. One extraneous comma in this case changes a statement on dietary habits into one of murder. The second reason is ease. When we read, we do so by taking in whole sentences, sometimes more, at once. (Try reading this sentence one letter, or even one word, at a time and see how long it takes you.) If a piece of writing has a spelling or grammatical error, it's going to slap a brake on your eyes and make you reread until you get it. If u r happily reading and something comes up that's nonstandard, you get thrown out of rhythm.

-Self-promotion. Again, depends on the forum. If there's a few posters and a lot of lurkers, advertising one's site or work might be something people want to see. It also makes a difference if it's for-profit promotion or just general come-to-my-cool-site talk.

-Back-and-forth posting. Can be useful; depends on the posters. One-liners back and forth are a waste of space, but if you've got a decent-length post responding to another decent-length post, and on and on, then even if they're all one right after the other with no time lag, it generally looks OK.

-Overquoting. That is, quoting a 5-paragraph post, just to respond to point 5. (or worse, point 2) This irks me because it seems to just be laziness. The poster is saying that he can't be bothered to block and cut text to make his own post better.

-People who think forums are Google. This is the person who asks, "Hey, does anyone know where I can find a cast list for PGSM?" as his first recourse when he wants information. Iit's understandable when the question is something that can't be easily slapped into a search engine, for example, "Which anime conventions are going to have Sailormoon panels or parties?" That's something that would take a lot of research, coordinating all sorts of information, and someone might already have such a list.

-The Same Damn Thing Again. This one is pretty Sailormoon-specific, but every time I go to a forum, there's the "Who's your favorite character" topic, and the "What's your favorite season" topic and the "Dubbie or Subbie?" topic. It's been beaten to death and back again. The problem is that for every genuinely interesting piece of reasoning on one of those, there's about 50 "Saturn is kewl cause she's teh GOTH!" posts. It happens with other topics too, but SM is definitely the worst.

-Off-topic-ness. Just about every forum has an OT section--is it so hard to figure out what goes there? That being said, I think digression is the root of innovation and I like a lot of OT in with my topic. Except for. . .

-Politics. Almost always gets heated, and no one's ever convinced. It's also very dehumanizing--any time one person disagrees with another, they must be in thrall to the Bush administration/the Clinton administration/Rush Limbaugh/the Liberal Media/insert name of political activist group here. No one actually comes up with their own political opinions.

Anything I've missed? ^_^

Tempest · Post by **Tempest** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 3:41 pm

Rainbow wrote: Edit: You know, there was some old story/fable about a family where the kid never talked until he was 6 and said the oatmeal was too cold. The parents asked "Why didn't you talk before?" and the kid says "Because everything was fine before." Maybe people don't say anything about the normal posts because they're not bothered by them, but then they get angry and speak up when they're scolded for breaking a rule?

I understand what you mean. But the other posts are just as important to character as the stern ones. If you pay attention to one and ignore the other, you're ignoring the other parts of that person's identity. You're missing the Tiff and only seeing the Tiffu-gryphon.

Gah. I have had way to many unrelateable (single cases) bad experiences on forums and some fall to single member rather than groups. I don have one for the masses.

Idenentity Changes - One person with multiple accounts acting like different people. 2 accounts : 1 "bad person" and 1 "good person". The bad brings chaos until they leave, while the good remains in the regular member's trust. Now with the ablitity to check IPs it's not as bad as it used to be, but in some cases with older-designed forums and less sophisticated ones than these types (phpbb, invisionboard, ect.) people can get away with it. Other than having too little to do with their time (and that's just plain sad, in a non-sarcastic sense), I don't see a point or purpose.

Rainbow · Post by **Rainbow** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 3:48 pm

Well, I agree with you, Tempest. I don't necessarily think that's a good attitude to have (only responding to the bad news, that is). I was just kind of "playing devil's advocate" and saying why people might only (or most of the time) comment on mod posts they regard in a negative way.

Tempest · Post by **Tempest** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 3:55 pm

I didn't mean anything bad by it or anything against you. I was just stating my piece on the whole "speaking out when something's wrong" point you brought up. ^^;; Sorry if I gave the wrong impression about it.

Rainbow · Post by **Rainbow** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 4:00 pm

Apology accepted, Tempest.

peachvampiress · Post by **peachvampiress** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 5:38 pm

I'm to lazy to come up with anything new, so I'll just dwell on one point that's been brought up.

Images in sig's and overly large avatars. @_@ Are these really needed? 80x80 or 100x100 avies are fine, I've seen lots of nice looking ones at this size. But are giant, 12 story tall avies really that important to a person? Their large, irritating, and sometimes disturbing (like a giant ass for an avie). Also, the images in sigs are just as pointless. Together, these two are just agrrivating. I've seen some boards where these people have GIANT avies and LARGE sigs and they just respond to something with "yeh I argee" and it ends up taking a good six inches on a monitor screen.

Thank you Admins for having small avies, you've probably saved my eyes.

Anthy · Post by **Anthy** » Tue Jun 22, 2004 7:27 pm

Rainbow wrote: I kind of singled you out because you post more on the forum and I also don't know how the other two mods feel about Mamoru.

::shrug:: He's good with jelly.

Tiff definitely helps keep everything under control here. ::nods:: I find it somewhat amusing (though Tiff probably doesn't) that I rip on people more than she does (at least in my section), as does Parakiss, while she reminds people of the rules fairly simply... I honestly think I'm meaner and she gets most of the "wah wah you're a bitch" BS. I'm guessing it's because she's the admin who bans people the most.

Things that piss the Anthy off:
-pointless, short posts that don't add anything to the topic. This is probably more annoying to mods and admins who have to sift through everything. i.e. the topic is about Sailormoon's magical items, poster says "I like all of Usagi's items!

" and leaves it at that.

-irrelevant posts. I remember one thread that was discussing what hentai you've seen, and half the posts consisted of "What's hentai?" "EW HENTAI IS GROSS" or "I don't have any hentai."

-shorthand. If you can not spell out "u" or "r", I will personally bully you. You think I'm not serious? I will.

I love all you guys that love us mods. I try not to single people out, but when they've proven themselves over and over to be problematic, it's very hard not to.

peachvampiress · Post by **peachvampiress** » Tue Jun 22, 2004 7:41 pm

Anthy

I love all you guys that love us mods. I try not to single people out, but when they've proven themselves over and over to be problematic, it's very hard not to.

awww anshi dat is soooe suweet of u. i luv u 2. ~_^

Seriously though, you guys do a good job. I honestly think you guys are the best mods/admins I've ever seen. (Then again, I haven't been to that many boards, but still :glomps:)

Sailorasteroid · Post by **Sailorasteroid** » Tue Jun 22, 2004 8:59 pm

Anthy wrote:Tiff definitely helps keep everything under control here. ::nods:: I find it somewhat amusing (though Tiff probably doesn't) that I rip on people more than she does (at least in my section), as does Parakiss, while she reminds people of the rules fairly simply... I honestly think I'm meaner and she gets most of the "wah wah you're a bitch" BS. I'm guessing it's because she's the admin who bans people the most.

Actually, just thinking of my own reactions, I think it might be this: If anyone, even a mod, simply rips on you, you can justify it to yourself by saying, "Oh, they don't understand what I'm trying to say, it's their fault for getting on me." When a mod simply points out the highly visible rules and where you went away from them you have no defense other than, "Yes, you're right, I screwed up." Tiff's style destroys all the happy illusions a rulebreaker may have of righteousness, and that creates a certain amount of hostility--shooting the messenger, so to speak.

Things that piss the Anthy off:

Well, that's one thing right there I don't like, that unnecessary "the" used when a person is referring to themselves in the third person. Sometimes intentionally spelled "teh." I know it's meant in satire of people who really do misspell and write incorrectly, but it still makes the writer look bad. No offense, Anthy.

-pointless, short posts that don't add anything to the topic. This is probably more annoying to mods and admins who have to sift through everything. i.e. the topic is about Sailormoon's magical items, poster says "I like all of Usagi's items! " and leaves it at that.

Well, if it's a question, and you have a simple answer, it's still an answer, so that I don't have a problem with it, and on many forums, it'll just be in the form of a poll. The problem is when a post is made just for the sake of writing a single-line witticism that usually lacks any kind of wit. Best I can do to explain is to give an example: This thread at the AnimeNext Forum, where in 15 posts, 2 are on topic, and maybe 2 that took longer than 30 seconds to write. I mean, I like that forum, cause I like all the people there, but I skip past anything that doesn't look interesting, wheras here I read every post except ones for anime I haven't seen.

I love all you guys that love us mods. I try not to single people out, but when they've proven themselves over and over to be problematic, it's very hard not to.

*sniff* That's so sweet! I love all you mods who love us people who love you mods! ^_^

Ni-ban Neko · Post by **Ni-ban Neko** » Tue Jun 22, 2004 10:37 pm

I hope I'm not diverging too terribly off topic, and if I am, please poke me about it...but something's really getting to me here lately, and it's the use of a really small font size for really long posts. It makes things really hard to read for me, and I can only imagine how hard it would be to read for someone who has worse vision than I do.

I don't know, but I wouldn't think it would eat that much bandwidth to keep the text size on a long post the normal font size here. And for people with web journals or web sites, it really wouldn't be hard to link to things - so if you've got a long con report, or something else that you think people might want to read, but you don't want to eat Dan's bandwidth, you might link to your off-site post. I just don't think making posts legible is too much to ask.

LadyFlameSniper · Post by **LadyFlameSniper** » Tue Jun 22, 2004 10:54 pm

I feel all the mods do a good job here. Pretty much everyone follows the rules, are respectful to each other, and there aren't flamewars all over the place.

And here are my top pet peeves on forums. They are what I've experienced on other places.. namely gamefaqs.com. Most don't apply here fortunately. (not in any order BTW)

1. The whole grammar issue. Please type clearly.. I'm not that picky about it. If you don't capitalize every sentence, that's okay as long as it's legible. Mispelling isn't much of a problem for me, unless it's illegible. There's no excuse on forums with a spell checker.. And use mostly standard English. I'm not sayin people who use slang are stupid because they're not. It's just another way of speaking. You might not use standard English when talking to your friends on instant messenger or irl (I know I shorten things and such under those circumstances sometimes) but on a forum not everyone is familiar with other dialects and slang.

2. Overdone topics. Certain polls, generic questions that are done a million times. "Who's your favorite character?" "who's the hottest anime girl" "what's the best" rpg? etc It gets old.

3. Not being able to debate something without resorting to flamming. Opinions are opinions and can't be wrong, unless it's something like a stereotype or racism. And opinions on characters such as ie: "Character A is prettier than character B" are harmless. If you disagree, no need to get angry over it. I especially cannot understand when people get so defensive or aggresive about characters they like or dislike. THEY AREN'T REAL.

4. Overuse of Japanese phrases. Mostly applies to anime boards/forums. I discussed my view on this in another topic. So I don't think I need to repeat it.

5. How girls get treated on forums at times. I'm sure I brought this up in another topic too. Of course it doesn't happen here but I'll elabortate on what I said before.. Basically girls don't get treated with respect in many instances. Male users sometimes try to hit on the females and make sexual comments towards them just because they're female. And then you also have those people who doubt that you're female since they never met a girl gamer or anime fan. Also because on the net some guys pose at girls for whatever stupid reason. They also assume a bunch of things about you. Such as your appearance, your life, your personality, etc. And if you say something about one of these that doesn't fit their mental image/stereotype, you're accused of lying. It's very unfair, and we shouldn't be treated differently because of our gender.

Post by **Tiff** » Tue Jun 22, 2004 10:59 pm

Ni-ban Neko wrote:I hope I'm not diverging too terribly off topic, and if I am, please poke me about it...but something's really getting to me here lately, and it's the use of a really small font size for really long posts. It makes things really hard to read for me, and I can only imagine how hard it would be to read for someone who has worse vision than I do.

I don't know, but I wouldn't think it would eat that much bandwidth to keep the text size on a long post the normal font size here. And for people with web journals or web sites, it really wouldn't be hard to link to things - so if you've got a long con report, or something else that you think people might want to read, but you don't want to eat Dan's bandwidth, you might link to your off-site post. I just don't think making posts legible is too much to ask.

Yeah, it strains my eyes, too x_X I don't mind if people want to make a long, intelligent post in regular font. Just don't ramble about pointless things and take up that much space =P

but I skip past anything that doesn't look interesting, wheras here I read every post except ones for anime I haven't seen.

>_> See, you GET to do that. (Although, I would much rather you read every post before replying, becuase that way you don't end up repeating shit). But the mods-especialy the admins-have to read each and every post to make sure everyone's following the rules. So when someone makes idiotically pointless posts and have NOTHING to do with the topic, I have to not only read it, but COMMENT on it and tell them how idiotically pointless and completely off-topic it is.

Sailorasteroid · Post by **Sailorasteroid** » Tue Jun 22, 2004 11:00 pm

Ni-ban Neko wrote:I don't know, but I wouldn't think it would eat that much bandwidth to keep the text size on a long post the normal font size here. And for people with web journals or web sites, it really wouldn't be hard to link to things - so if you've got a long con report, or something else that you think people might want to read, but you don't want to eat Dan's bandwidth, you might link to your off-site post. I just don't think making posts legible is too much to ask.

I don't think it makes a difference in bandwidth--text is text. It just stops the text from scrolling to infinity. Your browser should be able to adjust the text size (in IE it's in the View menu, in Opera you just press 0) or you can cut and paste to a text editor. With my con report I really just followed Dan's lead in doing it.

Could I have just put it on my blog and linked? Yeah, but I think fewer people would have seen it then, and there really wouldn't be any comments or discussion. If I had 260 people frequenting my journal (which Serenity knows I should) it might have been a different story. And also, there was some SMU-specific stuff, like meeting the people from the board, and on my blog I'd probably have to explain some of the SM references which I expect everyone here gets.

Tiff wrote: (Although, I would much rather you read every post before replying, becuase that way you don't end up repeating shit)

Sorry, let me clarify: I read every post in Announcements, the 5 SMU discussion forums, plus Sailor Moon and Off-Topic. In the other two I read all the posts of anime I've seen or video games I've playesd, but don't read any of the topics on ones I haven't, unless it's something really famous that I know the general gist of. I exclude topics, but not posts within.

Post by **Tiff** » Tue Jun 22, 2004 11:19 pm

Sailorasteroid wrote: I don't think it makes a difference in bandwidth--text is text. It just stops the text from scrolling to infinity. Your browser should be able to adjust the text size (in IE it's in the View menu, in Opera you just press 0) or you can cut and paste to a text editor. With my con report I really just followed Dan's lead in doing it.

Could I have just put it on my blog and linked? Yeah, but I think fewer people would have seen it then, and there really wouldn't be any comments or discussion. If I had 260 people frequenting my journal (which Serenity knows I should) it might have been a different story. And also, there was some SMU-specific stuff, like meeting the people from the board, and on my blog I'd probably have to explain some of the SM references which I expect everyonw here gets.

It kinda sounds to me like you'r etelling Ni-ban "Tough shit. I'm gonna do it anyway, and you can deal." That isn't cool.

I agree with her. It's straining to the eyes to read text that small. I have no problem with someone posting a long post in regular font, so long as it's INTELLIGENT, has a POINT, and is on topic. A long rambling of stupid nothingness is not tolerated.

It isn't really our problem whether or not people would choose to read it in your blog, so that's really kinda irrelevent and a moot point when it all comes down to it.

But I'm going to say this now: Try not to use that small text. It's painful to read, and really just a waste of time. If I find that your post is unnecessarily long, I'll let you know...but rest assured, again, I won't say that unless it's pointless and off-topic. If someone is too damn lazy to scroll, that's their problem.

LadyFlameSniper · Post by **LadyFlameSniper** » Tue Jun 22, 2004 11:29 pm

I'm not crazy about the large posts of small text either. I don't want to go blind you know. ^^; Yeah I can read it, but the normal size is so much easier to read when it's such a large amount. I don't mind having to scroll down at all.

Anthy · Post by **Anthy** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 8:47 pm

Tiff wrote:It kinda sounds to me like you'r etelling Ni-ban "Tough shit. I'm gonna do it anyway, and you can deal." That isn't cool.

It really doesn't sound like that to me. It seems like an explanation as to why Sailorasteroid chose to use the small text, and that his choice wasn't powered by "I want to make your eyes hurt," but "This seemed the most logical choice because...etc".

I know it's meant in satire of people who really do misspell and write incorrectly, but it still makes the writer look bad. No offense, Anthy.

None taken. I call Tiff "The Tiffu" sometimes, so it's more of a nickname sort of thing to me, like adding "-chan" or "-kun."

Post by **Tiff** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 10:47 pm

Anthy wrote:
Tiff wrote:It kinda sounds to me like you'r etelling Ni-ban "Tough shit. I'm gonna do it anyway, and you can deal." That isn't cool.
It really doesn't sound like that to me. It seems like an explanation as to why Sailorasteroid chose to use the small text, and that his choice wasn't powered by "I want to make your eyes hurt," but "This seemed the most logical choice because...etc".

Well, it doesn't really matter, becuase it has been taken care of.