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Posting guidelines?

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This is going to be a mix of suggestion and rant.

 

I don't think I have ever encountered such a quote-happy bunch of people before. I am seeing plenty of quotes that are quoting the post right above the reply, which is unnecessary and just needlessly complicates the discussion and lengthens the thread pages. Worse still I see people quoting images without even having the decency to turn them into links first, and yes, that image was RIGHT ABOVE their post too.

 

What I want to propose is to add posting guidelines to the rules. Going against them would not result in punishments in most cases but would give the staff the formal right to edit away unnecessary stuff and write reminders to the "offenders". Only if a user completely and repeatedly ignores all the guidelines will s/he receive a user warning.

 

 

Examples of guidelines:

1. Do not needlessly quote a post, especially a large post (5+ lines). Maybe the post you are replying to is far away and/or on the previous page, or you want to focus on a specific part of the post that is right above yours; these situations are fine for using quotes, you are bringing attention to the text you are replying to as well as your own, a piece of text that is either far above your post or on the previous page. But there is no need to bring special attention to the post that is right above yours if you are replying to it as a whole. When people see a post without a quote and looks like a part of an ongoing discussion it is obvious that the post being replied to is right above or at the very least very close.

 

2. Make moderate use of nested quotes ("quotes-within-quotes"). Sometimes you need more context than the post you are replying to offers, in such situations nested quotes can come in handy. But when you end up with a nested quote and you don't need it for your reply, please take 5 seconds of your free time and remove the unnecessary quote(s) from within the one you are focusing on. It is not a lot of work for you but gives your fellow members a better reading experience.

 

3. Avoid quoting large images and other large embedded content. Clicking a link is not a lot of work, nor is rewriting img tags into url tags prior to submitting a post. Please consider your fellow members when you take the decision to put a big image into your quote, that one image will lengthen the thread page considerably, and needlessly so. There can be situations where quoting an image as-is is a more fluid approach than turning it into a link, such as if a thread has a lot of linked images, but when there is only one image people will hardly need to guess which one you are linking to in that quote of your post.

 

4. Trim down quotes when appropriate. With longer posts it is less likely that you are responding to the entire block of text, so try to remove text from the quote that does not concern your reply. Do not take this too far, however, it is possible to take a quote out of context and therefore change a person's text to a different meaning.

 

5. Do not needlessly multi-post. Posting a second post right after yours can be useful to bring attention to an old thread that has dropped down the forum pages if you happen to be the last poster, but there is no reason to post more than one post at a time within an active discussion. You have an Edit button at your service and the ability to multi-quote in a single post, use these features please, they are there for a reason.

 

 

Now is your turn. If you find anything (else) annoying about people's posting habits then write them down along with a good explanation of why.

Edited by Guest (see edit history)

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Oops, guess i am kind of lazy. Thanks for reminding me, will do my best to follow these guidelines.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Some people quote those right above them if they think their post is going to end up on the next page... (I do that) It shouldn't be punished IMO, but everything else seems ok.

 

Might I recommend that if it's just a really small post, say a 1-4 line post that is quoted, even if it's immediately above the response, that it not be punished either.

 

Example of a 4 line quote:

A

4

line

quote.

 

This is not a 4 line quote:

A

 

7

 

line

 

quote.

Don't insult me. I have trained professionals to do that.

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You make some good points there. I hope I implemented them into the OP well enough. . .

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Excellent idea, glad J.C. thought of it.

There, fixed that for you

Now is your turn. If you find anything (else) annoying about people's posting habits then write them down along with a good explanation of why.

I think some signatures are ridiculously large. I don't have a problem with a nice embedded picture (specially a funny one), but when a signature takes up a whole screen length, it's too much.

I bring you mortal danger and cookies. Not necessarily in that order.

http://www.youtube.com/jclc

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I don't like signatures, no matter the size or content, so I hide them all. I do agree with you however, there need to be enforced some limits, as there will always be at least one person who thinks s/he is the only person on the forum.

 

I don't even understand why in the first place, why do people like massive signatures? They have to scroll through them themselves, not just other people.

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These are quite good. Why not make a showcase thread of your work?

 

I will add some more stuff to the OP later by the way, including your suggestion on the signatures. I am feeling lazy tonight. . .

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I have offended quite a few times, I'll try and keep that to a minimum. I haven't really been able to use quoting in a forum before so I wasn't quite sure on how to use it correctly

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I'm doing my best to not use quites too much and when I embed images I always try to use thumbnails that you click on to view full size versions rather than embedding the actual image. This is possible by copying the image url of the thumbnail and using that in IMG tags then copying the url of the actual image and put it in a url=

tag.

 

Example:

 

[url=(actual image url)][img=(thumbnail url)][/url]

Game developments at http://nukedprotons.blogspot.com

Check out my music at http://technomancer.bandcamp.com

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If replying to a particular post, I tend to quote it. It helps to avoid misunderstandings if someone thinks you are replying to them when this is not the case.

 

I agree with pointlessly HUGE quotes such as for example, quoting the entire original post in this thread. However I wouldn't have said this was a really big issue though, not really something worth penalising people for.

 

If heavily nested quotes are a problem, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a way to limit the number of quotes that can be nested. Same with large forum posts, I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of character limit can be implemented. Again though, I don't really think it's necessary, I honestly haven't seen much abuse of the forum (aside from a few huge signature images a while back).

 

Just my two pence really, although I do think discussion like this would be better suited to a staff forum.

Feel free to PM me about almost anything and I'll do my best to answer. :)

 

"Beware of what you ask for, for it may come to pass..."

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I'm doing my best to not use quites too much and when I embed images I always try to use thumbnails that you click on to view full size versions rather than embedding the actual image. This is possible by copying the image url of the thumbnail and using that in IMG tags then copying the url of the actual image and put it in a url=
tag.

 

Example:

 

[url=(actual image url)][img=(thumbnail url)][/url]

Ohwow, did not know that. Thanks ^^

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Just my two pence really, although I do think discussion like this would be better suited to a staff forum.

 

There is no such forum yet, and judging by the current presence of an administration I think we will need to wait a good while longer for any progress.

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If heavily nested quotes are a problem, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a way to limit the number of quotes that can be nested. Same with large forum posts, I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of character limit can be implemented.

There already is a triple nested limit... (quote within a quote within a quote)

 

Character limit is probably unnecessary though.

Don't insult me. I have trained professionals to do that.

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I agree i think it is fine the way it is right now. Only we maybe need is a sticky addressing this "problem", and seeing as most people on this forum are very nice people they will try to follow these guidelines.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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seeing as most people on this forum are very nice people they will try to follow these guidelines.

Even some of us "not so nice" people will try to follow rules on occasion...

Don't insult me. I have trained professionals to do that.

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Haha, irony.(if you don't get it, by actually quoting me he didn't follow the guidelines)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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