Round Table posting guidelines

[JBL]

Please observe the following guidelines while starting threads and making posts in the Round Table:

The Round Table is a forum for discussion. As such, the following activities/behaviors are strongly discouraged:

1) Creating "polls as subject of discussion" or "poll only" topics.

2) Using chat-speak or other forms of communication that vary wildly from standard written English. In particular, the use of "u" for "you," "r" for "are," etc. is annoying and distracting.

3) Making posts that do not add to a discussion. This can take many forms including personal anecdotes of no interest to anyone other than yourself, posts of the form "I disagree!" or "Right on!", posts that consist almost entirely of links or embedded content, etc.

4) The use of profanity.

5) Quoting the entire post immediately preceding yours. (This makes threads longer and makes reading them more difficult; it is always assumed that you are responding to the post directly preceding yours.)

6) The use of fonts that make your post difficult to read.

7) Reviving old threads on which discussion has long since ended, especially when in violation of other guidelines (e.g. (3) and (4)).


As a rule of thumb, before making a post, one should ask oneself the following questions:

[myyellowducky82]

Question: Is it the end of the world if we put "u" for you one time in a post?

[JBL]

Weakly supressed response with snark

Actually, yes. The Eschaton will commence the next time you use "u" in a post here. Also, I will visit your house and poke you with the pointy end of a pencil until you repent.

Actual response: these are guidelines -- they suggest ways to not make low quality posts. I notice that your rating is hovering rather below 2 (that is, between "Poor/Spam" and "Below average"), so I think it is self-evident that your posts could benefit from following them. From personally having observed many of your posts in this forum, however, I think it is probably more crucial that you focus on asking yourself question 2. ("Could my post interest or be useful to anyone?") in order to avoid problem (3) ("making posts that do not add to a discussion," specifically posting " personal anecdotes of no interest to anyone other than yourself").

[myyellowducky82]

Also, I've tried editing my posts because sometimes my computer entered my posts when I didn't want it to. (It doesn't do that now.) BUT, I can't edit my posts in The Round Table anymore!

Moderator responds: if you think you're being restricted more than the usual amount, post a comment in the Support forum. (You should view the posting guidelines there before you do so, and try a search.)

[ZetaX]

You can edit them for 24 hours only. If you posted accidently, this time should suffice very well.

[jhredsox93]

Just out of curiosity, what is the main point of not being able to have a poll in the round table. Personally, I have found many topics that could highly benefit with the addition of a poll. For example, yes/no topics, do you agree, or don't you agree with something (such as Obama's running mate or lip singing in the Olympics). However, I do think that polls over 3, MAYBE 4 options do belong in the games section (fun factory) since they generate a lot of spam, in certain cases.

[MysticTerminator]

I think that's been done away with -- for a short period of time, we had a separate polls forum, but everyone agreed that was silly. So yes, relevant and useful polls are no longer frowned upon.

[JBL]

[jhredsox93]

"Should the U.S. __________?" would not be a good example of a yes/no discussion?