What Is/Isn't Acceptable?

[DDoMM]

Ive read the forum rules, and ive acted in the forum in a way i believe follows those guidelines, but it seems that some things i would think of as acceptable language isnt accepted by a lot of other people, if your from the UK, then you prolly accept words like "Hell", "Damn", "Arse", "*****" etc.

Its not just the cultural language issue either, "Gentlemanly Behaviour" is also a very blurry generalisation, Gentlemanly as in we must all wear monacles and call each other "Old Chump" or Gentlemanly as in we can have a bit of a laugh together, and use light matey language towards each other (which is what i would think is meant).

I think we should have a more in depth and detailed rules page with a list of words we can't use and a more comprehensive guideline of acceptable behaviour.

imo the forums "Family Rating" has been taken way too far and i feel i cant have a joke with anybody anymore incase i get banned for expressing an opinion or banned for causing offence to somebody unintentionally.

 

[DDoMM]

I would like opinions from ppl not just in the US, it would be interesting to see the opinions from people around the world.

 

[LNCPapa]

I think we've functioned fine without a more descriptive set of rules for a few years now - and "I feel" that common sense would let you know when you're stepping over the line. If you review your post and think to yourself, "I wonder if that will offend the previous poster?", then it probably needs to be edited. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything at all about you or anyone else on the forums in particular, but as far as I can tell the moderators and administrators of Techspot enjoy/prefer the "Family Rating" of the forums. We want to prevent our forum from mutating into the filth most other forums have become. You should see no pr0n or WaRez or even vulgarity here. We have to take it pretty seriously because if you keep pushing the line eventually you don't really have any boundaries. </rant>

 

[Julio Franco]

DoM, you have been a member for sometime now and you've already had a good taste of what is the right tone to remain in good standing in these forums. To put things short, we rather have 'personality' toned down a bit that being closer to a flame war, even if you were joking, this is not acceptable:

Originally posted by (=DoM=)
how could it be fake you *****s

From our Guidelines: Criticize ideas, not people. We won’t stand, nor support personal flaming.
No questions asked, that is a rule that must be followed.

Of less relevance but still important: Avoid double posting, instead of posting twice in a row, next time you could edit your previous post, that is, unless someone had already replied to your original message. This last note not only goes to DoM but other members that have been doing the same ocassionally.

I have to go now but will be around later to see your responses on this matter... TS is one of the few tech forums that have been kept really clean, let's keep it that way.

 

[Godataloss]

You cannot legislate common sense.

Rules suck! I suppose you could make more, though as I never read the original ones I don't think I'd notice.

Vulgarity is a bludgeon while sarcasm is a sword. I've seen folks shredded here without explitives- not that its the purpose of TS, but everyone loves a spirited debate! :hotbounce

I do think that a broader selection of ideas should be allowed because I think it would contribute to a sense of community. I was disappointed that the George Bush thread was removed, but it isn't my house- I just lurk here.

 

[poertner_1274]

It's not that we in the US don't accept those kind of words, just not on TechSpot. If you want to read or see those things, this isn't the place for it. As you say the 'family friendly' rating is what we try to achieve here, but that doesn't mean we can't start unusual topics of conversation.

In regards to the Bush thread, we have been around to know what sorts of threads set others off. Just like the AMD vs. Intel threads, it would cause a huge flame war about who's for Bush and who's against. And we just don't like seeing those sorts of things around here, so they are removed.

 

[Julio Franco]

Re: You cannot legislate common sense.

Originally posted by Godataloss
Rules suck! ..... but everyone loves a spirited debate!

I wouldn't say that's the right way to look at things, just visit a few other forums and you will notice how quickly a bad moderated board can turn into an useless, non-informative board.

Rules give members and moderators a general guideline on what's acceptable and what not, and that's the first question DoM came up with at the beginning of this thread.

As for the politics posts... I have nothing against those and I've given complete liberty to moderators do what they believe will be best for the site, I've been thinking for some time however, opening a new board: "Offtopic"... you know, the Meeting Spot should in theory serve those needs but it does not completely.
What I mean is that the Meeting Spot still carries some of TS' computer background which caps the possibility of starting interesting conversations outside the tech world, not necessarily debates but there's always room for insightful opinions and ideas.

So let's take this "What Is/Isn't Acceptable?" thread onto another topic, what do you guys say about an "Offtopic" forum?

 

[Didou]

An off-topic forum can't hurt IMO. If it doesn't work that much & becomes useless we can scrap it like the Programming forum.

& BTW does that mean that when a thread starts to go off board we send it to that Off-topic forum ?

 

[DDoMM]

I think an Offtopic forum would be great, i dont go out to offend anybody believe me, when i call somebody a mong, or an *****, christ, i even call my mum a mong and an ***** sometimes its not meant to be offensive, just a matey dig.

I thought i knew some of you ell enough to get away with that, obviously not.

But back onto the offtopic idea, would it be possible to split it into a few sub categories? ie, Politics, Funny Stuff, Philosophy, Radiohead )) or something?

Anyway, this is turning out to be the most productive thread ever. Can i appologise to anybody who may have taken offence on the HL3 Confirmed thread, i didnt mean anything by it, its just the way i speak, so sorry about that.

 

[Didou]

Originally posted by (=DoM=)
its not meant to be offensive, just a matey dig.

That's something you can get away with in a chat room & such where you know the people really well & they know you.

On a forum, even with extensive use of smilies, it's not always clear how serious the other person is & you can't always predict how the other person will react.

We just try to avoid that altogether on these forums & so far it's worked quite well ( whenever we gave a flame-prone thread the benefit of the doubt, it always went to a useless flame like first predicted ).

 

[Julio Franco]

I agree with everything you have said in your last few posts... the problem is (and is a known fact) that it's not the same calling your friend an "*****" while talking to him as a way of speaking, than writing and reading someone else is calling you that... actually I believe that was how smilies were born, used during computer chats for taking away some seriousness to expressions that could be taken as offensive. Once again I will reiterate that any personal comments are not allowed in the forums, just to avoid this kind of problems

As for the Offtopic forum, I believe it's going up for sure but still would like to hear from more members if we should diversify that or make it just general (let's remember this isn't a huge forum).

 

[DDoMM]

Can i throw another thought into the equasion, i know Java chat rooms are a bit dodgy and quite frankly amateurish for a website like this, but i think it would be a big success on this site, not everybody has irc (including me) and they just like a quick chat with people quickly without any hastle without having to fill in a massive forum registration form, this will also cut down on forum members who post once to ask a question then never again and will diversify the website further. Could we at least try it? for a week or 2 and wee how it goes, i think it would be cool.

Just a thought

 

[DDoMM]

another thing too, we should have this...

tiled in the background of all the pages of the site, you know it makes sense

 

[Per Hansson]

Javachat is available via the starchat site..

Just start it up and log on to the channel #3dspotlight

 

[DDoMM]

I mean on the actual site itself

 

[Didou]

What difference does it make wether it's on the site or not ?

It will only be read by the people allready in the chatroom either way.

 

[DDoMM]

coz people are lazy, including me.

The idea behind it is Generic Computer Enthusiast, (lets call him Mr.A).....

Mr.A comes to techspot.com looking for help, he gets BSOD's all the time, he doesnt know what to do, He is lazy, like me and cant be bothered registering on the forum, he sees a button on the mainscreen "Java Chat!" he clicks, it loads, he can fire off his question and get an immediate reply, no extensive forum registrations, no hunting IRC channels, just quick, simple advice, thats all. Mr.A leaves very happy because Didou told him how to fix his problem, Mr.A dances into the sunset, The End.

See, did i not sell it well enough then?

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Heh, what could people post in Off Topic forum? If posts are off topic, what is/was the original topic? :giddy:

I think The Meeting Spot has served this purpose well enough so far, although I've seen some comments about some threads that are 'off topic' even for The Meeting Spot. Like Julio said, this is (still) a small site, while we have over 12000 members, most of them haven't posted even once, so I don't see real need for more forums.

I'm also a bit afraid that kind of place could turn into a flame forum easily.

 

[Didou]

Well that's the whole point. That Java Chat can simply point to the page which loads the StarChat IRC java applet & he wouldn't even notice that he's on another site or that he's using IRC.

Try it -> StarChat IRC Java Chat ( works with IE only ).

 

[Nodsu]

A public chatroom would only attract bored people who will do anything for some attention in a chatroom. The desired type ot attention being a ban.
The little effort to get connected to an IRC chatroom is a very effective means to keep out idle spammers.

The forums here are not only about helping people asking questions, they are a collection of hopefully useful information. The problems discussed here will be available for anyone coming hre in the future. In a chatroom nothing remains unless you keep your own logs. Not to mention that the chances of getting any useful info from a public chatroom are very slim - anyone ever tried asking questions in Yahoo! computer related rooms?

Another scenario:
Mr Lazy is browsing the TS front page for news. He is bored so he joins the hatroom, ASLs everyone and mentions that TS sucks. To the next person coming in asking for help he suggests that they open command prompt and run "format c: /y". Since chat medium is instant, his "advice" can't be moderated ...

Putting a chatroom on the main TS site would also mean that TS takes some degree of responsibility for the content. Thi means only problames for TS adminds. The current #3dspotlight IRC channel is not officially affiliated with TS and this allows different rules and more freedom.

 

[DDoMM]

I totally disagree Nodsu, Chat rooms are helpful, i was an admin in Compu-help chat rooms that MSN hosted for nearly 2 years (before they shut down all chat rooms in the UK) and i used to enjoy helping people, people didnt come in to get banned at all, we had the odd spammer, or bot, but they were few and far between.

Forget it now, its been built up to much.

All i thought was to have a button on the mainpage but it doesnt matter now, leave it

 

[Masque]

I Agree With Mic

Sorry I jumped into this a bit late.....just noticed it. I tend to think that what's currently offered should serve this site nicely. It's run this way well with no major issues (other than the occasional locked thread). As far as rules go, there are plenty. Anybody with a touch of brains can peruse these forums and get a sense of what we're all about and what's allowed/disallowed. This is a tech forum with a bit of off-topic.....hence the name TechSpot. It should be kept that way IMHO.

I know I haven't been around here as much as most but this is something I feel strongly about. And as always, it's......

.....just my $.02.

 

[Godataloss]

Poetner knows best

In regards to the Bush thread, we have been around to know what sorts of threads set others off. Just like the AMD vs. Intel threads, it would cause a huge flame war about who's for Bush and who's against. And we just don't like seeing those sorts of things around here, so they are removed.

So I guess in addition to the rules there ALREADY is an unwritten methodology that dictates the removal of posts that may lead to unlawful behavior. I thought the whole point of a moderator was to remove posts that were inappropriate and close a thread if it got out of hand. Mine was the second post on the thread- entirely factual and offensive only to the subject of the topic, not to any users or previous posts- very much comparable to saying Nvidia cards suck- dont buy them.

I am all for a Humanity forum where TS member could discuss carbon-based issues in the same mature manner that we (usually) discuss other matters.

 

[DDoMM]

I agree with Godataloss, a Humanity forum would be great, a forum where anybody can express open opinions, i have lots of opinions to express, especially about the whole bush debate and his corrupt presidency, but thats another issue, that would go down a storm a Humanity forum.

Another one would be a music forum, i would be a keen poster in that section.

Mike Moore for President!

Radiohead Own!

...and so on

 

[DDoMM]

we deffinately should have a politics forum too, anytimes a good time for a mass debate (sorry, couldnt resist)