This thread is for you to offer comments, revisions, suggestions, catch typos, etc for the new consolidation thread FAQ: Guidelines and Etiquette for Posting on the Straight Dope Message Boards
There is nothing new in this summary of guidelines and etiquette; this is merely consolidating and slightly rewording material that appeared in half a dozen different locations, putting them all together and cleaning out the stickies in About this message board … a long-promised task.
Nice job on all of these – very clear. Esp. like your providing a TOC (table of contents) in the OPs.
Thanks for all your hard work!
[/suck-up]
I notice that labeling links isn’t commented on. Still discussing it, or decided not to include in guidelines? Simply curious, not trying to mod the mods.
Thanks for cleaning up the stickies. Also, a very easy to read form used. Thanks.
Good job.
I’m not sure what you mean by “labeling links” – do you mean linking FAQ rather than like this FAQ - Guidelines and Etiquette on the SDMB - About This Message Board - Straight Dope Message Board ?
If so, it’s a nice courtesy but not important enough to be an etiquette standard… ?
Labelling links = PDF warnings and such?
Yes, as in our discussion in the YouTube thread.
In post 1 (table of contents) and 5 (title), I would capitalise the first ‘g’ of “Google”.
Got it, thanks, severus
In post #3, maybe mention that an OP with nothing but a link isn’t good. There should be at least a little discussion about the link.
This is cool.
Isn’t good.
This is the new Etiquette thread.
Is better.
picunurse: has that been a problem?
Possibly there needs to be a whole section on posting links: describe what it’s a link to, aleret for lenghty downloads, etc ?
Yes. There have even been Pit threads about it, with the usual lame mocking posts driven by (even by me, sad to admit) following the initial complaint.
But, yes, it has been a problem. When someone mentions a movie, they’ll just link to IMDB with “This movie” as a link descriptor. Or to an automatically opening video, complete with sound, with only “You should look here” as a descriptor. Or to a cite site that happens to be a .pdf, which we could all see was a .pdf in the url if we weren’t trusting people not to link us to unwarned .pdfs and thus neglecting to look at the url. Etc, etc …
IOW, it has become/been a minor problem of sorts.
From time to time.
What he said.
To expand on what NoClueBoy said, this isn’t too annoying when it’s a link to a page with a descriptive URL. Then, if you’re curious about what book/movie/pop culture phenomenon/etc. the poster is referring to, you can see just by mousing over the link. But links to movies on IMDb or books on Amazon will just have some incomprehensible ID number, so you have to open the link to even see what work is being referenced, which is a bit annoying.
OK, we’ll add 'er in.
Posters should let others know that their question has been answered to their satisfaction. It’s not needed for a story or opinions thread, but is a good practice for questions asking for help.
There used to be advice saying not to acknowledge help, due to it increasing traffic on the server. Saying thank you for being helped is being gracious at minimum, and adds to the quality of the posts. There are a lot of unnecessary posts on this board, and cutting out the thank you posts is just wrong.
just read the compilation of SDMB catch phrases and can’t believe that “Gotcha ya” didn’t make the grade.
I guess that there are some bits of common courtesy that we felt didn’t need to be mentioned: saying “thank you” or recognizing help is common courtesy in life, not specific to these message boards. I wouldn’t have thought that we’d need to specify such bits of normal, everyday good manners? However, if there’s some strong feeling that we need, we’ll be glad to add 'em in.
PS- My memory may be (often is) faulty, but I can’t imagine that it was ever official policy not to post a “thank you.” That may have been the opinion of some posters, but surely wasn’t board policy?
I don’t think it was either, but I believe the rules could be interpreted as such, given that bumping a thread is “strongly discouraged.” Posting a thank-you bumps the thread to the top, and an innocent newbie who’s already bumped the thread once might hesitate to do so again. Not that I really think it’s a major issue, but the potential for confusion is there.
Not to post a Thank You to cut traffic was being posted by people on this board as advice to posters sometimes, and may have been in one of the stickies when I came back to the board in 2005. It likely was opinions being presented as fact. I decided I would continue to thank people reguardless of it being discourged. It woiuld be nice to have this formly listed as a courtesy acceptable on the board. Some people don’t seem to understand that they should say I’ve got what I need. Thanks for the help. The post that you have what was needed, was a seperate issue from the Thank You. The Thank you bit wasn’t tied into the bumping a thread bit. Like I said before, the opinion of a poster was likely stated in a way to indicate it was a board policy. I didn’t find a policy to refute it.
C K Dexter Haven the rewrites are excelently done.
Thank’s for listening.