Informally Requested Policies

About This Message Board
1

… or Straight Dope Netiquette

Let’s see… we have:

[list=1]
[li]Don’t post a typo correction post unless the typo has significantly altered the meaning or understanding of your message. [/li][li]Don’t post an apology for double posting… we all know you didn’t mean to. [/li][li]Only use your canned .sig once per thread. [/li][li]It’s OK to thank a moderator via email. It makes their day. [/li][li]While you don’t have to, it’s considered polite to respect the OP’s wishes regarding the direction of a thread. [/li][/list=1]

2

Here’s a tip. I informally requested a policy once. I knew the mods were busy, though. So I typed it up exactly how I thought it should look, and posted it. Sure enough, a moderator took a lot of what I said and copied it, and added a lot too, and made it a sticky. Maybe just typing up the first draft will get them started.

3

Oh, at the time I made the request, we had just had some pretty serious infractions that upset a few people. That probably had something to do with its quick acceptance, too. But I don’t think it can hurt to try!

4
  1. Send the staff whiskey and strippers, dammit.
5

What kind of whiskey do you like?

I’m not sending strippers though, even I have to draw the line somewhere!

:smiley:

6

Well, some of these things are not in the interest of etiquette so much, but in the interest of conserving bandwidth. And that is a serious issue for us here. All the same, I see a huge difference between sanctimoniously vilifying someone for an infraction (even a medium-sized one), and informing someone of the official or unofficial policies.

7

I could take that two ways.

  1. Don’t post a dozen followups correcting someone if they do post to correct a typo or apologize for a double post.

I think that’s appropriate, given the whole reason is to reduce the bandwidth use.

However,

  1. You’re being a sanctimonious prig for listing these rules at all.

Rules one through three are mostly to reduce bandwidth use. The boards are so terminally slow at times that any reasonable request to reduce unnecessary and superfluous posts is a good idea. Rule four was listed because there was some question as to whether the mods wanted to receive thank you posts, or if it was just clutter to their mailboxes that they would have to sort through. Rule five was also a response to a question about the OPs ability to control the content of his own thread. It is polite to comply with a request to not hijack a thread into a known territory that is related but not the point of the specific thread in question. moriah was just listing the results of the last few days worth of responses in one place, since these topics have been coming up repeatedly.

Though I think we need to add

  1. Don’t post just to correct someone else for their typo. He saw the typo but didn’t respond because of rule 1.
8

I agree with you that that is the polite thing to do. But the rules that we have say, "Don’t be a jerk’ – not “Always be polite.”

If you disagree with me about the above statement, you don’t have to be polite when you disagree. Just don’t be a jerk. :smiley:

**IrishTxLdy[/b}. you are a hoot! I wish you would post more often.