"Cordial Participation" in Terms of Service 2.

[Gregadd]

I used the report button when I thought the post was an offense to the community at large. The person failed to respond to my challenge. TOS frowns on vigilantes.

 

[treitz3]

Gentlemen, we really do try to rule with a gentle hand. Part of our TOS are that we do NOT talk politics on this board, period. Everyone should know this by now. Yet, I just had to delete 4 posts that were blatantly political in nature and had nothing to do with the thread.

Please refrain from posting anything that even comes close to something political. In this thread or any other for that matter. This is not up for debate.

Tom

 

[Al M.]

Gentlemen, we really do try to rule with a gentle hand. Part of our TOS are that we do NOT talk politics on this board, period. Everyone should know this by now. Yet, I just had to delete 4 posts that were blatantly political in nature and had nothing to do with the thread.

Please refrain from posting anything that even comes close to something political. In this thread or any other for that matter. This is not up for debate.

Tom

Thanks, Tom. I don't want to deal with having to read this political shit.

 

[treitz3]

You are welcome and none of us do. There are a plethora of other avenues that one can speak their mind about all things politics. This is not one of them.

Tom

 

[rando]

<Sarc> but funny !

We need a <sarc> emoji - that might save some gnashing.

Post Construction Using Emoji

Accidentally brought up this box with a keyboard shortcut I'm having a hard time recreating. ;) As you can plainly see this allows access to a much larger selection of graphical elements beyond 12 emoji available in the dropdown panel we normally access. Would you rather I forget how this...

whatsbestforum.com

You are a smart enough guy to figure out what I did to access those. Following the A-OK from Steve it finally occurred to them why I asked first. The highly sanitized options one can at least view now include gif and the kamoji you seem quite thrilled to implement in your posts.

Very few beyond alt+code characters (ä ©) will actually remain in place after hitting post reply.

There is also this alternative.

 

[Ron Resnick]

As for their own system threads, people can moderate those themselves. I personally have let some tangential discussions run on my thread over a good number of posts before politely intervening. Others may have less patience, and they can moderate their system thread accordingly, as you also seem to imply.

Members, I think, cannot delete other members' posts. So on member system threads we grant member requests to delete posts on their system threads which they feel are off-topic.

 

[Al M.]

Members, I think, cannot delete other members' posts. So on member system threads we grant member requests to delete posts on their system threads which they feel are off-topic.

Ron, we are all supposed to be grown-up men.

Why can't members themselves politely ask others to, at some appropriate point, stop off-topic posts? That is what I did at times (while at other times I simply let the discussion run out), and it worked.

Of course, if the member makes highly provocative statements in his thread, he should not act surprised that the thread gets hugely derailed.

Running to the moderators as "mommy" seems not the most grown-up thing to do, and I am quite certain that you guys don't enjoy playing such a role either.

 

[PeterA]

Ron, we are all supposed to be grown-up men.

Why can't members themselves politely ask others to, at some appropriate point, stop off-topic posts? That is what I did at times (while at other times I simply let the discussion run out), and it worked.

Of course, if the member makes highly provocative statements in his thread, he should not act surprised that the thread gets hugely derailed.

Running to the moderators as "mommy" seems not the most grown-up thing to do, and I am quite certain that you guys don't enjoy playing such a role either.

Al, I see your point, but what if polite attempts fail? Some members don't care about the direction their system threads take, but some do. I had multiple discussions with the WBF team and others about my Natural Sound system thread. My interest was to edit the thread for focused content so that I could later more easily find and refer to posts of substance. I suppose, rightly or wrongly, I felt some authorship to the thread. I did not want to read pages and pages about purple dinosaurs or restaurants in London or people's pets. After multiple requests to remain on topic, the grown up men continued to veer off topic. Ron and Steve grant this latitude to solve this specific problem. Nothing is perfect and we work together to solve problems as best we can.

Another approach is taken by Romy the Cat. A condition to post on his site requires that the poster remain on the topic of the thread. There is much more latitude here on WBF, but there, if you want to read about a particular topic, it is easy to find and the threads are focused and full of information.

I think WBF allows this condition for specifically for system threads and only at the author's request.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Ron, we are all supposed to be grown-up men.

Why can't members themselves politely ask others to, at some appropriate point, stop off-topic posts? That is what I did at times (while at other times I simply let the discussion run out), and it worked.

Of course, if the member makes highly provocative statements in his thread, he should not act surprised that the thread gets hugely derailed.

Running to the moderators as "mommy" seems not the most grown-up thing to do, and I am quite certain that you guys don't enjoy playing such a role either.

All fair points, Al.

We simply have made a policy decision to be very deferential to member's opinions about their own member system threads. If a member asks us to hard delete a bunch of off-topic posts on his/her system thread we honor that request.