Ok, every year we spend endless hours posting reminders, guidelines, and suggestions about how people should post in the Chief Delphi Forum. Every year we spend endless hours pointing out errors, making criticisms, arguing with each other, and rebutting those arguments whenever we see inappropriate behaviors. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. Regardless of their effectiveness, these posts seem to come back every year.
I figure, why don’t all of us participate in this ritual together? Instead of only having a few veteran members lecturing all the time, let’s come up with a set of rules as a community!
So, here is the deal. I am asking you to come up with a set of rules and guidelines regarding appropriate behavior in this forum. These could be as small as tips on thread titles, or as big as what is considered gracious professionalism in your message. You could ban all use of sarcasm, or go as far as saying it is ok to flame each other as long as there’s no profanity. Hopefully at the end of this exercise, we will have a set of rules we can all agree on… Well, that might be too good to come true, so let’s just hope that we will all learn something from this exercise.
Few things to keep in mind:
Team 47 leaders are the ones who make the rules in this forum. So this thread is only intended as an exercise only. Any rules we come up with will be suggestions only.
Keep in mind that every year there are new members coming into this forum with no experience what so ever. While we should try to teach them the right thing to do, there MUST be room for mistakes and errors.
Understand that people are different, and may not agree with you. This exercise is intended as a brainstorming session instead of a fault-finding debate. You may suggest changes to other’s rules, but you can only disagree with them by coming up with your own set of rules.
Also, if this thread gets out of hand, we will close it. Lets hope we never have to see that happening.
As always, Great topic Ken. There are few things I would like to point out…
Respect others on the forum.
SEARCH BEFORE YOU POST!!! you can go on top of “portal” where it says search and search with a keyword. Member search - go into member section, top right corner, search.
Don’t abuse the privilege that you have been given on the forum.
Help other than putting anyone down.
If you are not sure about something (for example, finding something on the forum, need pictures deleted, account change) send a PM to one of the moderators or Brandon Martus. They will take care of it as soon as possible.
Please understand the fact that the moderators are not available 24/7. Give them time to go through the process that you have requested for.
Think twice before you click the “submit” button. Are you posting on the right part of the forum? If you are not sure where you should place the topic on the forum, ask the moderators or veterans who has been on chiefdelphi for a while.
Pictures that you get from your team events that are held throughout the year (workshops, car wash, fund raising etc), if there are 10 different ones which relates to the event, please don’t pick more than 2 and upload it.
Arguments belong in PM’s, not on public forums. If you don’t agree… either agree to disagree, or take it where we can’t see it. Many of us learned this the hard way, I being one. It’s better for everyone if you just let it go, or let it go elsewhere.
Rule number 2: Anyone preventing another user from following rule number one will be beat upon the head with a slew of red dots.
Rule number 3: Members who are involved in a key part of a discussion shall refrain from moderating a thread or issuing reputation, good or bad.
Rule number 4: All members will answer a simple quiz to determine basic functionality in:
Searching topics
Private messages
CD-isms (reputation, CD-Swap, and a bit on I am JVN)
…before being allowed to post. Then we know they at least glossed over the stuff that you and I consider essential.
Rule number 5: All members who post a question during build season that can be answered by reading the current FIRST manual will repay one Krispy Kreme donut to every member who reads the thread, and one dozen to the first person to reference a rule.
That’s my thought process. Probably entirely unfeasible in parts, but that’s the price you pay for reading my posts.
A good part of what I want to say is mentioned above.
What is comes down to is “Common Sense” which is generally uncommon, but still. It would be nice to put a couple lines before the “Submit” button. Did what I just write contribute to the conversation? Is it decent? Something along those lines, you get the idea.
The main problem here is most posters either flame on each other, insult each other directly or so. I think one of us should make a write up of Forum-Etiquette which basically describes how people have different views, opinions and feelings, and how we should learn to respect them even if they conflict with ours. Teach people how to disagree and yet get their point across to those willing to listen - “Don’t give a hungry man food if he’s not hungry”. A good portion of it should also distinguish between “whining” and posting something useful. A write up would be useful, I think.
A problem with that is how many people are going to read it? The forum rules are good, very helpful, nice and sweet, but how many people actually read the FAQ? I know I did not until I got a bad rep from someone about something I did not understand. Overall, I feel, no matter what we do new members are going to make stupid mistakes, and they should be forgiven. I also feel that we should guide them to do the right thing rather than “You stupid idiot, cant you read the whole thread, your question has been brought up already” - It should be a task for moderators and veteran members.
Finally, I would like to thank Brandon and ChiefDelphi for hosting such a good forum. You do a great job maintaining this place and always strive for better. Good job to all the moderators too.
Every person on this forum has a right to their opinion. We need to honor their opinion. You as a CD member have the right to debate it but do so with Gracious Professionalism. If you are going to debate an argument, there should be some rules:
Never put down the member or his opinion no matter what.
If you are going to debate the topic make sure you have a valid argument. comments such as “i don’t agree” or “your wrong” should not be posted. These are a waste of time for everyone.
if you feel like the debate topic is not appropriate for CD or the thread is getting out of hand, do not take it into your own hands report it to a moderator. Thats what they are here for and do a great job of doing
Remember to have fun, we all come to CD for the same reason…Thats because we eat,sleep, and live robotics. Every CD member is working toward the same goal, even if everyone doesn’t see eye to eye on a issue.
We got some great inputs so far, thanks guys. I look forward to seeing more.
A while ago I heard this story I thought I should share with you:
When Eisenhower became the president of a university, some of the administrator came to him with a problem. They explained to him about students walking on grass they are not supposed to. Apparently, no matter how much signs they put up, the students still went ahead and walk through the grass. They had no idea what to do, and thought Eisenhower, a brilliant general, ought to know how to discipline the students and keep them in order. Eisenhower went to look at the grass the students walk over, and he ordered the administrators to pave over the paths the students walked over.
The moral of the story is, people are going to do what they are going to do. You can’t force them to abandon human nature ;).
So, couple of things to keep in mind:
People are going to do what they are going to do. It might not be always beneficial to enforce too many rules all the time.
Everyone is different. It may not be reasonable to ask everyone to be reasonable, understanding, and compassionate. Some are bound to think with their emotions, while others are more moderate and level-headed.
Every year we try to come up with rules and reminders, and they have limited success. An iron fist to crack down on the rules might not be as good as you think it is.
I can’t stress this point enough. There MUST BE room for mistakes. That’s one of the best ways to learn. The rules should not tell people to be perfect.
So, keeping that in mind, maybe we can come up with a set of guideline/rules with a philosophy that tell us how to participate as a community constructively, while denying as little human nature as possible.
“U” is not a word. Neither is “r”. The only one letter words allowed are “I” and “a”. This isn’t IM or SMS, and if you don’t spend the time to make readable posts, people won’t spend the time to decode them. “I was in a hurry” is not an excuse. The only excuse for internet shorthand is if you are posting from a cell phone or other device without a keyboard.
Proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling, and capitalization are your friends. Posts on ChiefDelphi don’t have to be perfect, or even close to perfect, but they should look like you put some thought into them. Don’t forget that ChiefDelphi is a public forum, and how you present yourself here reflects not just on you, but on your team and school as well.
I’m sorry if these sound nitpicky, but I am tired of sorting through posts that are just one long run-on sentence. Being able to express yourself clearly in writing is an important skill, and we don’t want to reinforce the stereotype of engineers being unable to write, do we?
EDIT: If you notice a mistake in your post after submitting, there is no shame in clicking the EDIT button.
I feel that a few important guidelines on behavior are these:
What happens outside of the forums stays outside of the forums, and vice versa. In such a large community, it is impossible for everyone to be compatible. Arguments and disagreements happen, but it is not appropriate to negative-rep somebody or disrespect their opinion because you did not have a good interaction with them at the last meeting, competition, or even over chat clients.
Changing your behavior is not “giving up.” Changing your behavior or making an apology on the forums if necessary is absolutely acceptable and very mature. There are many different people here, and the ones that gain respect are the ones that are able to see their mistakes and moderate their own behavior.
In relation to number 2, and stated before, everyone makes mistakes. Giving someone disrespectful feedback for a post or incident that occurred months ago is unreasonable. Use your best judgement.
