FORUM PRIMER - PLEASE READ!!!

The Forum Primer.

As the Ogre Stronghold continues to grow, it has increasingly become a haven for players of all the warhammer races – and indeed many players of other game systems to show their work, gain tips and tricks and enjoy each other’s company.

As a part of the moderator team, I must say that we generally have a pretty easy job here.  The stronghold is a friendly, relaxed and co-operative forum – one where almost every post counts and we all pull together to make this great place even greater.

It’s that “almost every post” bit that we’re addressing with this thread.

As we pick up new members, we also attract those new players and hobbyists who have never used a forum before – and in some cases, even with our normal helpfulness, these people tend to get left out a bit.  Because they don’t understand what we should all be doing here, and how we should be doing it, they make mistakes.

These are totally understandable and forgivable mistakes – but mistakes that can, over time, really start adding up and annoying folk.

So with that in mind – here is a Forum Primer for using the stronghold, a quiet word from the moderator team, which we all might find useful to read and remember from now on.

How to Make Yourself Understood

Language is important.  You’ll not find any spelling or grammar fiends here, but to be able to communicate your ideas, ask for help and make useful suggestions you need to follow a few simple rules.

The language of the stronghold is English – you need a working knowledge of it in order to make progress here. 

To all members who don’t have English as a first language can I say “congratulations!”  I’m usually very impressed with you ability to communicate and your English skills are generally superior to my skills in any other language.  Member of the stronghold will generally be tolerant of any mistakes you make if you explain yourself and your situation.

Spelling and Grammar need to be of a reasonable quality

Punctuation exists for a good reason – to turn drivel into meaningful sentences!  You need to use punctuation in all your posts.  YOU might know what you mean – but that’s no guarantee that WE will.  On a forum you only have your words to describe you, and if we can’t read them, you’re in trouble!

The comma, the full stop and the space are required from time to time.  Remember, if your English teacher at school wouldn’t like your writing (can some of you remember back that far?) – then neither will we!  No one is going to yell at you for making obscure grammatical errors, but you need to read your writing to yourself, if you find it hard to follow, then so will others.

As for spelling, don’t worry too much over spelling mistakes, but DO read through your posts BEFORE posting them – if you can fix a mistake or too then so much the better.

Keep everything easy to read

At the stronghold we have members from all over the planet, or all ages and experiences – and in order to all get the best from each other, we have to keep things simple for each other.

DON’T use net speak, “leet speak”, or Txt spk here at the stronghold – just simple English will do.

We have enough abbreviations in the games we play already without adding more stuff in!


Now that you know how to make yourself understood, let’s look at some rules of behaviour

How to Make Friends and Influence People

In order to help people here at the stronghold, or to gain help from them, we all need to be courteous and reasonable.  It also helps if you can show that you are trying to help yourself at the same time.

Don’t be Lazy

When you post asking for help – don’t ask for everything to be given to you on a platter.  A forum is a place for discussion and advice.  If you can show a direction you are going in, and how much work you have done, you’ll get more help and a better quality help too!

What goes where??

If you are not sure where a thread should be posted, read the guidelines for each board given in the index.  If you’re still not sure, PM a moderator or another friendly member and ask them BEFORE posting it up.  Keeping things in the proper places makes it more likely you’ll receive responses to your posts.

Threadomancy is wrong!

Threadomancy is the act of posting in a thread that has been inactive for a long time, pushing it back to the top of the boards.  At the stronghold, we get through a lot of threads in some boards, so looking at what page something is on isn’t always the best idea.  As a rule, please check the date of the last post made before you decide to add anything.  If it’s more than 2 months old – Leave It Alone!!  Start a new thread instead if you have something on the topic you would like to discuss.

This doesn’t apply to Gnoblogs however.  Gnoblogs are personal journals of member’s projects and, as such, a lot of time may elapse and we might move on to other things before coming back to a long-dead project.  (Corai and myself are especially good at this!).

Double posting is bad.  Double posting is bad

Sometimes everyone has a brain fart.  You’ve just posted and then remember you need to add something else in.  Please don’t post another message – just edit your last one to include your new thoughts!

Even if it’s been a couple of days, don’t double post.

Once again, Gnoblogs are an exception to this as they more the repository for all the thoughts of the owner – feel free to update your own gnoblog even if you haven’t received any feedback lately – but read the stuff below first!

one-line posts

Posting one line




At a time





To build up your post count





Is annoying



Unless you have a valid contribution to make to a thread, something that will advance the debate, answer a question or provide a detailed insight – don’t bother posting it until you have had more time to think things through.  The kind of posts that say things like “I think your should use (insert name here)” and then don’t follow it up with a “why”, a “because” or a “how to” really waste your time – and the time of anyone reading it.

Flaming

At the stronghold we rarely have a problem with heated arguments – we generally have enough respect for each other to keep things nice and sensible.  Sometimes however, passions get raised, often because someone has said something in such a way that it triggers reactions from others.

If this happens to you, don’t start retaliating and never make things personal – this is the internet and, barring some of us who know each other in real life, we’re all just a bunch of 0’s and 1’s to each other.

Everything in Moderation

The moderators of the forum are a pretty active bunch as I’m sure you’ve noticed.  Check the post counts, and time spent online statistics from time to time and see for yourself – however, we can’t be everywhere at once and, from time to time, we might miss something that needs sorting out – a thread in the wrong place, an infringement of one of the above guidelines, etc.

If you spot something like this, your first action should be to alert one of the mods with a PM – not to try and deal with it yourself.  Although most people will take your well-meaning and thoughtful action in the spirit you intended it, not all will and if someone is going to take flack it should be us, not you, which bears the brunt.

Let us know, and we’ll sort it out.


And that’s about it for now – if anyone can think of something we should add let the Mod team know and we’ll get straight on it.

Happy posting to all!!