Good and Bad forum etiquette

[FreeTheSlaves]

Well I recently blew my foot off with presenting a silly strawman argument and before that I let rip with a PoV that had been totally discredited 2 pages earlier - i.e. not read the thread.

So before I continue any ritual self humiliation, what other forms of etiquette (for lack of a better word) should I religiously adopt or avoid like the plague?

In other words what is the difference between good posting and the rest?

 

[Mark]

Try to be honest, and if you make a mistake, apologize and correct it as best you can.

 

[Hand of Evil]

If you think you are in error/wrong/out of line state in a follow-up post, tell the poster you did not think of it that way and they make valid points.

If you think you are being flamed for a valid point, ignore the flame, move on and don't add fuel to the fire.

If you feel you are being attacked use the 'report bad post' button and let a mod know.

As far as etiqutee, quote the post you are discussing, this way your comments become point-counter point. If you feel passionate or emtional about an answer, sometimes it is better not to post right away and return later and re-read the thread.

Moderate yourself, all of us use words and sentence structure that we see as faine but someone else may take issue with, use smiles and (comments enclosed) to change flow of your post.

See my disclaimer in my sig: Proof read your post before hitting submit reply.

 

[Darkness]

Right, missing that a point has already been made (and maybe even disproven) happens from time to time - especially in longer threads. If you're unable to read an entire thread, quickly skimming over the thread to search for something resembling the point you're trying to make can be useful.
Even if you do miss it, though, no biggie. Just thank people for pointing it out (or report them for flaming you over it, as the case may be ) and move on.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Thanks for the replies. I'm sort of thinking to not post for posts sake (this reply excluded ) if it doesn't add anything to a thread, particularly if it just bumps head to head with someone in a rapidly entrenching viewpoint; That seems to be a waste of bandwidth.