Posting habits people can do without

[Piratecat]

Wow... I guess that's one message board I should never visit… I would be banned within a few hours.

The first thing I posted got me censured by the moderator.

Clearly, we don't use the Forge's rules, and I'm not a big fan of using any ironclad and unflexible rules as a straitjacket for posting. I much prefer to be guided by common sense and courtesy. It's only when people use line-by-line posting to abuse the latter that the style truly annoys me.

 

[Deset Gled]

Here's a few more. They might just be my personal pet peeves, but I think that they have merit.

8. Not using any capital letters (alternatively, only capital letters) or punctuation, and people who use "l334" speak. If what you have to say is worth reading, it's worth spending an extra 5 seconds to type it correctly.

9. Colors. Changing color is useful if you want to black something out to avoid spoilers or info about a duel. It's not aesthetically pleasing, it's not cool looking, and it's not going to make you stand out (at least, not in the way you want it too).

10. Needless text formatting. Making something bold and/or italic is useful when you need to make something visually stand out from the rest of the text. It doesn't make your point any stronger. Same goes for using huge letters.

Do these get on anyone else's nerves at all? The color one in particular really gets to me. I hate the way some people deal with color on the internet. Enworld is the only site I know that managed to get light text on a dark background and have it be readable enough for me to frequent it. Then again, I tend to dislike colors in general (I'm partially colorblind).

 

[Afrodyte]

Do these get on anyone else's nerves at all? The color one in particular really gets to me. I hate the way some people deal with color on the internet. Enworld is the only site I know that managed to get light text on a dark background and have it be readable enough for me to frequent it. Then again, I tend to dislike colors in general (I'm partially colorblind).

I can see where you're coming from. A lot of times people change the color and/or font size when they're doing something like campaign design or tweaking a lot of rules in one go, and it actually hurts my eyes to see it. I don't mind changing the font size slightly to show headers, but making the head text twice as big as the normal text and then applying a lot of colors is painful for me to read. I don't mean this figuratively either.

 

[Crothian]

Yes, those actually bother me more then the orginal posters

 

[stevelabny]

there is no way a line-by-line response is the same as interrupting someone when talking.
when most of us have conversations with other people face to face, we would never ask numerous questions or make numerous ridiculous statements without pausing or the other person to get a word in.
it takes TWO to have a conversation.
otherwise you're giving a speech.

 

[Berandor]

Yep. Generally, the best way to respond to a long post, IMO, is to pick out a point or two from it that you think is key and respond to those points. Things tend to get pretty icky when two people start doing this to one another.

Daniel

Which then leads to the original poster coming in and semi-disregarding the post or accusing you of not reading thoroughly ("Did you not read what I wrote above? How about you address my real points?")

 

[Umbran]

Which then leads to the original poster coming in and semi-disregarding the post or accusing you of not reading thoroughly

Human communication has never been an exact science, so that a single perfect approach that has no drawbacks at all simply does not exist. On top of that, message boards have never been a perfect venue for clear and polite discourse. Life's a pain, in that occasionally you'll have to clarify yourself.

 

[hong]

I tend to agree. In my experience when most people descend to this level (Hi Hong! ), they've already lost the argument and are just being snarky.

Hey, it's all good, as long as people keep talking about me.

 

[Crothian]

What I don't like is people who say "Waste my time" as if reading the boards takes so much of their precious time. Threads are easily scaned and skimmed.

 

[Afrodyte]

What I don't like is people who say "Waste my time" as if reading the boards takes so much of their precious time. Threads are easily scaned and skimmed.

For you, maybe, but not everyone, and not all the time. Is there something wrong with the idea that not everyone shares the same interests, schedule, and techniques?