Forum Etiquette

[nasa35]

sometimes there's some mental effort involved with letting people know why they shouldn't tell anyone to die

So Louis CK, not for everyone, but your comment totally made me think of his standup at 1:50 from SNL in November.

What a great comedian. He hates deer by the way,

[Andrew_F]

Re: development info and updates getting buried in discussion--

Perhaps it might be a good idea to expand on Matt's wordpress idea and try to keep a wiki of development projects?

[Le Sueur]

Re Re: development info and updates getting buried in discussion--

Another thought I've had on this matter: Click on you're username (eg. next to a post you've made) and look at you're "Total Posts" statistics... If you post at least once a day, aka, you're on the site a lot, try to refrain from asking basic questions on topics you're perfectly capable of finding on your own in less than 5 minutes (Please think of this a friendly request to make the site better and not a curmudgeony comment to pick on anyone).

After looking up the correct answer to your question, if you still feel others may be confused, post the answer and help out, rather than generating 6-8 posts of unneeded responses.

[Nick]

I'm personally hesitant to spend much time with project pages after having spent many hours working on them over at Minnescraper in like 2007 and then it kind of being forgotten. I think people generally come to the forum for discussion rather than the specific height of building A, but then again, the poster above is correct in pointing out that lots of people tend to pop into the end of a 18 page discussion being all like "What's a train?" Also, there's a pretty similar thing on Finance and Commerce's website and in a couple other places. Which isn't to say that they don't get most of that info here (Hi, guys!) but that's a different story.

If there are some people who want to work on it, I'm sure that's something Shawn can look into when he gets back from his vacation. He'd wanted to do something like that but I was pretty meh about it.

[Tcmetro]

I think a stickied thread with a list of links to the topics, the status of the project, and maybe a small rendering would be nice. But I think it would fall to the wayside like the project pages have in the past.

[Nick]

So I think this is what I'm going to start doing:

viewtopic.php?f=15&p=26005#p26005

viewtopic.php?f=13&p=26049#p26009

Which comes with a "warning" which doesn't actually mean anything specific, but hopefully people will get the idea.

[twincitizen]

In the case of the LIME thread, I really just want to start deleting posts. That is just straight up spam.

[Nick]

Well, that's one thing I have done/probably will continue to do, but then there are no examples of what you shouldn't do. And people who don't religiously check the forum every hour might miss bad posts that were deleted but might see "y we're my posts deleted???" and not really get the whole context.

[Le Sueur]

As long as people take it in good faith and don't start leaving in droves because they've been shamed, sure why not...

[kregger22]

I just have to say, the fact that the moderator "Nick" has to make a specific comment to MS3 on his post when he suggests that he would like the height of this tower taller is embarrassing and sophomoric. If you want to kick me off of of UrbanMSP for saying so, it is what it is and that would be par for the course I guess. The fact of the matter is this is a site created from others that existed in the past and paved its way is way, and where MANY of us want more height and can't get enough of it. I understand not all people on here do, and that's ok as well, but making a statement about adding more floors to this building and potentially 15 more isn't a crime because this is a website partially about tall buildings - and I'm sure many agree with him. Maybe laying off the oversight and moving peoples posts from one thread to another and adding special comments can take a breather for a while.

[min-chi-cbus]

As a victim of Nick's comments myself, I have to say/admit that I think the thread looks a bit more professional when cleaned up, and Nick has done a good job with that so far. I also think the comments could at least be directed at the poster only, instead of the entire group, but I have personally defaulted in assuming that was a mistake and wasn't meant to happen. As far as getting docked "naughty points" or getting kicked off, I totally agree with you, and think it's childish at best and insecure superiority syndrome at the worst. Anything that improves this site I am all for, but not at the chagrin of otherwise happy posters.

[FISHMANPET]

I think endless reposts of "it should be taller" don't add anything to the conversation. If you have a new novel viewpoint to bring to the table by all means state it, but when many posts repeat the "it should be taller" line, or even worse the same poster says it over and over again, it's just wasting space and the time of everybody that has to read the same thought yet again.

[Didier]

Exactly as FISHMANPET said. The nature of discussing development leaves a lot of downtime for which we can engage and re-engage in the same circular discussions over and over again. Nick does a good job of moderating that.

[kirby96]

I personally think its too tall as is. Two stories is one too many if you ask me. As for the 'scolding', I'm with the guy that says it doesn't have to happen in public. I default to 'its the Internet. Deal with it.' Not that that means no moderation, but look at the unintended consequences. Now we've got a half dozen off topic posts. Err on the side of letting people voice. Plenty of folks have pet agendas that come out on every forum. Repeating 'it should be taller' is prolly the least annoying of these IMHO.

[Nick]

I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, because it's working.

[kirby96]

Agree. THIS works. Calling out folks publicly does not. Minimize your work load.

[twincitizen]

I support the public lashings. It calls out the poster on their bad/annoying/spammy behavior in a way that can't simply be ignored like a PM can. While feelings may be hurt, it sends a clear message to all forum members of what not to do and underlines the idea that we demand better than "just an internet forum".

Going off topic in a thread from time to time is fine. That's the nature of discussion, whether online or in person, it goes off in tangents. What's not ok is when it's the same tangent, by the same person(s), every time they talk. Imagine you had an acquaintance who talked about how great veganism is, or something equally annoying, every time you hung out with them. In real life you would stop hanging out with that person.

[mattaudio]

We wouldn't have any forum etiquette issues if we had just chosen 3C for SWLRT.

[PhilmerPhil]

Imagine you had an acquaintance who talked about how great veganism is, or something equally annoying, every time you hung out with them. In real life you would stop hanging out with that person.

I feel like I'm like that guy to my friends, except it's about biking and urbanism...

[MNdible]

We wouldn't have any forum etiquette issues if we had just chosen 3C for SWLRT.

As much as I supported 3A, I must begrudgingly admit that this is true.