Enforcing professionalism at this forum.

[Cornish Steve]

Personally, I would like to encourage the moderators of this forum to enforce a minimum level of professionalism among its membership. I visit this forum because I hope to learn from industry professionals. The forum is devalued when emotional and unprofessional messages are posted that might turn potential members away.

I'm a comparatively new member here, so maybe I'm the one who is out of line. For that reason, I thought I'd take a poll. I encourage everyone to register an opinion on the subject.

By the way, I understand that sometimes we all say and write things that we shouldn't, especially when we respond on the spur of the moment. That is no excuse, however, for disrespect. We can always come back to edit or to delete an unfortunate message posted in haste.

[The_JinJ]

No - censorship is never a good idea, so let's trust the personal integrity of forum members.

[epiphany]

No censorship unless it's porn, or any 'ism :P

[Amber]

I think that forums like this one very quickly become self-moderating, in that anyone who is obviously out of line will very quickly find out about it from the responses they receive.

I sometimes think censorship in a forum like this can cause more problems than it solves. Who decides what the minimum level of professionalism should be, for example?

[webit]

I fully agree, censorship is to be avoided.

[fastfences]

No to censorship - the moderators are up with it. Although to contradict myself: that flagrant ad' trying to sell about 500 ebooks 1 week ago should have been ripped off the board straight away! Cheers, Nigel

[Ozzy]

I love the way no-one has opted for "Leave the moderators to it" ;)

In theory we do censor this forum, but only slightly. By the very nature that we do delete some posts we are censoring these forums. However I do like to try and allow self censorship to this forums, and only remove really dodgey stuff or blatant spam and "get rich quick" stuff. This country is all about free speak and although it is inevitable taht some may offend others, so long as it isn't truly offensive or illegal and try to be quite tollerant to what gets posted on this board.

After all, we are all adults are we not? :)

[coxadmin]

Our moderators do a great job, which is probably tough at times.

Sometimes posts are made that are less than helpful or constructive or are even harsh in the way they are put (e.g. your website/logo/idea/whatever is terrible/awful/rubbish), and I personaly have been discouraged by such posts. In one case I received such comments and then got a PM offering services to deal with the problem - unsurprisingly I chose not to respond as the harshness of the moments did not endear me to the person and/or company offering the servcies.

Not everyone is able to put in writing what they want to say - others have a more gentle way of saying the same thing.

I think we should ALL be in less of a hurry to respond to a post until we have read it over several times and considered whether another reader would find it harsh or unkind.

I know we're all in business and that can be a tough place to be, but we're also on this forum to help one another, not post negative comments to get business.

Keep up the good work, Moderators.

[MinuWeb]

After all, we are all adults are we not? :)

shouldn't this question be raised in a seperate thread ? :D :D

[webit]

After all, we are all adults are we not? :)

shouldn't this question be raised in a seperate thread ? :D :D

That's what my wife keeps remining me how I'm suposed to act like

[Webstuff]

We all need to vent our immaturity somewhere, and theres a whole category for it (time out), but I think the members who've been here a while / intend to be here a while post only fitting material in the other threads. If your dislike is for the spammers - sadly theres not much that can be done, short of deleting their posts ASAP.

[daveashton]

What is more dangerous, someone being rude or someone giving bad advise?

So if we have censorship we could stop people being rude and offensive, but we still allow people to post dangerous advise that can damage businesses!

I don’t think there is a perfect solution so my vote is, say what you want and reader be aware that the person who has given you the advise on tax could be a 16 year old school drop out working in McDonalds flipping burgers and finds the job challenging.

[chris1317]

Just want to re-emphasise what everyone else is saying basicaly.

I dont agree with censorship unless it is totaly neccicary e.g. blatant spam.

The mods seem to be doing a god job when it comes to this respect.

If someone posts junk it is normaly flamed by about every person on the forum within about 30 secconds anyway.;

It would be nice if they censored some extra letters that i sometimes put in words e.g. helllo, alternately I could just learn to type and spell.

Chris.

[Handyhero]

Having been censored myself after reacting to a post that I misread, I appreciate the value of censorship. :oops:

Apologies to Mr Ashton for that.

I agree with Steve that there should be a minimum level of professionalism and respect for all members except Ian - who has piles.

Therefore, I vote for full censorship!... I think.

[Desmond Brambley]

Ahh, self censorship is the key, but moderator lead decisions on what is right or wrong? Nah.

If you flame someone and they take offense, it's your business you're damaging, not theirs.

[Cornish Steve]

I would like to add my voice of thanks to moderators who do an excellent job:

- They welcome new visitors promptly.
- They provide great advice based on experience.
- They do appear to remove extreme posts.
- They spend a lot of personal time on this activity.
- They diffuse difficult situations with good humor.
- They are even-handed in their comments.
- They avoid any impression of superiority.

It takes a certain type of person to meet all these criteria: Thanks guys!

Thank you too to everyone who took time to respond to my initial post. Your comments have certainly encouraged me to check and double-check messages before I post them to this forum.

[webit]

- They spend a lot of personal time on this activit.

In my case its rather too much non-personal time ...

[Rob Holmes]

Interesting..

Of the 3 options heres my thoughts..

1. We should be encouraging other professionals to join this forum and not be turning them away.

Definately, but we never turn away anyone, pro posts stay, cheap viagra posts get deleted but the poster (to my knowledge) doesn't get blocked and they are free to post professionally so this option generally already happens.

2. Censorship is never a good idea, so let's trust the personal integrity of forum members.

Unfortunately although most can be trusted that does not stop unprofessional people spamming. So maybe the question should be changed to do we delete 'spam/offensive/illegal/obscene and abusive posts or not'

3. Don't care - this is a matter for the moderators to decide, and we shouldn't be interfering with their work.

Theres an Admin to goto if you disagree with the moderators deleting your viagra posts ;) but thankfully there seems to be a great professional community here and although (like any community) things occasionally get a little heated - the vast amount of the time the only moderation needed is the spam posts, which I think is fantastic and a credit to the members here.

Rob

[winton50]

I watch another forum where the moderators are very active in removing posts.
unfortunately at the start they were pretty easy going but now it appears they remove many posts because they disagree with the argument or don't like the person who posted it!

[Ozzy]

which I think is fantastic and a credit to the members here.

...and credit to you and Alan as the other moderators who help me here. This is a busy forum and I wouldn't be able to keep on top of it myself.

[Thais]

The mods seem to be doing a god job...

Amen to that, brother!

[Webstuff]

lol, now they just need to help us with our spelling.

[Rob Holmes]

Now a spellchecker for phpbb that would be good!

:)

[Cornish Steve]

Now a spellchecker for phpbb that would be good!

:)

Spell-checker is my middle name. :)

[ebonybailey]

Yes lets not turn this place into Ecademy were it seems to be emotionally motivated gumf.
I like this place because unlike the formentioned it has not turned into a cheap promo site, there are genuine questions and genuine people helping.

[Webstuff]

And then theres me :P

Just a note - there is already a spell checker (ActiveX) plugin that can be used alongside most DHTML RTE's, though it may only be available in American...

[DuaneJackson]

Yes lets not turn this place into Ecademy were it seems to be emotionally motivated gumf.

I second that!

[Subbynet]

I think it sounds like the Admin/Moderators have it under control.

Don't expect everyone to be an expert, remember you wasn't and everyone no matter how stupid needs to learn from someone.

All the best

Martin

[Webstuff]

No, thats the beauty of being stupid - you know everything already! This has to be one of the best moderated forums I've ever been on. There are lots of helpful people here, and plenty of advice to be picked up.

[kyber]

The odd flame throw at a spammer/blatent advertiser is, I feel, therapeutic.

I did offer my services as a moderator a while back but was politely ignored. Perhaps it was assumed I would not be as restrained as the moderators already in place who I think do an excellent job which I why I voted to leave them to it.

The owner/managers of several businesses I helped start off are on here and I know they have found the advice on this forum very helpful (even if it meant they sometimes beat me in, er, discussions because they had better arguments thanks to you lot... mutter... mutter...)

Stuart

[Ozzy]

You wasn't ignored, I seem to remember I did reply, but I didn't see the point in having more moderators just for the sake of having more :)
Anyway, this forum is getting busier by the day so a new vacancy may soon become available ;)

[Webstuff]

You wasn't ignored


lol, that cheered me up no end ;)