• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Good Posting Practices

We try to have as light a touch as we can, but one thing we do try to do is keep the mainstream threads on-topic as much as possible, or they all too easily spin-out. It's actually pretty much the same line moderation has taken since 2002 in terms of marshalling and curating. Chat - fine, mention East Anglian resorts to your heart's content, but in the middle of a very well-argued and focused thread in one of the actual Fortean categories? No, it's basically inappropriate. All we ask for is some sense of context. One of - if not the main reason we've lasted this long, longer than all of the others pretty much is that we have kept to our own line, changed when we needed to, but stayed basically true to the original idea of this place. It hasn't been easy, we haven't always got it right, but we do know what we're doing and have a lot of experience keeping this place going.

We don't charge a fee, we don't put ludicrous strictures on the membership, we're approachable and constructive. All we ask is that everyone thinks, in Fortean topic discussions especially about what they're posting, if it contributes constructively to the conversation at hand, or whether it really needs saying at all. You don't have to reply, unless you have something to actually say.

It has become apparent that yet again this thread has spun out. So - I'm going to close it now, extract all the actual Good Posting Practice material and post that as a locked thread. Six hundred posts is a lot to expect any newcomer (or existing poster) to read. It'll take a couple of days so watch this space.
 
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Thread now pruned, extensively. As I have edited into the opening post, this thread has been distilled down from a 20 page, 600 post epic which kicked off 15 years ago. In that time we've had a number of major software changes that have rendered a lot of posts redundant, plus about 12 pages of off-topic meandering.

What remains is all appropriate to the current iteration of the forum. I will be keeping it locked so it remains focused. If you have queries about the site and its functionality then quite the best place is, perhaps unsurprisingly General Website Queries 2018 & Onward.
 
Yithian said:
Videos frequently move or disappear, leaving a trail or broken links and zero clues as to where replacements can be found.
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Having spent a good while over the past few weeks 'patching up' old threads, we've found that this has become more and more noticeable among those threads that have been active from c. 2016 to the present. Where possible, dead video links (usually but not always YouTube ones) are replaced with active ones, but we're finding that a large proportion of those that no longer function are music--frequently because they have been removed for copyright infringement.

We'll leave YouTube to their own policing, but we're now asking for a cessation of the 'Every Thread Needs a Theme Tune' posts. If you've got an especially witty one for a CHAT thread, it's probably fair enough, but threads in the Fortean sub-fora are all the better for their absence. They're an irritation to remove or maintain, and of very negligible value in terms of furthering conversation. It's perfectly possible to mention the existence of a song and post the name of the artist and track without supplying a YouTube link to it--we all know how to find music online.

As ever, sorry if this makes us appear kill-joys; we're just trying to ensure that the machine runs smoothly, and we're unconvinced that there's all that much joy you're missing out on with this one.
 
Re-emphasising the guidelines on nekkid links given here

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/good-posting-practices.16430/page-4#post-1914806

and

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/good-posting-practices.16430/page-4#post-2039908

and elsewhere in this thread and other places.

Also re-emphasising that posting nekkid links means that some members can't access otherwise accessible material. I'm very happy to talk and explain and discuss this 1:1 if that would be helpful - have already been doing this and nobody has died so far ;)

Frides
 
Frideswide said:
Re-emphasising the guidelines on nekkid links given here

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/good-posting-practices.16430/page-4#post-1914806

and

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/good-posting-practices.16430/page-4#post-2039908

and elsewhere in this thread and other places.

Also re-emphasising that posting nekkid links means that some members can't access otherwise accessible material. I'm very happy to talk and explain and discuss this 1:1 if that would be helpful - have already been doing this and nobody has died so far ;)

Frides
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And in case you’re wondering about nekkid
EnolaGaia said:
The posting of blind links (links alone, without any introductory or explanatory text) is discouraged as bad posting practice.
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Effective immediately ...

Posts consisting of no more than a blind link to external material without any explanation of its content and / or its relevance to the topic at hand are subject to deletion without comment or notification.

If you can't be bothered to advise your fellow members what the link leads to or why it's pertinent to the given discussion we can't be bothered to let it survive.
 
Please do not post links to sites which either infringe copyright or supply tools and descriptions for how to do so.

We do not expect anyone to make delicate and subjective legal judgments, just use common sense and we'll handle the rest.

If you wish to discuss such matters with one another privately, then that is none of our business, but we do not encourage or promote it on this board.

Thank you.
WastefulSameAttwatersprairiechicken-max-1mb.gif
 
Killjoy alert.

In the last three months alone, we've had approximately fifty Cromer 'jokes' on threads that are not the dedicated Cromer thread (yes, we've counted). Around half of these were in CHAT, but the rest were scattered across a variety of Fortean threads where they have no place. We haven't included in this total the numerous Cromer jokes in profile posts (that's your personal domain), but around thirty of the duddest or most incongruous found elsewhere have now been removed.

I usually prefer not to name names, but two posters of long-standing and good character form the core of our Cromer-tangent production team: @ramonmercado and @Tigerhawk.

If they and everybody else could now limit this tendency to the Cromer thread, we'd be most grateful; we have asked nicely in the past.

It's off-putting to newcomers to have pointless derailments about crabs, and the joke is past its best before date in terms of humour.

Edit: this is not now 'a thing'—we don't plan to police use of running jokes or humour; it's just that this one has run so long that that particular domain has been left very far behind.
 
Whilst we all probably agree that politics is an important subject this is not the place for it.

The Charles Fort Institute (who make the continuing functioning of this board possible) exists to further the study, discussion and sharing of all things Fortean. This is facilitated by civil discourse and when politics rears its head that civil discourse is generaly the first casualty. There are many locations both online and in real life where you can discuss politics to your hearts content. This is not one of them.

Thank you for your understanding and now let's get back to Forteana.
 
It would be optimal when copying the sample text for articles if 'flavour' artwork and photographs that do not add to the story were removed. I know that some browsers copy them by default, but for us they're just clutter and bandwidth—apart from any copyright concerns.

@maximus otter I've edited out a few of yours recently (but not only yours).

Appreciated.
 
The Fortean News section is looking rather bare of late.

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?forums/latest-fortean-news.13/

To clarify, news stories posted there are moved periodically to specialist fora, either as complete threads or by being appended to existing threads. In general, anything that has not had a response during the past three months is moved.

Accordingly, it's a good 'first place' to post things, especially if you are uncertain where to put a story, because we can search for the best choice and make the call for you a few months down the line.

Please help us repopulate the section regularly.
 
A post I recently made on another thread that applies to many others. It was written in response to the various COVID threads, but a good number of topics in the Conspiracy section are covered by the advice:

Yithian said:
YouTube videos will convince almost nobody for the simple reason that few people will watch them--and even fewer will watch them in their entirety.

With this in mind, it is hugely more helpful to us here if, when posting a link to one, you summarise the findings in a few sentences and/or highlight the main point in text. This is what many members already do when posting links to published scientific papers:
  1. What is this?
  2. What does it prove?
  3. Why is this important?
  4. My opinion (if not implied above).
  5. Extract from text/description.
  6. Here's the link.
if you find that you are not able to do these things, you probably ought to ask yourself whether the video is worth posting at all; a three-hour tour de horizon from an amateur researcher has to be pretty special to warrant anybody's attention.
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Thanks.
 
Something to add for the regular members here.

When a new shouty person washes up and starts being slightly obnoxious—as happens from time to time—and a moderator pushes back against that behaviour, that is usually not a fit of pique from an excessively territorial moderator but a calculated move; often, it's the product of multiple moderators who have conferred 'behind the scenes' as it were, having made some kind of calculation of the odds of said shouty new member improving their behaviour or leaving in response; it's also often a second approach after contact has been attempted via private message. I'm not referring here to new members simply making mistakes, I mean belligerence and rudeness to those with whom they are interacting.

While I have no doubt that intentions are pure, and we are aware of everybody's desire to grow the membership and be welcoming to new arrivals, it doesn't help the matter to have longstanding members complaining on thread about these actions or worse—and there are some serial offenders here—draping a metaphorical arm over the new member's shoulder and commiserating with them about the heavy-handed censorship under which you all labour.

Do feel free to cajole and encourage these people, but please don't assume we're behaving thoughtlessly in these scenarios. We sometimes make the wrong call, but over time we beat the odds and have helped to turn around some of the most unpromising cases.
 
LIke Yith said ...

Don't presume the visible actions taken by the staff are as unexpected and sudden as they may appear. You folks have no idea how much time we spend comparing notes and debating issues over the horizon from the visible forum. Some days it seems that's about all we manage to accomplish.

Furthermore, don't make the mistake of assuming all actions we take are initiated at our own proactive discretion. You don't see, and therefore don't know, the number of reports submitted to us by your fellow members.
 
EnolaGaia said:
You folks have no idea how much time we spend comparing notes and debating issues over the horizon from the visible forum. Some days it seems that's about all we manage to accomplish.
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This also explains why we may appear a little careworn when we're simultaneously accused of not doing anything and doing too much.
Yithian said:
...commiserating with them about the overly heavy-handed censorship you all labour under here.
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We think really hard about deleting content (ie actual content, not spam, irrelevant pictures, catchphrases, etc). We've made it plain what's allowable and what isn't, especially on actual Fortean threads. Obviously, sometimes the diversion becomes an interesting discussion in its own right so we tend to hive it off into a dedicated thread, however frequently it just becomes a retread of another discussion or a collection of spam, irrelevant pictures, catchphrases, etc so we're justified in ditching it. This applies less, slightly, to Chat and MSN threads, but they have their own issues which we will address in a separate thread presently.
 
Yithian said:
The Fortean News section is looking rather bare of late.

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?forums/latest-fortean-news.13/

To clarify, news stories posted there are moved periodically to specialist fora, either as complete threads or by being appended to existing threads. In general, anything that has not had a response during the past three months is moved.

Accordingly, it's a good 'first place' to post things, especially if you are uncertain where to put a story, because we can search for the best choice and make the call for you a few months down the line.

Please help us repopulate the section regularly.
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Bump to this message.

The threshold for 'news' is three months.

As July is now upon us, April's crop has been moved to other fora and there's an echo in the news section once more.

Please assist.
 
A message to members new and old:

Do not post 'bare links' without comment or explanation as to what they are.

Best practice is also to copy a sample extract from the text at the site.

If we have time, we will edit these posts to include such an extract and an explicatory title, but if we don't, the post will be deleted without correspondence (not out of petulance, but because contact takes up more of our time).
 
Yithian said:
... Do not post 'bare links' without comment or explanation as to what they are.
Best practice is also to copy a sample extract from the text at the site.
If we have time, we will edit these posts to include such an extract and an explicatory title, but if we don't, the post will be deleted without correspondence (not out of petulance, but because contact takes up more of our time).
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It's simple courtesy to cue your fellow members to what you're inviting them to visit.

Blind links are commonly used for nefarious purposes, and we (the staff) can't responsibly allow potentially toxic posts to survive.

Providing an introductory comment and / or a quoted excerpt gives clues to WTF the original link offers. If the link goes dead the intro / comment may be the only clue available for updating or salvaging the content.

It can take considerable time to track down clues about current and dead blind links - time you could save us by explaining your links when you first post them.

It can take hours to verify, decipher, and / or repair content hidden behind blind links. It takes me only a single click to put your cryptic post out of my misery.
 
1664376252748.png


So I have now clicked on the 'Watch - without receiving emails' at the top of this thread - hopefully it'll show up in my 'alerts' now!
 
Members have the whole of CHAT to play in plus the profile message bar; minor banter has always been standard, but when threads in Website Issues have more than a page or spam and jokes as their most recent contributions, those threads lose their intended purpose.

A whole page of quips was recently moved from the Missing In Action thread, for example.
 
In response to a recent request, I supplied the following guidance for how to employ spoiler tags.

As you can see, there are two options:

Screenshot 2022-12-06 at 3.53.36 AM.png


Standard use here is for actual spoilers (important plot details) and graphic text, video or images.
 
1) Bump to the previous post—you can save the instructions in the one graphic.

2) We've recently deleted a number of hand-wringing laments about how the world is going too woke.

This may or may not be the case, but it's a) tedious to read, b) liable to spark culture spats and political-adjacent sniping.

In the spirit of the season nobody has received any warning, nor even been contacted for a virtual tap on the shoulder, but if such posts continue to appear, we shall take action at once.

Please consider this post the polite throat-clearing hint.
 
Yithian said:
Killjoy alert.

In the last three months alone, we've had approximately fifty Cromer 'jokes' on threads that are not the dedicated Cromer thread (yes, we've counted). Around half of these were in CHAT, but the rest were scattered across a variety of Fortean threads where they have no place. We haven't included in this total the numeous Cromer jokes in profile posts (that's your personal domain), but around thirty of the duddest or most incongruous found elsewhere have now been removed.

I usually prefer not to name names, but two posters of long-standing and good character form the core of our Cromer-tangent production team: @ramonmercado and @Tigerhawk.

If they and everybody else could now limit this tendency to the Cromer thread, we'd be most grateful; we have asked nicely in the past.

It's off-putting to newcomers to have pointless derailments about crabs, and the joke is past its best before date in terms of humour.

Edit: this is not now 'a thing'—we don't plan to police use of running jokes or humour; it's just that this one has run so long that that particular domain has been left very far behind.
Click to expand...

Please read and note.

There has been a resurgence.
 
To be fair....there is no longer a 'Cromer' thread, (apart from the one about a ghost walk) so any specific Cromer-area related posts do not have a dedicated pigeonhole any more..
Not that I'm that concerned about it, just saying.
 
Yithian said:
Please read and note.

There has been a resurgence.
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Although it is not always deliberate, "in jokes" are a form of shibboleth. They help to differentiate between those who are "in" and those who are not. If this place is to remain lively and entertaining, we need new people and fresh insights. Anything that tends to make new people feel like outsiders is a bad thing. Personally, I don't mind the Cromer jokes, but I can see that too many of them may be harmful to the interests of the forum.
 
I'm keeping out of this one but the Mrs has had a bottle of red. I'm not going to censor her.

edit: she's getting 'YOU HAVE INSUFFICIENT PRIVILAGES TO REPLY HERE' ... (I'm guessing because she hasn't posted here before?).
 
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Swifty said:
I'm keeping out of this one but the Mrs has had a bottle of red. I'm not going to censor her.

edit: she's getting 'YOU HAVE INSUFFICIENT PRIVILAGES TO REPLY HERE' ... (I'm guessing because she hasn't posted here before?).
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Has she just registered a new account?

I have just approved one that looks likely, and if so, she should now be able to post.
 
Yithian said:
1) Bump to the previous post—you can save the instructions in the one graphic.

2) We've recently deleted a number of hand-wringing laments about how the world is going too woke.

This may or may not be the case, but it's a) tedious to read, b) liable to spark culture spats and political-adjacent sniping.

In the spirit of the season nobody has received any warning, nor even been contacted for a virtual tap on the shoulder, but if such posts continue to appear, we shall take action at once.

Please consider this post the polite throat-clearing hint.
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Unofficial Christmas truce is over.

Next post about how woke the world is or how weak the younger generation is wins you an official warning—and perhaps a bonus prize of a temporary ban.

Take it elsewhere.
 
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