Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video
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After a decade of continuous posting in online communities and analyzing how different response methods are used to enable healthy conversation in real time, and how other methods can be used to silence and shut down response by mimicking a load speaker keeping others from talking... here are some guides of how to post when the goal is interactive, peer to peer conversation rather than trying to shout down others in the thread.
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So question, so you consider a wall of text just writing one big response to the OP and not consecutive posts going through each point of the OP in a conversation discussion?
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@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
So question, so you consider a wall of text just writing one big response to the OP and not consecutive posts going through each point of the OP in a conversation discussion?
A WoT is okay if it is a single response to a single point or thought. At some point you need a long response because the thought is complex.
It becomes a problem when people mash many thoughts or points together to make response difficult.
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@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
So question, so you consider a wall of text just writing one big response to the OP and not consecutive posts going through each point of the OP in a conversation discussion?
A WoT is okay if it is a single response to a single point or thought. At some point you need a long response because the thought is complex.
It becomes a problem when people mash many thoughts or points together to make response difficult.
I am just having a hard time of grasping the proper difference.
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@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
So question, so you consider a wall of text just writing one big response to the OP and not consecutive posts going through each point of the OP in a conversation discussion?
A WoT is okay if it is a single response to a single point or thought. At some point you need a long response because the thought is complex.
It becomes a problem when people mash many thoughts or points together to make response difficult.
I am just having a hard time of grasping the proper difference.
The difference is giving people the fastest and easiest ability to read and respond, or just talking on and on without taking an break so people who want to respond cannot.
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You should not have to edit what someone has written to be able to respond. A quote response ideally can be an entire post without having to edit it to explain context.
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@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
You should not have to edit what someone has written to be able to respond. A quote response ideally can be an entire post without having to edit it to explain context.
I do that most of the time and in my posts to make sure I grasp what others are saying. Sometimes though when the post is too long I need to break it down to the parts that need attention or are the actual questions about.
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@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
You should not have to edit what someone has written to be able to respond. A quote response ideally can be an entire post without having to edit it to explain context.
I do that most of the time and in my posts to make sure I grasp what others are saying. Sometimes though when the post is too long I need to break it down to the parts that need attention or are the actual questions about.
Sure. And when you do, make each a separate response so the next person doesn’t need to break it up to respond further.
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It's a lot like the way @scottalanmiller machine gun posts, lol. When he does posts like that a lot of times, each separate post is related to one specific point. (sometimes several of his following posts are related to one specific point).
That does tend to intimidate some folks, I think.
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@dafyre said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
That does tend to intimidate some folks, I think.
Yes, it intimidates people who were hoping to get away with WoT attacks to silence critics by making their points too hard to follow or to respond to. I've had a lot of discussions with people about it, and people have never complained about it doing something bad, only it doing good things that they didn't appreciate because allowing others to respond wasn't their goal.
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@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dafyre said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
That does tend to intimidate some folks, I think.
Yes, it intimidates people who were hoping to get away with WoT attacks to silence critics by making their points too hard to follow or to respond to. I've had a lot of discussions with people about it, and people have never complained about it doing something bad, only it doing good things that they didn't appreciate because allowing others to respond wasn't their goal.
My point is that both are hard to follow, going point by point is hard to follow as well as one big chunk of post.
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@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dafyre said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
That does tend to intimidate some folks, I think.
Yes, it intimidates people who were hoping to get away with WoT attacks to silence critics by making their points too hard to follow or to respond to. I've had a lot of discussions with people about it, and people have never complained about it doing something bad, only it doing good things that they didn't appreciate because allowing others to respond wasn't their goal.
My point is that both are hard to follow, going point by point is hard to follow as well as one big chunk of post.
How is point by point hard to follow? It's a single point, all contained. All the work is already done.
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@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dafyre said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
That does tend to intimidate some folks, I think.
Yes, it intimidates people who were hoping to get away with WoT attacks to silence critics by making their points too hard to follow or to respond to. I've had a lot of discussions with people about it, and people have never complained about it doing something bad, only it doing good things that they didn't appreciate because allowing others to respond wasn't their goal.
My point is that both are hard to follow, going point by point is hard to follow as well as one big chunk of post.
How is point by point hard to follow? It's a single point, all contained. All the work is already done.
Say I have 8 points in a OP, a couple of people answer the most egregious issues they find, then I have another person dissecting the post and into each of the points has 8 different posts with their long answer to them and then I move on to answer all your 8 posts. Meanwhile another poster answers all your points in one single post but clearly organized. What's the difference?
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@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dafyre said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
That does tend to intimidate some folks, I think.
Yes, it intimidates people who were hoping to get away with WoT attacks to silence critics by making their points too hard to follow or to respond to. I've had a lot of discussions with people about it, and people have never complained about it doing something bad, only it doing good things that they didn't appreciate because allowing others to respond wasn't their goal.
My point is that both are hard to follow, going point by point is hard to follow as well as one big chunk of post.
How is point by point hard to follow? It's a single point, all contained. All the work is already done.
Say I have 8 points in a OP, a couple of people answer the most egregious issues they find, then I have another person dissecting the post and into each of the points has 8 different posts with their long answer to them and then I move on to answer all your 8 posts. Meanwhile another poster answers all your points in one single post but clearly organized. What's the difference?
One is simple to follow and simple to respond to, the other is not. They are totally different. One is a mess, one is clean. One is simple, one is impossible to extract context.
Also, one is designed to encourage further discussion by both the OP and and other people. The other is designed to stay silent until everything is written so that the conversation feels "over" and the effort to respond is much higher.
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@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dafyre said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
That does tend to intimidate some folks, I think.
Yes, it intimidates people who were hoping to get away with WoT attacks to silence critics by making their points too hard to follow or to respond to. I've had a lot of discussions with people about it, and people have never complained about it doing something bad, only it doing good things that they didn't appreciate because allowing others to respond wasn't their goal.
My point is that both are hard to follow, going point by point is hard to follow as well as one big chunk of post.
How is point by point hard to follow? It's a single point, all contained. All the work is already done.
Say I have 8 points in a OP, a couple of people answer the most egregious issues they find, then I have another person dissecting the post and into each of the points has 8 different posts with their long answer to them and then I move on to answer all your 8 posts. Meanwhile another poster answers all your points in one single post but clearly organized. What's the difference?
One is simple to follow and simple to respond to, the other is not. They are totally different. One is a mess, one is clean. One is simple, one is impossible to extract context.
I just can follow both practices without any problem but I don't have the many posts as you have had ever, as I just started online communities in 2016 so nothing prior.
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@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dbeato said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@scottalanmiller said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
@dafyre said in Forum Posting Etiquette SMBIT Video:
That does tend to intimidate some folks, I think.
Yes, it intimidates people who were hoping to get away with WoT attacks to silence critics by making their points too hard to follow or to respond to. I've had a lot of discussions with people about it, and people have never complained about it doing something bad, only it doing good things that they didn't appreciate because allowing others to respond wasn't their goal.
My point is that both are hard to follow, going point by point is hard to follow as well as one big chunk of post.
How is point by point hard to follow? It's a single point, all contained. All the work is already done.
Say I have 8 points in a OP, a couple of people answer the most egregious issues they find, then I have another person dissecting the post and into each of the points has 8 different posts with their long answer to them and then I move on to answer all your 8 posts. Meanwhile another poster answers all your points in one single post but clearly organized. What's the difference?
One is simple to follow and simple to respond to, the other is not. They are totally different. One is a mess, one is clean. One is simple, one is impossible to extract context.
I just can follow both practices without any problem but I don't have the many posts as you have had ever, as I just started online communities in 2016 so nothing prior.
It's not just about the OP following, it's about everyone that reads following. If you have to keep looking back to the OP, then to the response, over and over just to figure out what is being responded to, that's not as easy. If you have multiple points in the OP, then multiple points in the response, that is what is required. And someone responding to that then has a massively increasingly hard time responding again, because the "quote" is getting huge and hard to follow. Just one generation later it is 16 points to track for a single response! There is no way for anyone, OP or not, to follow to what people are responding.
If you follow
carefully and watch for this, people do this to silence people constantly. They make the response too much effort to respond to, and too confusing so people are never quite sure what has been said. People are constantly unable there to follow the conversations for exactly this reason. No one is sure what point is being responded to, or even what person. It's a mess. It simple doesn't work. -
Think of it another way, if you merge points into one post, it also stops topic forking. Put multiple topics in a thread, it is easy to fork them into their own threads. Mash them into single posts, and you cannot. Having to manage forks alone, I think, proves the degree of complexity and mess created by not keeping post thoughts discrete.
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Haha, I just posted a long post on a forum before watching this video, and I literally thought, "I think I have a lot of good points in this post, but what are the chances someone is going to read this post at all?"
Often when reading a thread that's come up from a Google search, I will just skip over a WoT and only go back if later posts either didn't fill in the context, or indicate that there was good information in it.
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I just had a great example post come up. Check out this one...
There are three pretty disconnected thoughts here. Responding to this takes several posts. Not a big deal. Until you get to the bottom paragraph - it's a completely different topic and should be in its own thread. But because it is asked as part of a wall of text, instead of as a discrete posting, there is no clear way to respond to it in the thread without editing the post to only quote that part. And it can't be forked to its own thread because it would pull key elements of the thread out and put them into the wrong thread.
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@scottalanmiller but nodebb has a decent method to handle this.
You can reply as topic.
It iwll open the reply windows, but stay withing the current topic.
So you can then select the text of the post you want to talk about in a new topic and click the quote link.
