Presentation About Forums :: Looking for feedback

[Norm Kirchner]

I'll be giving a presentation this week called "Make Friends not Flames :: Online Forum Etiquette"

I thought I would pass this across the community to get a pulse on if y'all think this is a well balanced list and no massive misses on my part.

I know that we have a great document at LAVA Forum Guidelines https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ce1aE4Kz6h1W5vdQER8LIc_9ZvW8QhHLQoqoVjcWw10/edit
But we all have our little peeves, and this might be a fun airing of the grievances.

It's for a 7 minute presentation, so the idea is 30 seconds each on average.
The idea is to hit things for people who are newbs and veterans.

DON"T

1. Abuse the Private Message (PM) Feature
2. Admonish a newb publicly
3. Turn a commuinty forum post into a 2 person flame war
4. Presume that people have knowledge of what hardware your using and how it's API / Interface works
5. Be a 1 hit wonder
6. Post Across multiple forum sub-forums
7. Be a clueless homework hustler; we know what you're doing, do it the right way

DO

1. Search the best you can with site:lavag.org {your search}
2. Remember what it was like when you were young and clueless
3. Be apprecaitive
4. Give ample detail in the form of: high level diagrams, videos, pictures, code and big picture purpose
5. Share novel things that you figure out
6. Start out saving for previous and make everyone's lives easier
7. Be an active participant and share the love!

In the end it might be a flop, but I hope it encourages those CLA in India to kick things up a notch.
Your short term feedback will be appreciated and rolled right in.

~,~
The Captain Was Here

 

/EDIT :: Presentation Added Make Friends, Not Flames.pptx

Edited June 27, 2016 by Norm Kirchner
Added Final presentation at the top

[ShaunR]

2 hours ago, Norm Kirchner said:

I hope it encourages those CLA in India to kick things up a notch

Elaborate?

[Norm Kirchner]

1 minute ago, ShaunR said:

Elaborate?

My mistake, I left out that this is for the Indian CLA summit going on this week.

[ShaunR]

Do #1 should be a don't. The site search is useless and we all use Google

 

Do:

8. Use emoticons liberally. Subtle meanings or intentions may be lost or misconstrued when writing text so use them to reinforce your intended meaning.

[JKSH]

A very sensible list!

Do #5 and #7 could be merged, or at least presented one after the other (#5 sounds like a specific way to do #7)

Do #4 should include error messages and error codes whenever applicable.

You might also find other useful gems at http://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask

 

4 hours ago, ShaunR said:

Do #1 should be a don't. The site search is useless and we all use Google

Norm's point is a tip for using Google.  Type "site:lavag.org ShaunR" into Google and see what happens

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

16 hours ago, ShaunR said:

Do #1 should be a don't. The site search is useless and we all use Google

I think he was refering to using Google. Wouldn't know what the extra keyword "site:lavag.org" would otherwise help in the search on this site. If you want to limit your google search to that extend is of course another question but generally you can always extend it later if you find you get to few hits.

[ShaunR]

Soooo. Shouldn't we remove the site search then if that's not the recommended way of searching or (shock horror) fix it so it works?

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

In my experience almost all forum searches suck badly in comparison to the standard set by Google. So I would say: Disable it!! 

[JKSH]

4 hours ago, rolfk said:

In my experience almost all forum searches suck badly in comparison to the standard set by Google. So I would say: Disable it!! 

Or, embed Google into your forum: https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/2630969?hl=en

[crelf]

noob:
DO: Skim through the forum to see if your question has already been answered. Use the search function. You might find a great answer to your question, as well as a bunch of other cool things along the way.
DON'T: abuse the PM feature. Only PM people you know personally. If you want to ask a general question, ask it in the forums: you'll get a much bigger cross section of experienced responses, and you won't upset people you PM.

Experts:
DO: Try remember what it was like when you were first starting out with a technology, Try not to rush to judge newbies, as today's newbies are tomorrow's champions.
DON'T: Admonish a newbie on forums. That's not your job, and experts on crusades loose a lot of respect of their peers.  If you think a newbie's post is inappropriate in any way, click "Report to Moderator", that's what they're there for.

[Norm Kirchner]

To keep things complete, I've attached the actual presentation that resulted.

Thank you all for your feedback, and I encourage anyone to take this and use at their local user group meeting.

Believe it or not, I was able to pile-drive through these in 7 minutes 30 sec/slide on average.

However it could have gone for 30 min or more. The audience gave positive feedback on the material

Make Friends, Not Flames.pptx

[Norm Kirchner]

By the by, some of my findings on the worst posts on LAVA are as follows for your comedic enjoyment