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For clarity's sake, you mean PMs from the moderators? Or other users?

I think we're talking about PMs from other members. Indeed some of the discussion upthread suggests exactly this - that when one of us sees something we don't like, we PM the member concerned. (See Grinity's signature about wanting a PM if she offends, for example, but the idea is that this should be the default.) I think the argument is that a private PM is less inflammatory than commenting in public, and easier on Mark than PMing the moderator (who probably doesn't read every thread and so wouldn't be immediately up to speed anyway). As I think I said up there, I don't like this idea myself at all (e.g. for precisely the reason shown up in the elephant signature thread - you get a critical PM, you don't immediately agree, you still need to come to the board to see whether others share the feeling). However, given that the idea is on the table, attracted some support, and we're "in limbo" as far as actual guidelines are concerned, my feeling is that if someone is trying out the private PM, s/he is acting reasonably, assuming the PM in question was polite. If we don't want this done, we should have forum guidelines that say what people should do if they have an issue with what someone writes.

ColinsMum, that seems like a fair and reasonable interpretation of the events. So, when do we expect these formal guidelines so we can all stop offending one another ?

The only issue is knowing if you should presume to "correct" another poster or not. That old saying goes, "your rights end where another person's starts". You have your right to speak your mind. Does it matter if it's a pm or on a public thread? Unless you can read everybody's mind you're not going to "gently nudge" each poster you want to correct in the correct manner since some would be upset and argue back if you corrected them in public and some would be offended if you corrected them privately since that would not allow them a forum to publicly defend in if they disagreed with your correction.
And you don't know what people want to be corrected on. Someone told me I was accidentally racist by saying I felt gypped since gyp was short for gypsy and was a romanian racial slur. Scale of 1-10 for me, only 2 or 3 level of interesting. Someone corrected me on my thinking in the nature vs nurture question when old wives tales say we only use about 10% of our brain at once then no one operates near their ceiling of capacity. But I was corrected that parts of our brain have different assignments so using more at once would be applied to the task at hand but would be painful. To me that correction was interest level 9 out of 10. Also, I was recently corrected on misinterpreting data. Someone proved 41% of a genetic factor in g, so I assumed the other 51% was nurture. Some guy pointed out that just because they found the chromosomes creating the first 41% didn't necessarily mean the rest was nurture, it could just as well be other chromosomes they haven't looked for yet. That is the kind of correction I like. I was corrected about something I was trying to think through. The first type of correction is an interesting trivia factoid. I have a bone to pick. And, sadly, I know this is offensive and here I am saying it anyway. I've seen vocal advocates of the child led learning movement being the worst ones for making the trivial corrections on other adults statements, not the constructive on topic feedback like the second two. Ironic, huh.

I agree. Now I'll speak my mind, too.

I'm getting very tired of the PC police jumping all over trivial points that might possibly offend someone somewhere, maybe in the Andromeda galaxy. If you think I'm wrong, please say so in public so we can have a debate about it (as happened on a thread about GRE scores, which made me think about things. I appreciated different points of view). Why the need to hide?

I hate to see this forum suddenly turn to gelatin because of the overblown and self-serving way that one member reacted to a valid criticism. Let's not let her ruin it for everyone.

The world is full of people whose opinions you don't like. Part of being a responsible grownup is accepting that fact and not trying to control what everyone else says. Sorry, but I feel like I'm revisiting 7th grade here.

All right. I agree that a rule to PM someone in private won't work well, due to honest disagreement, an understandable reflex on the part of the recipient to get defensive about her/his posting habits (whether right or wrong, a highly subjective inquiry most of the time), and a probable tendency to encourage the development of "forum police".

In the event that spawned the recent navel-gazing pandemonium, I could have just PMed Mark, though I'm usually loath to bother him, and though it would have felt like tattling. I could alternatively have continued, after my first post and the other poster seemed not to understand what the fuss was about, to point out to her exactly why I had an issue, while keeping as close to a neutral tone as possible (I think I did try to do this but could have done better). The new discussion definitely derailed the original thread a bit, so I probably should have suggested that we take it to another thread. That other thread could have morphed into a discussion much like this one.

Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to share their thoughts in this thread. I would very much like to get something started and in writing by the end of the week, and I apologize for the delay.

Mark

Hello everyone -

Please see the updated Forum Guidelines/Board Rules: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/ubb/boardrules/v/1.html.

For now, this is just a starting point and I can certainly make additions to these rules (or remove or edit them). I'm sure I'm forgetting something. I tried to incorporate many of the thoughts shared in this thread, and I really appreciate everyone taking the time to share their thoughts.

I also left in some of the legal jargon that was previously on the page.

There are a couple items that I would like to also share some thoughts on, so this will likely be edited further.

In regards to making some members of the forum mods, we gave it some consideration. However, there are a couple members of the Davidson Institute staff that are now helping me with this responsibility. It may be something we look at in the future, however.

As always, if anyone has a thought or suggestion, please respond to this thread or send me a PM!

Mark