Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Forum Guidelines Working Group

At some point we will have formal Forum Guidelines, but until then, I'd love to hear your ideas about what those guidelines should be and how they could be worded. I'd like to know what you want more of and less of, what you don't like but can live with because it's worth it.

Love and more love,
Grinity

I'll jump in and address the linking to blogs issue. Many people have their own blogs or other websites where they are contributors. I think it's appropriate for those posters to include their links in their signatures, but not appropriate to just post links to their own site as a response to a question. If people are curious about the poster based on the information in their post, they will naturally click through the link to the signature to learn more. I think it's also fine for people to copy text from their own sites and paste here when relevant to a particular question or topic, but even better if they tailor the response to the particular question.

I would like to see a guideline to respect everyone's opinions. Because our children and families are all unique, our experiences as to what works and what doesn't will be quite different. One of the best parts of this forum is that you get to hear many different viewpoints and ideas, and I don't want that limited. There should be room for disagreement and healthy discussion as well, while remaining respectful.

Here are some guidelines/rules of conduct from forums with varying degrees of similarity to this one:

http://giftedkids.about.com/gi/boards/proxicom/guide.htm
http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/ucp.php?mode=terms
http://www.bellaonline.com/misc/forums/rules.asp
http://www.bellaonline.com/misc/terms.asp
http://www.bellaonline.com/misc/forums/compassion.asp
http://www.giftedhaven.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=1212
http://www.mothering.com/motheringdotcommunity-user-agreement
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/faq.php

The above sites have the following rules on spam and solicitation:

* No commercial messages or solicitation, but can include links to a personal website in a signature (giftedkids.about.com)

* No advertising, promotional materials or solicitation (artofproblemsolving.com)

* No posting with the main aim of driving readers away from the forum website (bellaonline.com)

* No posting to advertise a product, business, website or blog or in any other manner from which you would financially benefit (mothering.com)

* Authors of homeschooling or other materials, or who have a financial interest in a particular program, may answer questions about those materials/programs but may not use a more general query to promote their materials/programs (welltrainedmind.com)

I don't know if I'd recommend a rule that no one involved with any website can link to it. That would rule out even links to Wikipedia posted by a Wikipedian. I don't necessarily think that a person could never link usefully to their own blog either. I think a pattern of linking to a website where one has an interest could become solicitation.

If we are to allow some links to websites where a person has an interest, I don't know whether it would be optimal to allow links only in sigs. That would mean that sometimes a person might know about a page that could be highly relevant and useful, which happened to be on a website where they have an interest, and not be able to do more than hope that the reader would find it by accident by following the link in their sig. A sigs-only rule has the advantage of being fairly easy to apply, being fair, and avoiding a lot of solicitation, but the drawback of excluding some useful content.

I would generally in the past have considered these factors when deciding whether posts were solicitation or spam:

* Apparent intent to drive traffic to the linked-to website, instead of simply participating in discussions on the forum site.

* Pattern of posting links to a single site. (This feeds into the last factor.)

* Pattern of posting more than one link to the same external website in a single post.

* Posting links to the same external website with low relevance or which are unrelated to the discussion.

* Relatively few/no forum posts without links to the external website, in proportion to posts with links.

* Relatively low amount of content when posting links to the same external site.

* Non-link posts with minimal or negligible content, such as "Okay" or "I agree", in an apparent attempt to counter the number of posts with links or to present a link in a signature.

* Any interest in the external website linked to in the ways specified above, but especially a financial interest.

Thanks Lucounu! Great Contribution.

I'm curious about topic drift...it seems that pretty often post drift away from the original poster's concerns. This worries me when the OP is relativly new to our forum or the idea of giftedness. Sometimes I've gone ahead and started a new thread that consists of a quote of someone else's post - but that hasn't been met with great success, so I sort of dropped that idea. Is there a way to say - hey, lets keep on topic, particularly if the OP seems new, worried, or vulnerable in some way, without making people so nervous about their posts that they don't post?

I kind of like the freewheeling nature of our current way, but I sure would love to see posters say - 'I disagree with you but I feel we are drifting too far off topic - care to 'step outside?' or care to start a new topic, or care to meet me in 'snark-postive timeout?'

What about PMs? Can we make it a board tradition that anyone can PM anyone else and say - 'Welcome to the board, I'm x parent of 3 gifted teens, and I'm worried when you do X, but I'd like to learn more about you and your perspective."

((shrugs))
Grinity

I like the idea of a respect rule (almost all forums have them) and tentatively a take-it-outside, don't-derail-threads rule.

Regarding respectfulness, a lot of sites use boilerplate language like "unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable" etc.

Mothering.com, which I believe is known for being somewhat restrictive, prohibits forum posts which are "disrespectful, defamatory, adversarial, baiting, harassing, offensive, insultingly sarcastic or otherwise improper manner, toward a member or other individual, including casting of suspicion upon a person, invasion of privacy, humiliation, demeaning criticism, name-calling, [and] personal attack".

Gifted Haven requires one to behave towards others by "respecting their opinions/beliefs, not singling them out without a solid, justifiable reason to do so, or insulting them for no particular reason".

Words like "harmful" may be too vague to be useful. I think "tortuous" must mean "devious" in this context, but it's so vague as to be worthless too. I guess that a certain amount of the boilerplate will likely wind up in the respectfulness rule (ETA: and it's actually already there in the rules that exist for this site). I think that mothering.com's policy has some interesting differences. "Adversarial" seems like possibly a bad choice, as it could lead to claims that any disagreement with another poster are off limits (and in fact some of the history of that site seems to have gone that way). "Baiting" and "casting of suspicion" might be good additions, although I don't know if they're necessary. "Demeaning criticism" is highly vague, but it or something similar might still make a good addition to get the idea across that we should be tolerant and respectful. A rule against "personal attack" is akin to one against singling a person out.

In retrospect in that other thread, if I had it to do over, I would probably start with a PM directly to the other person. It might be a nice explicit rule that if you have a problem with someone else's posts you start by PMing them, unless you choose to bring it to the moderator's attention. We could also consider a rule against singling someone out (a hard rule or one with qualifications like at Gifted Haven). I guess the wording would have to distinguish between what we consider to be bad singling out, and simple disagreement.

Re: Mon, that other website I visited used the phrase "support only" at the top of a thread if they only wanted advice how to achieve their goal and really weren't open to opinions. Maybe there could be a few kinds of tags "thoughts welcome" "how-to only" or "stay on topic" or "converse freely here".

Way Cool!

I do like the support only possibility in the title of threads. I would say, though, that mothering's gifted forum has moved so far in that direction that it seems like you cannot disagree with anyone about anything. I'd hate to see things here move in that direction to the extent that they have there b/c it feels so broad that it is no longer meets my needs at times.

What their guidelines read is:

I would also not want to go in the direction of that other site's guidelines. I value hearing differing opinions on subjects. It would take a whole lot of the interest and fun out of this forum if we had to agree to post only if we agreed on the topic at hand (which I know is only a possible interpretation of that other guideline). A full and open discussion will often include different opinions and comparisons.

Popping in while poorly connected, but: I think it ain't broke, so we shouldn't fix it. I think new posters who belong here generally get answers that let them feel that, and those who don't sometimes don't - but tbbh, that's how it has to be. This place has its own tenor, and part of that is that some peopel who stumble in will not feel welcome because they haven't found the right place. Part of that is that if you want to be somewhere were people will only agree with you, you're in the wrong place. So be it.