Civility

Thu 26 Jun 2008, 19:16

Occasionally I've received comments that the discussions in the forum put people off contributing to the site.

I've historically tended to take these with a pinch of salt: the Charlbury forum is, by and large, enormously civil and well-mannered compared to the rest of the Internet and it is unrealistic, I think, to expect it to be completely insulated from the way everyone else does it. The forum, too, is but a small part of the website, and if you choose not to use 80% of the site because you don't like 20%, that's silly. Even now (26 June), there are 14 threads on the first page of the forum and 13 of them are very civil.

Unfortunately, one is not, and has gone way beyond what is usually considered acceptable on this forum. I would like to think that it's a one-off - after all, there would be no point in maintaining the forum if every thread were like this. But we have to make sure that doesn't happen.

So two requests... well, they're a bit stronger than "requests", really.

Keep it civil.

If you wouldn't say it to someone's face in a pub or cafe - especially if it's to the face of someone you've never met - then don't say it on the forum.

Be careful with your turn of phrase. What might seem hypothetical from your end of the keyboard ("people like you") can look very personal on someone else's monitor. Emotions, gentle jibes and dramatic exaggerations don't translate well across the Internet.

The best way to improve the forum is to make a good posting.

If you have an issue with a particular posting, do not retaliate. Do not even reply.

The best way to make the forum better is to start a good, civil thread about something else relevant.

Forum postings complaining about others' behaviour on the forum are not helpful: they are part of the problem. Believe me, this is the case on pretty much every newsgroup and forum across the Internet: one ill thought-out posting starts an endless chain of moaning and the original is rapidly forgotten.

If you have an issue with a particular posting, or poster, please let me know by e-mail to the usual e-mail address, or ask Susie or I when you see us around town. (At the very least I'm in the same place twice a week should you want to collar me - the Rose & Crown on Friday night and St Mary's on Sunday morning - and if you don't know what I look like, I'm mid-30s, fairly thin, and with very rapidly greying hair; found behind either a pint of Black Rat or an organ!)

We can do something about it that won't ruin the forum for others. If people tell us, we can consider whether there's a wider problem to address, or just one rogue poster, and act accordingly. But endless, public tit-for-tat just puts people off, and there has been far too much of that in the recent thread. At a cursory glance I can see a long list of moans like "goodnight", "this sums up everything that is wrong with this forum", "you have to spit out the dummy", "I'm going to give up" - people who, in complaining about the thread, just have to post and make it worse, thereby drowning out decent posts. For goodness' sake, if you don't like it, just leave alone.

Thanks for the patience of everyone who does make the forum a useful and interesting resource. We now return you to your regular scheduled programme.