Why I'm Not Renewing.

A slew of my posts were deleted tonight, reason given that I

abbreviated "people" as "ppl" in the unsigned email I

received.<BR><BR>Unfortunately my posts especially to the newb in the

"hockey" thread, had a great deal of *content* and is confusing her

mightily.<BR><BR>I had no idea syntax and spelling were so strictly

controlled here, and I apologize for not consistently using the King's

English.<BR><BR>I won't be renewing, nor contributing so much content.

Well, whoever you are, I see that you're not deleting the newb's posts with the non-standard English, yet you are systematically deleting my posts... and I subscribe.<BR><BR>Not even a warning shot, eh?<BR><BR>Tell you what, if you refund my money I won't ever darken this door again.

I thought I was going doolally earlier whilst I was reading the thread mentioned above. The missing posts added greatly to my confusion. Surely if the abbreviations were so offensive, a simple ammendment and e-mail to Kevin would have been a better solution.

 

This kind of action can also encroach upon the posting habits of those who have lesser exposure to english, why would the site want to prejudice their input?

 

Moderators, don't cut off your nose to spite your face. Let's see if this post survives.

Kevin, "Tell you what, if you refund my money I won't ever darken this door again" You may want to go to your local library and check out Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Your current method of communiciation is not working very well.

I looked at your deleted posts. They were deleted by Bob Atkins. They don't fall into the category of abusive, although I think in a couple of them you were badgering other members a bit.

 

Sorry to be blunt, but they fall into the category of piffle. Some of the moderators on photo.net have a no-piffle policy in their forums, and delete posts not only because they are abusive, but because they are untrue, unhelpful, uninformative, irrelevant, uninteresting, poorly written, etc. One of these moderators is Bob Atkins.

 

Many of the forums are more tolerant of piffle, although none of them are supposed to be chat rooms, with the online equivalent of some guy standing at the bar in a pub holding forth on whatever topic comes up.

 

You should stick to the forums with a higher piffle tolerance than Bob's forums. Alternatively, you might think before posting: I am posting this for a worldwide audience of people trying to learn about photography. This post will be indexed in Google under my name and it will be in the photo.net archives when my grandkids are learning photography, if the photo.net owners plans are realized. Is what I am posting true, useful, and/or interesting to anyone?

 

I'm sorry you are aren't going to resubscribe, and I know that there is a lot of undeleted piffle in the forum archives -- posts that are lot more pifflish than what you posted, in fact. But I'm not going to tell Bob to stop deleting these kind of posts.

I have a fairly high piffle tolerance, as long as the thread is generally relevant to the forum.

 

However multiple exclamation marks rub my fur the wrong way so I installed a filter to prevent the use of more than one per phrase. I guess that's my equivalent to "ppl".

 

Nobody said moderators are perfect. But hopefully we're forgiven for our foibles, including being hoisted by our own petards. ;>

Ahhhh so your culprit! I am the double exclamation mark queen! And you always snag me! It's ok I forgive you. "All caps" does the same thing to me! :-) (i hope you don't mind smileys)

C'mon ppl, the definition of "piffle" is "trivial nonsense." We'd best be careful if we delete it all or there may not be many posts left in the forums, eh! ! ! Is there an exam to see if one is qualified to decide trivial content? Cheers.

Actually, Laurie, you weren't the culprit who inspired me to add that exclamation mark filter. There was a too-enthusiastic newbie who ended! every! word! with! multiple! exclamation! marks! and! ignored! capitalization! and! all! other! puncutation! it! was! infuriating!

I actually removed a bunch of posts yesterday and moved a few threads around between forums. This is perfectly normal for me and the way I try to run the Nature and EOS forums.

 

The "Hockey" thread was moved to the Sports forum with a clean slate. It really wasn't a Canon EOS question in the first place.

 

I try (but fail) to keep them on as "professional" a level as possible. "Professional" doesn't mean everyone has to be an expert or that people with no experience aren't welcome, in fact quite the reverse. It does mean trying to keep forums as discussion forums not chat rooms using internet slang and abbreviations and trying to keep posts useful and on topic. The use of somewhat "standard English" is required since a large number of forum participants speak English as a second language. This is an international website. While I can figure out what terms like "plez" and "youz dee bom" might mean, I'd imagine non-native English speakers are just confused (not that those particular terms were used in this particular case as far as I know). The same goes for "ppl" (which was used and appears to actually mean "people"). There's really no reason to use non-standard grammar or spelling unless you don't know any better. Keeping things "professional" and maintaining some sort of archival integrity also sometimes involves removing some posts that don't materially contribute to answering posters questions, which includes back and forth one-line "chat" between users.

 

Not all of it gets removed. If it's one comment in a long thread, it usually stays. If it's in every other post in a thread it does (if I see it).

 

There are some people posting here who seem to be incapable of constructing a grammatically correct sentence or even writing in sentences. We don't tend to punish the badly educated. If it's the best you can do, it's the best you can do. We also don't remove posts made by people who don't speak English as a native language if they make errors. However people who can speak English properly and who can construct a grammatically correct sentence should do so whenever possible. You should write here as though you were writing for a newspaper or magazine, if you are capable of doing so. It makes things far easier to understand for everyone (including native English speakers), plus, for those who can read English, things you say in a standard manner tend to carry a lot more weight than things said in slang.

 

"When taking photographs of people, a focal length of 80mm is often used for portraits" carries a bit more weight than "use da zoom at 80 fer yr ppl pix", even though I can recognize that both contain essentially the same advice.

 

If someone makes a bunch of posts in what I consider an inappropriate style for the forums, I remove them. It's more obvious if they all come in a big batch than if they trickle in by one spaced many days apart.

 

We don't quibble over spelling error, placement of commas, use of semi-colons and other "small" details. We're not marking term papers.

 

We could have USENET here, where pretty much anything goes and you can say whatever you want. But we don't. I remove posts which contain bad information and I remove posts which I don't meet standards for clarity and appropriate use of language.

 

I suppose I could let everything go and if Brian wanted things that way, I'd follow his lead. It would certainly be a lot easier and a lot less work. Perhaps I'm just wasting my time attempting to maintain some sort of standards. It's impossible to do at the 100% level and maybe people would prefer to have everything posted that wasn't actually obscene or highly offensive just stay put. There are plenty of working forums out there on other sites that seem to have that policy.

 

Sorry if you were offended. Posts get removed. Some of my posts get removed. I don't think anyone here has words that are so wise that every one of them is precious.

 

BTW there used to be a mechanism where all responses made to a post were emailed to the poster of the thread, so every word that was typed actually got to the poster, whether it was useful or not. So nobody could then complain they wasted their time even if their words were deleted from the forum. Does that no longer work? We still have the "radio button" which is labeled "notify me of responses" and it's checked by default. Brian - does it do anything these days? Is it supposed to email responses or is it broken?

That option has NEVER worked for me and I got burned because of it. I too had a thread deleted, and it contained very valuable info to me that people "ppl" were nice enough to share. Can we get that option fixed? Thanks.

As this "piffle" is soon to be deleted as well, I thought that I would point out that we have a

Queen, not a King!

 

Up the British, and our coloUrful language! Tax the colonies, and don't give them

representation, I say!

I'm not going as far as insisting on English spelling and grammar. I'll tollerate American English on the grounds that the web servers are based in the US!

<p>

I'll even give extra latitude to n00bs, though I do draw the line at 1337 and the use of expressions such as "b4k4" and of course the ubitquitous "YHBT YHL HAND". Plez keep it cl33n ppl.

<p>

<pre>

Jones: Morning, Squadron Leader.

Idle: What-ho, Squiffy.

Jones: How was it?

Idle: Top-hole. Bally Jerry, pranged his kite right in the how's-your-father;

hairy blighter, dicky-birded, feathered back on his sammy, took a waspy,

flipped over on his Betty Harpers and caught his can in the Bertie.

Jones: Er, I'm afraid I don't quite follow you, Squadron Leader.

Idle: It's perfectly ordinary banter, Squiffy. Bally Jerry, pranged his kite

right in the how's-your-father; hairy blighter, dicky-birded, feathered

back on his sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harpers and

caught his can in the Bertie.

Jones: No, I'm just not understanding banter at all well today. Give us it

slower.

Idle: Banter's not the same if you say it slower, Squiffy.

Jones: Hold on then -- Wingco! -- just bend an ear to the Squadron Leader's

banter for a sec, would you?

Chapman: Can do.

Jones: Jolly good. Fire away.

Idle: Bally Jerry... (he goes through it all again)

Chapman: No, I don't understand that banter at all.

Idle: Something up with my banter, chaps?

</pre>

<P>

If you think this is all a load of [insert expression here], take a look at this:

<p>

<a href="http://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Site_support">http://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Site_support</a>

Kevin, I can certainly understand how you feel. Several of the Pnet forums are the most micro-managed forums I have ever seen on the web. Obviously, profanity and ad hoc attacks should not be tolerated, but I think several of the moderators here take it WAY too far.

 

For the most part I find Pnet to be an educational and enjoyable experience. Recent changes in Pnet policy have made it clear that Pnet is moving away from a ".net" type of website and much more into a ".com" type of website with the increase of advertising, etc. That's fine, but IMHO when you cross that line you change some things--i.e. instead of just being supporters/contributers/donors, we become more like customers. As such, if you want to run a successful business you need to attract and then maintain your customer base.

 

If I want to use 2 exclamation points in a sentence (a very common practice) it should be up to me--not the "punctuation police." Most importantly, we should not be subject to the whims and pet-peeves of the forum moderators regarding silly things like punctuation, etc.! Imagine going to a store and asking for a plastic bag for your purchases and the clerk says "No, you're getting a paper bag--plastic bags just drive me nuts." Would you continue to do business with that store? I know I wouldn't..........

 

IMHO, over-moderated forums that delete threads at will for petty reasons are in effect valuing the "sanctity" of the archives and the pet-peeves of moderators over the the feelings of paying members. Maybe a few forum moderators will sleep better at night knowing that there are no marauding exclamation points wreaking havoc in "their" forum--but satisfying fetishes doesn't pay for salaries and bandwidth--paying customers do!

 

BD

Yes, I agree. Moderators do too much. They try to make forums into something better than they are. It's probably a legacy from the original days of photo.net when it was envisaged as a sort of authoritative source of accurate information and moderators were at least as much expected to act as editors as traffic cops.

 

That, though a laudable goal, is impossible with high traffic open public forums.

 

Perhaps the time has come to drop all standards of content other than simply to remove excessive abuse. It would certainly make the moderators job a lot easier. It's a losing battle anyway and quite possibly not worth the effort involved - it's certainly not worth the abuse some moderators get for their efforts.

The policing of exclamation points, I think, is taking things way, way too far !(Second exclamation point). That said, keeping out teenage text message speak gets a bit thumbs up from me. If that's what people are looking for then they can simply text message each other.

 

Given the level of traffic on the EOS forum, Bob, you must be doing something right.

I think the exclamation point filter was originally installed by Philip, back in the last ice age.

 

How many should be allowed? 2? 4? an infinite number?

I installed the exclamation point filter on the b&w forums. But I deleted the longstanding "ebay" filter that was originally in place.

 

Here's the deal: If I'm gonna spend hours each week (sometimes hours every day) reading the forums I'm responsible for in order to be sure they're more or less on topic and nobody is throwing chairs at the saloon mirror, I believe I'm entitled to micro-manage the one bit of piffle that really gets on my nerves - abuse of exclamation points.

 

Anybody who doesn't like it is welcome to take over moderating. I guarantee that within six months you'll be guilty of some micro-management of your own, at least in the opinions of a few folks.

Here is the one and only communication I received for my "piffleness"... unsigned.<BR><BR>I only learned who it was from reading this thread!<BR><a href="http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=clipboard015wi.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/4705/clipboard015wi.th.gif" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us" /></a><BR><BR><BR>And here is a newb's (can I say "newb"? that is internet speak...) reaction after my information was deleted from her thread:<BR><BR><a href="http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=clipboard01b8no.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/4733/clipboard01b8no.th.gif" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us" /></a><BR><BR>... and a member's puzzlement...<BR><BR><a href="http://img505.imageshack.us/my.php?image=clipboard01c0rf.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/2844/clipboard01c0rf.th.gif" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us" /></a><BR><BR><BR>S0 |-|0w 4b0u7 P|\|37 d0|\|4735 000|-|, 20$ 0f my |\|3w 5ub5(rip7i0|\| 70 7|-|3 Am3ri(4|\| C4|\|(3r S0(i37y 4|\|d w3 (411 i7 4 d4y?<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><a href="http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/l/leetspea.htm">1337speak translator</a>

All I can say Kevin is ITYAFW

 

I'm not wasting any more of my time on this.

Now that I think about it some more, just removing the extra exclamation points would probably work much better than the condescending admonishment that is displayed now (By the way there's a typo in that admonishment). So, in that regard, one is sufficient. Allow the user to enter as many as is necessary to vent frustration. We'll start to feel pretty silly entering exclamation points we know will be removed.

 

Bob, Philip may have put in the original filter but it seemed to have a rebirth a few months back.

"... since I shoot ppl, and if I need more..."<BR>

If someone hadn't told me that "ppl" was short for "people", I would still be scratching my head. I'm used to seeing "ppi" and would think that "ppl" was tied in some way with digital. Good advice is advice that people can easily understand.

<BR>You'll be really pissed someday..."<BR>

"pissed" "ppl" and "newbs" (whatever that is) Yes, I would really be impressed with the advice of a person who expresses himself this way. Sounds like the girl behind the counter at Wal-Mart (the one who chews four sticks of gum at the same time).

Kevin, I'm fairly sure the Canon 2x extender (doubler?) does not work with the Canon 28-135mm IS lens. The 1.4x doesn't either. Or did I take the wrong meaning from your deleted post?

ITYAFW is not in google, nor in urbandictionary.com

 

?

Do these same high standards apply to languages other than English?