Forum Rules
Poorly phrased questions and poor grammer, spelling and capitalization have been discussed here often. Also mentioned many times is the problem of users not completing their profiles making it more difficult to offer appropriate responses to their questions. Changes to the forum structure have been suggested to address some of these problems. I suggest what I think would be a fairly simple change that might help. Rather than making it nesessary to click a link in order to see the forum rules (and many new users do not seem to bother doing that) have the rules listed under the "Ask a Question" banner. Yes, I know guidelines appear when writing a question. This is good but having all the rules put in front of us would be even better. Oh, and add "complete your profile" to the rules.
8 Answers
I have never read the rules! I don't think many people do... They would have to be terrribly dedicated.
It's like when the computer wants to install an update,it says: read the information, but you just click ok and hope for the best.
I really think it's nicer to just welcome new members. In no time they will stop using text language, I don't find that a major problem. We do after all have to live in the mobile phone world, we might as well accept that young people write like that. If I had been critizesed on my first question in this forum, I would never have returned. Ok, many people think that would have been a good thing.
But,we need new members in order to have fresh new questions. ( well, some questions return with alarming regularity) and good answers.
I¨m not as picky about the spelling and grammar. I see pros and cons to being strict there, and fully accept annierat´s precept that it´s a young world, for better and worse.
But filling out where you´re from and at least a vague, better-than-nothing self-assessment of your level doesn´t hurt anyone, and helps responders. And saves everyone from having to ask this all the time. It´s simply a waste of limited human time and energy.
And since there is obviously already coding in place that allows certain privileges with certain amounts of experience, that framework should allow easy change to field requirement. Is it a null field, or not. Not a big deal.
Questions that are too vague should just be closed. Tell the poster something to the effect of more info required and make them re-post it. Questions they can easily use the translator or search functions for should be closed as well.
We need an additional option when identifying someone's level of language proficiency, "Native". Fluent and native are two very different things. I can be fluent in Spanish but not a native speaker.
And we don't really need to know a persons location, but rather what dialect of their native language they speak. For English it would be USA, England, etc,. Spanish would be Spain, Mexico, etc.
As for grammar and punctuation, good luck. You can't force people to do it, you can only remind them. For people that are blatant and repeat offenders you can send them warnings and maybe suspend them for a few days, even banning them if they insist on purposely continuing to submit poorly written material, but outside of that, you just gotta accept that it happens and move on.
Oh, and add "complete your profile" to the rules.
Estoy de acuerdo
I agree with the changes recommended. I would add a request to make filling out the profile required to access the Q&A ( that would require some pogramming). The key items to be required would be English and Spanish fluency...and maybe gender and location.
It would be nice if we could put in slightly longer comments.
Very good point on linguistic levels, Rodney. I know I am a beginner in Spanish and that I have a way to go before I get to the next level but, I don't know if I will recongnize when I do because I do not know what "intermediate" means in language skill. I do understand the terms beginner, conversant, fluent and native speaker and perhaps I might put communcative between beginner and conversant.
Has anybody ever noticed ?. The members that complain the most about capitalization, punctuation, spelling etc. appear to break these rules as much if not more than others. I say , put your own house in order before you complain about others.
Annie said
If I had been criticized on my first question in this forum, I would never have returned. Ok, many people think that would have been a good thing.
I am surprised more members didn't pick up on Annie's remark above. Particularly as she has been an avid poster in both posing and answering questions.
Annie, I know you meant it as a joke, however, I think that it would not have been a good thing but a very bad thing.
