Useful Guidelines For Posters

[FailingEnterpriseAdmin]

Hello FailingEnterprise Community Members,

I’m always looking for ways to improve the usefulness of FailingEnterprise.com and the quality of the discussions here on the discussion board. After reading thousands of messages, I’m ready to offer some advice on how to be a useful contributor to our discussion board:


1. Do your homework, get your facts straight, think clearly and then write clearly. Express an opinion and explain why. This board has a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than other discussion boards, and it’s one of our best features.


2. If you disagree with another posting, state your disagreement and explain why. Criticizing someone else’s argument is encouraged. Criticizing the person themselves, however, only encourages retaliatory insults, sidetracks useful discussion, suppresses participation, and is usually a sign of lazy thinking and a weak argument.


3. Don’t use fanciful alternate spellings for swear words. All you’re doing is adding the insult of unreadability to the injury of foul language, and gaining no benefit in the process. Best to skip them entirely, as they weaken your arguments by implying lack of confidence in the power of your ideas. If you have something worthwhile to say, showing that you lack good manners never improves your believability. Presently, there is no swear word filtering.


4. Register with the discussion board. Your username will be reserved for your use only, and you’ll be able to send and receive e-mail messages and private messages on the internal message system. You’ll still have the option to temporarily log out and post without your username whenever you wish. Most posters start off unregistered, then later register, and are glad they did.


5. Use paragraphs and sentences and do the best you can with spelling and grammar. Sure, it takes a little more time, but it greatly improves the readability of your message. Try to ignore everyone else’s spelling and grammar errors. Spelling Nazis are unpopular on the board and generally earn a backlash. Also, not everyone here learned English as their first language. The Admin is learning another language and is humbled by the experience; let’s give each other a break on spelling and grammar.


6. Give praise and encouragement when it’s earned. We want to nurture our community and give each other a break.


As always, your feedback is encouraged. How can we make this better?


Admin

[lionheart]

Great info. Thanks! After browsing the threads, I'd say following this advice would improve the quality of the discussions. Great site.

[iriswalt]

Originally Posted by FailingEnterpriseAdmin

Hello FailingEnterprise Community Members,

I’m always looking for ways to improve the usefulness of FailingEnterprise.com and the quality of the discussions here on the discussion board. After reading thousands of messages, I’m ready to offer some advice on how to be a useful contributor to our discussion board:


1. Do your homework, get your facts straight, think clearly and then write clearly. Express an opinion and explain why. This board has a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than other discussion boards, and it’s one of our best features.


2. If you disagree with another posting, state your disagreement and explain why. Criticizing someone else’s argument is encouraged. Criticizing the person themselves, however, only encourages retaliatory insults, sidetracks useful discussion, suppresses participation, and is usually a sign of lazy thinking and a weak argument.


3. Don’t use fanciful alternate spellings for swear words. All you’re doing is adding the insult of unreadability to the injury of foul language, and gaining no benefit in the process. Best to skip them entirely, as they weaken your arguments by implying lack of confidence in the power of your ideas. If you have something worthwhile to say, showing that you lack good manners never improves your believability. Presently, there is no swear word filtering.


4. Register with the discussion board. Your username will be reserved for your use only, and you’ll be able to send and receive e-mail messages and private messages on the internal message system. You’ll still have the option to temporarily log out and post without your username whenever you wish. Most posters start off unregistered, then later register, and are glad they did.


5. Use paragraphs and sentences and do the best you can with spelling and grammar. Sure, it takes a little more time, but it greatly improves the readability of your message. Try to ignore everyone else’s spelling and grammar errors. Spelling Nazis are unpopular on the board and generally earn a backlash. Also, not everyone here learned English as their first language. The Admin is learning another language and is humbled by the experience; let’s give each other a break on spelling and grammar.


6. Give praise and encouragement when it’s earned. We want to nurture our community and give each other a break.


As always, your feedback is encouraged. How can we make this better?


Admin

I feel this post should be followed