1. formatting; 2. choice of subsection

[bennyboy]

Hi, guys, I have two rule suggestions I'd like to introduce for consideration

1.
Formatting of posts

Everyone respects NSFW rules, but are there other presentation issues that should/could maybe be considered?

In my opinion, any formatting which has only the purpose of drawing attention to oneself in favor of others should be considered bad manners, and if persistent should be restrained by mods.  I'd include the following:
-unnecessary overuse of special fonts: extra-sized ones, all-caps, poorly-contrasting colors, all italics or bold.  Nobody is more special than anyone else, and I think any obvious attempt to make one's own contributions stand out visually should be either prohibited or discouraged.

Of course, if someone wants to add a little flare to make PARTICULAR passages or comments stand out (like my caps just did), or if the color has some expressive meaning in context (like a rainbow colored "Congratulations!" to celebrate new rulings supported gay rights), that's fine.  But I don't feel anyone should get to be the "always uses italics" guy, or the "always uses 24-point font" girl or whatever. Maybe a sig could be used for this kind of expression, and others could choose whether to display/hide a certain user's sig?

One more thing, though I've never seen it: I think videos or gifs with a lot of flashing should be required to be put in hide quotes and marked for epilepsy.  My recent episode may/may not have come from residual effects of childhood epilepsy-- I was kind of half-strobing or something. I recognize that's pretty rare and was unpredictable, but there are some more obvious cases that are very likely to cause problems for a significant minority of people. Some meme gifs, for example, flash contrasting colors very fast.


2.
Reasonable adherence to Section/subsection and to OP

I think that OPs should be expected to adhere to the spirit of a section.  A particular peeve of mine is clearly-religious themes getting posted in philosophy.  I don't care if some guy wants to quote scripture, but unless it is relevant to the philosophical question at hand, I'd prefer it to start and stay in the Religion sections. Another peeve happens when the majority have given up arguing with an OP, and start posting cat memes or headslap memes or irrelevant content that derails the thread; it's clearly deliberate, and just because the majority has become bored doesn't mean the OP or a minority arguer (e.g. a religious guy) should be shut out and shut down. A more appropriate exit would be, "I think this thread is going nowhere, so I'm going to bow out" followed by radio silence.

[SteelCurtain]

1) I agree with size issues for screen formatting. Style/color issues, I disagree with. If they are extremely off putting, a poster can always be ignored, but I would be adverse to telling anyone they cannot personalize their posts. This also happens so rarely that it can be treated as a case by case for the Staff.

2) I will recuse myself from discussing this rule, because I like trolling trolls with the rock crusher meme. It has its purpose, it will actually get threads back on track, but it has been used like the above.

[Mr.wizard]

I don't find any of this important, the forum is great just the way it is, keep up the good work!

[Napoléon]

In my opinion, any formatting which has only the purpose of drawing attention to oneself in favor of others should be considered bad manners, and if persistent should be restrained by mods.  I'd include the following:
-unnecessary overuse of special fonts: extra-sized ones, all-caps, poorly-contrasting colors, all italics or bold.  Nobody is more special than anyone else, and I think any obvious attempt to make one's own contributions stand out visually should be either prohibited or discouraged.

I thought this was already considered bad etiquette anyway? Isn't bad etiquette already discouraged?

One more thing, though I've never seen it: I think videos or gifs with a lot of flashing should be required to be put in hide quotes and marked for epilepsy.  My recent episode may/may not have come from residual effects of childhood epilepsy-- I was kind of half-strobing or something.  I recognize that's pretty rare and was unpredictable, but there are some more obvious cases that are very likely to cause problems for a significant minority of people.  Some meme gifs, for example, flash contrasting colors very fast.

With all due respect, I think it's a little naive to expect everyone else on the internet to provide you with a "WARNING FLASHING IMAGES" sign.

2.
Reasonable adherence to Section/subsection and to OP

I think that OPs should be expected to adhere to the spirit of a section.  A particular peeve of mine is clearly-religious themes getting posted in philosophy.  I don't care if some guy wants to quote scripture, but unless it is relevant to the philosophical question at hand, I'd prefer it to start and stay in the Religion sections.  Another peeve happens when the majority have given up arguing with an OP, and start posting cat memes or headslap memes or irrelevant content that derails the thread; it's clearly deliberate, and just because the majority has become bored doesn't mean the OP or a minority arguer (e.g. a religious guy) should be shut out and shut down.  A more appropriate exit would be, "I think this thread is going nowhere, so I'm going to bow out" followed by radio silence.

*snore*

What a boring place this would be if we didn't have thread derailing of bullshit threads from time to time.


But meh, my opinion counts for 0.

[bennyboy]

In my opinion, any formatting which has only the purpose of drawing attention to oneself in favor of others should be considered bad manners, and if persistent should be restrained by mods.  I'd include the following:
-unnecessary overuse of special fonts: extra-sized ones, all-caps, poorly-contrasting colors, all italics or bold.  Nobody is more special than anyone else, and I think any obvious attempt to make one's own contributions stand out visually should be either prohibited or discouraged.

I thought this was already considered bad etiquette anyway? Isn't bad etiquette already discouraged?

No. Not only was it not discouraged, it was actively supported as a mode of liberty and self-expression.

One more thing, though I've never seen it: I think videos or gifs with a lot of flashing should be required to be put in hide quotes and marked for epilepsy.  My recent episode may/may not have come from residual effects of childhood epilepsy-- I was kind of half-strobing or something.  I recognize that's pretty rare and was unpredictable, but there are some more obvious cases that are very likely to cause problems for a significant minority of people.  Some meme gifs, for example, flash contrasting colors very fast.

With all due respect, I think it's a little naive to expect everyone else on the internet to provide you with a "WARNING FLASHING IMAGES" sign.

The event in question was due purely to font and couldn't possibly have been predicted. The epilepsy suggestion is just a suggestion. It's pretty rare that fast-flashing images are used, anyway, but I figured I'd add it to the list.

2.
Reasonable adherence to Section/subsection and to OP

I think that OPs should be expected to adhere to the spirit of a section.  A particular peeve of mine is clearly-religious themes getting posted in philosophy.  I don't care if some guy wants to quote scripture, but unless it is relevant to the philosophical question at hand, I'd prefer it to start and stay in the Religion sections.  Another peeve happens when the majority have given up arguing with an OP, and start posting cat memes or headslap memes or irrelevant content that derails the thread; it's clearly deliberate, and just because the majority has become bored doesn't mean the OP or a minority arguer (e.g. a religious guy) should be shut out and shut down.  A more appropriate exit would be, "I think this thread is going nowhere, so I'm going to bow out" followed by radio silence.

*snore*

What a boring place this would be if we didn't have thread derailing of bullshit threads from time to time.


But meh, my opinion counts for 0.

No, I think your opinion counts for 1. Or 2, if you type everything in all-caps.

[Napoléon]

No.  Not only was it not discouraged, it was actively supported as a mode of liberty and self-expression.

BY WHO? GIVE ME NAMES AND I'LL GIVE YOU BLOOD.

[bennyboy]

No.  Not only was it not discouraged, it was actively supported as a mode of liberty and self-expression.

BY WHO? GIVE ME NAMES AND I'LL GIVE YOU BLOOD.

You, sir, are a nasty trickster.  I know enough about the rules to know I'm not supposed to call someone out in a public complaint thread.

[Napoléon]

You, sir, are a nasty trickster.  I know enough about the rules to know I'm not supposed to call someone out in a public complaint thread.

Quite honestly, I could have sworn the etiquette you're talking about was discouraged though, I'm sure I remember several times newbies have been advised to keep their fonts and colours to the standard that everyone else uses. There's only one exception I can think of to that, which is relatively recent.

[rexbeccarox]

No one is advised to keep their stuff standard to what everyone else uses. One person has posted in a funny color (not any weird fonts or sizes), but there are no rules against it, and I'd like to keep it that way because this is not usually a problem. Even with this particular incident, it was only a real problem for one person and an annoyance for, maybe, two who have spoken up. We're not going to start changing forum rules for that; we have enough to deal with between spammers and assholes and general forum clean-up.

Benny, like I said in the other thread (and I'm not trying to be mean at all, just honest): if you have problems with flash and funny colors, etc., the internet is probably not the place for you in general. My advice is to ignore a user who doesn't conform to your requirements.

As far as reasonable adherence goes: if you see someone posting in the wrong forum, report it, and we'll move it.

[bennyboy]

Benny, like I said in the other thread (and I'm not trying to be mean at all, just honest): if you have problems with flash and funny colors, etc., the internet is probably not the place for you in general. My advice is to ignore a user who doesn't conform to your requirements.

It's not your place to tell me what I should/shouldn't be able to do with my free time.  This is a solvable technical problem, solvable by either site programmers who can easily give better control over how the site displays (I know this for a fact as I'm personally capable of doing it), or the person who insists on using strangely-colored fonts, or by me-- since I found the "Ignore" button which you bothered to tell me how to find in that "other" thread.

In the current guy's case, who we can talk about but not name (I know the rules), the guy's a nice guy overall, and making good contributions, and clearly identifies strongly with his color of choice.  I get it-- but after all that, I still feel such a persistent and excessive use of special fonts should be discouraged, ideally with a rule.

For me, the best solution would be a programming one-- a feature to force all forum text to black, or even to select your preferred font or whatever.  The second best would be people not using goofy fonts because it's pointless and annoying.  The third, I suppose, would be to follow your suggestion for me to fuck off, which language I would have preferred to your patronizing tone.

You, sir, are a nasty trickster. I know enough about the rules to know I'm not supposed to call someone out in a public complaint thread.

Quite honestly, I could have sworn the etiquette you're talking about was discouraged though, I'm sure I remember several times newbies have been advised to keep their fonts and colours to the standard that everyone else uses. There's only one exception I can think of to that, which is relatively recent.

I thought so, too. I've seen people in the past get scolded for it. Maybe the times they are a changin', or I'm just hallucinating rules of etiquette that I thought were universal to electronic communication.