Forum tips
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Tony Gravagno
Feb 10, 2012, 4:49:23 AM2/10/12
to mvd...@googlegroups.com
Thanks to everyone for making this forum a success.
The following tips (expressed as requests and common to most forums) should help keep the group running smoothly.
Summary:
1) If you have Moderated status, please contact a manager to change to UnModerated status. This allows your notes to get posted immediately and reduces the effort required by managers.
2) Please avoid over-quoting for those receiving email digests, and avoid under-quoting for those who receive immediate e-mail.
3) Please start a new thread for subject changes.
4) Please encourage end-users, VARs, and other industry colleagues to join.
5) If there are issues with the forum, please contact a manager rather than posting to the group.
More:
1) "Moderation" means a group managers get emails when new posts are available, and we check them for abuse before approving them. You can get full/approved status if we can verify the real person behind the gmail, yahoo, or other anonymous address. See this other posting for details:
<http://groups.google.com/group/mvdbms/msg/30f404f14db66445>
2) As a rule of thumb, it's nice to see more new content than quotes. Of course this doesn't always work, so quote what you feel is important, but no more and no less. Many people get an email "digest" which is a single email that has all postings for the day. (There are two kinds of digests, full and abbreviated.) A single line of content in a stream of quotes is difficult to read. So please remove quoted signatures, off-topic quoted comments, etc, before posting your content. This little bit of "tidying up" makes forum reading a faster and more pleasant experience for everyone. Conversely, a terse response with no context often means nothing to someone reading email - the reader needs to look back in prior emails to see what you're responding to, and many people delete forum email after reading it. A posting should include what it is that you are responding to - again, no more or less, unless you intentionally feel the extra context is of value.
3) Quite frequently subjects change and threads get very long. We've all seen in the past that shorter threads get more responses because they're focused and don't appear to "go on forever". So if you're going off-topic, or if you're continuing an off-topic thought, please consider starting a new thread titled something like "New subject (was Old topic)".
4) The community is enriched as more people contribute. Information is often posted in product-specific groups that could be useful to a wider audience. Consider re-directing product-specific content to product-specific forums where there are people who don't get their information here, and consider reposting more general content from other forums here. Encourage colleagues to do the same. Share what you find here with others if you find it valuable - and link back here:
<http://groups.google.com/group/mvdbms/about>
5) A couple hundred people see every posting to the group, so please send inquiries about the forum itself, about your membership, or about extra/missing posts to a manager for response rather than to the entire group. If you would like to test your postings to see what they look like, please try in one of these groups first, and then set your preferences here:
<http://groups.google.com/group/Groups-Test-Group/about>
<http://groups.google.com/group/alt.alt.test/about>
Thanks!
Your MVDBMS Forum Management Team
The following tips (expressed as requests and common to most forums) should help keep the group running smoothly.
Summary:
1) If you have Moderated status, please contact a manager to change to UnModerated status. This allows your notes to get posted immediately and reduces the effort required by managers.
2) Please avoid over-quoting for those receiving email digests, and avoid under-quoting for those who receive immediate e-mail.
3) Please start a new thread for subject changes.
4) Please encourage end-users, VARs, and other industry colleagues to join.
5) If there are issues with the forum, please contact a manager rather than posting to the group.
More:
1) "Moderation" means a group managers get emails when new posts are available, and we check them for abuse before approving them. You can get full/approved status if we can verify the real person behind the gmail, yahoo, or other anonymous address. See this other posting for details:
<http://groups.google.com/group/mvdbms/msg/30f404f14db66445>
2) As a rule of thumb, it's nice to see more new content than quotes. Of course this doesn't always work, so quote what you feel is important, but no more and no less. Many people get an email "digest" which is a single email that has all postings for the day. (There are two kinds of digests, full and abbreviated.) A single line of content in a stream of quotes is difficult to read. So please remove quoted signatures, off-topic quoted comments, etc, before posting your content. This little bit of "tidying up" makes forum reading a faster and more pleasant experience for everyone. Conversely, a terse response with no context often means nothing to someone reading email - the reader needs to look back in prior emails to see what you're responding to, and many people delete forum email after reading it. A posting should include what it is that you are responding to - again, no more or less, unless you intentionally feel the extra context is of value.
3) Quite frequently subjects change and threads get very long. We've all seen in the past that shorter threads get more responses because they're focused and don't appear to "go on forever". So if you're going off-topic, or if you're continuing an off-topic thought, please consider starting a new thread titled something like "New subject (was Old topic)".
4) The community is enriched as more people contribute. Information is often posted in product-specific groups that could be useful to a wider audience. Consider re-directing product-specific content to product-specific forums where there are people who don't get their information here, and consider reposting more general content from other forums here. Encourage colleagues to do the same. Share what you find here with others if you find it valuable - and link back here:
<http://groups.google.com/group/mvdbms/about>
5) A couple hundred people see every posting to the group, so please send inquiries about the forum itself, about your membership, or about extra/missing posts to a manager for response rather than to the entire group. If you would like to test your postings to see what they look like, please try in one of these groups first, and then set your preferences here:
<http://groups.google.com/group/Groups-Test-Group/about>
<http://groups.google.com/group/alt.alt.test/about>
Thanks!
Your MVDBMS Forum Management Team
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