From a forum I moderate:
xxxxx (a new poster) wrote
TALKING OF SHORT FORMED TRAINS DID ANYONE TRAVEL ON THE 17.02 FROM MELKSHAM 12/03/08 JUST A SINGLE 153, I THINK EVERONE GOT ON DONT KNOW WHAT HAPPENED UP THE LINE.
I'm not usually inclined to pull someone up in their first or second post - especially as some people just post a handful of times. But I do find the use of all capitals to be hard to read - as if I'm being shouted at, and I am tempted to ask the writer to modify the posts - or at least to add in lower case where appropriate on future contributions.
It reminds me uncomfortably of a time that I was a moderator on another board and we all (in the moderation team) getting a bit steamed up about the poor typing, use of English and pure stupidity (apparently) of some of the things that came from one particular poster. "Is she real? Is she a troll? Is she a [personal description deleted]?" we asked. And we darned nearly shut her account off. It turned out that she was nearly blind and (I think - it is a long time back) wheelchair bound or nearly so - every byte of her posts were a struggle and
once you knew of her background, which she wasn't shouting about / asking sympathy for you understood why some things happened to her.
I'm not suggesting the same will turn out to be the case here - though we could have posts submitted through a very simple device where case-mixing is hard to this day ...
Location, time and date modified to protect the identity of the original poster ... (written 2008-03-16, updated 2008-03-18)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
G903 - Well House Consultants - Running and moderating forums and social media sites [22] Falling out over the silliest things - (2004-08-21)
[29] Silence is Golden - (2004-08-26)
[115] Expiration dates or times on web pages - (2004-11-12)
[130] Spelling and grammar - (2004-11-25)
[204] The confidence to allow public comments - (2005-02-06)
[231] Feedback as lifeblood - (2005-02-28)
[248] Use me, but use me effectively - (2005-03-16)
[424] How not to run a forum - (2005-08-24)
[516] Open source questions? Anyone can ask. - (2005-12-03)
[651] Please Register with Opentalk - but just once! - (2006-03-19)
[806] Check your user is human. Have him retype a word in a graphic - (2006-07-17)
[828] Freedom of speech and freedom to post - (2006-08-10)
[841] Forum help - a push in the right direction - (2006-08-21)
[919] Freedom for X is denial of privacy for Y - (2006-11-09)
[923] Why shouldn't I spam? - (2006-11-13)
[948] Running an on line campaign - (2006-11-27)
[1088] Why use BBC code not HTML? - (2007-02-21)
[1190] Save the Forum - A regular clean sweep - (2007-05-17)
[1362] No Thank You - (2007-09-23)
[1472] The Horse goes on and on - (2007-12-15)
[1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
[1523] Ive just received an email from myself. Should I be worried? - (2008-01-29)
[1532] Comment spam blocked. Please comment via Forums - (2008-02-05)
[1539] A forum is not always the best vehicle - (2008-02-14)
[1563] Guidlines for posting on a forum - (2008-03-04)
[1569] I dont care - goodbye - (2008-03-09)
[1595] First Great Western Weekend - (2008-03-30)
[1678] Software - changes and delays. But courses must run on time! - (2008-06-15)
[1759] While the world sleeps ... - (2008-08-19)
[1923] Making it all worthwhile - (2008-12-04)
[1972] Pettifog and forum boards away from public view - (2009-01-03)
[2103] Ask the Tutor - Open Source forum - (2009-03-25)
[2116] Why do we delay new forum members through authorisation? - (2009-04-03)
[2156] Stopping forum spam - control of the signup process - (2009-05-04)
[2162] Admins thoughts on banning a member from a forum - (2009-05-09)
[2177] Preventing forum spam - checks at sign up - (2009-05-12)
[2254] Forum membership - a privilege not a right - (2009-06-22)
[2386] Computing under the influence of alcohol - (2009-08-29)
[2526] A reluctance to move from old shoes to new - (2009-12-05)
[2527] Flying tonight - (2009-12-05)
[2569] How to run a successful online poll / petition / survey / consultation - (2010-01-10)
[2781] The 500 pound question to get you started - (2010-05-26)
[2820] Netiquette for forum newcomers - (2010-06-20)
[3479] Practical Extraction and Reporting - using Python and Extreme Programming - (2011-10-14)
[3910] Identifying your real customers and keeping them well informed fast - (2012-11-02)
[4017] Acceptable User Policy / vexatious interacter - (2013-02-24)
[4025] Backups, Codebase, Strategy and more - dealing with forum incidents - (2013-03-03)
[4065] Handling requests to a forum - the background process - (2013-04-17)
[4234] Change to Libel and Defamation laws from 1st January 2014 - (2013-12-31)
[4239] Facebook marketing - early experiences - (2014-01-19)
[4283] Can a legitimate forum post become illegal a year later? - (2014-07-11)
[4307] Identifying and clearing denial of service attacks on your Apache server - (2014-09-27)
[4315] Welcoming genuine forum posters quickly - but turning away off topic advertisers - (2014-11-16)
[4403] The unbalanced relationship between customer and provider - (2015-01-21)
[4492] Almost so wrong, but perhaps it's right for some? - (2015-05-11)
Some other Articles
Ruby, C, Java and more - getting out of loopsWhat is an lvalue? (Perl, C)Congratulations, Martin and MartaRome, and the faith of RomePlease don't shout at me!Spring and early summer training coursesMaking PHP and MySQL training relevant to the course delegatesDatabase design for a shopping application (MySQL)Joining MySQL tables revisited - finding nonmatching records, etcBudget tax increases hit vehicle market