Please Read: Important!

[Chris]

We've had some issues with some recent threads on VF and most of that seems to center around miscommunications; where something is said and it's taken another way, usually in a negative light.

If you're going to post a topic, or respond to a topic, you should have the following in mind.

1. If you're going to state your opinion, you shouldn't get upset when others disagree with you. Back up your statements with facts or examples.

2. Spelling and punctuation are so important! If your grammar is poor, its going to be especially difficult for you to get your point across. Poor spelling al lazy capitalization may be acceptable to your friends elsewhere online (twitter, facebook, myspace), but it's difficult to fully accept here because if you're responding to a post, one would hope you're at least taking the time to re-read your post and catch the obvious mistakes.

3. When people read, they are able to get the gist of what you're saying because they recognize the shapes of words. If you're putting capital letters where they don't belong (like mid-sentence), it makes your post very difficult to read. "There Is No Need For This".

4. Lots of us make mistakes and say something inappropriate or something appropriate at an inappropriate time. Nothing wrong with saying "I didn't mean it like that" or "I'm sorry, I got carried away". These kinds of statements go a long way. VF has a great EDIT feature where you can go back and edit your recent posts.

5. If you create a topic and its closed/moved, don't attempt to re-hash those same issues in another thread. The thread was closed for a reason.

6. Yes, there are people much smarter than you are. Nobody is keeping score here. State your opnions and if they differ from others, let it go and move on.

7. 'In Jokes' are fun with your immediate friends on VF, but the majority of people reading that thread 2 years from now will have no idea what you're talking about. Keep on topic to the discussion.

8. If a user is bothering you, consider putting that user on IGNORE (You can set this up in your User Control Panel, much the same way your 'Friends list' works). If you feel their actions/statements are inappropriate and are breaking guidelines (or perhaps doing some of the issues listed above), use the 'Report this post" feature.

9. We have a new feature on VF called "Helpful Posts". It lets you flag posts that are helpful to others in the VF community. Labeling a post as "not helpful" is an option, but we don't recommend this as a way of passively trying to hurt somebody's feelings. Its likely they won't understand why their post is being labeled as "Not Helpful". If you have concerns, the "report this post" feature is the best way to alert VF staff that there is a problem (or an ongoing problem).

10. If you, as a user find yourself getting poor feedback from your postings, you may want to consider some of the items outlined above. Some of that may involve modifcations to your behavior and may actually require more maturity than you may be used to in the online community.

11. Creating new threads: You should only create a new thread when the following criteria has been met: The subject is new and hasn't been discussed before (use the Search button to check old threads), the subject may be helpful to someone, the subject is something that invites discussion and the sharing of opinion.

Lastly, if VF staff feels a particular user is unable to change their behaviors and get along with others, we may choose to ban the account or place other restrictions. Usually this would happen after repeated contact from staff. We want everyone to get along, but we also realize some users, despite their age, just may not have the maturity to handle it.

Please contact me if you have questions or concerns.

Thanks,

Chris