What makes a good forum user?

[sjwt]

Im sure everyone means well..

But for the love of us mods.. Stop the veiled swearing or hinting or masking.. lest this thread meets an early end.

Thread lock applied for a cleanup.

- - - Updated - - -

Ok people, cleaning is done..

Play nice and try not to break forum rules when answering questions about how a new user should act on the forums, indeed don't break them at all :>

[Cirocco]

"what makes a good forum user?"

Hm. Well most things have already been said: be nice, be polite, re-read your posts before posting, etc.

To me "what makes a good forum user" is basically equivalent to "what makes a good human being"

Just being nice and having a good dose of empathy goes a very long way. Put yourself in other readers' shoes before posting your post. I can't count how many times i've written up entire paragraphs on forums or other social media, only to reread them through the eyes of someone who thinks differently than myself, sigh at my own crassness, and then hitting the "cancel" button.

Nobody's perfect, but just do the best you can to be nice and respectful. I find that most other things tend to fall into place when doing that

EDIT: also, slightly off-topic: I feel like I'm massively missing a pun or obvious joke here, but I'll go for it anyway at risk of making a giant sillybutt out of myself: why would water be the universal solvent? It doesn't dissolve apolar substances.

EDIT2: OHGODIJUSTGOTIT. That is a terrible and awesome visual joke at the same time

Edited May 18, 2015 by Cirocco

[Robotengineer]

"What makes a good forum user?"

A forum user that doesn't post at all.

"What makes a well liked forum user?"

It really depends, a better question might be:

"What doesn't make a well liked forum user?"

Excessive nitpicking, leave the nit picking to the apes.

Posting impossible answers with no real definitive questions, and vice versa.

Terrible bug reports.

Being disrespectful to good forum users.

Making claims without evidence.

Etc.

So while it is impossible to be a perfectly good forum user and still post, it is possible to get close to good.

[basic.syntax]

On criticism

The Good Conduct Guide.

The Positive Forum movement

[Red Iron Crown]

On criticism

The Good Conduct Guide.

The Positive Forum movement

Those three links sum it up really well. Be friendly, helpful, constructive, and take other people's feelings into account.