Messaging Guidelines

Overview

The NetConnect forums are for ministry leaders to constructively and edifyingly interact with one another. For this interraction to be efective, though, some guidelines need to laid down.

The forums are not moderated, but they are monitored. In other words, anyone is free to post a message, but any message may be edited, moved to another forum or deleted afterwards if it doesn't meet these guidelines.

These guidelines are neither burdensome nor Draconian. Simply put:

Choose a descriptive synopsis
Use content appropriate for the forum

Choose a Descriptive Synopsis

Forums can contain so many messages that tracking down useful information can be a challenge sometimes. To make life easier for those who come later, please choose a synopsis that fully describes the message content.

It may be tempting to give a tantalizing synopsis instead so that people will want to read your message, but the whole idea is to able to know what the message is without having to read it.

You may find it easier to write the synopsis after you've written the message.

Here are some examples:

Bad Synopses	Good Synopses
I have a problem This is where I turn to Try this There's a problem with that, though	Help! I have to make a puppet and I don't know how! Try the Puppeteer's Craftbook by Ima Noboddi Here are some instructions for making a marionette Good instructions, but use fishing line instead of thread

Use Content Appropriate for the Forum

The overarching guideline for message content is this:

Consider the needs of the forum's readers.

While it is preferable to not interfere with ongoing dialogues or stifle free speach, there may be situations in which a message will be edited, moved to another forum or deleted. The following, for example, are not appropriate:

coarse or foul language
gross disrespect towards others
content that's not consistent with the forum's stated purpose
merely saying, "Me too!" - the bane of message boards and newsgroups everywhere!

If you have two or more things to say then please use two or more different messages. This way, if there are a number of follow-up postings then they'll be grouped together properly instead of being intertwined with each other.

If you are familiar with HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) tags then you should know that they aren't permitted in messages because of formatting and security issues. Otherwise, it would be possible for a malicious person to make a mess of how a message is displayed in a web browser, or possibly craft a message that could steal e-mail addresses from anyone who followed it up.