Forum Rules/Etiquette

Here on the thrive development forums, we take pride in our work, and that means we expect a certain level of respect, professionalism, and effort from our posters. For the most part, these expectations are followed by all members, and rarely does anyone have to reprimand another member of the forums. Nonetheless, there may be some confusion among members as to what is expected of them, so this thread exists to establish guidelines for forum behavior.

General Rules

• Respect other members. This means that any personal attacks are unwelcome, and any language that is purposefully inflammatory or derisive is prohibited.
  
• Stay on topic. Please only post information in threads that that information is pertinent towards, and try to discuss issues tangential tom the thread's main purpose as little as possible.
  
• Act professionally. It's fine to have personality, but we want to run an efficient forum where ideas are exchanged quickly without too much superfluous chit-chat.
  
• Leave the dead to rest. Please don't post in threads that haven't seen any activity in the past year or so. If you want to start discussion on them again, first post about it on this thread.

Things to Remember

• We are a worldwide community. Many of our members speak English as a second or third language, so be accepting of misspellings and imperfect grammar. At the same time, try to keep your own posts as coherent as possible, so that there is minimal misunderstanding between members.
  
• There is a hierarchy of command. When there is a question or dispute, don't be afraid to summon a moderator or team lead to the thread to resolve it.
  
• Thrive has been around for a while. We've had lots of ideas, and lots of those ideas didn't make the cut, or are being put on the back burner to be dealt with at a later date. If we've already thought of your idea, or seem to dismiss it fairly quickly, don't be offended. We've probably seen it before.

Rules of Thumb

• Think before you post.
  
• Search first, ask second, post with approval. When you have a question, first look through the forum for a moment to see if you can find the answer yourself. If you can't ask it on
  this thread, and someone should be able to help you. If your question or idea is interesting enough, someone will advise you to start a new thread on that topic, and then you can go ahead and author a thread.
  
• Learn theJargon.
  

Should there be rules for clearing completely unused accounts?
If we completely erased accounts with no posts where the "last visit" was more than a month ago, it would tidy up the memberlist a lot and help work out how popular these forums are.

I don't think the memberlist being cluttered or the confusion as to the popularity of the forums are problems to worry about.

Also, more than a month? That's a very harsh sanction. Even amongst people who have posted, there are many who have gone for at least a month and later returned to contribute. I would never have wanted to delete their accounts during that time. There have also been many users who have just been visitors for several months, until they joined and actually started participating at a later date. I never would have wanted to deny them that opportunity be telling them "post within the first month of registering or out you go!".

And lastly, why should posting within a month be a qualification for maintaining your account? There are many users who join the forums as a symbolic gesture to show their support for the project, while others join and initially have nothing to say but do participate later when they do find something they can contribute to. There are also many users who join the forums as a practical gesture since it is required if you want to be able to open embedded links, which is why I try to keep important links untouched.

If we were to start cleaning up old dusty accounts, one month would be far too short. I would say 6 months, if not a year, should be the minimum. It doesn't cause any harm or detriment having a long memberlist.

First of, im also against deleting any account. Unless we had so many accounts that dinding names for new ones was hard, i dont see a reason to eliminate anything.

But i believe he sugested people who NEVER posted any post, and on top of that didnt log in in the last month. However, i'm still against deleting anything unless we would solve anyting with it.

I'm not sure whether I honestly have authority to post here but, I agree with Nick and Dani, don't delete old accounts, it would only cause problems right now. Many people take leave for a few months because they have things that are going on in their lives that merit leaving the forum for awhile.

Next year I will be at college, if I don't post for a month due to finals and stuff I don't want to come back to the forum and realize that my account has disapeared.

untrustedlife wrote:

I'm not sure whether I honestly have authority to post here but, I agree with Nick and Dani, don't delete old accounts, it would only cause problems right now. Many people take leave for a few months because they have things that are going on in their lives that merit leaving the forum for awhile.

Next year I will be at college, if I don't post for a month due to finals and stuff I don't want to come back to the forum and realize that my account has disapeared.

QFT

NickTheNick wrote:

I don't think the memberlist being cluttered or the confusion as to the popularity of the forums are problems to worry about.

Also, more than a month? That's a very harsh sanction. Even amongst people who have posted, there are many who have gone for at least a month and later returned to contribute. I would never have wanted to delete their accounts during that time. There have also been many users who have just been visitors for several months, until they joined and actually started participating at a later date. I never would have wanted to deny them that opportunity be telling them "post within the first month of registering or out you go!".

And lastly, why should posting within a month be a qualification for maintaining your account? There are many users who join the forums as a symbolic gesture to show their support for the project, while others join and initially have nothing to say but do participate later when they do find something they can contribute to. There are also many users who join the forums as a practical gesture since it is required if you want to be able to open embedded links, which is why I try to keep important links untouched.

If we were to start cleaning up old dusty accounts, one month would be far too short. I would say 6 months, if not a year, should be the minimum. It doesn't cause any harm or detriment having a long memberlist.

I'm only talking about accounts with a postcount of 0. I'd very likely end up leaving for months at a time, and I don't want my account deleted, because this account is one of the 1/3 that actually has a postcount.

As for what this solves, it makes popularity tracking easier.

NickTheNick wrote:

And lastly, why should posting within a month be a qualification for maintaining your account? There are many users who join the forums as a symbolic gesture to show their support for the project, while others join and initially have nothing to say but do participate later when they do find something they can contribute to. There are also many users who join the forums as a practical gesture since it is required if you want to be able to open embedded links, which is why I try to keep important links untouched.

To add to the above, there might be people who register for the above reason, and then leave for at least a month, and then return. I would not want to delete their accounts in that time.

Why is popularity tracking important?

NickTheNick wrote:

NickTheNick wrote:

And lastly, why should posting within a month be a qualification for maintaining your account? There are many users who join the forums as a symbolic gesture to show their support for the project, while others join and initially have nothing to say but do participate later when they do find something they can contribute to. There are also many users who join the forums as a practical gesture since it is required if you want to be able to open embedded links, which is why I try to keep important links untouched.

To add to the above, there might be people who register for the above reason, and then leave for at least a month, and then return. I would not want to delete their accounts in that time.

Why is popularity tracking important?

Six months then. If they don't come back after six months, they're probably gone forever. And they can quickly recreate their account in the extremely unlikely event that they do come back.

And as for popularity tracking, it's useful to know how fast serious accounts are being created to help with an open source game, and then compare that to recent events to find out how Thrive gets popularity.

That sounds far less unreasonable.

I still don't think that answers the question. Popularity cannot be simply gauged by user count, and I don't think it is worth deleting accounts for. The statistics link at the bottom is useful since it provides charts on post counts, thread counts, post and thread activity, new user registration, etc.

EDIT: On the stats page you can clearly see the Reddit influxes from the peaks in activity.

True. Maybe this idea should be ignored until and if this forum gets several times more popular.

Yeah, I'd personally want to avoid deleting accounts unless they've been inactive for a period of years. I personally might be gone for up to six months again next year, dealing with thesis, so I'd like to be able to come back and resume my moderator duties.